I didn't have much energy. After a few minutes, I hung panting and hurting and too tired to struggle any more, the water only getting colder, bound limbs screaming.

I hurt, but I figured the pain couldn't possibly get any worse.

A few hours went by and showed me how wrong I was.

A door opened and firelight stabbed at my eyes. I would have flinched if I had been able to move that much. A couple of large, blocky men came through the door carrying actual flaming torches. The light let me see the room. The wall beside the door was finished stone, but the walls all around me were a mishmash of fallen rubble and ancient brick, and one was made of curved concrete-some kind of piping for the city's water system, I supposed. The ceiling was all rough earth, some stone, some roots. Water poured down from somewhere, over me, and vanished down a groove worn in the floor.

They had taken me to Undertown, a network of caves, ruined buildings, tunnels, and ancient construction that underlay the city of Chicago . Undertown was dark, damp, cold, full of various creatures that shunned sunlight and human company, and might have been radioactive. The tunnels where the Manhattan Project had been housed were just the start of Undertown. The people who knew of its existence didn't come down here-not even wizards like me-unless matters were desperate.

No one knew their way around down here. And no one would be coming to find me.

"Been working out pretty hard," I muttered to the two men, my voice a croak. "One of you guys got a cold beer? Maybe a freeze pop?"

They didn't so much as look at me. One man took up a position on the wall to my left. The other took the wall to my right.

"I should have cleaned up, I know," I told them. "If I'd realized I was having company I'd have taken a shower. Mopped the floor."

No answer. No expression on their faces. No nothing.

"Tough room," I said.

"You'll have to forgive them," said Nicodemus. He came through the door and into the torchlight, freshly dressed, shaved, and showered. He wore pajama pants, slippers, and a smoking jacket of Hugh Hefner vintage. The grey noose still circled his throat. "I like to encourage discretion in my employees, and I have very high standards. Sometimes it makes them seem standoffish."

"You don't let your goons talk?" I asked.

He removed a pipe from his pocket, along with a small tin of Prince Albert tobacco. "I remove their tongues."

"I guess your human resources department isn't exactly under siege, is it," I said.

He tamped tobacco into his pipe and smiled. "You'd be surprised. I offer an excellent dental plan."

"You're going to need it when the formal-wear police knock your teeth out. This is a rented tux."