Shiro shook his head. "I do not know."

I looked at the clock and bit my lip. "Christ."

Charity walked by with an armload of groceries and glared at me.

I lifted my hands. "Sorry. I'm a little tense."

Shiro studied me for a moment, and then asked, "Would Michael help him?"

Charity's voice drifted out of the cavernous walk-in pantry. "My husband is sometimes an idiot."

Shiro nodded and said, "Then I will assist you in his stead, Mister Dresden."

"You'll what?" I asked.

"I will be your second in the duel."

"You don't have to do that," I said. "I mean, I'll figure out something."

Shiro lifted an eyebrow. "Have the weapons been set for the duel?"

"Uh, not yet," I said.

"Then where is the meeting with the emissary and your opponent's second?"

I fished out the card I'd gotten from the Archive. "I don't know. I was told to have my second call this number."

Shiro took the card and rose without another word, heading for the phone in the next room.

I put my hand on his arm and said, "You don't need to take any chances. You don't really know me."

"Michael does. That is enough for me."

The old Knight's support was a relief, but I felt guilty, somehow, for accepting it. Too many people had been hurt on my behalf in the past. Michael and I had faced trouble together before, looked out for each other before. Somehow, it made it easier for me to go to him and ask for help. Accepting the same thing from a stranger, Knight of the Cross or not, grated on my conscience. Or maybe on my pride.

But what choice did I have?

I sighed and nodded. "I just don't want to drag someone else into more trouble with me."

Charity muttered, "Let me think. Where have I heard that before?"

Shiro smiled at her, the expression both paternal and amused, and said, "I'll make the call."

I waited while Shiro made a call from the room that served as the family study and the office for Michael's contracting business. Charity stayed in the kitchen and wrestled a huge Crock-Pot onto the counter. She got out a ton of vegetables, stew meat, and a spice rack and set to chopping things up without a word to me.

I watched her quietly. She moved with the kind of precision you see only in someone who is so versed at what they are doing that they are already thinking of the steps coming twenty minutes in the future. I thought she took her knife to the carrots a little more violently than she needed to. She started preparing another meal somewhere in the middle of making the stew, this one chicken and rice and other healthy things I rarely saw in three dimensions.

I fidgeted for a bit, until I stood up, washed my hands in the sink, and started cutting vegetables.