I shivered. “No. It’s chock-full of all sorts of weird stuff. You wouldn’t believe how many ghosts are running around this place.”

Even as I spoke, I turned my head to watch two wraiths glide down the sidewalk as the car passed them. I frowned. “Including one of you, Bob.”

Bob the Skull snorted. “I’m not mortal. I don’t have a soul. The only thing waiting for me when I cease to be is entropy. I can’t leave a ghost.”

“Then how come I saw a floating skull with blue eyelights helping attack Mort Lindquist’s place last night?”

The skull just stared for a moment. Then he suggested lamely, “You were high?”

I snorted. “Can’t be many things like that running around,” I said. “What do you know?”

“I have to think about this,” Bob said in a rushed tone, and his orange eyelights winked out.

Butters and I both stared at the skull.

“Huh,” Butters said. “I’ve never seen anyone make him shut up before.”

I grunted. Then I said quietly, “Scared the hell out of me, seeing that. Thought something had happened to him.”

“He’s fine,” Butters said. “Best roommate I ever had.”

“I’m glad you’re taking care of him,” I said. “He wouldn’t do well alone.”

“It’s not a big deal, right?”

“What isn’t a big deal?”

“If there’s an Evil Bob out there,” he said. “I mean… it’ll just be another nerd like this one, right? Only with a black hat?”

The orange eyelights winked back on, and Bob said, “Hey!”

“Butters… Bob is spooky strong,” I said quietly. “Knowledge is power, man. Bob has a lot of it. When I accidentally flipped his switch to black hat a few years ago, he nearly killed me in the first sixty seconds.”

Butters blinked several times. He tried to talk for a few seconds, swallowed, and then said in a small voice, “Oh.” He eyed Bob sideways.

“I don’t like to make a big thing of it, sahib,” Bob said easily. “Not really my bag to do that kind of thing anyway.”

I nodded. “He was created to be an assistant and counselor,” I said. “It’s unprofessional to treat him as anything else.”

“Which sahib doesn’t,” Bob noted. “Due to complete ignorance, but he doesn’t.”

“Oh,” Butters said again. Then he asked, “How do I… make sure not to set him on black hat?”

“You can’t,” Bob said. “Harry ordered me to forget that part of me and never to bring it out again. So I lopped it off.”

It was my turn to blink. “You what?”

“Hey,” Bob said, “you told me never to bring it out again. You said never. As long as I was with you, that wouldn’t be an issue—but the next guy could order me to do it and it would still happen. So I made sure it couldn’t happen again. No big whoop, Dresden. Oy, but you are such a little girl sometimes.”

I blinked several more times. “Oy?”

“My mother calls me twice a week,” Butters explained. “He listens in.”