Someone had turned the ruin of my home into a freaking fortress.

A plaque hung over what had to be the main entrance. It read, simply, BRIGHTER FUTURE SOCIETY.

Butters followed my gaze to the plaque. “Ah,” he said. “Yeah. We named it that because if we didn’t do something, there wasn’t going to be much of a future for this town. I wanted Brighter Future Group, actually, for the initialism, but I got voted down.”

“Hell’s bells,” I said. I did some math. To build on the ruins of the boardinghouse, construction would have had to start practically the same day that I died. Actual stone is expensive to build with because it’s difficult and time-consuming. This place was as big as a small castle. It should have taken months and months and months to build. It had gone up in six. Probably significantly less, given the weather. “This place cost a damned fortune.”

“Meh,” Butters said, and walked to the front door. “Hang around a bit and you’ll take it for granted like the rest of us.” He entered a sequence of numbers on the keypad beside the door. They made a little mechanical clicking sound that reminded me of a manual typewriter. He put his hands back into his pockets and waited.

A moment later, a heavily accented basso voice emerged from a crackling speaker box. “Who goes there?”

“Butters,” he said. “With Dresden’s shade. Hi, Sven.”

The speaker made a rumbling sound. “Waldo,” it said, pronouncing it Valdo. “The night is dangerous. One day you will stumble across a fox and it will eat you.”

Roars of laughter erupted from the speakers—evidently, several other men were with the door guard.

Butters didn’t laugh, but he did grin. “I’ll just get stuck in his throat until you can haul your walrus ass over to him and save me, Sven.”

Louder laughter erupted from the speaker, and a voice half-choked with it said something in a language that had come from somewhere in northern Europe. There was a click, and Butters opened the door. I started to follow him in—and remembered, in time, to put my hand out and check the doorway first. My hand moved smoothly past the twelve inches of stone, but then hit something as solid as a brick wall where the doorway opened up into the entry hall.

“Uh, Butters,” I said.

He smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Right, sorry. Please come in.”

The invisible wall vanished, and I shook my head. “It’s got a threshold. People live here?”

“Bunch of ’em,” Butters confirmed, and we went inside. “Lot of Paranetters come through for a little while when they don’t have a safe place to sleep. Uh, visiting Netters who are passing through town. Venatori, when they meet with us. That kind of thing.”

I felt anger stirring in me, irrational but no less real. “My home… is a supernatural flophouse?”

“And armory! And jail!” Bob said enthusiastically.

Ghosts can sputter in outrage. “Jail?”