“That’s… putting it sort of lightly, Father,” Fitz said.

He nodded. “I’m sure your experience has not been a gentle one,” he said. “I won’t add to it with my own disbelief.”

Fitz bit his lower lip for a moment. “Okay.”

“I am also aware,” Forthill continued, “that Dresden’s shade is apparently taking a hand in things. I assume that’s who you’ve spoken to?”

“Yeah.”

Forthill nodded and looked around the room. “He’s… he’s here with you, isn’t he?”

“Wow,” I said. “Points for Forthill.”

“Yeah,” Fitz sighed. “He… kinda doesn’t shut up.”

Forthill chuckled. “He is—he was—a very determined young man.”

“Hasn’t changed,” Fitz said.

“I see,” the priest said. “My son, I am sure you understand that these are perilous times. I am afraid that I must ask for some kind of confirmation that this entity is who he says he is.”

Fitz looked at the priest blankly. Then around the room. “You hear that?”

“Yeah,” I said. I walked over to the far wall of the room and stuck my head through it. On the other side was a dark space, a hidden storage compartment just large enough to contain a couple of small file cabinets. The concealed compartment had been unknown to anyone but Forthill until I worked a case for an archangel a while back. Michael Carpenter and I had seen him open the hidden cabinet.

“Come over here,” I said. “Knock on the wall, right here. Forthill will know what it means.”

“Uh, dude,” Fitz said. “I can’t see where you are.”

I sighed. “Can you hear my voice?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but it’s just… like, this disembodied thing. There’s not much direction to it.”

Which made sense. He was not actually, physically, hearing me speak. Fitz’s gift to sense spirits simply expressed itself as something his mind could interpret—in this case, auditory stimulus.

“Uh, okay,” I said. “Walk over to the back wall of the room, the one you were facing when you came through the door.”

Fitz said to Forthill, “He’s trying to tell me how to prove he isn’t full of crap.” Then he stood up and walked across the room.

“Okay,” I said. “Put your hand out on the wall. Now move to your right. Little more. Little more. Too far. Okay, now about nine inches down, and rap on it with your knuckles.”

Fitz did all of that and finally knocked on the wall. Then he turned to Forthill and said, “Mean anything to you?”

The old priest pursed his lips and nodded. “Indeed. Indeed it does.”

“Man,” Fitz said, shaking his head. “Old people.”

Forthill smiled at that. “Well, my son. Are you as cold and hungry as you look?”

Fitz tried to look nonchalant. “I could eat, I guess.”

“How long has it been since you’ve had a hot shower?”

Fitz rolled his eyes and said, “Now, if that isn’t a straight line, I don’t know what is.”

Forthill chuckled and spoke to the air. “Dresden, I’m sure that you’re in a hurry and that there is some kind of dire deadline, but I’m not talking business with you until the young man is seen to.” He said to Fitz, “That door leads to my bathroom. There’s a shower. There’s a cardboard box under the sink with several items of clothing in it. I keep them on hand for events such as this. Feel free to take any of them.”