“Oh, sure,” Bob said. “I can remake whatever in here.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You want to see a replay of that time Molly got the acid all over her clothes in the lab and had to strip?”

“Um. Pass,” I said. I sat down gingerly on a chair, making sure I wasn’t going to sink through it or something. It seemed to behave like a normal chair. “TV and stuff, too?”

“I am kinda made out of energy, man,” Bob said. He pointed at the wall of media equipment. “You remember me broadcasting to your spirit radio, right? I’m, like, totally tapped in now. Television, satellite imagery, broadband Internet—you name it; I can do it. How do you think I know so much?”

“Hundreds of years of assisting wizards,” I said.

He waved a hand. “That, too. But I got this whole huge Internet thing to play on now. Butters showed me.” His grin turned into a leer. “And it’s, like, ninety percent porn!”

“There’s the Bob I know and love,” I said.

“Love, ick,” he replied. “And I am and I’m not. I mean, you get that I change based on who possesses the skull, right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“So I’m a lot like I was with you, even though I’m with Butters, because he met me back then. First impression and whatnot, highly important.”

I grunted. “How long do we have to talk?”

“Not as simple to answer as you’d think,” Bob said. “But… you’re still pretty cherry, so let’s keep it simple. A few minutes, speaking linearly—but I can stretch it out for a while, subjectively.”

“Huh,” I said. “Neat.”

“Nah, just sort of the way we roll on this side of the street,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“Who killed me?” I replied.

“Oooh, sorry. Can’t help you with that, except as a sounding board.”

“Okay,” I said. “Lemme catch you up on what I know.”

I filled Bob in on everything since the train tunnel. I didn’t hold back much of anything. Bob was smart enough to fill in the vast majority of gaps if I left anything out anyway, and he could compile information and deduce coherent facts as well as any mind I had ever known.

And besides… he was my oldest friend.

He listened, his gold brown eyes intent, completely focused on me.

“Wow,” he said when I’d finished. “You are so completely fucked.”

I arched an eyebrow at him and said, “How do you figure?”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, where do I start? How about with the obvious? Uriel.”

“Uriel,” I said. “What?”

“A wizard tied in with a bunch of really elemental sources of power dies, right after signing off on some deals that guarantee he’s about to become a whole Hell of a lot darker—capital letter intended—and there’s this sudden”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“ ‘irregularity’ about his death. He gets sent back to the mortal coil to get involved again. And you think an angel isn’t involved somewhere? Remember. Uriel is the black-ops guy of the archangels. He’s conned the Father of Lies, for crying out loud. You think he wouldn’t scam you?”