It would give her more variety to choose from.

I rushed up the stairs, praying that I would be in time to stop Kemmler’s protégé from taking one of my friends—for keeps.

Chapter Forty-eight

I pounded up the stairs and found that it was getting dark. Dammit. I’d gotten way too used to the upside of ghostliness. I reached up to my neck to find my mother’s pentacle amulet and…

… and it wasn’t there. Which it should have been. I mean, my actual duster had been destroyed, but the one I was wearing was an exact duplicate. There was no reason my mother’s amulet shouldn’t have been there, but it wasn’t. That was possibly something significant.

But I didn’t have time to worry about it at the moment. Instead, I sent a whisper of will into my staff, and the runes carved in it began to glow with blue-white wizard light, casting their shapes in pure light on the moldy stone walls and floor of the hallway, showing me the way. I didn’t have much magic left in me, but a simple light spell was much, much easier than any kind of violent spell, requiring far less energy.

I ran down the hall, past the filthy sleeping rooms with curtains for doors, and through the break in the wall, to the old electrical-junction room.

A flashlight lay on the floor, spilling light onto a patch of wolf fur from a couple of inches away and otherwise doing nothing to illuminate the scene. I had to brighten the light from my staff to see that Murphy and the wolves were lying in a heap on the floor, next to the unconscious Big Hoods.

The Corpsetaker was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Molly.

I turned in a slow circle, looking for any sign of what had happened, and found nothing.

Feet scraped on rock and I turned swiftly, bringing up my staff, ready to unleash whatever power I had left in me—and found Butters standing halfway down the stairs, looking like a rabbit about to bolt. His face was pale as a sheet behind his glasses, and his dark hair was a wild mess.

“My God,” he breathed. “Dresden?”

“Back for a limited engagement,” I breathed, lowering the staff. “Butters, what happened?”

“I… I don’t know. They started shouting something and then they just… just collapsed.”

“And you didn’t?” I asked.

“I was out there,” he said, pointing behind him. “You know. Looking out for the police or whatever.”

“Being Eyes, huh?” I said. I turned back to Murphy and the wolves.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. He moved quietly down the stairs. “Are they all right?”

I crouched down over Murphy and felt her neck. Her pulse was strong and steady. Ditto for the nearest of the wolves. “Yeah,” I said, my heart slowing down a little. “I think s—”

Something cold and hard pressed against the back of my head. I looked down.

Murphy’s SIG was missing from its holster.