“Molly,” the older woman said. “I know you’re tired. I would like it if you let me offer you some clothes. A meal. A shower. Some real sleep. My house is protected. I’d like to be able to tell your parents that I did at least that much for you, the next time they call me to ask about you.”

Molly looked around the room for a moment, biting her lip. “Yes… it…” She shivered. “But… it’s better if I don’t.”

“Better for who?”

“Everyone,” Molly said. She gathered herself and rose, using the cane to get to her feet once again. She grimaced in the process. It was obvious that using her leg still caused her pain. “Honestly. I’ve been playing a lot of games, and I don’t want any of them to splash onto you.” She paused and then said tentatively, “I’m… sorry about the detective remark, Karrin. That was going too far.”

Murphy shrugged. “Least said, soonest mended.”

My apprentice sighed and began pulling her tattered layers about herself a little more securely. “Mr. Lindquist appears to be working in good faith. I’ll come back tomorrow with something that might let you communicate with Harry’s shade a little more easily.”

“Thank you,” Murphy said. “While you’re at it, it might be smart to—”

There was the sudden blaring of a pocket-sized air horn from outside.

Mort hopped up from his seat into a crouch, ready either to run or to fling himself heroically to the floor. “What was that?”

“Trouble,” Murphy said, unlimbering her gun. “Get d—”

She hadn’t finished speaking when gunfire roared outside and bullets began ripping through the windows and the walls.

Chapter Twelve

I did what any sane person would do in a situation like that. I threw myself to the ground.

“Oh, honestly, Dresden,” Sir Stuart snapped. He sprinted toward the gunfire, out through the wall of the house. I actually saw the building’s wards flare up with spectral, blue-white light around him as he went through unimpeded.

“Right, dummy,” I growled at myself. “You’re already dead.” I got up and ran after the elder shade.

The living were all kissing hardwood floor as I plunged into the wall of the house. I wasn’t worried about the wards keeping me in—no one ever designed their wards so that bad things couldn’t leave, only so that they couldn’t enter. Besides, I’d had an invitation to come in, which technically made me a friendly—but I found out that “friendly” wards operated on much the same principle as “friendly” fire. Going out through the warded wall didn’t just tingle unpleasantly. I felt like I’d just plunged naked down a waterslide lined with steel wool.

“Aaaaaaaagh!” I screamed, emerging from the wards and onto Murphy’s front lawn, chock-full of new insight as to why ghosts are always moaning or wailing when they come popping out of somebody’s wall or floor. Not much mystery there—it freaking hurts.

I staggered for several steps and looked up in time to see the drive-by still in progress. They were in a pickup truck. Someone in the passenger’s compartment had the barrel of a shotgun sticking out the window, and four figures in dark clothing crouched in the truck’s cargo bed, pointing what looked like assault weapons and submachine guns at Murphy’s house. They were cutting loose with them, too, flashes of thunder and lightning too bright and loud to be real, seemingly magnified by the quiet, still air between the snow and the streetlights.