Michael grunted, somehow making it wry. "I'll say a prayer to Saint Jude."

I leaned my head against the bars and closed my eyes. I ached in places I didn't know could ache. I could have dozed off right there. "All I want," I said, "is to get home, get clean, and go to sleep."

An hour or so later, a uniformed officer appeared and opened the door, informing us that we'd made bail. I got a sickly little feeling in my stomach. Michael and I shuffled out of the holding area into the adjacent waiting room.

A woman in a roomy dress and a heavy cardigan stood waiting for us, her arms folded over her seventh or eighth month of pregnancy. She was tall, with gorgeous, silken blonde hair that fell to her waist in a shining curtain, timelessly lovely features, and dark eyes smoldering with contained anger. "Michael Joseph Patrick Carpenter," she snapped, and stalked toward us. Well, actually she waddled, but the set of her shoulders and her determined expression made it seem like a stalk. "You're a mess. This is what comes of taking up with bad company."

"Hello, angel," Michael rumbled, and leaned over to give the woman a kiss on the cheek.

She accepted it with all the loving tolerance of a Komodo dragon. "Don't you hello angel me. Do you know what I had to go through to find a babysitter, get all the way out here, get the money together and then get the sword back for you?"

"Hi Charity," I said brightly. "Gee, it's good to see you, too. It's been, what, three or four years since we've talked?"

"Five years, Mr. Dresden," the woman said, shooting me a glare. "And the Good Lord willing it will be five more before I have to put up with your idiocy again."

"But I-"

She thrust her swollen stomach at me like the ram on a Greek warship. "Every time you come nosing around, you get Michael into some sort of trouble. And now into jail! What will the children think?"

"Look, Charity, it was really imp-"

" MissusCarpenter," she snarled. "It's always really important, Mr. Dresden. Well, my husband has engaged in many important activities without what I dubiously term your 'help.' But it's only when you're around that he seems to come back to me covered in blood."

"Hey," I protested. "I got hurt too!"

"Good," she said. "Maybe it will make you more cautious in the future."

I scowled down at the woman. "I'll have you know-"