I’d sent Smudge into the server room to hide. Fire-spiders liked warm, enclosed spaces. Like server cabinets. By now, he would be making a merry, melted mess of whatever cables and circuits he found.

Lena grabbed a Kiyoko by the waist and throat and threw her into the oak tree. Branches snaked around her limbs, pinning her in place. Additional branches grew out to gag both captive clones.

Only one Kiyoko remained free. She knocked Lena aside and seized my throat. Her thumbs crushed my larynx, and she spun me around so my body was between her and Lena. I tried to peel her thumbs away. When that failed, I punched her in the nose and throat. Her grip only tightened.

My blood was pounding so hard I barely heard the gunshot. Kiyoko blinked, and her hands fell away.

“You dropped your gun, asshole,” said Deb. She fired again, and Kiyoko fell.

I crawled toward Deb. Kiyoko had shot her three times through the chest, and had probably assumed she was dead.

“Thanks, Isaac. This has been the most fun I’ve had in years.” Deb dropped the gun. Her head thudded to the floor. “Finish this, would you? For all of us.”

“Hold on.” I searched for Excalibur’s scabbard, but it had vanished when I destroyed the sword. I reached into my bag. The healing cordial was in the outer pocket.

Deb wasn’t breathing.

I found the potion. I could see her magic beginning to unravel, like insects fleeing the light. I forced her mouth open and poured a mouthful down her throat. “Swallow, dammit.”

I plugged her nose and pressed her mouth shut. Nothing happened. I set the potion aside and reached for the fading text of Renfield, trying to force it back into Deb’s flesh.

Lena picked up the potion and brought a droplet to her tongue. Then she gently pulled me to my feet.

“I couldn’t stop all three of them,” I said. “Destroying the sword, stripping the magic from the bullets . . .”

The two surviving Kiyoko clones watched impassively from Lena’s newgrown oak. I stepped past them into the server room. Smudge had turned the server towers into chimneys. I squinted until I found him, and returned him to his cage. “Nice work, partner.”

Lena had done some damage as well. Oak roots cracked through the tiled floor and tangled into the electrical and cables. What little equipment hadn’t been destroyed in the fighting sparked and died as I approached, fried by the tech-phobic magic of Harry Dresden.

‹Talulah, we’re in the server room, and the electronics are dead. Can you confirm IAS is offline?›

‹Looks that way to me. The other clones probably have a copy of the software, but they’d need magical assistance to reconfigure and start again. We’ve got good news over here, too.›

Charles’ mental voice broke in to say, ‹I found the sirens. They’re in a subbasement beneath Metrodora Tower.›