“SI’s been pooling the coffee money, in case we needed your take on something.”

This time I didn’t bother to hide the wince. Taking money from the city government was one thing. Taking money from the cops in SI was another.

Special Investigations was the CPD’s version of a pool filter. Things that slipped through the areas of interest of the other departments got dumped on SI. Lots of times those things included the cruddy work no one else wanted to do, so SI wound up investigating everything from apparent rains of toads to dog fighting rackets to reports of El Chupacabra molesting neighborhood pets from its lair in a local sewer. It was a crappy job, no pun intended, and as a result SI was regarded by the city as a kind of asylum for incompetents. They weren’t, but the inmates of SI generally did share a couple of traits—intelligence enough to ask questions when something didn’t make sense, and an inexcusable lack of ability when it came to navigating the murky waters of office politics.

When Sergeant Murphy had been Lieutenant Murphy, she’d been in charge of SI. She’d been busted for vanishing during twenty-four particularly critical hours of an investigation. It wasn’t like she could tell her superiors that she was off storming a frozen fortress in the near reaches of the Nevernever, now, could she? Now her old partner, Lieutenant John Stallings, was in charge of SI, and he was running the place on a strained, frayed, often knotted shoestring of a budget.

Hence the lack of gainful employment for Chicago’s only professional wizard.

I couldn’t take their money. It wasn’t like they were rolling in it. But at the same time, they had their pride. I couldn’t take that, either.

“Per diem?” I told her. “Hell, my bank account is thinner than a tobacco lobbyist’s moral justification. I’ll go hourly.”

Murphy glowered up at me for a moment, then gave me a grudging nod of thanks. Proud doesn’t always outweigh practical.

“So what’s the scoop?” I asked. “Arson?”

She shrugged. “Explosion of some kind. Maybe an accident. Maybe not.”

I snorted. “Yeah, because you call me in on maybe-accidents all the time.”

“Come on.” Murphy pulled a dust mask from her coat pocket and put it on.

I took out a bandanna and tied it around my nose and mouth. All I needed was a ten-gallon hat and some spurs to complete the image. Stick ’em up, pahdner.

She glanced back at me, her face hard to read under the dust mask, and led me to the building adjacent to the ruined apartment. Murphy’s partner was waiting for us.

Rawlins was a blocky man in his fifties, comfortably overweight, and looked about as soft as a Brinks truck. He’d grown in a beard frosted with grey, a sharp contrast against his dark skin, and he wore a weather-beaten old winter coat over his off-the-rack suit.

“Dresden,” he said easily. “Good to see you.”

I shook his hand. “How’s the foot?”