“Once we’re done tonight,” I said, “maybe we could talk about that. Over dinner.”

Her smile widened, and color touched her cheeks. “That would please me.”

“Good,” I said. I arched an eyebrow at her. “I’ll put my shirt on now, if that’s all right.”

Anastasia let out a merry laugh and stepped back from me, though she didn’t lift her fingertips from my skin until the distance forced her to do it. “Very well, Warden. As you were.”

“Why, thank you, Captain.” I tugged the rest of my clothes back on. “What were you going to tell me?”

“Hmmm?” she said. “Oh, ah, yes. Before I was so cleverly distracted. I think I know where the Denarians are holding the Archive.”

I blinked. “You got through with a tracking spell?”

She shook her head. “No, it failed miserably. So I was forced to resort to the use of my brain.” She opened a hard-sided leather case hanging from her sword belt. She withdrew a plastic tube from it, opened one end, and withdrew a roll of papers. She thumbed through them, found one, and put the rest back. She unfolded the paper into what looked like a map, and laid it out on the lid of the dryer.

I leaned over to look at it. It was indeed a map, but instead of being marked with state lines, highways, and towns, it was dominated by natural features—most prominent of which was the outlines of the Great Lakes. Rivers, forests, and swamps figured prominently as well. Furthermore, a webwork of intersecting lines flowed over the map, marked in various colors of ink in several different thicknesses.

Footsteps approached and Molly appeared, carrying a plastic laundry basket full of children’s clothing. She blinked when she saw us, but smiled and came over immediately. “What’s that?”

“It’s a map,” I replied, like the knowledgeable mentor I was supposed to be.

She snorted. “I can see that,” she said. “But a map of what?”

Then I got it. “Ley lines,” I said, looking up at Luccio. “These are ley lines.”

Molly pursed her lips and studied the paper. “Those are real?”

“Yeah, we just haven’t covered them yet. They’re…well, think of them as underground pipelines. Only instead of flowing with water, they flow with magic. They run all over the world, usually running between hot spots of supernatural energy.”

“Connect the dots with magic,” Molly said. “Cool.”

“Exactly,” Luccio said. “The only method that would have a chance of restraining the Archive’s power would be the use of a greater circle—and one that uses an enormous amount of energy, at that.”

I grunted acknowledgment. “It would have to be dead solid perfect, too, or she could break loose at the flaw.”

“Correct.”

“How much energy are we talking about?” I asked her.

“You might be able to empower such a circle for half an hour or an hour, Dresden. I couldn’t have kept it up that long, even before my, ah”—she waved a hand down at herself—“accident.”