I sat waiting and tried not to fidget. Mort was completely still for several minutes, and then his lips started moving. No sound came from them, except for the quiet sighs of breathing when he inhaled. He broke out into a sudden and heavy sweat, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight. The air suddenly vibrated against my face, and flashes of cold raced over my body at random. A second later I became acutely conscious of another presence in the room. Then another. And a third. Seconds after that, though I could see or hear no one, I became certain that the room was packed with people, and an accompanying sense of claustrophobia made me long to get outside into fresh air. It was definitely magic, but different from any I had felt before. I fought the trapped, panicked sensation and remained seated, still and quiet.
Mort nodded sharply, picked up the atomizer, and sprayed a mist of red ink into the air over the map.
I held my breath and leaned closer.
The mist drifted down over the map, but instead of settling into an even spread, the fine droplets began to swirl into miniature vortexes like tiny, bloody tornadoes sweeping over the map. Scarlet circles formed at the base of the minitornadoes, until the whirling cones spiraled down into vertical lines, then vanished.
Mort let out a grunt and slumped forward in his chair, gasping for breath.
I stood up and examined the street map by candlelight.
"Did it work?" Mort rasped.
"I think it did," I said. I put my finger beside one of the larger red circles. "This is the Forensic Institute. One of them created a zombie there earlier tonight."
Mort sat up and leaned forward over the map, his eyes glazed with fatigue. He pointed at another bloody dot. "That one. It's the Field Museum."
I traced my finger to another one. "This one is in a pretty tough neighborhood. I think it's an apartment building." I moved on to the next. "A cemetery. And what the hell, at O'Hare?"
Mort shook his head. "The ink's darker than the others. I think that means it's beneath the airport, in Undertown."
"Uh- huh," I said. "That makes sense. Two more. An alley down by Burnham Park, and a sidewalk on Wacker."
"Six," Mort said.
"Six," I agreed.
Six necromancers like Grevane and Cowl.
And only one of me.
Hell's bells.
Chapter Eleven
I clipped my old iron mailbox with the front fender of the stupid SUV as I pulled into the driveway at my apartment. The box dented one corner of the vehicle's hood and toppled over with a heavy clang. I parked the SUV and shoved the pole the mailbox was mounted on back into the ground, but the impact had bent the pole. My mailbox leaned drunkenly to one side, but it stayed upright. Good enough for me.
I gathered up my gear, including the sawed-off shotgun I'd removed from the Beetle, and got indoors in a hurry.
I set things down and locked up my wards and the heavy steel door I'd had installed after a big, bad demon had huffed and puffed and blown down the original. It wasn't until I had them all firmly secured that I let out a slow breath and started to relax. The living room was lit only by the embers of the fire and a few tiny flames. From the kitchen alcove, I heard the soft thumping sound of Mouse's tail wagging against the icebox.
Thomas sat in the big comfy recliner next to the fire, absently stroking Mister. My cat, curled up on Thomas's lap, watched me with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Thomas," I said.
"All quiet on the basement front," Thomas murmured. "Once Butters wound down he just about dropped unconscious. I told him he could sleep in the bed."
"Fine," I said. I took my copy of Erlking, lit a few candles on the end table, and flopped down onto the couch.
Thomas arched an eyebrow.
"Oh," I said, sitting up. "Sorry, didn't think. You probably want to sleep."
"Not especially," he said. "Someone should keep watch, anyway."
"You all right?" I asked him.
"I just don't feel like sleeping right now. You can have the couch."
I nodded and settled down again. "You want to talk?"
"If I did, I'd be talking." He went back to staring at the fire and stroking the cat.
He was still upset, obviously, but I'd learned that it was pointless to start pushing Thomas, no matter how well-intentioned I might be. He'd dig in his heels from sheer obstinacy, and the conversation would get nowhere.
"Thanks," I said, "for looking out for Butters for me."
Thomas nodded.
We fell into a relaxed silence, and I started reading the book.
A while later I fell asleep.
I dreamed almost immediately. Threatening trees, mostly evergreens, rose up around a small glade. In its center a modest, neat camp-fire sparked and crackled. I could smell a lake somewhere nearby, moss and flowers and dead fish blending in with the scent of mildewed pine. The air was cold enough to make me shiver, and I hunched a little closer to the fire, but even so I felt like my back was to a glacier. From somewhere overhead came the wild, honking screams of migrating geese under a crescent moon. I didn't recognize the place, but it somehow seemed perfectly familiar.
A camping rig straddled the fire, holding a tin coffee mug and a suspended pot of what smelled like some kind of rich stew, maybe venison.
My father sat across the fire from me.
Malcolm Dresden was a tall, spare man with dark hair and steady blue eyes. His jeans were as heavily worn as his leather hiking boots, and I could see that he was wearing his favorite red-and-white flannel shirt under his fleece-lined hunting jacket. He leaned forward and stirred the pot, then took a sip from the spoon.
"Not bad," he said. He picked up a couple of tin mugs from one of the stones surrounding the fire and grabbed the coffeepot by its wooden handle. He poured coffee into both cups, hung the coffeepot back over the fire, and offered me one of them. "You warm enough?"
I accepted the mug and just stared at him for a moment. Maybe I had expected him to look exactly like I remembered, but he didn't. He looked so thin. He looked young, maybe even younger than me. And... so very, very ordinary.
"You go deaf, son?" my father asked, grinning. "Or mute?"
I fumbled for words. "It's cold out here."
"It is that," he agreed.
He pulled a couple of packs of powdered creamer from a knapsack, and passed them over to me along with a couple of packs of sugar. We prepared the coffee in silence and sipped at it for a few moments. It filled me with an earthy, satisfying warmth that made the terrible chill along my spine more bearable.
"This is a nice change of pace from my usual dream," I said.