"Dead before the sun rises," I said. "Stars, Bob, why don't you just go all the way over the melodramatic edge and tell me that I'm going to be sleeping with the fishes?"
"I'm not sure that much of you would be left," Bob said, seriously. "Harry, look at this thing. Look at what it's done. It crossed a threshold."
"So what?" I asked. "Lots of things can. Remember that toad demon? It came over my threshold and trashed my whole place."
"In the first place, Harry," Bob said, "you're a bachelor. You don't have all that much of a threshold to begin with. This Malone, though - he was a family man."
"So?"
"So it means his home has a lot more significance. Besides which - the toad demon came in and everything after that was pure physical interaction. It smashed things, it spat out acid saliva, that kind of thing. It didn't try to wrench your soul apart or enchant you into a magical sleep."
"This is getting to be a pretty fine distinction, Bob."
"It is. Did you ask for an invitation before you went into the Malone's house?"
"Yeah," I said. "I guess I did. It's polite, and - "
"And it's harder for you to work magic in a home you haven't been invited into. You cross the threshold without an invitation, and you leave a big chunk of your power at the door. It doesn't affect you as much because you're a mortal, Harry, but it still gets you in smaller ways."
"And if I was an all-spirit creature," I said.
Bob nodded. "It hits you harder. If this Nightmare is a ghost, like you say, then the threshold should have stopped it cold - and even if it had gone past it, then it shouldn't have had the kind of power it takes to hurt a mortal that badly."
I frowned, drumming my pencil some more, and made some notes on the paper, trying to keep everything straight. "And certainly not enough to lay out a spell that powerful on Malone."
"Definitely."
"So what could do that, Bob? What are we dealing with, here?"
Bob's eyes shifted restlessly around the room. "It could be a couple of things from the spirit world. Are you sure you want to know?" I glared at him. "All right, all right. It could be something big enough. Something so big that even a fraction of it was enough to attack Malone and lay that spell on him. Maybe a god someone's dug up. Hecate, Kali, or one of the Old Ones."
"No," I said, flatly. "Bob, if this thing was so tough, it wouldn't be tearing up people's cars and ripping kitty cats apart. That's not my idea of a godlike evil. That's just pissed off."
"Harry, it went through the threshold," Bob said. "Ghosts don't do that. They can't!"
I stood up, and started pacing back and forth on the little open space of floor of my summoning circle. "It isn't one of the Old Ones. Guardian spells all over the world would be freaking out, alerting the Gatekeeper and the Council of something like that. No, this is local."
"Harry, if you're wrong - "
I jabbed a finger at Bob. "If I'm right, then there's a monster out there messing with my town, and I'm obliged to do something about it before someone else gets hurt."
Bob sighed. "It blew through a threshold."
"So ..." I said, pacing and whirling. "Maybe it had some other way to get around the threshold. What if it had an invitation?"
"How could it have gotten that?" Bob said. "Ding-dong, Soul Eater Home Delivery, may I come in?"
"Bite me," I said. "What if it took Lydia? Once she was out of the church, she could have been vulnerable to it."
"Possession?" Bob said. "Possible, I guess - but she was wearing your talisman."
"If it could get around a threshold, maybe it could get around that too. She goes to Malone's, looks helpless, and gets an invite in."
"Maybe." Bob did a passable imitation of scrunching up his eyes. "But then why were all those little animals torn up outside? We are going way out on a branch here. There are a lot of maybes."
I shook my head. "No, no. I've got a feeling about this."
"You've said that before. You remember the time you wanted to make 'smart dynamite' for that mining company?"
I scowled. "I hadn't had much sleep that week. And anyway, the sprinklers kicked in."
Bob chortled. "Or the time you tried to enchant that broomstick so that you could fly? Remember that? I thought it would take a year to get the mud out of your eyebrows."
"Would you focus, please," I complained. I pushed my hands against either side of my head to keep it from exploding with theories, and whittled them down to the ones that fit the facts. "There are only a couple of possibilities. A, we're dealing with some kind of godlike being in which case we're screwed."
"And the Absurd Understatement Award goes to Harry Dresden."
I glared at him. "Or," I said, lifting a finger, "B, this thing is a spirit, something we've seen before, and it's using smoke and mirrors within the rules we already know. Either way, I think Lydia knows more than she's admitting."
"Gee, a woman taking advantage of Captain Chivalry. What are the odds."
"Bah," I said. "If I can find her and find out what she knows, I could nail it today."
"You're forgetting the third possibility," Bob said amiably. "C, it's something new that neither of us understand and you're sailing off in ignorance to plunge into the mouth of Charybdis."
"You're so encouraging," I said, fastening on the bracelet, and slipping on the ring, feeling the quiet, humming power in them both.
Bob somehow waggled his eyebrow ridges. "Hey, you never went out with Charybdis. What's the plan?"
"I loaned Lydia my Dead Man's Talisman," I said.
"I still can't believe after all the work we did, you gave it to the first girl to wiggle by."
I scowled at Bob. "If she's still got it, I should be able to work up a spell to home in on it, like when I find people's wedding rings."
"Great," Bob said. "Give 'em hell, Harry. Have fun storming the castle."
"Not so fast," I said. "She might not have it with her. If she's in on this with the Nightmare, then she could have dumped it once she had it away from me. That's where you come in."
"Me?" Bob squeaked.
"Yes. You're going to head out, hit the streets, and talk to all of your contacts, see if we can get to her before sundown. We've only got a couple of hours."
"Harry," Bob pointed out, "the sun's up. I'm exhausted. I can't just flit around like some kinda dew-drop fairy."
"Take Mister," I said. "He doesn't mind you riding around. And he could use the exercise. Just don't get him killed."
"Hooboy," Bob said. "Once more into the breech, dear friends, eh? Harry, don't quit your job to become a motivational speaker. I have your permission to come out?"
"Yep," I said, "for the purposes of this mission only. And don't waste time prowling around in women's locker rooms again."
I put out the candles and the heater and started up the stepladder. Bob followed, drifting out of the eye sockets of the skull as a glowing, candleflame-colored cloud, and flowed up the steps past me. The cloud glided over to where Mister dozed in the warm spot near the mostly dead fire, and seeped in through the cat's grey fur. Mister sat up and blinked his yellow-green eyes at me, stretched his back, and flicked his stump of a tail back and forth before letting out a reproachful meow.
I scowled at Mister and Bob, shrugging into my duster, gathering up my blasting rod and my exorcism bag, an old black doctor's case full of stuff. "Come on, guys," I said. "We're on the trail. We have the advantage. What could possibly go wrong?"
