into an open grave? What kind of idiot are you?” Butters replied. “I might as well put on a red shirt and volunteer for the away team. There’s snow and ice and slippery mud down there. That’s like asking for an ironically broken neck.”
“Are all doctors whiny girls like you?” Fitz asked.
“Hey. This whiny girl is still alive because he doesn’t do stupid crap.”
Fitz snorted. “So I help you down, my foot slips, we both fall in and die.”
Butters lifted an eyebrow and grunted. “Huh. True.”
I pinched at the bridge of my nose. “Oh, Hell’s bells, guys. Either get a room or stop flirting and get down here.”
“Ha-ha,” Fitz said toward me crossly. “He just called us gay.”
Butters blinked. “For not jumping into a hole we might not be able to climb out of? That’s kind of insensitive.”
“Not for that, for . . .” Fitz let out a sigh of vintage teenage impatience. “Christ, just give me your hand, okay? I’ll swing you down.”
Butters fussed for a moment more, making sure that Fitz had a solid place to plant his feet, and then he swung down into my grave. He was wearing his winter gear again and carrying the gym bag. Once he was down, he made sure he was out of direct sunlight and started opening the bag.
“What’s up?” I asked Fitz.
“Trouble,” Fitz said.
“We need your help, Harry,” Butters said.
“Hey, wait,” I said, scowling. “How did Butters find you, Fitz?”
“He asked,” Fitz said to Butters.
The little ME nodded. “Harry, I got from Murphy that you were apparently going into social work. It wasn’t hard to figure out who you’d ask for help, so I went over to the church to talk to Forthill about the situation—except he wasn’t there.”
Fitz bit his lip. “Look, Dresden. The father and I talked. And he decided he was going to go talk to Aristedes on my behalf.”
I blinked and pushed away from the grave wall. “What?”
“I tried to tell him,” Fitz said. “He wouldn’t listen. He was . . . I think he was angry. But he said he was going to resolve this before it came to some kind of bloodshed.”
Hell’s bells. I’d known Aristedes’ type in the past. If it suited him, he’d kill Forthill without an instant’s hesitation. The good father was in danger.
“Murphy would go in guns blazing,” Butters said. “She’s going to break my arm when she finds out I didn’t tell her. We need you to help talk us through this.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “Go in guns blazing!”
“It’s too late for that,” Fitz said. “Look, Forthill is already there. I just met the guy but . . . but . . . I don’t want him to get hurt for me. We have to move now.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t move around in broad daylight.”
“We thought of that,” Fitz said. “Butters said you needed a shielded vessel.”
“Butters said that, did he?” I asked wryly.
Butters rose from the bag, holding the plastic flashlight case holding Bob’s skull. He winked at me, held it out, and said, “Hop in.”
I blinked.
Then I said, “Right. Let’s go.”
I took a deep breath and willed myself forward, into the staring eye sockets of the skull.
Chapter Thirty-five
There was a very, very odd swirling sensation as my spirit-self leapt forward, and then I was standing . . .
. . . In an apartment.
Okay, when I say apartment, I don’t mean it like my old place. I lived in a mostly buried box that was maybe twenty by thirty total, not including the subbasement where my lab had been. Apartment Dresden had been full of paperback books on scarred wooden shelves, and comfortable secondhand furniture.
This was more like . . . Apartment Bond, James Apartment Bond. Penthouse Bond, really. There was a lot of black marble and mahogany. There was a fireplace the size of a carport, complete with a modest—relatively modest—blaze going in it. The furniture all matched. The rich hardwoods from which it had been made were hand-carved in intricate designs. It wasn’t until the second glance that I saw some of the same rune and sigil work I’d used on my own staff and blasting rod. The cushions on the couches (plural, couches) and recliners and sedans and chaises (plural, chaises), were made of rich fabric I couldn’t identify, maybe some kind of raw silk, and embroidered with more of the same symbols in gold and silver thread. A nearby table boasted what looked like a freshly roasted turkey, along with a