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Title: The Bisexual Wizard
Fandom: The Dresden Files (TV!verse)/Smallville crossover
Pairing: Harry/Bob and Clark/Lex among others
Rating: hard R
Summary: Harry Dresden is a fierce but fey private eye who uses insider insights to crack a series of gay murders that have baffled Metropolis police. Clark Kent is a straight, downwardly-mobile former football player who takes a job as Dresden's sidekick. Seems there's a camera behind a trick mirror in a notorious bathhouse run by the sinister Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, and a few members of high society who think they're too powerful to be blackmailed. Will Harry and Clark have to go undercover as a gay couple and spend a night in the baths to expose the nefarious scheme? Not if the lovely and mysterious Lana Lang has anything to say about it!
Warnings: Spoilers for both shows, established relationship, angst, futurefic.
Word Count: 21,729.
Notes: for moonlash_cc's Gay Pulp Multifandom Challenge, for (D), The Gay Detective, by Lou Rand. Thanks for running this challenge! I also want to thank my betas, pinkdoom and beachkid, for giving me amazing and thoughtful feedback on this truly humongous story. You guys are awesome! Any grammatical or canon errors that remain are my fault, obviously. Also, thank you to Steam Portland, whose website I used to get a better idea of what a gay bathhouse might be like.

I thought long and hard about whether to move Harry to Metropolis or Clark to Chicago. In the end, I compromised by going with Metropolis, but keeping the original comic book idea of Metropolis not being in Kansas and in fact maybe being in the Great Lakes region (according to Wikipedia, "Joe Shuster modeled the Metropolis skyline after Toronto, Ontario, where he was born and lived until he was ten. Superman's home was referred to as Cleveland twice, and the original Daily Planet building was modeled on a Cleveland landmark"). Um, not that any of that actually even comes up in the fic.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. I am not making any money off this.

###

Like most things in my life, it started with a beautiful woman. Beautiful girl, I reminded myself as I sat across from Chloe Sullivan at the diner near my place. Chloe might already be one of the best paranormal investigative reporters in the city---okay, so there wasn't a lot of competition---but I was pretty sure she was still in her early twenties, and as such, she was way too young for me. Never mind that she had some of the most fantastic breasts I'd ever seen, with the hips to match.

I tried not to think about her hips. I couldn't see them at the moment, because they were below the booth's cheap Formica table, but I had gotten a good look at them earlier, curving generously in low-slung cargo pants. I tried not to think about how small and round she was, how easily I could pick her up, how her breasts would press against my chest and her legs would wrap around my waist and I could just slide into her...

"Harry?" Chloe said, with an amused tilt to her mouth. "Up here?"

"Sorry," I said, embarrassed. "What did you say?"

"Hey, I thought you were supposed to be gay."

"Bi," I said. "Bi."

"I know," she said, grinning. "Gossip columnist by day, remember? I was just teasing." Her shoulders slumped. "I'll have to switch to gossip columnist twenty-four-seven if the Planet keeps refusing to print my other work."

"You should go to the tabloids," I told her. "The Arcane sometimes prints real stories."

"But no one believesthe Arcane, Harry. Everyone thinks it's like the Weekly World News, making up funny stories about Dick Cheney being secretly a robot or---"

"That's ridiculous," I said, startled. "Everyone knows Cheney was a vamp." A Malvora, actually. They feed on fear and despair.

Her eyebrows shot up, and I laughed nervously, trying to pass it off as a joke. I didn't think she bought it. I suspected Chloe had seen more weird shit than she let on. She'd been the perfect sidekick on my last case---kept her head in a crisis, followed directions, had my back, and best of all knew when to stop being spunky and courageous and just let a professional work. All of which indicated experience.

"This is an important story, Harry," she insisted. "The Planet should be covering this. If they don't, how is anybody going to know what's happening the next time kids start disappearing?" Homeless shelters for gay teens had been losing kids for months before Chloe had noticed. Kids like that are easy pickings. They're young and confused and half the time their families don't even want to know where they are.

"You'll know what's happening ," I said grimly. "I'll know." Maybe you can get away with that kind of crap in other cities, but Metropolis is mine. Chloe had convinced her cousin Lois Lane to do a front-page story on the disappearing kids, and I'd read it. Together Chloe and I had tracked down the guy who was doing it, and I'd killed him.

Don't worry, he wasn't human.

It's a long story. They all are, in my line of work---which, in case you were wondering, is "wizard." You can look it up. I'm in the Metropolis yellow pages.

She nodded. "I just wish those kids knew."

"It'd be a drop in the bucket," I said, surprised at my own sudden pessimism but not sure what to do about it. "There's more weird stuff popping up every day. The word is there's a whole new kind of supernatural nasty in town. People are saying these guys can cross thresholds with their power intact. If you hear anything about that, come straight to me, ok?"

Her gaze flickered away from me for a second. "Sure thing, Harry!" she said a little too brightly.

"Do you know something you're not telling me?" I asked.

She grinned. "I know a lot of things I'm not telling you," she said, signaling for the check. "I'm an investigative reporter. Listen, I should be getting back to the Planet. Remember, you owe me for helping you with that case. I might need a favor someday."

I nodded, and tried not to watch her leave. I love a woman who picks up the check, especially when it's almost the first of the month.

###

I was still thinking about Chloe's ass and my rent as I walked to my car. Maybe that was why I didn't notice the sleek black bulletproof sedan until it had screeched into a driveway in front of me, blocking my way. I instinctively readied my will in case I needed to bring up a shield.

I relaxed when I recognized Hendricks, Johnnie Marcone's chief enforcer. Marcone is king of organized crime here in Metropolis. Took over from the old guy, Morgan Edge. It wasn't exactly a bloodless coup, but he runs things more efficiently, so a lot less people die. I never forget he's criminal scum, but...well, sometimes I forget. Like when he risks his life to get me out of bad situations, which has happened more than once. I got in the car.

"So what's your boss want from me this time, Hendricks?" I asked. "Not that a little abduction doesn't always brighten my day."

Hendricks just stared at me, beady eyes unreadable. He never speaks if he doesn't have to, so talking at him's become something of a matter of principle.

"Do you think he'll pay me for whatever it is?" I asked. "My phone bill's overdue."

Hendricks grunted noncommittally. I wished the car was a limo so I could put my feet up on the seat. As it was, there was very little to entertain me on the drive to Marcone's office. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I knew it irked Hendricks that I didn't bit my nails the whole way and tried to memorize our route.

Finally the car came to a stop. I waited for a shove from Hendricks before opening my eyes and looking around. Huh. Apparently Marcone rented office space in Luthor Plaza. And they say crime doesn't pay.

I'd been in the lobby of Luthor Towers before, of course. Everyone in Metropolis has. Lots of fountains, statues of spheres, that kind of thing. Just your typical plaza named after a rich guy stuff. More purple than average, maybe. But I'd never been in one of the offices. There was a damn fountain in there, too. I think it was supposed to make me feel zen and tranquil. It didn't. "What do you want, Marcone?" I demanded. "And could you just call me next time? I have this handy device, it's called a telephone--"

"I have a case for you," he interrupted.

I raised my eyebrows. "A case? As in, a paying case?"

He smiled without warmth. "Precisely. It shouldn't even require any of your particular talents. Straight PI work."

"Then why have me do it?" I asked, instantly suspicious.

Instead of answering me, he said, "Have you heard of the Steam Room?"

My eyebrows shot up. Sure, I'd heard of it. It was a fancy bathhouse where gays who didn't make their living shilling for Johnnie Marcone went to get massages, mud-baths, and other, more personal services. "Sure," I said guardedly. "Never been. They don't let guys like me in."

He smiled. "Oh, the staff have standing orders to admit you," he said. "Just like--"

"--At the Velvet Room," I finished. For some reason Marcone had thought it was funny to make me a member of the fanciest, most exclusive, most pseudo-respectable brothel in Metropolis. He'd told me he'd done the same at most of his other places, though I'd never tested it out. I hadn't known Marcone owned the Steam Room.

"The Steam Room is one of my most lucrative establishments," he said. "It is clean, well-run, safe, and discreet. I am afraid I cannot say the same for my most recent rival, the Tortuga."

"Never heard of it," I said.

Marcone's eyes gleamed at that, but he didn't let his satisfaction show in his voice. "It's very new," he said. "But it's already attracting a clientele among the younger, hipper gay elite."

"And you want to shut it down."

Marcone's face grew very cold. "I have reason to believe there is a one-way mirror in at least one of the rooms," he said. "That place is a set-up for blackmail, and I need you to prove it."

"Just blowing the place up is too old school for you, huh?"

"You know I don't operate that way unless I have to," Marcone said.

I did know it. I'd just wanted to get to him, and sometimes a cheap shot is the only one that comes to mind. "And you picked me because I like men," I said, rolling my eyes. "Well, you can find some other gay detective to take your case. I'm not going to blend in at a place like that in a million years. I mean, look at me, Marcone."

He looked at my shabby gray t-shirt and jeans and grimaced. "I see your point. But I prefer to work with people I know. I'll buy you new clothes."

"Straight Eye for the Queer Guy, huh?" I said. "I'd need an advance, too. I don't have the kind of money it would take to pay for a night at a place like that out of pocket."

He inclined his head. "Of course. And I'll pay you double what the police do."

I hesitated. On the one hand, I needed to make rent. On the other hand, getting involved in some kind of mob-related gay bathhouse turf war sounded like a bad idea. And it wasn't like I was being asked to stand between innocent people and the dark.

"These kids are easy pickings," Marcone said. "They're young and stupid, and most of them aren't out to their families. Whoever owns that place will have them completely at her mercy."

Damn it. I sighed. Marcone watched me carefully. He knew me too well, which is not something I feel comfortable saying about the biggest boss in Metropolis. But that's my life. "So you don't know who owns it?"

He shook his head. "I just know it's a woman."

Just my luck. She was probably beautiful.

###

I stopped by the place on my way home. As expected, it had a vaguely Caribbean look, if the Caribbean were a gay club. But improbably, it still managed to look tasteful. An artfully tattered pirate flag of a skull over crossed swords hung in the window. The gorgeous young man at the front desk told me that the owner never came in herself, but that the manager would be happy to talk to me. Looking around, I wished I'd changed before coming over

The manager was a woman too, in a power suit that cost more than my lab and somehow led irresistibly to thoughts of fucking on top of big mahogany desks. She was young and tall and willowy and blonder than blonde, with pale blue eyes that looked older than the rest of her, and not in an unsexy way. "I'm Fred," she said, holding out a hand.

I froze in the act of reaching out mine.

She smiled at me. "Yes, it's a girl's name. Haven't you ever watched Angel?" She had a British accent---I'm not exactly an expert, but I was pretty sure it wasn't as upper crust as Bob's.

"Yeah, I know, it's short for Winifred," I said. That was why I'd been a little spooked. I have issues with girls named Winifred.

She gave me a funny look. "Frederica, actually. And yes, I have had it out with my parents about that."

I laughed reluctantly. "Sorry. I'm Harry Dresden. Nice to meet you."

No reaction at all. It was almost as if she already knew who I was. "It's nice to meet you too, Mr. Dresden. What can I do for you?"

"I was thinking about stopping by some night," I said. "Is it just for singles?"

"Not at all," she said. "Did you want to bring your boyfriend?" There was a note in her voice I couldn't quite figure out.

"Maybe," I lied. "He's not out, though. How private is it?"

"Well," she said, "it's a social environment, so you will probably be seen by some of our other clients. But 'don't ask, don't tell' is one of the club's ground rules, and our staff is very discreet. And I can assure you that our client list is completely confidential."

"Can I look the place over before I make a reservation?"

She smiled. "Those parts of the club are closed for cleaning during the day. If you'd like to make an appointment to look it over tonight or tomorrow night, I can do that."

I thanked her and said I'd think about it.

"All right," she said, still smiling. "Here's my card. I look forward to hearing from you."

###

Bob was standing by the door when I got home, staring out through the glass. Usually he spent his days in the lab reading or resting in his skull, but lately I'd found him by the window more and more. I knew he wanted me to take him outside. But I was afraid someone would see him and realize what he was. He'd been kidnapped a few years before and I still worried. I made a guilty resolution to take him to the park when this case was over. On a weekday morning, maybe, so no one would be around.

"Guess what, Bob, someone's actually gonna pay me for something," I told him, dropping a kiss on his lips. I stopped short at the sense of dissatisfaction that suddenly filled me. "Bob, won't you tell me what's wrong?"

In a lot of ways, kissing Bob is totally different from kissing a mortal. My lips pass right through his, for one thing, and they glow golden when they do it. But in some ways, it's just the same. You know how when you kiss your lover hello, you can tell from how they kiss back whether they're mad at you or had a bad day or want to fuck you right there in the kitchen? It's exactly like that with Bob, only more so.

For a long time, it gave me the creeps when Bob touched me. His hand would brush mine and I would get this vague feeling of misery, anguish, worry, or even fear. I thought that was just what it was like, making contact with a ghost's essence. Even though I knew that ghosts got an echo of what a person was feeling or thinking when they touched them, it wasn't until after Bob and I were already involved that I realized it worked both ways. The thing was, before then, Bob never, ever let himself touch me. Not unless he was so lonely he'd do anything for the illusion of contact, or so desperate to stop me doing something stupid that he'd physically try to bar my way in spite of the obvious futility of the gesture. So when I got an echo of Bob's state of mind, it had never been pleasant.

How guilty did I feel to realize that my whole life, whenever Bob was at his lowest, if he reached out to me all he heard was, "Ew, Bob, you're gross, don't touch me"? Pretty damn guilty, let me tell you.

Nowadays I touch Bob pretty much every chance I get. It brings a sense of closeness like nothing else in the world---like instead of brushing hands or lips, you're brushing minds. But lately he'd been avoiding contact with me, except during sex, and when I managed to touch him he seemed unhappy, bored, or frustrated. If I asked him about it, though, I always got a response like this:

"It's merely some troublesome equations," he said. "Tell me about the job."

I could have forced the issue, but I was afraid I already knew what was wrong. I was scared that Bob was tired of me, tired of wasting his incredible knowledge and talents scrambling for rent on a tiny, dirty apartment and helping me with a never-ending stream of quixotic mini-crusades. If I pushed it, and he said that---then what? I'd have to give Bob to another wizard, and there wasn't anyone I trusted with Bob. Besides, I couldn't even imagine going one whole day without Bob, let alone---I couldn't even think it. Yeah, I knew I was acting like a kid pretending that if he couldn't see the monsters, they couldn't see him. I didn't care. I'd curl up under my bed, breathing in dust bunnies and chanting La la la I can't hear you, if I thought it would buy me five more minutes with Bob. I backed off and told him about the case.

I hadn't gotten very far in my rundown before the phone rang. It was Chloe.

"Harry, I need to call in that favor," she said.

"What do you need?" I asked. "I just took on a new case, so I might be busy for the next few days, but--"

"This won't interfere with your case," she told me. "I hope it'll help, actually. I--I need you to give my friend Clark a job."

"A job?" I said, startled. "As what?"

"Backup," she said. "You need backup, Harry. That was obvious from the case we worked on together. And Clark really needs some a lucky break. I don't like the way he's been looking."

"I can't afford to pay a sidekick, Chloe," I told her. "Anyway, an ordinary guy is not going to be much help in the kinds of situations I get myself into."

"You said I was useful," Chloe reminded me. "And Clark is much stronger than me. He played football in high school."

"Great," I muttered.

"Harry," Chloe said. Something in her voice made me shut up and listen. "You owe me a favor. Clark's been my best friend for years, he's saved me from---I don't even know if I would be here without him. He needs this job. He needs to send money to his mom, because she can't make the mortgage payments on the farm. And he can't find a job, and he's not used to the city, and---I'm afraid he'll do something stupid."

I wasn't sure if she meant suicide or bank robbery. "I can't afford to pay all that much, Chloe."

"I'll pay half," she said immediately. "He won't borrow money from me."

"Chloe, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I'm sure it's not, Harry, but I don't know what else to do. I hate what Metropolis is doing to him. I think he needs to see something positive about the city."

"Positive like ghoulies and ghaisties and long-legged beasties trying to kill homeless kids?" I asked.

"Positive like someone trying to do something about it," she said, sounding as rock-solid sure of my good guy status as Morgan is of my incorrigible criminal tendencies.

Does everyone know I have a soft spot for the young and stupid? I guess it's because I was as young and stupid as they come, in my day. "Fine, send him over and I'll see if I can give him something to do. But I don't really need backup on this case."

"What's the case?" she asked curiously.

"I can't tell you details, Chloe, you know that," I told her. "But put on your gossip columnist hat and I'll ask you something--what have you heard about a place called the Tortuga?"

"It's too soon for much buzz," she said. "But one of my contacts started freaking out yesterday that they're having Couples Week this week. He said it was part of the chocolate manufacturers' global conspiracy to make singles hate themselves."

"Couples Week?" I asked with a sinking feeling. "You mean, as in couples only? All week? The manager never said anything about that!"

"No Singles Allowed," she confirmed. "Foursomes Welcome. You should take your boyfriend and expense it. And thanks for helping Clark out."

Suddenly I saw where Clark fit in this investigation. And I knew Bob wasn't going to like it.

###

I was planning to run the plan by Bob before Clark showed up, but he must have been nearby because he got to my place not more than a minute after I got off the phone with her.

Unlike most people, Chloe's friend didn't just open my door and waltz in. He knocked and waited for me to let him in. Apparently they still teach manners in the heartland. However, in my world, that could be a sign you're something that can't cross a threshold without an invitation. So I held the door open wordlessly, and waited until Clark had stepped through before I said anything.

He wasn't what I'd expected. From Chloe's sad tale of high school football player in a downward spiral, I had expected one of those guys---you know the ones I'm talking about. Fading blond good looks, beer belly, old letterman's jacket, probably still wearing their damn high school ring. Clark was nothing like that. He was about my height, all unruly dark hair and broad shoulders, wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt. The shirt wasn't very tight, but it was worn thin from a hundred washings, and I was pretty darn sure Clark was still in great shape.

And there was sure as hell nothing fading about his looks. Sure, he hadn't shaved for a few days, and he had a certain hometown-boy-lost-in-the-big-city look to him. But he exuded strength and wholesomeness with an energy that took me aback, and even made me a little envious. I hadn't looked that blazingly young when I was eleven.

"You must be Clark," I said. "I'm Harry Dresden."

"Yeah, I'm Clark Kent," he said. His handshake was so firm it nearly went right out the other side and got limp again. He took off his jacket, and I swallowed hard. His arms were...impressive.

"Chloe said you're looking for a job," I said.

He looked down, flushing. "Yeah. Metropolis is..."

I nodded sympathetically. "It's a big city. Easy to fall through the cracks." And the cracks were a lot bigger than most people suspected. "So did Chloe explain what I do?"

"She...she said you were a private investigator," he said hesitantly, looking at all the weird crap I keep in my living room.

"That's right," I said, hiding a smile. "Sometimes things can get a little hairy, and it's nice for someone to have your back. That's where you come in."

He nodded. "I can do that."

I drew in a breath. "Now listen, this assignment could be a little awkward, and if it makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to do it. But then I won't have work for you until I get another case, and I can't always say how long that will be." I gave him a hard look. "The first rule of being a PI is to keep your mouth shut," I told him. "That means no discussing details of the case with anyone, including Chloe. Especially Chloe."

He laughed at that. "I'm good at keeping secrets," he said.

I doubted it, but I sighed and told him about the case. "We'd pose as a couple to get into the club---"

Clark turned bright red. "I'm not gay!" he squeaked. "I have a girlfriend!"

I sighed inwardly. "I'm sure you do, Clark," I said soothingly. "That's why I said 'pose.' Like I said, if you don't want to, that's fine, but I'll have to wait for another case to hire you."

Clark considered that for a moment, still the color of a Kansas sunset. At least, I'm assuming--I've never actually been to Kansas. "All right," he said at last. "But I don't have to, you know, do anything, right?" His voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

I tried not to laugh. "Nothing past second base," I said in my most deadpan voice.

Clark swallowed, and Bob walked in. Fortunately, he came through the door, not the wall.

"Harry," he said in a tone heavy with meaning.

Uh oh. "Bob, this is Clark. He's going to help me with the Tortuga case. Clark, this is my boyfriend Bob."

Clark was staring at Bob like he'd just seen a ghost--which, of course, he had, but he had no way of knowing that. "You're--you're--"

I frowned. If Clark was this uncomfortable with homosexuality, the case was going to be tricky. I hadn't really expected it from Chloe's best friend, but I guessed he was from Kansas.

Bob rolled his eyes. "Harry's boyfriend, yes. His real boyfriend."

Clark continued to look at Bob with slightly narrowed, puzzled eyes, but he held out his hand.

Bob made no move to take it, of course. "Harry, I need to speak to you. In private?" He jerked his head at the door.

Crap. I'd learned that Bob usually had something pretty important to tell me when he did that. What could have gone wrong now? "Give us a minute, Clark." As soon as we were in the kitchen and out of earshot, I said, "What is it, Bob?"

"Robbing the cradle, now, are you?" he inquired poisonously.

"He's just hired muscle, Bob."

Bob sniffed. "He certainly has plenty of muscles."

"He's not my type, Bob," I said. "I'm already a freakishly tall, dark-haired guy with too much stubble and not enough dress sense. What do I need another one for?"

Bob still looked annoyed, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. "He certainly wouldn't provide my dramatic visual contrast to your dark good looks."

God, I loved him. "Bob, I--"

Clark poked his head around the door. "Hey, something's come up," he said. "I need to go. But I'm cool with the whole...you know...fakeboyfriendthing." He could barely say the words. "Here's my cell number. Call me with the details, okay?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "I'll make us reservations for tomorrow night. I'll call you about the time."

He nodded and left. "Oh, and Clark, don't wear flannel," I called, but the door was already shutting behind him. Funny, I hadn't even heard footsteps yet. I shrugged. Whatever.

###

I had just gotten off the phone with Fred (fortunately, they did still have openings for tomorrow night) when the doorbell rang again. Dammit. I wanted to talk to Bob and make sure he was really okay with the whole fake-boyfriend-thing. Instead, I went to the door to see my third beautiful woman of the day. Like Chloe, she would more properly be termed a girl---I guessed they were about the same age. She had a dark sweep of smooth hair, killer legs, and a lithe body that somehow managed to look just right in a little-girl sundress. "Hi," she said, a smile crinkling the corners of her dark eyes. Her voice was huskier than I'd expected. "I'm Lana Lang. Clark's girlfriend."

What the hell was Clark's girlfriend doing here? "Oh," I said stupidly. "Um. I'm Harry Dresden. Come on in."

She came in and sat in the only chair. My living room, never exactly a Good Housekeeping photo spread, looked even darker and dingier in her sunny presence.

"What can I do for you, Miss Lang?" I asked.

"Clark told me you gave him a job."

I nodded warily.

"I'm glad," she said. "But I don't think it's a good idea for Clark to go with you to that gay club."

So. Clark could keep secrets about as well as I speak Latin. Which is to say, very badly. "Now, Miss Lang--"

"Call me Lana," she said, and smiled at me a little.

I blinked. "Now, Lana," I tried again, "if Clark doesn't want to do it, he can talk to me directly--"

"Oh, Clark would never refuse to help someone if they asked him," she said earnestly. "But I know he isn't comfortable with the idea, and I would hate for him to give you away accidentally. He's not a very good actor."

I sighed. I already knew that much, but I'd promised Chloe. Anyway, there were lots of reasons a young guy could look uncomfortable at a gay bathhouse. I'd already told Fred he was closeted. I could play it off like I was a disreputable older man who'd dragged him there...God, this was sounding like more and more fun every minute. "Look, Miss Lang--sorry, Lana--I already considered this when I hired Clark. And I decided to take the risk. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't tell anyone else about this, because my clients prefer secrecy. Clark really shouldn't have been talking to you about it in the first place."

"Please, Mr. Dresden," she said, looking up at me with those big dark eyes.

Damn. When a pretty woman says "please," I usually crumble like a staked vampire in one of those painfully inaccurate TV shows for teens. But Chloe had said please first. I held onto that.

"He needs the money for his mother," she said. "How can you ask him to do something like this when you know he can't say no?" A tear slipped down her cheek. "Please. Just call it off. He won't take money from me, but if you just take this check and give it to him, tell him it's an advance for the next case---you can keep a percentage for yourself if you need to, I can afford it. Please, Mr. Dresden. Let me do this. Let me help him." Another tear followed the first as she fumbled in her purse.

The only thing worse than pleading is tears. "Hey," I said, kneeling by her chair and wishing I knew where the box of Kleenex had got to. "Hey, it's all right. Nothing bad will happen to Clark. It's just a routine case. And I promise I don't have any designs on him." I expected her to laugh, but she didn't. She just sat there looking hopeless. "Listen, I'll tell you what. You go discuss this with Clark, and if he wants out, I'll do like you said, give him an advance and use him on my next case."

She pulled out her checkbook, but I pushed it firmly back into her purse.

"An advance of my money. I hired him and I'll pay him." Which sounded a lot less generous when you knew that Chloe was paying half of that. Which Lana didn't.

She stared at me, clearly frustrated, her cheeks still wet.

"Go on," I said. "Talk things over with Clark. And don't look so tragic. No one's died."

She muttered something under her breath that might have been yet. But she left.
As soon as she was gone, I summoned Bob. "It looks like we may be on to Plan B," I said. "Clark's girlfriend is against the idea. I don't know how a guy like him managed to get a girl like that, but he probably won't want to push his luck by insisting."

Bob frowned. "I didn't think she was anything special. I must be the only one, though; you know she's Lex Luthor's ex-wife, don't you?"

I stared. "What? How did you know that?"

Bob rolled his eyes. "Because I read the gossip column Clark's little fag hag writes," he said. "But as unimpressive as I found her, I agree with her that this faux couple scheme is a terrible idea. If you'd read as many romances as I have, you'd know this sort of thing never ends well. Not for the fussy, repressed current boyfriend, anyway."

"Clark isn't gay, Bob. Besides, you're not repressed, you're the kinkiest person I know."

"Well, there is that," he said, coming closer. "Speaking of which, it's been a while since you brought a girl home--Chloe's not seeing anyone, is she?"

And damn that idea sounded good, but the reason I hadn't brought a girl home in a while was because the last few times I had, Bob had seemed to enjoy watching as much as ever, but afterwards he'd brooded for days. "Bob," I said. "You know I love you, right?"

He looked away. "I love you too, Harry."

We'd been together for three years, and he'd never once said the l-word first. Oh, he always said it back, and he even seemed to mean it most of the time. But he'd never said it first. It didn't take a marriage counselor to know that wasn't a good sign. "I'd rather take you to the Tortuga, you know that," I said. "You deserve a smooshed-rose-petal facial or whatever they do at those places."

"I deserve a blowjob from a cabana boy in the hot tub," Bob said. "But alas, I can't actually receive either. Or protect you the way you need."

"If you don't want me to take Clark, I won't," I told him. "Marcone can wait till next week. It's just a routine case. I don't need backup."

Bob's shoulders slumped. "No, you should take him, if his girlfriend lets him go," he said. He sounded so defeated my heart ached. "Your cases are always routine, until they're not."

I couldn't argue with that. "Thanks, Bob," I said. There was a pause. "Do you want to...um, you know...I think I could probably do cabana boy." Me and Bob work around the whole incorporeal thing a bunch of different ways. One of them is for me to let Bob into my mind. Then if I fall asleep, Bob can kind of talk to my subconscious. Or, in this case, fuck him. It's like lucid dreaming, only much, much hotter.

"Don't you have things you should be doing, outside?" Bob asked. "More important things than taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon?"

I flinched at the bitterness in his tone. "Well, I--" I stopped and tried to think what to say. "More important things, maybe," I said finally. "Nothing I'd rather do."

His face softened. "All right," he said. "But you'd better be wearing a thong."

###

Clark didn't back out. He never even brought it up, by which I assumed Lana hadn't mentioned our little chat to him when she tried to talk him out of going.

I was supposed to pick up Clark at 9:30. I showed up fifteen minutes early so he'd have time to change if he was wearing anything too straight. Not that I was much of a judge. As promised, one of Johnnie Marcone's people had picked my clothes and sent them over to the apartment. Creepy, but convenient. I was wearing designer jeans, one of those linen shirts with the very thin pin-striping in black and silver, and black Italian leather boots that probably cost as much as six months' rent. And my shield bracelet, of course. I'd shaved, too, and put a bit of gel in my hair. I think Bob liked it, judging from how he'd started to walk around me to examine me from all angles, and then paused for about five minutes to stare at my ass. I really, really wished I wasn't a poor schlub who was only borrowing the clothes, and that this wasn't a case, and that I could take Bob to the Tortuga.

It turns out I needn't have worried about Clark, either. He came to the door with Chloe right behind him adjusting his collar. I was willing to bet she'd picked out his clothes and probably arranged his hair. He was wearing khakis that were about 50% tighter than the jeans he'd had on the day before, nice shoes, and a dark blue button-down that fit him like a glove. When he'd come to my apartment, his hair had been combed into straightness and tucked unflatteringly behind his ears. Now it curled a little, framing his face and making his cheekbones look...I shook myself.

All right, he wasn't my type. But I'm not blind. He looked good.

"I look stupid," he said, batting away Chloe's hand.

"You look hot, Clark," Chloe said. "Tell him, Harry."

I gulped. Chloe raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips.

I shrugged and nodded. "Your friend's right, kid. Believe me, no one is going to think you look stupid."

Clark gave me this shy, uncertain look from under his lashes and scuffed a toe on the floor. God, he was young.

"You look nice too, Harry," Chloe said, ready to reward me with one of her warm grins now that I'd done her bidding. "Although I miss the five o'clock shadow."

"Very funny," I said. "Hasn't anyone ever told you it's not nice to mock the elderly?"

She looked pointedly at my hair. "I don't see any gray," she said. "But maybe you'd better turn around so I can see if there's any coming in in the back."

I blinked, confused.

"Chloe!" Clark said.

"It was worth a try," she said, somehow quirking an eyebrow and smiling sheepishly at the same time.

I blushed as I got it, remembering Bob checking out my ass earlier in the evening. Chloe wanted to check out my ass?

Then something beeped, and she jumped. "Oh, sorry, let me get that." She pulled out some hi-tech gadget I suspected had been a phone in an earlier life. A satisfied smile spread over her face as she read whatever message she'd gotten, and she started typing into the phone.

It gave me an idea. "Hey, Chloe..."

A couple of minutes later, we were ready. "Let's get going," I told Clark. "We have evildoers to bring to justice." I clapped him on the shoulder. I must have done it at a weird angle or something, because it kind of hurt my hand. On our way out the door, I glanced back at Chloe.

She was staring after Clark with an odd combination of wistfulness and pride, her eyes suspiciously bright. I looked away quickly. Chloe's got a very expressive face, but I'd never seen her look so raw. Suddenly I realized that "best friend" might not have been the whole story.

###

We were shown into the inner recesses of the Tortuga by a beautiful young man in a lot of eye makeup, wearing a red-and-white striped shirt that had the club's skull and crossed swords silk-screened onto it. "These are the public rooms," he said. We were in a big room filled with people. I saw a lot of guys by themselves, but I figured their dates were just off having threesomes. The walls were white and bare, while the bar was made of gleaming dark wood and brass. Around the edges of the room were potted palms and small orange trees. The tacky piratical stuff contrasted with that uber-modern style where everything looks like a dystopian warehouse.

"Is Fred around?" I asked.

"I"m sorry, not tonight," he said. "I know she's usually in the back if anyone wants to say hi, but she had plans tonight."

I wondered if she was really gone or just hiding somewhere with a video camera.

"As you can see, the bar is over there," our guide continued. "The hot tubs, the steam room, the sauna, and the sling room are at the ends of those corridors. There are also private rooms off each corridor. Our staff will provide you with anything you wish; just ask any of us. Snacks are available in our vending area on the second floor. Lubricants and related supplies are available at our check-in/check-out station, and complimentary condoms are available throughout the club. Play safe!"

Clark was still bright red when we got to the bar, where the beer was served in old-fashioned tankards. A little chalkboard over the bar had a colored drawing of a parrot, with a speech bubble saying "Try our special: Pyrat XO Reserve rum!" I put an arm around Clark's waist and leaned in to whisper in his ear, "Keep an eye out for anything that could be a camera, a peephole, or a one-way mirror."

He nodded, glanced across the bar---and froze. "I'm not thirsty!" he said. "Let's, um--let's go check out the other rooms!"

I looked over at the bar, trying to figure out what had spooked him. It just looked like a bunch of gay rich boys to me, drinking Mai Tais and eating mixed cocktail nuts because apparently peanuts were too plebian for a place like this.

Still, Clark really looked freaked, so I figured I might as well listen first and ask questions later. "Come on," I said. "The private rooms are our best bet." I grabbed his hand and started to pull him towards the doors that edged the big room, but after a few steps he kinda sucked in his breath and stopped short, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights.

I turned, and saw why. Lex Luthor was coming towards us. His gaze was fixed on Clark with the intensity of not so much headlights as maybe a tractor beam made of lasers. I remembered suddenly that Clark was dating Luthor's ex-wife.

I'd met Luthor once before. He's one of the richest and most powerful men in Metropolis, and as it happens, he's not one to discount the supernatural. He'd hired me to put up some defensive wards on his penthouse. Well, he'd tried to hire me. I didn't take to him. He was smooth and sleek, yet still somehow one of those guys who's trying to prove he's got a bigger dick than you every second. He had this whole seduction/intimidation routine with his pool table. That kind of crap just pisses me off. I mean, I occasionally express anger by shooting twenty foot gouts of flame from a hockey stick, my boyfriend has a thousand years of kinky experience and can shapeshift---and I'm what, supposed to be flustered by a rich kid with a pool cue? It's just insulting. Besides, his security was shit. The money was good but not good enough to take the fall when someone inevitably broke in, which is what I told him.

So yeah, I hadn't been impressed with him then. But at the moment, with him bearing down on Clark as if there was nothing else in the room---well, right then I didn't want to be in his way. Unfortunately, given that Clark was my employee and looked scared shitless, I was.

"Mr. Luthor," I said with false heartiness when he got near enough that I didn't have to shout. I figured when you're bald and sexy and on the cover of every tabloid in the city, you don't really go incognito, but who knows, right? "Fancy meeting you here. This is my boyfriend, Clark."

Clark sort of squeaked.

"Dresden," Luthor said with a nod, and there was a world of menace in his voice. "No need for an introduction. Clark and I go way back, don't we, Clark?"

Clark licked his lips. "Lex," he said kind of dazedly. "You're--you're--I didn't know you were--" His eyes were all over Lex, who was admittedly looking pretty sharp in this sort of sheer black shirt with purple buttons, and I suddenly wondered if I'd got the wrong end of the stick.

"What, queer?" Luthor said sharply. "It's not exactly a secret, Clark." Which was true. I mean, even I knew Lex Luthor played for both teams.

"Well, I mean, Chloe said--but I thought she was just, you know, reading too much into things," Clark said.

I rolled my eyes.

Luthor actually almost smiled. I mean, he actually looked kind of affectionate for a second. It was unsettling. "Chloe is a gossip columnist, Clark. She knows things."

Clark shrugged and kept staring.

"You, though," Luthor said, blank and smooth again except for a predatory gleam in his eye and a faint, angry edge in his voice. "You are a surprise. But then, secrets are what you do best, aren't they?" There was a brief, uncomfortable pause. "So you're seeing Harry Dresden, are you? Funny, I thought you were still running after Lana Lang."

I blinked. What the hell was going on, and why did everyone think Clark was such a great secret keeper when he couldn't even keep his mouth shut about my case? I waited, resigned, for Clark to explain that he wasn't gay and we were just here to expose a blackmail ring. I wouldn't even have really blamed him. Standing next to Lex Luthor, who looked like he was born to swan around exclusive gay bathhouses seducing everyone in sight, it was painfully obvious how out of place the two of us were.

But Clark didn't do that. "Um," he said, instead. "Yeah. Harry and I are seeing each other. Is that your boyfriend?" He glanced pointedly at a young man standing several steps behind Luthor, who until that moment had escaped my notice. I looked at the kid and my eyebrows shot up to my hairline. Dark hair, check. Green eyes, check. Broad shoulders and truly impressive biceps, check. Baggy jeans and a worn t-shirt, check. Lex Luthor was here with the poor man's Clark Kent. Bob was going to dematerialize laughing when I told him.

"Oh, you mean Ari?" Luthor asked.

"Andy," the kid corrected him.

Luthor smirked. "Well, I wouldn't say he was my boyfriend. But I'm here with him, yes."

"Well, then," Clark said. "I guess Harry and I will just be checking out the private rooms. Have fun with your date, Lex." And then he slung his arm around my shoulders and walked us away.

You know what they say. Still waters run deep.

I glanced back once. Luthor was standing where we'd left him, staring after Clark---staring after Clark's ass, to be exact---as if there was nothing else in the room. Hell, as if there was nothing else in the world, or possibly even this universe plus that parallel one on Star Trek where everyone is evil. His date put a hand on his shoulder, and Lex shrugged it off without a word. I felt a shiver run down my spine. If I weren't such a bad-ass and all, I might have been a little nervous.

###

It didn't take long to find the one-way mirror. Or a one-way mirror, anyway---who knows, there could have been dozens of them. It was a good thing it didn't take long, because by the time Clark and I had stuck our heads into a few private rooms and the Sling Room (if you'd asked me before, I would have guessed a sling room was something in a hospital, and I wanted my blissful ignorance back), both of us were blushing and fidgeting and trying not to look at each other. I mean, I don't consider myself particularly prudish, but these people were having sex in public.

About the seventh or eighth room we looked in was empty, well-lit with lights recessed into the ceiling--and the walls were mirrored. I was trying to figure out how to tell if they were one-ways without knocking out the lights and tipping off whoever was looking at us when Clark said softly, "I think it's the one on the far wall."

I looked. It didn't look any different than the others, and while I could have guessed it was that one, since presumably the others bordered on the rooms on either side, I was pretty sure from our brief tour that there were a couple feet between each room--ostensibly, I guessed, for soundproofing. "How can you tell?" I asked neutrally.

"I--I think someone lit a cigarette or something on the other side," he said in a not-very-stage whisper.

I didn't know enough about one-way mirrors to know if that was plausible or not. While I thought, I sat on the bed in the middle of the room and bounced up and down a few times, as if I were testing the mattress. "How sure are you it's that one?" I asked.

"I'm sure," he said firmly.

I shrugged. "All right, let's go."

"Go?" he said.

I went up and started talking in his ear as if I were, I don't know, saying something sexy or something. It was weird that he was my height. "We have to get pictures, like I told you," I explained quietly. "The only way to do that from this side is to break the glass or knock out the lights. If it turns out it's not a one-way--"

Clark opened his mouth to protest, and I put a hand over his mouth.

"Just if it turned out that way," I continued, "we'd be screwed. Besides, my client isn't interested in lawsuits and red tape. We do this the quiet, non-property-damaging way."

Clark nodded uncertainly. I got the feeling he found the whole concept of not damaging property confusing and faintly unnatural. Kids. We slipped back out into the hallway and started trying to find the authorized personnel only part of the club. That took us a little longer, but eventually we saw a door with a little sign on it. The sign was marked with another skull and crossed swords, and read, "This portion of the club is STAFF ONLY. Please stay in the public rooms, and play safe! Arrr!" I tried the door, but of course it was locked.

"Let me try," Clark said. "Maybe it's just jammed."

"I think you're right," I said, pushing some of my will into the keyhole. The door clicked open.

Clark gave me a startled smile, and I grinned back. Sometimes I love my job.

I'm good at finding stuff. It didn't take me long to get us back to about where we'd been (only, of course, on the other side of the wall). Luckily, we didn't run into any Tortuga employees on our way.

"Okay," I said, turning onto a corridor with a row of doors on the left side. "I think it's one of these." None of them were locked. What we were looking for was behind the third door I opened. The ill-lit little room looked just like the one-way mirror Murphy used down at the police station, except that instead of a cop browbeating some poor sucker on the other side of the huge window, it was two guys having sex. A girl was standing there taking pictures.

She turned to look at us when we walked in, and Clark said, "Lois?"

The girl did a double take. "Smallville?" she said. "What the hell are you doing here? Did Lana send you?"

"Lana?" Clark asked. "No, she has no idea I was coming here."

I was as interested in this development as Lois appeared to be, but it wasn't really what we were here for. I coughed. "Clark," I said meaningfully.

"Oh, yeah, sorry," Clark said, and took out Chloe's cell phone and started snapping pictures of the blackmail setup.

I can't use hi-tech stuff. Magic tends to scramble those little circuits and micro-chips and what have you. I do fine with an old-fashioned camera made of light and lenses and mirrors, but I'd known for damn sure I wouldn't get decent pictures in a dark room, not good enough for Johnnie Marcone to use as proof. Luckily, the digital camera on Chloe's cell phone is better than the cameras most professional photographers use, and she'd been real nice about letting us borrow it, once I'd promised not to touch it.

"Clark!" Lois said, holding on to her camera and trying to put her arms over her face. "What the hell are you doing? What is wrong with you? What---okay, now what?" Because Clark had frozen, staring through the lit window into the next room.

I looked, and realized why. On the other side of that glass was Lex Luthor, getting a very enthusiastic blowjob from Clark Kent 2.0.

Luthor's head was tilted back. The bright lights caught a drop of sweat as it slid down his neck and into the open collar of his shirt. One of his hands was fisted in the sheets, the other tangled in the dark hair of his date as he thrust into the boy's mouth. As I watched he bit his lower lip, hard, and said something we couldn't hear.

I had to admit, it was hard to look away. But I did it just in time to see Clark drop Chloe's phone. "Clark, the phone!" I yelled. Clark started, and he lunged for the phone so fast his hand practically blurred. I blinked, impressed---he must have been really good at football---and then there was a loud crack and the glass window shattered. "Everybody down!" I shouted, but before I could raise my arm and bring up a shield Clark was tackling me to the floor. "Get off me," I yelled, trying to free my arm as the sound of another shot cracked out. "Get the girl!"

"I'm under you, dumbass," a voice said, and I realized the floor was both too hard and too soft, and also elbowing me in the ribs.

"Who's there?" came Luthor's voice from the next room. "Tell me or I'll shoot!"

"It's Dresden, you crazy fuck!" I shouted, shoving Clark off me and rolling into a standing position with my shield arm in front of me. Luthor was crouched behind the bed, his boy toy behind him and his gun aimed at my head. "And if you don't put that gun down, they'll be picking up bits of your charred remains for weeks. You could have killed someone!"

"And I would have missed you so much," Luthor muttered, but he lowered the gun.

"Not me, you asshole," I snapped, but I didn't have time to finish because Clark stood up, zipping up his jacket and brushing broken glass off his clothes, and interrupted me.

"Lex, that's not a very nice thing to say about my boyfriend," he said.

Luthor blanched, and he dropped the gun as if it burned him. "Clark? Are you all right? Did I hit you?"

"See?" I said. "God, didn't you ever read Hamlet? You never shoot at someone you can't see, you could end up killing your father-in-law." I've never read Hamlet myself, being a high school dropout and all, but Bob's another story. To hear him tell it, he's played Yorrick opposite most of the greats of the British stage.

Luthor muttered something under his breath that sounded like Clark's father is already dead.

"Of course you didn't hit me, Lex," Clark said angrily, pulling the zipper on his jacket up even higher. The kid didn't have a scratch on him. It was some kind of fucking miracle, because I could feel blood running down my cheek from where a flying piece of glass had nicked me, and my hands were bleeding in a few places. "And you shouldn't be so rude to Harry when he just saved you from being blackmailed."

Luthor turned to look at Lois, who was trying unsuccessfully to hide her camera behind her back. She gave him an unconvincing grin.

"Lois Lane," Luthor said, looking as if he'd swallowed a lemon. "I don't pay blackmail money. You're a reporter. You should know that."

Lois, who clearly had no sense of self-preservation, smirked. "Oh, I think if Clark here hadn't already seen it, you would have paid through the nose to keep the farmboy wannabe here out of the papers."

Lex's eyes turned to furious slits. "Never try to blackmail someone more ruthless than you, Miss Lane. Especially not when your weak spots are so abundantly known to him. You're awfully fond of that cousin of yours, aren't you? You know the editor of the Daily Planet is a friend of mine--"

"Hands off Chloe," I growled, just as Clark said, "Lex!"

Luthor eyed me as if he'd discovered an interesting weak spot, but he glanced at Clark and subsided. I noticed, though, that he hadn't actually threatened Chloe's life, just her job. Which, from what I'd heard about Luthor, was some pretty impressive self-restraint to begin with.

Then, abruptly, he looked as if the lemon he'd swallowed had just turned into a grapefruit. "So," he said. "You're not with Dresden. Chloe's got you helping him on a case. I should have known."

"What does that mean?" Clark demanded.

"It means you're the straightest person I've ever met, Clark."

Clark shuffled his feet. "Actually, Lex, about that..."

It looked like Luthor actually stopped breathing. But I guess he couldn't have, because he said, very carefully, "Yes, Clark?"

"Dammit, Lex!" Clark said furiously, and then he strode forward, broken glass crunching under his shoes, and kissed Luthor hard. After several seconds, he broke it off and glared.

Luthor put one hand up to touch his own lips, staring at Clark as if he couldn't believe what had just happened. "What the fuck was that, Clark?" he said.

"I, um, I just kissed you," Clark said, and blushed.

When Luthor spoke, it was in the same measured tones he'd been using all along, but somehow he sounded young and lost underneath. "This better not just be Stage 4,327 of the Great Clark Kent Mindfuck."

"It's not, Lex, I swear," Clark said. "It's always been you."

Luthor's mouth started to curl up a little at the corner. "Scout's honor?"

"Scout's honor," Clark said, actually starting to raise his hand in the Boy Scout Salute, but Luthor was on him before he could finish. Within seconds he had backed Clark against a wall, hands fisted in his hair. "Oh God, Lex," Clark said, and they were all over each other like teenagers, all tongues and moans and fiercely yet awkwardly trying to get hands up shirts.

"That's hot," Lois said, and started trying to take pictures. "Hey, what happened to my camera? It's melted!"

I dragged my eyes away from Clark and Lex and looked. Sure enough, the camera was a pretty much unrecognizable hunk of plastic. Had I done that without noticing? I didn't have time to think about it, because at that moment my wards on Bob tripped and one of the links in my shield bracelet heated up.

Which meant someone was touching Bob.

Someone who was not me.

I was instantly doused with panic. "Clark," I said sharply. "Something's wrong with Bob. I've gotta get home. You finish up here and come over as soon as you can. Get a statement from Lois. And bring that phone." And I was racing out the door and through the club.

By a minor miracle I didn't run into any Tortuga staff on my way back to the public rooms. But even if Marcone didn't shut the place down, I knew I was never being allowed back in. In each room I passed through, everyone turned to stare at me. That may not sound too dramatic, but when you think about what else they had to look at, it means more. I knew how I must look---a crazy-eyed giant with blood on my face, covered in bits of broken glass and sprinting at full-tilt through a gay bathhouse. Someone must have figured I was running from the scene of a crime, because he got in my way and tried to grab my arm. I decked him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone trying to dial 911 on their cell phone, and I sent out a pulse of magic that should have scrambled everything more complicated than a toaster within a forty-foot radius.

Usually I take it as a personal affront how sheep-like people are, but tonight I was grateful. No one else tried to get in my way. I made it out the door and raced the final six blocks to my Jeep, wishing I'd paid the twelve bucks for private parking.

Of course the first stoplight I got to was red. I sat there in agony, my knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. It's times like these when I really wish I could interact with technology. Then I could set up a Bob-cam, so I'd be able to see Bob's skull all the time on my cell phone or iPod or Blackberry or whatever gizmo I'd be able to use without frying its trendy little innards. As it is, I could scry, but it would have taken concentration I needed to drive. I stared at the red light, and thought, Fuck this. I ran the red light and drove ninety the rest of the way, using a mildly Black illusion to keep from getting pulled over.

I parked illegally in front of the store and examined the front door. The wards seemed intact, but the lock had been forced. There didn't seem to be any kind of booby trap on the doorknob, but I couldn't be sure. I had no idea what awaited me inside. It didn't matter. Bob was in there, so I had to go in. I opened the door and walked in, shield at the ready.

The first thing I heard was Bob's voice, saying "Harry, turn around and leave now." I didn't, obviously.

The first thing I saw was Bob. The second thing I saw was a woman holding his skull. I recognized her immediately. It was Fred, the manager at the Tortuga. And the way Bob looked at her, that mixture of shock and longing, told me the rest.

"You're home earlier than I expected," she said. "Was the club not to your liking?" She was wearing a short-sleeved version of the Tortuga t-shirt. I looked at the t-shirt again, and realized the answer had been right there all along. The skull in the logo. Bob's skull. Apparently Bob has a weakness for wizards with a juvenile sense of humor.

"Evidently not," Bob said, eying my dishevelment. "Unless you told Clark you like it rough."

I put out my hand, and my staff flew into it. The familiar weight of the hockey stick in my hand grounded me, somehow let me talk and move and act like this was just one more case and not my life crumbling around me. "Not really my kind of place," I said. "Who the hell are you and why are you in my living room?" I knew, of course, but I was trying to buy time.

"This is Winifred, Harry," Bob said. "Well, not Winifred exactly. It's Winifred's spirit possessing one of her descendants. A descendant with a very odd taste in tattoos."

Mechanically, I looked. Sure enough, there was a strange geometric shape tattooed on her upper arm---a sort of diamond, with a line coming off the right-hand point, and a circle through the line. I didn't really care. Kids have weird taste these days, so what? Winifred looked annoyed at Bob's comment, though.

I took a few steps closer to her---and walked into an invisible barrier. I put out my hand and felt it. It was solid, and when I touched it I felt an alien energy.

There was someone else's goddamn shield in the middle of my living room.

She shouldn't have been able to work that kind of magic in my house, not after crossing the threshold uninvited. Not unless---

"Oh yes, Hrothbert invited me in," she said gleefully. "He lives here too, you know."

I glanced at Bob, but he didn't say anything, or even look at me. I tried to hide my hurt. Could I really be shocked? She was his epic love. He had damned himself for her. Why wouldn't he invite her in? "So, what?" I asked. "You're just planning to take Bob and go?"

"Eventually," she said, still smiling.

Bob didn't look thrilled, but he could have just been worrying about hurting my feelings.

"Do you want to go with her, Bob?" I asked. I wasn't sure what I would do if he said yes---I wasn't entirely sure I was capable of just watching her walk of out of there with Bob's skull---but it seemed important to get all the facts.

Bob made an indecisive gesture and ran his hand through his hair, but didn't say anything. I saw that his wrists were kind of misty and wavering underneath the manacles. I'd never seen anything like that before, and it worried me.

"What happened to your wrists, Bob?"

He didn't answer.

I didn't push it, because there was an obvious answer---they'd been trying to get the manacles off. "Bob, if you want to go, I'll"---I swallowed hard---"I'll let you, but I'm not letting her walk off with you without being sure it's what you want."

Winifred laughed. "As if Hrothbert or I needed your permission! It's sweet, really. But I have other plans for you. Hobkin, léof, I need you to tell me something honestly."

"What?" Bob asked, and I thought he sounded a little apprehensive.

"Do you love this mortal?" She looked at him earnestly.

Bob's eyes widened for a second, and then he smiled at her, smooth and predatory. "What does that have to do with us, sweet?" he asked her. "I've loved you for a millennium."

I felt a little sick.

"I know," she said softly, giving him her own wild sweet smile. "But answer me plainly."

"Don't order me about," he snapped. "You're as bad as he is." I didn't know what was going on. Was she jealous, or was there something else? And why didn't Bob want to answer---because the answer was yes, and he didn't want her to know? Or because the answer was no, and he didn't want me to know?

Her eyes flashed. "All right, Hobkin, you've forced my hand," she said sharply. "Are you in love with him? I command you to answer, and I command you to speak true."

She was in possession of the skull, and he had to obey her. This was it, then, the moment of truth. I waited breathlessly for Bob's answer.

He didn't speak.

I had never seen Bob disobey a command before. I hope I never see it again. At first, he merely stood stock-still, his face set and his fists clenched. The sigils on his fancy manacles started to glow, and as they passed from gold to orange to blue to white hot, the expression on Bob's face went from stubborn to pained. I'd only seen Bob in pain once, ever in my life, and it was when he was briefly mortal and died. I mean, being incorporeal, Bob never even stubbed his toe. Bob in pain was all kinds of wrong. I wanted to ask him to stop, to tell her what she wanted to know. I wanted to tell him that I'd be okay even if he wasn't in love with me---but I trusted Bob, maybe not to love me but not to betray me, and I still wasn't sure what was up.

The sigils shone bright blue, and the manacles themselves began to smoke. So that's what happened to his wrists, she stole him and then made him invite her back in, I remember thinking. Then, abruptly, the bracelets blazed with a terrible white flame, and Bob started to scream.

I don't remember moving, but abruptly I was pressed against Winifred's shield, pounding on it, blasting it with gobs of fire, trying to get to Bob's skull. As if from a long way away, I could hear my voice, begging, the words bleeding together: "Just tell her, Bob, please, tell her, I don't care what the answer is, I don't care what she does, justtellherjustmakeitstop---" I wasn't even sure he could hear me over his own pain.

Winifred's voice cut through the noise, cold and sharp and desperate. "Hrothbert of Bainbridge, I command thee!"

Bob's whole body shuddered. "Yes!" he screamed.

The blaze of his manacles extinguished as if it had never been, and there was blessed dark and silence. I could breathe again, and Bob loved me, and I was furious and nauseous and ashamed and sickly, sickly grateful that it hadn't been me doing that to Bob, that he had never disobeyed one of my commands, that I had never demanded more of him than he was willing to give.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he said hoarsely, and I didn't understand why he would apologize to me.

"Bob, your wrists," I said, and my voice cracked. His wrists were black and smoky now, a dark rift in his manifestation, and orange sparks crackled along the edges of the gap.

He looked down vaguely. "I'll heal. It's damaged my essence, but it's not permanent. I'm so sorry, Harry."

"What's to be sorry for, Bob?" I said.

"Yes, tell him, Hobkin," Winifred said. I'd almost forgotten she existed. I looked at her, now. She was bone-white, a tear running down her cheek. I didn't give a shit.

"Tell him yourself, you fucking cunt," Bob said. I tensed, afraid she would take some form of revenge, but instead she bowed her head, a sheet of blonde hair falling over her face.

"In theory only the arrow that slew me should make Hrothbert mortal again, and it's gone," she said quietly. "But since he loves you, now, I think I can modify the spell so that the weapon that killed you would work just as well."

So that was it. Bob's ex-girlfriend wanted to kill me, and I didn't know how I was going to get out of this without killing Bob's ex-girlfriend. I readied my shield and tried to think.

"Winifred," Bob said, and it hurt, the weight of emotion just in how he said her name. "Winifred, I love you, but if you hurt him, I'll never forgive you."

She laughed, a jagged unhappy sound. "Forgive me? I don't need you to forgive me. I never forgave you for what you did to me, but I'm here, aren't I? I came for you across the centuries. For a thousand years my soul has not rested while I waited for my chance to free you---for you to love again."

"I'm sorry, Winifred," Bob said. "But if you hurt him, my first mortal act will be to slay you."

I stared at Bob.

She smiled. "That would be a fitting end to our tale, don't you think?"

"Winifred, wouldn't you rather have me willing? Just take me and go, and leave him be. I have built centuries of knowledge since we died. There is nothing we could not do together. Let us go now, and I swear I will serve you faithfully---"

She slammed her hand down on the table, and suddenly my record collection went up in flames. She cursed in a Germanic language I had sometimes heard Bob whisper in, when we were having sex. I had always thought of it as private between us, and it stung to realize it was the language he shared with her. "Serve me?" she said furiously. "I don't want you to serve me---I want you to fight beside me as you used to. Don't you remember the sun gleaming on our blades? I want to taste you again, I want to feel you between my thighs---and you offer to serve me! Hrothbert of Bainbridge served no man."

"That was a long time ago," Bob said gently, but there was longing in his voice. "The world has changed. I have changed."

"You have been enslaved!" she said. "I will give you back yourself, léof, though you hate me for it."

"Winifred, no!"

"You can't stop me," she said tauntingly. "Don't you want to be able to stop me? Don't you want to be able to wrap your hands round my throat and blast me with fire? I'm going to give you that, Hobkin." And she picked up a crossbow I hadn't even noticed lying on the table. To do it she had to put down Bob's skull, but they were still behind that damned wall of a shield. She would have to take it down to shoot me, though, and maybe I could---"Put down your staff," she said.

"What?"

"Put down your staff."

I clutched the hockey stick tighter. "Why the hell would I do that?"

"Because if you don't, I will smash the skull."

"You can't just smash the skull," I said. "It's warded."

She laughed. "I was there when those wards were put on," she told me. "They killed him first, telling him they would spare me."

"They didn't spare her," Bob interjected. "They merely waited to kill her until my spirit was safely bound."

"I saw them made," Winifred repeated. "Do you think I do not know how to break them?"

The air turned thick and slow in my lungs. "I thought you wanted him to kill things by your side and fuck you again," I said, trying to control my voice.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and then met my gaze squarely. "I do," she said. "But I have vowed to free him, and if the closest I can come is to destroy him, I will. It will be better than this eternal bondage."

"She's bluffing, Harry, don't do it," Bob said in a bored tone. "Anyway, you know how much I like bondage."

"Why would you go to such lengths to protect him?" she demanded, her voice trembling. "You'd be obliterated for him when he's happy to own you, when he doesn't care what they did to you---show him what they did to you!"

"Winifred--"

"Show him! That's a command!" she shrieked.

Bob closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, as if he were preparing for pain.

"For God's sake, Bob," I said. "Just do it, please."

Bob dematerialized into that orange ball of sparks, and when he rematerialized I almost vomited. I had always been kind of curious about what Bob looked like in those days, but I couldn't notice his tunic or his hair now. He was holding his severed head in bound hands.

"And this was before they boiled his head to separate the flesh from the skull," Winifred said viciously.

His knee looked broken, there was blood all over him, and his face was swollen and bruised. I tried not to look at the bloody stump of his neck, or the great slash across his shoulders as if they'd had to try more than once, but I could not look away from his face. He was gagged with a strip of rune-covered cloth, like the ones he had used to keep me from casting during that whole business with my uncle. Another blood-spattered cloth covered his eyes. I was grateful that I did not have to see his eyes, and yet I wanted to, I wanted to see it all and never forget, because the Council had done this to Bob and---

"Can I change back now?" Bob said, Bob's ordinary bored drawl coming out of his gagged, bruised mouth with blood caked around it, and I bit my lip so hard I bled too.

"You can change back when he drops his staff," she said.

"Oh, well, I suppose I could get used to looking this way," Bob said.

I dropped my staff.

"Kick it across the room," she said, and I did that too. "You can change back," she said, and I breathed a sigh of relief as Bob once more became the Bob I knew.

"Now drop your shield bracelet."

That was when I knew this was it, I was going to die. I can work a few spells without my staff or my shield bracelet, but nothing big enough to damage a sorceress in the split-second her shield would be down. Maybe I could try to call back my staff real fast and knock the bolt out of the way when she shot at me, but I doubted my timing was good enough, and even then we'd still have the problem of her having Bob and being behind a shield. "And if I don't?"

She sighed and snapped her fingers. A chalice that had been sitting on the table crumbled to dust. "We've been through this. I'll smash him."

"Harry, please," Bob said. "I've lived a long time, you're young, don't be an idiot---"

I took off the bracelet and kicked it across the room after my staff. Now there was nothing between me and Winifred's crossbow but her own shield.

"I love you, Bob," I said.

"If you loved me you would---" Bob started to hiss furiously, and then Clark walked in.

"Sorry it took me so long to get here," he said. "I---who's she?" He didn't really seem bothered by how she was aiming a crossbow at me and everything.

"Clark, this is Bob's ex-girlfriend Winifred. She's been dead for eight hundred years and has possessed one of her descendants. Turns out the whole blackmail-at-the-club thing was a decoy to get me out of the house so she could fulfill her vow to steal him back."

"No, the club thing was so Lana could make money," Clark said. "Lois told me Lana owns the Tortuga. She always was a bit of an entrepreneur. In high school she made Lex buy this old theater, and---"

"That's fascinating, Clark, but I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment," I said.

"Does she have a weird tattoo by any chance?" Clark asked.

Winifred started. "Look, Clark," she said sharply, "Your girlfriend's been a good business partner and I like how she uses her gift. So why don't you just walk out the door and I won't kill you?"

Which is when I realized that Clark had never told Lana we were going to the club at all. Winifred had, after I called to make the reservation. Why is it that by the time I solve puzzles, the solution is always totally irrelevant? "Yeah, Clark," I said. "I don't pay you enough for this. You should go."

"I'll walk out if you walk out ahead of me," Clark said to Winifred in a reasonable tone of voice, as if he thought she might really take him up on this offer.

Winifred rolled her eyes, lowered her shield, and fired the crossbow straight at me. I threw myself out of the way, but I would probably still have gotten hit in the shoulder or something if Clark hadn't lunged into the line of fire and taken the bolt squarely in the chest.

Chloe's face flashed through my mind. She'd trusted me to keep her friend safe. "Oh, fuck, fuck, Clark, fuck," I swore. "Get down. Let me see, maybe she didn't hit anything vital. God damn it, Clark, I hired you to be back-up, not a goddamn human shield. Fuck!"

"Harry, I don't think he's hit anything at all," Bob said in a very strange tone.

He was right. Clark turned to me with a sheepish expression, holding the arrow in one hand. There wasn't a scratch on him.

"What are you?" Winifred asked, and shot him again. The bolt fucking bounced off him.

I stared blankly and tried to remember the last time something in my life made sense.

"I'll explain later," Clark said. "Does she have a tattoo?"

"Yeah, on her arm," I said.

He looked. "Oh, fire," he said. I didn't ask what he was talking about. "Does she have anything that she's carrying around with her that seems to be the source of her power?"

"I don't know," I said, frantically trying to scan the things on the table next to her. The problem with being messy is that you can't always tell what doesn't belong.

Winifred dropped her shield just long enough to send fire lancing at Clark. His clothes burned and scorched, baring perfect skin.

"The scroll, Clark!" Bob said. "The scroll next to the skull!"

"Hobkin!" Winifred shrieked, and lunged for the scroll, clutching it tightly as she aimed her crossbow again. Which was stupid, because there had been about fifty scrolls next to the skull, and now we knew exactly which one was hers.

Then the weirdest thing I'd seen yet happened. These red beams came out of Clark's eyes and started heating up her shield.

Now, it was a good shield, and it could withstand a lot. But it takes power to absorb or reflect energy. Evidently there was a lot of power in Clark's eye-rays, because the shield started to glow red-hot. Winifred held out a hand towards it, eyes shut tight and pale cheeks splotchy, sweat beading on her forehead, and set her shoulders. I was pretty sure that, like me, she had an affinity with fire. For a second it looked like she was going to absorb all that heat and keep going. But then the shield vanished with a pop, and Clark's eye-beams started setting the house on fire.

"Not the skull!" I screamed, lunging forward. "Don't hit the skull, Clark!"

Clark stopped for a split second. Winifred could probably have killed me then, but instead she lunged for Bob too, and Clark sent one last beam at the scroll in her hand. It crumbled to ash in seconds, and Winifred fell to the ground unconscious.

I scrambled forward and grabbed Bob's skull, sinking to the floor and cradling it in my arms. "Bob, Bob, Bob," I chanted. I was vaguely aware Clark was doing something to put out the fires. I was vaguely aware I looked like a crazy person. I didn't care.

"She isn't gone," Clark said unexpectedly. "She won't be gone until she's fulfilled her vow. She's just hiding inside that girl now."

"What?" I asked, clutching Bob's skull even tighter. "How---how do you know?"

"Something like this happened to Lana once," Clark said, and started. "Oh! Lana, right. Here are the pictures from the Tortuga---" He held out the cell phone to me. I started to laugh. With all the magic that had been flying around, they were gone for sure. Possibly the phone was dead, too. I wondered if Johnnie Marcone would buy Chloe a new one.

"Harry?" Clark asked, looking worried. Possibly he had noticed my hysteria.

"Magic fucks with technology, Clark," I finally managed to say. "I doubt the pictures are any good. Bob, you don't mind living in the Jeep, do you? I am so not getting my security deposit back."

Bob didn't answer. He was looking at Winifred.

"Oh," Clark said cheerfully, putting the phone back in his pocket. "Good thing I e-mailed them to Chloe already."

"You did?"

"It was Lex's idea. Anyway, what are you going to do about her?" He pointed at Winifred, who was still out.

"Better make sure she isn't going to get up," Bob said dully.

That shocked me out of my relieved stupor. "Bob, I'm not going to kill her."

Bob raised his eyebrows at me.

I had to contact the Council. And I didn't really think the Council should know about Clark. Reluctantly, I stood up. I noticed my hands were shaking. I set Bob's skull down carefully on a non-scorched section of table. "I have to call some people," I said. "You...um...probably shouldn't be here when they get here. They don't like people knowing about them."

"All right," Clark said agreeably. "I'll stop by tomorrow, okay?"

"Sure, Clark. Do you want to borrow a shirt?"

"Oh, yeah," he said sheepishly, looking down at the scorched remains of his own.

He took a shirt and left, and I called Morgan, who came with some minions. The minions took the girl away so they could try to figure out how to exorcise her. Morgan stayed so he could try to figure out in what way this was all my fault.

"We know how to exorcise her, Morgan," I said. "She's made a vow to free Bob from his skull. Free Bob from his skull, and poof!"

"That is not an option," he said.

In a second I had him up against the wall, my hands fisted in his stupid designer jacket. Somehow this always seems to happen with Morgan. Bob says it's a sign of repressed attraction, but I think it's just good old-fashioned hatred.

"Harry," Bob said tiredly, but that was all he said. I think he knew I was past listening to reason.

"That is the only option," I said. "Or are you planning to just kill the girl? Christ, Morgan, do you know what happens when he disobeys a command? Do you---of course you know!" I slammed him against the wall, hard. "And you fucking tried to blame him for my uncle's crimes! You told me he was complicit in my father's murder and I should let the Council deal with him. As if the Council hadn't already dealt with him. As if he could have denied my uncle anything he wanted!"

"I was trying to bring a dangerous fugitive into custody," Morgan snapped. "I said what I had to."

"You---you---" I let go of him and stepped back, afraid of what I would do. "You had better not harm that girl. And you and Mai will help me free him."

"I don't take orders from you, Dresden," Morgan said. "His punishment is just."

"I don't know if you got the memo, Morgan, but slavery has been abolished," I said furiously.

Morgan's face set like stone. "Why the sudden passion for manumission, Dresden? You've seemed perfectly content with this state of affairs for the past ten years."

That was a question I'd been very carefully not thinking about. Now I remembered all the times I'd told Bob to get in his skull, all the times I'd---I was freaking Thomas Jefferson, carrying on an affair with his slave and never bothering to free her. "Because I'm a complacent asshole!" I yelled at Morgan. "But now I've changed my mind and you are damn well---" I suddenly got a very clear image of me dragging Bob around a crime scene by his wrists.

I barely made it to the bathroom in time to throw up. Bob materialized beside me. "Harry, sweetheart, don't take on so," he said gently, as if I were thirteen again and sulking because my uncle wouldn't let me have a familiar. He put his hand on my back, and the steady warmth and concern I sensed, the casual touch I'd been missing for months, sent another wave of nausea through me.

I wanted to tell him not to touch me, that I didn't deserve it, but somehow what came out was, "Why didn't you let her kill me, Bob?"

Bob moved his hand to the base of my skull, and the wash of affection steadied me in spite of myself. "Perhaps you'd better come back later," he said to Morgan in a voice that made it very clear it was not a suggestion.

I couldn't quite bear to turn around, but I could feel Morgan eyeing us with distaste. "This should never have been allowed," he said. "It is making him unbalanced."

The only thing that kept me from getting up and killing him was that if I did, I'd have to stop touching Bob.

"What should never have been allowed is you being made a Warden," Bob said to Morgan. "Have you no ability to judge a situation? For the love of God, leave."

Morgan turned on his heel.

"This isn't over, Morgan," I said. "You tell Ancient Mai---"

I heard the door shut. Now I knew Morgan wasn't watching me, I was able to find the strength to move forward out of Bob's touch and turn round to look at him, sitting on the floor.

"Be careful, Harry," he said quietly. "If you provoke him, they may decide to take me away from you altogether."

"They aren't going to do that, Bob," I said. "Listen, I---"

"You don't usually have such faith in them."

"They can't take you while I'm alive," I said.

"That's very sweet of you, Harry," he said, "but nothing prevents them from taking me over your dead body, and as I already narrowly escaped watching you die once this evening, I should very much appreciate---"

"They won't kill me for you, Bob," I said.

"How can you be so sure?" Bob demanded. "Morgan would like nothing better than to have an excuse---"

There was nothing for it. Bob was really worried. "Maisworeonherpower," I said, real fast.

Bob stared at me. "What?"

"Mai swore on her power," I repeated.

Bob rocked back on his heels. "Now why would she do that?"

"Haven't you ever wondered why I got you back at all?" I asked.

"I assumed your uncle left me to you in his will," Bob said in surprise.

Like a slave, I thought. Like property. "You weren't in the will, Bob. I don't think he wanted any record that he had any connection with you. You were part of my plea bargain."

"Plea bargain?"

"Come on, Bob, you know what a plea bargain is."

"Yeees," he said, drawing the word out as though talking to a child. "But I also know that since the Council hardly goes to a good deal of expense on trials, they haven't much use for them."

That was true; the Council was more of the judge, jury, and executioner type. "I knew I couldn't run from the Council forever," I said. "I didn't want to. And I was tired of hiding at Bianca's waiting for them to corner me. So I went to Mai and Morgan and told them I'd come quietly if they agreed to some conditions. One of them was that if they decided to let me live, I'd get to keep you, and they couldn't kill me to take you back." Keep you. How had it taken me so long to realize how wrong those words sounded?

"What were your other conditions?" Bob asked curiously.

"Uh..." I said. "There might not have been any other conditions."

Bob let out a long breath. "Oh, Harry. Why?"

"Well...I told myself it was because only you knew the truth about that bastard and my mother."

"You never asked me about that again," Bob said carefully.

"Yeah, so I was lying to myself," I snapped. "You were all I had left, Bob. What do you want me to say?"

"What would you have done if they'd refused you?"

"I would have killed Morgan and used my death curse on Mai," I said. That still sounded pretty good, actually.

"Oh, Harry," he repeated. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"We're guys, Bob. If I'd told you, we would have had to have an emotional moment, it would have been weird." I grimaced. "I should have told you. I would have if I'd known you were worried about it."

Bob smiled at me. "And you can still ask me why I didn't let Winifred kill you."

"You could've been free, Bob," I said. "You could've been mortal."

Bob pressed his lips together. "There are many prices I would pay for that, Harry," he said. "Your life is not one of them."

"She saw it was wrong right away," I said bitterly. "She saw it was disgusting, you having to serve someone." I was silent for a minute. "The two of you really had something, didn't you?"

"We did," Bob said with a sigh. "But---that wasn't Winifred, Harry."

I blinked. "Well, I know she was possessing her descendant, but surely the difference in appearance wouldn't really matter---"

"That's not what I meant," Bob said. "It was so long ago, Harry; I don't even really remember what she looked like any more. I remember she had strong hands, and she was fair, so fair; she loved the sun, but it burned her." He was quiet for a minute. "I might not even have realized that wasn't her body, at first, if she hadn't told me. No---Harry, do you remember that time, when Ancient Mai moved the store into darkness and you saw that spirit---"

"The one who looked like my dad," I said, feeling a sudden chill.

"Was it your father?"

"No," I said.

"But even though you knew, you still wanted"---Bob's voice cracked---"you still wanted to talk to it."

I nodded, because I had. I had wanted to tell it everything I hoped my dad had already known. I had wanted to tell it I loved it. I had wanted it to stay and let me pretend.

"How did you know it wasn't your father?" he asked.

"It wanted me to kill everyone in the house," I said dully. "My dad would never have said that."

"And Winifred would never have done this," Bob said, holding out his wrists so I could see the damage. "She could be cruel, but she would never have---" He shut his lips on the rest. "But Harry, that thing wasn't your father. Your father, your real father, is somewhere else. Or perhaps he is nowhere, perhaps he is at peace; even I don't know what happens to spirits who are permitted to move on. But---how much worse, if you had looked at him and known that that was your father, that was all that was left of him, all that there would ever be of him again till world's end, and that it was you who had made him into that---"

I put my hand out and placed it on his chest, focusing on my sympathy and love as hard as I could. It's basically the ghost equivalent of a hug.

"I brought her back three times," he said at last. "The first time it was fever, and the second time it was the arrow. The third time, it was suicide."

"Oh, fuck, Bob."

"When you bring a person back like that, by my method, when you will the energy and power from another human being into their body, the energy is---corrupted, somehow, in the process of adapting to its new body."

I had a sudden horrible thought. "Am I corrupted, Bob? You moved my energy around, that time with my uncle."

"No, Harry," he said. "I understand the equations rather better now than I did a thousand years ago, and I timed it very carefully. You were never actually dead, and your energy was not out of your body long enough to be changed by your uncle. I would not have risked you, if I had not been sure. But I risked Winifred. You saw her. She---she is out of tune. Not right. She could feel it, feel herself changing and going mad, and she chose to die rather than live the tainted life I had given her."

I found myself wondering what she'd used to kill herself, and if we could get ahold of it. I didn't much like myself for it, but there it was.

"She drank hemlock," he said. "She wanted peace, and I would not let her have it. I brought her back again, forced the life back into her body so that the Council could put her down like a rabid dog. They made me watch while they hanged her and burned the rope, and I still wasn't sorry. I only burned for vengeance." He turned his face away. "And still she came back for me; she went without rest for a thousand years for me. So much love has been lavished on me, and I have never deserved it."

"Love's not about deserving, Bob," I said. "You make me happy, that's all. Anyway, it was a long time ago, and losing someone is---when I thought you were dying, believe me, there was a part of me that was already thinking about looking up those insurance fraud necromancers and seeing what they could do."

He laughed weakly.

I took my hand off him. "We're gonna free you, Bob," I said. "No one is ever going to be able to control you again. But---Bob, if you're going to leave me or---or try to move on, even, I---I understand. I understand there's a lot you might want to do that isn't living in this crummy apartment. Just please, tell me so I can be ready." I didn't know if it was possible to be ready. Even thinking about life without Bob made me feel like I was dying.

"Why would you think I would leave you?" he asked, his astonishment plain.

"I know you haven't been happy the past few months. I know---I know there isn't much for you here." He reached out a hand. "Don't touch me, Bob, just answer me," I said, leaning back. I didn't want him to know how bad I felt.

He didn't listen. He put his hand right through my chest, into my heart, and a little bit of that awful, suffocating feeling leeched away, replaced with love and warmth. "If I were mortal," he said, "you would never go into battle without me by your side, and I would kill any who would dare harm you."

"I love you too, Bob," I said, touched and just a little creeped out by his intensity. "But maybe it's just as well---I try to keep the killing to a minimum." I thought about fighting beside Bob, and how much more I would have to lose, and how many more risks I would consider unacceptable. Bob and I would be deadly, and I wasn't sure I liked the idea.

"I have been unhappy," he said. "I have chafed at my fate, waiting at the door for you like a lapdog. I'm tired of watching. I want you to have someone who can do more than just watch. I want you to have what Winifred and I had." He sighed. "I hate to see you in danger, and myself powerless to help you. I hate to be a risk to you. Winifred was able to enter our home, Harry, because I am a weak link. I would die before I would betray you, Harry. But I am not permitted to die."

"Look, Bob, if you want to be mortal, we'll work on that, and we'll find a way," I said. "It's your call. But don't do it for me. I don't---I don't need someone to fight beside me. I don't need someone else who can die. I like having someone who can touch blood and tell me it belonged to a werewolf who was killed with silver. I like having someone who can shapeshift. You've saved my life a million times with what you can do. The only thing that's a danger to anyone is you being bound to your skull."

"If I were free," he said, "there is nowhere else on earth I would rather be than here. Harry, listen to me: even if I could get Winifred back, somehow, my Winifred---I shouldn't know what to do with her, poor girl. It's been a thousand years. I'm not the same man who loved her. I do still love her, somehow, but I hardly even think of her anymore. It's not so much her I love as a memory of a time when the world was different. When I was different. But that doesn't mean I want to go back. It's like---it's like you and that childhood plaything you're so fond of."

"Mr. Bunny?" I still have him around. He lives in my dad's old top hat.

"Yes, Mr. Bunny," Bob said, smirking a little. "You were an original child, weren't you? You still cherish it. You still feel an irrational nostalgia for a time when you were different, more innocent, when possibilities had not fallen away from you. But if you could become a child again, would you do it?"

I shuddered. "God, no."

"Exactly. It's been so very long, Harry. I daresay I should have forgotten Winifred altogether if she weren't the reason I'm bound to this thing; if I were not bound to her with a debt of blood and magic. And as for moving on---I've waited this long. I think I can wait a few hundred years more for you. And when you die, God willing---and perhaps even if He isn't---then my soul will follow yours to the Gates of Hell. I don't want to leave you, Harry. I couldn't ever want to leave you. I just want to go outside more often."

"I love you too, Bob," I said miserably. "I couldn't bear to lose you either. It isn't safe for you out there! What if someone saw you? What if someone---"

"You go outside every day," Bob said. "Every day I watch you walk out that door, and I know you have the self-preservation instincts of a mentally deficient lemming. Every day I walk from one end of this apartment to the other, knowing you've gone out alone and that people want you dead. You were going to stand there and let her kill you, Harry! You were going to make me watch! God only knows what you get up to out there." He gestured towards the door. "If you died, Harry---what do you think would become of me?"

I hadn't really thought about it before, about what would happen to Bob if I got myself killed on a case. Mai would get him, probably. I thought of Mai, able to make Bob do whatever the hell she wanted, and I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill my uncle again, kill everyone who had ever owned Bob if they hadn't already all been dead.

"I'll be more careful," I promised. I knew I was missing the point in a major way, but I couldn't help it. "I--come on, Bob, tonight was unusual. I wouldn't throw away my shield and staff for just anyone." I chuckled awkwardly.

Bob laughed, a real, amused laugh. He doesn't do that very often. "Of course you would, Harry," he said, smiling at me. "That's one of the things I love about you."

That's when I got the point. Not just saw where Bob was going, but really got it.

Bob had made a lot of ruthless suggestions, over the years, for how I should protect myself. But he had never, not even once, seriously asked me to give up a case. At the back of my mind I had always assumed it was because he thought I wouldn't listen. I had hoped he would go on thinking it, because if I had to decide between Bob breaking up with me and letting skinwalkers steal some little boy...well, I wasn't sure what I would do.

Now I saw, finally, that Bob didn't want me to stop. He wasn't asking me to be more careful. He knew I had to live my life the way I chose. He was just asking me to let him take a few risks too, because he needed to live.

What he wasn't saying was that he shouldn't have had to ask. For a second I heard my uncle's voice---Whatever I've done, I've done for love. He'd believed it, too. I swallowed bile. "God, Bob, I'm so sorry. I---how can you not hate me?"

Bob sighed. "It's my fault too, Harry. You've only ever known me as a servant, since you were a child. And I suppose Winifred was right, and I'd grown accustomed to it myself. It's been centuries since I longed so fiercely to go out into the world. It's been centuries since I let myself want anything, Harry. You've done that for me, Harry."

At that moment I would have burned the world down to make Bob happy, and considered it only justice for what the world had done to him.

"I should have told you I was chafing at my bonds," he said. "God knows you asked me what was wrong. But---I was afraid. Afraid you'd say no, and that I would hate you for it, or worse, hate myself for loving you anyway. But most of all I think I was afraid that I'd find out you just didn't want a useless tagalong like me. I was afraid you'd get tired of me if you had to put up with me out there as well as in here.

"Bob---that's ridiculous. I---I can't tell you how many times every day I wish you were with me." I took a deep breath. "Bob, do you want to go camping this weekend?"

"You hate camping, Harry," Bob said. "That's why that backpacking in Peru story was so idiotic."

It's true, I hate camping. I always think something's going to jump out at me from behind the trees. I guess I'm just a city boy. "You could be outside all night, Bob," I said. "We could have sex under the stars."

Bob's face lit up. I felt even guiltier, but I couldn't help smiling back.

"I want you to hire that Clark boy permanently," he said.

"I thought you didn't like him," I said, surprised.

"It doesn't matter whether I like him," Bob said. "He's invulnerable. That's exactly who I want protecting you."

"I don't know," I said. "He might not need the money any more now that he's seeing Lex Luthor."

Bob's eyebrows shot up. "You're joking!"

"Not a bit." I grinned at him. "Here, come upstairs, I'll tell you all about it."

###

Clark came by the next day like he'd promised, bringing Lois's signed statement. When I opened the door he looked---well, mostly he looked like a kid waiting outside the principal's office. But underneath that he was practically glowing.

I read the statement, and Bob read it over my shoulder. It was pretty much what I expected: Lana had asked Lois to photograph whoever used the room so that Lana could threaten her clients with publication later and demand hush money. "So the blackmail plan was Lana's idea?" I said.

Clark nodded. "Lana told me it was to protect me," he said. "She said it was because Lex knew about me and she needed leverage. But Lois said that they weren't even targeting Lex! She said they had no way of knowing Lex would even use that room. Why would she lie?"

Bob raised his eyebrows. "To keep Lex from stringing her up by her entrails?" he suggested.

"You don't know Lois," Clark said. "She wouldn't think of that."

Bob's eyebrows climbed higher.

"I've met her," I said. "Clark might be right. How did Lana know Winifred?"

"Well, according to Lois, Lana has been running sex clubs for years," Clark said.

I tried to reconcile all this with the pretty, crying girl I'd met.

"Precocious, isn't she?" Bob asked.

"She was running a successful coffee shop by the time she was a high school sophomore," Clark said proudly, then apparently remembered he was talking about his criminally unscrupulous ex-girlfriend and coughed. "Anyway, Lana said that Winifred approached her with the idea to open a gay bathhouse."

"There aren't very many of them in Metropolis," I said. "She must have been setting Lana up for a turf war with Marcone. Then Winifred leaked that there was a one-way mirror, knowing that Marcone would hire me to investigate, which would get me out of the house." I thought about it. "It's an awfully complicated plan, isn't it? I mean, why not just hire me herself to watch a building across town or something?"

"I know the answer to that, Harry," Bob said. He looked at his hands. "Winifred told me that her descendent ran a gay bathhouse in London. Winifred had access to the girl's memories, and once she located me she needed to support herself while she---er---'cased the joint,' so to speak. She always liked killing two birds with one stone." From the way he said it, I wasn't entirely sure he was speaking figuratively.

I had nearly forgotten that Bob and Winifred had had half an hour together before I got home. Apparently they'd talked. I wondered what Bob had told her. I tried not to be jealous. "And Lana tried to keep you from coming along because she didn't want you finding out about her---business ventures," I said to Clark.

"Yeah," Clark said, looking at the floor. "I think she didn't want me seeing Lex, either."

"Evidently she had good reason," Bob said.

Clark looked even guiltier, and I felt a sort of sympathetic shame, thinking about the women I'd dated while trying to pretend I didn't have a major hard-on for my roommate. I changed the subject. "We don't have to talk about what happened if you don't want to, Clark," I said. "But I'll admit I'm pretty damn curious about where you learned to do all that magic."

Clark took a deep breath. "I didn't learn it," he said. "I--I was born this way. I'm not exactly from around here."

"Wait, you're---you're from the Nevernever?" I asked. "But you were able to cross the threshold!"

"Er, no," he said. "I don't know what that means, but no. I'm...an alien." He blushed.

"Really," Bob said, leaning forward. He looked as if there were about a thousand questions he was just dying to ask and he was only waiting until he could decide which was the most inappropriately personal.

"Yeah," Clark said.

I thought about that for a minute. It sounded weird and unbelievable, but I guessed it wasn't any weirder than lots of shit I saw all the time. "And you can use your...talents without an invitation," I said.

He nodded again.

I frowned, remember the stories I'd been hearing about crooks with magic who could cross thresholds. "Are there more of you running around?"

"No," he said, looking noble and sad. "I'm the only one of my kind left. But...sometimes people get powers from the meteors in Smallville. And they don't have anything to do with thresholds. They're just like...eyesight or something. You can't lose them. Well. Unless something weird happens, like you're struck by lightning or---"

I blinked. "Oh. Well, you saved all our asses last night, so thank you."

"Yes, thank you, Clark," Bob said. "I find I much prefer Harry without holes in his chest."

Clark ducked his head. "Glad I could help."

"Listen, I should have told you I was really a wizard," I said. "It turned out okay, but you had a right to know what you were getting into. My only excuse is that I thought it was a routine case, and I figured if Chloe hadn't told you, it was because she thought you couldn't handle it."

"Chloe did tell me," Clark said. "I just assumed she wasn't supposed to and I shouldn't bring it up unless you did."

I raised my eyebrows. "Clark, it says 'wizard' on my door. I'm in the phonebook. I don't exactly have a secret identity."

"Aren't---aren't you scared?" he blurted out.

"Scared of what?" I asked gently.

"Well...of what people will say. What if they think you're a freak? Or what if they try to blackmail you into using your powers to do things that are wrong?" He was talking really fast. "What if you tell someone and it puts them in danger?"

Whoa. "Bob, could you give us a minute?" I asked.

When Bob had left the room, I sat on the arm of the couch. Clearly he'd thought about this. Hell, maybe some of it had already happened to him. "Chloe knows about you," I said. I knew I was right. It explained a lot about Chloe.

He nodded.

"Does Lex know?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"What do you think will happen if you tell him?" I asked.

Clark took a deep breath. "What if---what if he tries to put me in a LuthorCorp lab somewhere?"

That was not the answer I'd been expecting. "Clark, are you serious? I mean, you know him better than I do, but...I kind of got the vibe that Luthor would try to eviscerate anyone who looked at you funny."

Clark nodded and smiled a little, that pleased helikesmehelikesmehelikesme smile that kids always think no one will notice. "I think he would too," he said. "But---I'm still scared."

"That's the thing about fear," I said. "You start with a little, reasonable fear, and then if you don't watch it, it grows until it drives your whole life, and you can't even tell if it's crazy or not anymore. When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me that what I could do, my magic, was a loaded gun. He said I should never tell anyone or do any magic where anyone could see me, because people were going to want that gun."

Clark was nodding. "My dad was terrified someone would find out about my secret," Clark said, and the automatic way he called it his "secret" kinda made me sad. "He was just the same, always telling me never to trust anyone, and yelling at me if I saved a bus-full of kids where someone might see me."

"It's natural for parents to be protective," I said. "When you love someone, there is no level of risk you're gonna be willing to accept, because the idea of losing them is so unthinkable. If you could you'd shut them in a little box so they'd never, ever leave you." I thought of not letting Bob out of the house and I felt that sick guilt I wasn't sure would ever go away entirely. I'd been so afraid of losing Bob one way that I'd almost lost him another. I'd almost made him lose himself. "And kids can't defend themselves, and don't even know what they need to defend themselves from, so it's even scarier for the people who love them. But soon you won't be a kid anymore---"

"I'm not a kid," he said indignantly.

I laughed. "Sure, kid. My point is, now you have to decide for yourself what risks are worth taking. Worth it to you, not your dad or your mom or your friends."

"But I'd be deciding for them too," he said. "Knowing my secret could put them in danger."

"That's one way of looking at it," I said. "But nothing's for sure. I've had people die because I lied to them to protect them and they walked into danger blind."

He turned kinda white. I could see the years of secrecy struggling to keep their hold on him.

For the first time, I wondered whether I would really be better off if I'd grown up with my dad. I hated thinking it. "How long has Chloe known your secret?" I asked.

"Since high school," he said.

"She's still alive," I pointed out. "And so are you."

He nodded, looking unconvinced.

"What would your life be like if you'd never confided in her?" I asked.

"I'd go crazy," he said promptly.

I grinned. "You're afraid it's not safe to tell people," I said. "But it's also not safe to be too alone. You get depressed and start making stupid decisions that can get yourself killed. Or you can lose sight of the human part of you. When people with power do that it's not safe for anyone. I'd be a much darker wizard without Bob and my friends."

"I didn't tell Chloe," he said abruptly. "She found out on her own. I've never told anyone but my best friend in high school, and he freaked out and moved away."

I sighed. "Yeah," I said. "Look, I don't tell everyone. I'm a lot older than you, and I'm still scared. I've had people leave me because they couldn't handle the things I told them. It hurts. But I've also had people---girls I really liked, friends I really cared about---walk away because they knew I was hiding something from them. They knew I didn't trust them, that I wasn't really letting them be part of my life. And you know, those were the ones that bothered me the most afterwards. I still think about some of those people and wish I could do it again. It looked to me like you had something pretty special going with Luthor."

Clark nodded.

"He seems like the type who really doesn't like to play the fool."

Clark gulped. "Yeah. He hates it when I lie to him."

"So I guess you've got to decide what's scarier---telling him or risking losing him," I said. "Look, this is something you have to figure out for yourself. Don't go telling the world just because I said so. But think about what I said, okay?"

"I will," he said. He frowned. "But---the phonebook?"

I laughed. "My magic is a gift, Clark. I want to use it to help people, and I can't do that if they don't know I exist. Besides," I added, "I gotta pay the bills somehow."

That made him look thoughtful.

"Speaking of which---Clark, if last night gave you a distaste for the P.I. business, I understand. But if it didn't, and you'd like to provide backup for me on a more permanent basis...I don't make a lot, but I'm sure we could come to some kind of arrangement. I could really use a guy like you."

He grinned at me. "Thanks, Harry, but Lex says he thinks he can get me a job at the Daily Planet," he said. "You should ask Chloe to help you out, though. She'd love it."

"Chloe already has two jobs, Clark," I pointed out.

Clark laughed. "You don't know Chloe very well, do you? Just ask her."

I grinned back at him. "I'll think about it. And Clark, you saved Bob last night. I'm pretty much gonna owe you forever for that one. So if you ever need help, or just someone to talk to who knows what it's like to be different...you come here, okay?"

"Thanks, Harry," he said. He glanced at his watch. "Oh, crap, I'm late to meet Lex! See you round!" He gave me an impulsive hug and zipped out the door.

###

Chloe came by a couple of hours later with the photos. Bob was watching me cook dinner when I heard her calling me from the front of the store. "Watch the potatoes, will you, Bob?" I said.

"Not a chance, Harry, I've wanted to meet this one for ages," he said, and trailed me out.

"Hi, Harry," Chloe started as we walked in, "I have the photos, but---oh my god, are you Bob?"

"I see my fame precedes me," Bob said warily.

"It's just that not very many people get to meet you. I'm Chloe," she said, beaming at him. She held out her hand. Bob didn't take it, of course, but unlike most people, who look confused and offended, Chloe smiled a secret smile. That made me a little nervous.

I think it threw Bob off too. "So you're the intrepid girl reporter," he said, eyeing her appraisingly. "You're shorter than I'd pictured you. Usually Harry likes them with long legs."

Chloe's smile wobbled. "I'll be sure to mention that when I put in for my next body," she said.

"Bob," I said warningly. "Don't."

Bob smirked. "Obviously Harry is prepared to make an exception," he said. "I do enjoy your column, you know. Are you looking forward to scooping everyone when you report about Lex Luthor's new boy toy?"

"I'm not going to write about it." Chloe bit her lip, and for a second I could see that she really, really wanted to. Then she said, very firmly, "My friends are off limits." She gave me an apologetic glance. "Speaking of which..." She handed me a stack of photos.

The pictures were great, big and colorful and time-stamped---but Lois's face had been blurred out of every one.

"Sorry, Harry, but she's my cousin."

I considered leaving it at that, but I remembered my advice to Clark from earlier in the day and was honest. "Chloe, I already have a signed statement from her laying out the whole plan."

"You can't give it to Marcone," she said.

"Marcone isn't going to kill anyone," I said gently. "He just needs enough leverage to get Lana to shut down the Tortuga. The statement is for the police, not so he can know Lois's name and come after her."

Chloe's mouth set. "Then what if he gives it to the police? Lois isn't a gossip columnist, she's a real reporter---this could kill her career. You can't give it to Marcone."

I considered asking how she was planning to stop me, but I didn't.

"Your cousin was trying to blackmail one of the most powerful men in Metropolis," Bob pointed out. "She should have thought of that before."

Chloe sighed. "Lois never thinks. And she hates Lex; we all hate Lex. Look, I'll talk to Lana. She'll close the Tortuga."

I stared at her. "She will? Because you ask her?"

"Of course she will," Chloe said. "She's my best friend."

"I thought Clark was your best friend," Bob said.

Chloe blinked. "Well, yeah. But next to Clark she's my best friend," she said after a moment. "She's a really sweet girl."

"She was running a blackmail ring out of a gay bathhouse," Bob said in disbelief. "How sweet could she be?"

"She was probably just trying to protect Clark," Chloe said. "Maybe Lex was threatening him. She's done stuff like this before."

I guessed that made sense. Lana had seemed like a really sweet girl. I nodded.

"Are you both out of your mind?" Bob said. "We went through this already with Clark! According to Lois, Luthor was not even their target. They would have tried to squeeze money out of anyone who used that room. I don't understand what you all see in her, anyway. She's got looks but she's as insipid as weak tea."

"That's not fair!" Chloe said indignantly. "Everyone loves Lana."

Suddenly I remembered something Winifred had said. I like how she uses her gift. "Everyone?" I said.

"Yeah," Chloe said. "Everyone." She smiled wistfully. "I used to hate her for it, but once I got to know her I realized it wasn't her fault. She's just...special, you know?"

I started to nod before I caught myself. "Everyone but Bob," I said. "Is there any chance she's one of the folks from your town with the weird powers?"

Chloe looked gobsmacked. "Lana? Of course not."

"What causes these powers?" I asked.

"Exposure to meteor rocks from the 1989 Smallville meteor shower," she said promptly.

"Was Lana exposed to them?"

"Well, she did have a necklace made out of a piece of the meteor that killed her parents," Chloe said slowly. "She wore it 'til high school...Huh." She thought about it. "So Lana's power is---that people love her?" She looked almost lost, as if the world had shifted on its axis and she wasn't sure where she was anymore. "I guess---I guess that would explain a lot, but..." She shook herself and focused back on me. "I'll think about that. But you still can't send in Lois's statement."

I've spent a lot of time trying to protect people I love from their own stupidity. "All right," I said. "Lana's name and these photos will probably be enough for Marcone. But if they aren't, we're going to revisit this."

She relaxed, her face glowing. "Thank you!"

"So I guess Clark told you about him and Luthor," I said.

She smiled a little ruefully. "It was all over his face when I saw him this morning," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She looked at me. Then she laughed, a little self-consciously. "Oh, I gave up on Clark a long time ago."

I didn't say anything.

She sighed. "I kept thinking...he'd get over Lex. But I haven't seen him look that happy in years. He used to look that way all the time back in high school. I guess I hoped it wasn't really Lex that made the difference. But it was."

"It had to be kind of a shock," I said. "What with you hating Lex, and all."

She looked at me, and her laugh was real this time. "Oh, come on, Harry! Why do you think I told you it was Couples' Week?"

I blinked. "Wait, it wasn't?"

Her eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth, but I could tell she was still smiling behind it. "You didn't realize? I just told you that so you'd take Clark. I heard Marcone gave you the case, and I knew Lex went there all the time. Just telling Clark to call him hadn't worked too well."

"Harry, your friend is a minx," Bob said approvingly. "I think I like her."

"Thanks, Bob," she said dryly, but she looked pleased.

I shrugged. "I guess I can't complain, since Clark saved all our asses last night. I think I owe you another favor, Chloe."

She shook her head. "Clark's happy," she said. "And you were nice about Lois. I think we're even." Her smile turned wicked and she leaned forward. "But I was hoping we might try something...mutually beneficial."

I tried not to look at her cleavage. A glance at Bob showed he had no such scruple. "What's that?" I said, trying to sound as if I wasn't already imagining all sorts of things.

She blushed, but her impish smile didn't go anywhere. "The word on the street is that Bob likes to watch," she said.

I swallowed hard. "Chloe..."

"Why yes, so I do," Bob said, grinning cheekily at her.

"Bob!"

"And you, presumably, like to not watch," she continued, looking at me.

I refused to answer that, but Bob chimed in with, "He certainly does."

"And I've always liked boys who can...do things," she concluded.

"Always?" I said. "Or just since Clark? Because if this is just a rebound superpowers thing, that's not healthy for any of us."

She glared at me. "Since way before Clark," she said. "Well. Since before I knew Clark had powers. When I was fifteen I dated this boy who could do telekinesis. Things floated when we kissed." She got this nostalgic smile on her face. "It was hot."

I tried to pretend I wasn't thinking about the kinky potential of making things float. I could do floating. Floating chocolate sauce, maybe....but Bob had said he was tired of watching. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe it would just make things worse.

"Anyway, I interviewed a few girls you've slept with," she continued blithely, and I wished I could sink through the floor like Bob. "They all said he doesn't even shake hands with them. And none of them have ever seen him come."

"Chloe!"

"I'm a very private person," Bob said in a bored voice. It was what he always told them. I'd worried before that it was frustrating for him, but now, with my conversation with Clark fresh in my mind, it hit me just how galling it must have been, limiting himself that way to hide the truth.

Chloe looked at Bob, that excited investigative-reporter-with-a-scoop gleam in her eye. "You're incorporeal, aren't you?"

"How the hell did you know that?" I exploded.

"Well, he's obviously afraid that touching people will give something away. I already suspected something, and then Clark told me he had no skeleton," she said. So that was why Clark had stared at Bob like that. "I figure it's either that, or he's a succubus. And you seem too upstanding to be dating a succubus."

"Harry is distressingly ethical," Bob said. "It is my cross to bear. I'm a ghost."

Chloe bounced a little in her seat. Bounce, bounce, went Chloe's breasts. "Really?"

"Really," Bob said, smiling indulgently at her. "A lifeless spirit, bound to my skull for eternity as punishment for necromancy. That's why, unlike everyone else, I can tell you're far more attractive than your friend Lana."

She gave him a kind of bright, hopeful glance. For a couple of seconds I think the compliment actually rendered her speechless. But only for a couple of seconds. "Necromancy, huh?" she said. "Glamorous. So...what does it feel like when you touch someone?"

"I get an echo of their thoughts or feelings," he said. "And they get an echo of mine. There also seems to be a sort of tingly feeling that goes with it."

"Can I?"

Bob nodded, and she stuck out her hand and waved it around inside him. Her eyes got really big, and she did it again. Bob looked so entertained that I quashed my tiny spark of jealousy. Right then I realized how much Bob had needed someone else to talk to. "Whoa," she breathed. "That is so cool." Then the gleam in her eyes turned speculative. "So if you touch someone during sex..."

Bob leered at her. "Precisely. Our arousals feeds off each other in an amplifying positive feedback loop." God, it was hot when he got all technical like that.

"Is it transitive?" she asked curiously. "I mean, just as an example, suppose Harry and I were having sex, and you were touching both of us. Would I be able to feel his---"

"I'm standing right here!" I yelped, but they ignored me. I didn't really mind. I had a feeling my afternoon was going to be a lot kinkier than I had anticipated. I couldn't wait for the look on Chloe's face when she found out Bob turns into a fireworks display when he comes.

"What is that smell?" Chloe asked suddenly, making a face.

I went to take the potatoes out of the oven. As I scraped the charred remains of my lunch into the garbage, I listened to the murmur of Bob and Chloe's voices in the next room. Bob sounded happy.

###

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