"What?" I asked him.

"Your godmother. You got away from her," he said.

I laughed, weakly. "This time, yeah. So what's bothering you?"

"You lied to her to do it."

"I tricked her," I countered. "Classic tactics with faeries."

He blinked, and then used another section of his cloak to clean the ecto-gook off of Amoracchius. "I just thought you were an honest man, Harry," he said, his expression injured. "I can't believe you lied to her."

I started to laugh, weakly, too exhausted to move. "You can't believe I lied to her."

"Well, no," he said, his voice defensive. "That's not the way we're supposed to win. We're the good guys, Harry."

I laughed some more, and wiped a trickle of blood off of my face.

"Well, we are!"

Some kind of alarm started going off. One of the nurses stepped into the observation room, took one look at the pair of us, and ran out screaming.

"You know what bothers me?" I asked.

"What's that?"

I set my scorched staff and rod aside. "I'm wondering how in the world my godmother happened to be right at hand, when I stepped through into Nevernever. It isn't like the place is a small neighborhood. I wasn't there five minutes before she showed up."

Michael sheathed his sword and set it carefully aside, out of easy arm's reach. Then unfastened his cloak, wincing. "Yes. It seems an unlikely coincidence."

We both put our hands up on top of our heads, as a Chicago P.D. patrolman, his jacket and pants stained with spilled coffee, burst into the nursery, gun drawn. We both sat there with our hands on our head, and did our best to look friendly and non-threatening.

"Don't worry," Michael said, quietly. "Just let me do the talking."

Chapter Seven

Michael rested his chin in his hands and sighed. "I can't believe we're in jail."

"Disturbing the peace," I snorted, pacing the confines of the holding cell. "Trespass. Hah. They'd have seen disturbed peace if we hadn't shown up." I jerked a fistful of citations out of my pants pocket. "Look at this. Speeding, failure to obey traffic signs, dangerous and reckless operation of a motor vehicle. And here's the best one. Illegal parking. I'm going to lose my license!"

"You can't blame them, Harry. It isn't as though we could explain what happened in terms that they would understand."

I kicked at the bars in frustration. Pain lanced up my leg and I immediately regretted it—they'd taken away my boots when I'd been put through processing. Added to my aching ribs, the wounds on my head, and my stiffening fingers, it was too much. I sat down on the bench next to Michael with a whuff of expelled breath. "I get so sick of that," I said. "People like you and me stand up to things that these jokers" — I made an all-encompassing gesture—"would never even dream existed. We don't get paid for it, we hardly even get thanked for it."

Michael's tone was unruffled, philosophical. "It's the nature of the beast, Harry."

"I don't mind it so much. I just hate it when something like this happens." I stood up, frustrated again, and started pacing the interior of the cell. "What really galls me is that we still don't know why the spirit world's been so jumpy. This is big, Michael. If we don't pin down what's causing it—"

"Who's causing it."

"Right, who's causing it—who knows what could happen."

Michael half-smiled. "The Lord will never give you a burden bigger than your shoulders can bear, Harry. All we can do is face what comes and have faith."

I gave him a sour glance. "I need to get myself some bigger shoulders, then. Someone in accounting must have made a mistake."

Michael let out a rough, warm laugh, and shook his head, then lay back on the bench, crossing his arms beneath his head. "We did what was right. Isn't that enough?"

I thought of all those babies, snuffling and making cute, piteous little sounds as the nurses had rushed about, gathering them up and making sure that they were all right, carrying them off to their mommies. One, a fat little Gerber candidate, had simply let out an enormous burp and promptly fallen asleep on the nurse's shoulder. About a dozen little lives, all told, with an open future laid out before them—a future that would have abruptly ended if I hadn't acted.

I felt a stupid little smile playing at the corners of my mouth, and a very small, very concrete sense of satisfaction that my indignation hadn't managed to erase. I turned away from Michael, so that he wouldn't see the smile, and forced myself to sound resigned. "Is it enough? I guess it's going to have to be."

Michael laughed again. I flashed him a scowl, and it only drew more merry laughter, so I gave up trying, and just leaned against the bars. "How long before we get out of here, do you think?"

"I've never been bailed out of jail before," Michael said. "You'd be a better judge."

"Hey," I protested, "what's that supposed to mean?"

Michael's smile faded. "Charity," he predicted, "is not going to be very happy."

I winced. Michael's wife. "Yeah, well. All we can do is face what comes and have faith, right?"

Michael grunted, somehow making it wry. "I'll say a prayer to Saint Jude."

I leaned my head against the bars and closed my eyes. I ached in places I didn't know could ache. I could have dozed off right there. "All I want," I said, "is to get home, get clean, and go to sleep."

An hour or so later, a uniformed officer appeared and opened the door, informing us that we'd made bail. I got a sickly little feeling in my stomach. Michael and I shuffled out of the holding area into the adjacent waiting room.

A woman in a roomy dress and a heavy cardigan stood waiting for us, her arms folded over her seventh or eighth month of pregnancy. She was tall, with gorgeous, silken blonde hair that fell to her waist in a shining curtain, timelessly lovely features, and dark eyes smoldering with contained anger. "Michael Joseph Patrick Carpenter," she snapped, and stalked toward us. Well, actually she waddled, but the set of her shoulders and her determined expression made it seem like a stalk. "You're a mess. This is what comes of taking up with bad company."

"Hello, angel," Michael rumbled, and leaned over to give the woman a kiss on the cheek.

She accepted it with all the loving tolerance of a Komodo dragon. "Don't you hello angel me. Do you know what I had to go through to find a babysitter, get all the way out here, get the money together and then get the sword back for you?"

"Hi Charity," I said brightly. "Gee, it's good to see you, too. It's been, what, three or four years since we've talked?"

"Five years, Mr. Dresden," the woman said, shooting me a glare. "And the Good Lord willing it will be five more before I have to put up with your idiocy again."

"But I—"

She thrust her swollen stomach at me like the ram on a Greek warship. "Every time you come nosing around, you get Michael into some sort of trouble. And now into jail! What will the children think?"

"Look, Charity, it was really imp—"

"Missus Carpenter," she snarled. "It's always really important, Mr. Dresden. Well, my husband has engaged in many important activities without what I dubiously term your 'help. But it's only when you're around that he seems to come back to me covered in blood."

"Hey," I protested. "I got hurt too!"

"Good," she said. "Maybe it will make you more cautious in the future."

I scowled down at the woman. "I'll have you know—"

She grabbed the front of my shirt and dragged my face down to hers. She was surprisingly strong, and she could glare right at me without looking me square in the eyes. "I'll have you know," she said, voice steely, "that if you ever get my Michael into trouble so deep that he can't come home to his family I will make you sorry for it." Tears that had nothing to do with weakness made her eyes bright for a moment, and she shook with emotion. I have to admit, at that particular moment, her threat scared me, waddling pregnancy and all.