I worked up enough courage to scowl at Bob. "The wards, then. I've got all the doors and windows warded. And I don't have any mirrors it could have used."

If Bob had any hands, he would have been rubbing them together. "Exactly," he said. "Yes, exactly."

My stomach quailed again, and a fresh burst of shuddering made me put my hands in my lap. I felt like sprawling somewhere, crying my eyes out, puking up whatever shreds of dignity remained in my stomach, and then crawling into a hole and pulling it in after me. I swallowed. "It … it never came in to me, then, is what you're saying. It never had to cross those boundaries."

Bob nodded, eyes burning brightly. "Exactly. You went out to it."

"When I was dreaming?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Bob bubbled. "It makes sense now—don't you see?"

"Not really."

"Dreams," the skull said. "When a mortal dreams, all kinds of strange things can happen. When a wizard dreams, it can be even weirder. Sometimes, dreams can be intense enough to create a little, temporary world of their own. Kind of a bubble in the Nevernever. Remember how you told me Agatha Hagglethorn was a strong enough ghost to have had her own demesne in the Nevernever?"

"Yeah. It looked kind of like old Chicago."

"Well, people can do the same, at times."

"But I'm not a ghost, Bob."

"No," he said. "You're not. But you've got everything it takes to make a ghost inside you except for the right set of circumstances. Ghosts are only frozen images of people, Harry, last impressions made by a personality." Bob paused, reflectively. "People are almost always more trouble than anything you run into on the Other Side."

"I hadn't noticed," I said. "All right. So you're saying that any time I dream, it creates my own little rent-by-the-hour demesne in the Nevernever."

"Not every time," Bob said. "In fact, not even most times. Only really intense dreams, I suspect, bring the necessary energy out of people. But, with the border being so turbulent and easy to get through …"

"More people's dreams are making bubbles on the other side. That must have been how it got to poor Micky Malone, then. While he was sleeping. His wife said he'd had insomnia that night. So the thing hangs around outside his house waiting for him to fall asleep and starts killing fuzzy animals to fill up the time."

"Could be," Bob said. "Do you remember your dream?"

I shuddered. "Yeah. I … I remember it."

"The Nightmare must have got inside with you."

"While my spirit was in the Nevernever?" I asked. "It should have ripped me to shreds."

"Not so," Bob beamed. "Your spirit's demesne, remember? Even if only a temporary one. Means you have the home field advantage. It didn't help, since it got the drop on you, but you had it."

"Oh."

"Do you remember anything in particular, any figure or character in the dream that wouldn't have been acting the way you thought it should have?"

"Yeah," I said. My shaking hands went to my belly, feeling for tooth marks. "Hell's bells, yeah. I was dreaming of that bust a couple of months back. When we nailed Kravos."

"That sorcerer," Bob mused. "Okay. This could be important. What happened?"

I swallowed, trying not to throw up. "Um. Everything went wrong. That demon he'd called. It was stronger than it had been in life."

"The demon was?"

I blinked. "Bob. Is it possible for something like a demon to leave a ghost?"

"Oh, uh," Bob said, "I don't think so—unless it had actually died there. Eternally perished, I mean, not just had its vessel dispersed."

"Michael killed it with Amoracchius," I said.

Bob's skull shuddered. "Ow," he said. "Amoracchius. I'm not sure, then. I don't know. That sword might be able to kill a demon, even through a physical shell. That whole faith-magic thing is awfully strong."

"Okay, so. We could be dealing with the ghost of a demon, here," I said. "A demon that died while it was all fired up for a fight. Maybe that's what makes it so … so vicious."

"Could be," Bob agreed, cheerily.

I shook my head. "But that doesn't explain the barbed-wire spells we've been finding on those ghosts and people." I grabbed onto the problem, the tangled facts, with a silent kind of desperation, like a man about to drown who has no breath to waste on screaming. It helped to keep me moving.

"Maybe the spells are someone else's work," Bob offered.

"Bianca," I said, suddenly. "She and her lackeys are all messed up in this somehow—remember that they put the snatch on Lydia? And they were waiting for me, that first night, when I came back from being arrested."

"I didn't think she was that big time a practitioner," Bob said.

I shrugged. "She's not, horribly. But she just got promoted, too. Maybe she's been studying up. She's always had a little more than her share of freaky vampire tricks—and if she was over in the Nevernever when she did it, it would have made her stronger."

Bob whistled through his teeth. "Yeah, that could work. Bianca stirs things up by torturing a bunch of spirits, gets all the turbulence going so that she can prod this Nightmare toward you. Then she lets it loose, sits back, and enjoys the fun. She got a motive?"

"Regret," I said, remembering a note I'd read more than a year ago. "She blames me for the death of one of her people. Rachel. She wants to make me regret it."

"Neat," Bob said. "And she could have been everywhere in question?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, she could have been."

"Means, opportunity, motive."

"Damn shaky logic, though. Nothing I could justify to the Council in order to get their back-up, either. I don't have any proof."

"So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved."

"Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people."

"I know. That's why you should do it."

"No, no. I can't go around killing people, either."

"Why not? You've done it before. And you've got a new gun and everything."

"I can't arbitrarily end someone's life because of something they may have done."

"Bianca's a vampire," Bob pointed out cheerfully. "She's not alive in the classic sense. I'll get Mister and go fetch the bullets and you—"

I sighed. "No, Bob. She's got lots of people around her, too. I'd probably have to kill some of them to get to her."

"Oh. Damn. This is one of those right and wrong issues again, isn't it."

"Yeah, one of those."

"I'm still confused about this whole morality thing, Harry."

"Join the club," I muttered. I took a shaking breath and leaned forward to put my hand over the circle, and will it broken. I almost cringed when its protective field faded from around me, but forced myself not to. I was as recovered as I was going to get. I needed to focus on work.

I stood up and walked to my work table, my eyes by now adjusted to the dimness. I reached for the nearest candle, but there weren't any matches handy. So, I pointed my finger at it, frowned, and muttered the words, "Flickum bicus."

My spell, a tiny one I had used thousands of times, stuttered and coughed, the energy twitching instead of flowing. The candle's wick smoked, but did not flicker to life.

I frowned, then closed my eyes, made a little bit of an effort, and repeated the spell. This time, I felt a little surge of dizziness, and the candle flickered to life. I braced one hand on the edge of the table.

"Bob," I asked. "Were you watching that?"

"Yeah," Bob said, a frown in his voice.

"What happened?"

"Um. You didn't put enough magic into the spell, the first time around."

"I put as much as I always do," I protested. "Come on, I've done that spell a million times."

"Seventeen hundred and fifty-six, that I've seen."

I gave him a pale version of my usual glower. "You know what I mean."

"Not enough power," Bob said. "I call 'em like I see 'em."