Once you got into the complicated stuff, though, you had an enormous number of things to keep track of in your mind, envisioning flows of energy, their manipulation, and so on. If you have the real props, they serve as a sort of mnemonic device: You attach a certain image to the prop, in your head, and every time you see or touch that prop, the image is packaged along with it. Simple.

Except that I didn’t have any props.

I was winging the whole thing. Pure imagination. Pure concentration.

Pure arrogance, really. But I was at a lower rock bottom than normal.

In my thoughts I lit the candles, walking slowly around the circle in a clockwise fashion—or deosil, as the fairy tales, Celtic songs, and certain strains of Wicca refer to it—gradually powering up the energy it required to operate. I realized that I had forgotten to make the floor out of anything specific, in my head, and the notional floor space, from horizon to horizon, suddenly became the linoleum from my first ratty Chicago apartment. Hideous stuff, green lines on a grey background, but simple to envision.

I imagined performing the spell without ever moving my body, envisioned every last detail, everything from the way the floor dug unpleasantly into my knees as I began to the slight clumsiness in the fingers of my left hand, which always seemed to be a little twitchy whenever I got nervous.

I closed the circle. I gathered the power. And then, when all was prepared, when I held absolutely everything in my imagination so vividly that it seemed more real than the room around me, I slid Power into my voice and called quietly, “Uriel, come forth.”

For a second, I couldn’t tell whether the soft white light had appeared only in my head or if it was actually in the room. Then I realized that it stabbed at my eyes painfully. It was real.

I kept the spell going in my head, easier now that it was a tableau. I just had to keep my concentration focused.

I squinted into the light and saw a tall young man there. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and a farmer’s duck coat. His blond hair fell over his eyes, but they were blue and bright and guileless as he looked around the room. He stuck his hands into his coat pockets and nodded slowly. “I was wondering when I’d get this call.”

“You know what’s happening, then?” I asked.

“Yes, yes,” he answered, with perhaps the slightest bit of impatience in his tone. He turned his gaze to me and frowned abruptly. He leaned forward slightly, peering at me.

I carefully fortified and maintained the image of the restraining magical circle in my imagination. When an entity was called forth, the circle was the only thing protecting the caller from its wrath.

“Please, Dresden,” the archangel Uriel said. “It’s a very nice circle, but you can’t honestly think that it’s any kind of obstacle to me.”

“I like to play it safe,” I said.

Uriel let out a most unangelic snort. Then he nodded his head and said, “Ah, I see.”

“See what?”

He paused and said, “Why you called me, of course. Your back.”

I grunted. It was more effort than usual. “How bad is it?”

“Broken,” he said. “It’s possible that, as a wizard, your body might be able to knit the ends back together over forty or fifty years. But there’s no way to be sure.”

“I need it to be better,” I said. “Now.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have climbed that ladder in your condition.”

I let out a snarl and tried to turn toward him. I just sort of flopped a little. My body never left the surface of the backboard.

“Don’t,” Uriel said calmly. “It isn’t worth getting upset over.”

“Not upset?!” I demanded. “My little girl is going to die!”

“You made your choices,” Uriel told me. “One of them led you here.” He spread his hands. “That’s a fair ball, son. Nothing to do now but play it out.”

“But you could fix me if you wanted to.”

“My wishes have nothing to do with it,” he said calmly. “I could heal you if I were meant to do so. Free will must take precedence if it is to have meaning.”

“You’re talking philosophy,” I said. “I’m telling you that a child is going to die.”

Uriel’s expression darkened for a moment. “And I am telling you that I am very limited in terms of what I can do to help you,” he said. “Limited, in fact, to what I have already done.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Soulfire. Just about killed myself with that one. Thanks.”

“No one is making you use it, Dresden. It’s your choice.”

“I played ball with you when you needed help,” I said. “And this is how you repay me?”

Uriel rolled his eyes. “You tried to send me a bill.”

“You want to set a price, feel free,” I said. “I’ll pay it. Whatever it takes.”

The archangel watched me, his eyes calm and knowing and sad. “I know you will,” he said quietly.

“Dammit,” I said, my voice breaking. Tears started from my eyes. The colors and lines in my imagination began to blur. “Please.”

Uriel seemed to shiver at the sound of the word. He turned his face from me, clearly uncomfortable. He was silent.

“Please,” I said again. “You know who I am. You know I’d rather have my nails torn out than beg. And I am begging you. I am not strong enough to do this on my own.”

Uriel listened, never quite looking at me, and then shook his head slowly. “I have already done what I can.”

“But you’ve done nothing,” I said.

“From your point of view, I suppose that’s true.” He stroked his chin with a thumb, frowning in thought. “Though . . . I suppose it isn’t too much of an imbalance for you to know . . .”

My eyes were starting to cramp from looking to one side so fiercely without being able to move my head. I bit my lip and waited.

Uriel took a deep breath and looked as if he were considering his words with care. “Your daughter, Maggie, is alive and well. For now.”

My heart skipped a beat.

My daughter.

He’d called her my daughter.

“I know you wanted Susan to be the woman you loved and remembered. Wanted to be able to trust her. But even if you weren’t admitting it to yourself, you had to wonder, on some level. I don’t blame you for it,” he said. “Especially after those tracking spells failed. It’s natural. But yes.” He met my eyes. “Flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. Your daughter.”

“Why tell me that?” I asked him.

“Because I have done all that I can,” he said. “From here, it is up to you. You are Maggie’s only hope.” He started to turn away, then paused and said, “Consider Vadderung’s words carefully.”

I blinked. “You know Od . . . Vadderung?”

“Of course. We’re in similar fields of work, after all.”

I exhaled wearily, and stopped even trying to hold the spell. “I don’t understand.”

Uriel nodded. “That’s the difficult part of being mortal. Of having choice. Much is hidden from you.” He sighed. “Love your child, Dresden. Everything else flows from there. A wise man said that,” Uriel said. “Whatever you do, do it for love. If you keep to that, your path will never wander so far from the light that you can never return.”

And as quickly as that, he was gone.

I lay in the darkness, shivering with weariness and the effort of the magic. I pictured Maggie in my head, in her little-girl dress with ribbons in her hair, like the picture.

“For you, little girl. Dad’s coming.”

It took me less than half a minute to restore the spell, and not much longer than that to build up the next wave of energy I would need. Until the last second, I wondered if I could actually go through with it. Then I saw a horrible image of Maggie in her dress being snatched up by a Red Court vampire, and my whole outraged being seemed to fuse into a singularity, a single white-hot pinpoint of raw, unshakable will.

“Mab!” I called, my voice steady. “Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, Queen of the Winter Court! Mab, I bid you come forth!”