middle-class background like mustard stains under a black light.
Granted, it would probably work even better if I wasn’t one of them.
I used my key at the security gate, and Thomas pulled the van around to my unit, a storage unit the size of a two-car garage. I unlocked the steel door and rolled it up while Thomas got Morgan out of the van. Molly followed, and when I beckoned, she wheeled Morgan into the storage space. Mouse got down out of the van and followed us. I rolled the door back down, and called wizard light to the amulet I held up in my right hand, until its blue-white glow filled the unit.
The interior of the place was mostly empty. There was a camp cot, complete with sleeping bag and pillow, placed more or less in the middle of the room, along with a footlocker I had filled with food, bottled water, candles, and supplies. A second footlocker sat next to the first one, and was filled with hardware and magical gear-a backup blasting rod, and all manner of useful little items one could use to accomplish a surprisingly broad spectrum of thaumaturgic workings. A camp toilet with a couple of jugs of cleaning liquid sat on the opposite side of the cot.
The floor, the walls, and the ceiling were covered in sigils, runes, and magical formulae. They weren’t proper wards, like the ones I had on my home, but they worked on the same principles. Without a threshold to build them upon, no single one of the formulae was particularly powerful-but there were lots of them. They began to gleam with a silvery glow in the light coming from my amulet.
“Wow,” Molly said, staring slowly around her. “What is this place, Harry?”
“Bolt hole I set up last year, in case I needed someplace quiet where I wouldn’t get much company.”
Morgan was looking, too, though his face was pale and drawn with pain. He swept his eyes around and said, “What’s the mix?”
“Concealment and avoidance, mostly,” I replied. “Plus a Faraday cage.”
Morgan nodded, glancing around. “It looks adequate.”
“What’s that mean?” Molly asked me. “A Faraday what?”
“It’s what they call it when you shield equipment from electromagnetic pulses,” I told her. “You build a cage of conductive material around the thing you want to protect, and if a pulse sweeps over it, the energy is channeled into the earth.”
“Like a lightning rod,” Molly said.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Only instead of electricity, this is built to stop hostile magic.”
“Once,” Morgan corrected me primly.
I grunted. “Without a threshold to work with, there’s only so much you can do. The idea is to protect you from a surprise assault long enough for you to go out the back door and run.”
Molly glanced at the back of the storage unit and said, “There’s no door there, Harry. That’s a wall. It’s kind of the opposite of a door.”
Morgan nodded his head at the back corner of the space, where a large rectangular area on the floor was clear of any runes or other markings. “There,” he said. “Where’s it come out?”
“About three long steps from one of the marked trails the Council has right of passage on in Unseelie territory,” I said. I nodded at a cardboard box sitting in the rectangle. “It’s cold there. There’re a couple of coats in the box.”
“A passage to the Nevernever,” Molly breathed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Hopefully whoever was coming after me wouldn’t, either,” I said.
Morgan eyed me. “One can’t help noting,” he said, “that this place seems ideally suited to hiding and sheltering a fugitive from the Wardens.”
“Hunh,” I said. “Now that you mention it, yeah. Yeah it does seem kind of friendly to that sort of purpose.” I gave Morgan an innocent look. “Just an odd coincidence, I’m sure, since I happen to be one of those paranoid lunatics, myself.”
Morgan glowered.
“You came to me for a reason, Chuckles,” I said. “Besides. I wasn’t thinking about the Wardens nearly so much as I was…” I shook my head and shut my mouth.
“As who, Harry?” Molly asked.
“I don’t know who they are,” I said. “But they’ve been involved in several things lately. The Darkhallow, Arctis Tor, the White Court coup. They’re way too handy with magic. I’ve been calling them the Black Council.”
“There is no Black Council,” Morgan snapped, with the speed that could only have been born of reflex.
Molly and I traded a look.
Morgan let out an impatient breath. “Any actions that may have been taken are the work of isolated renegades,” he said. “There is no organized conspiracy against the White Council.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Gosh, I’d have thought you’d be right on board with the conspiracy thing.”
“The Council is not divided,” he said, his voice as hard and cold as I had ever heard it. “Because the moment we turn upon one another, we’re finished. There is no Black Council, Dresden.”
I lifted both eyebrows. “From my perspective, the Council’s been turning on me for most of my life,” I said. “And I’m a member. I have a robe and everything.”
“You,” Morgan spat, “are…” He almost seemed to be choking on something before he blew out a breath and finished, “… vastly irritating.”
I beamed at him. “That’s the Merlin’s line, isn’t it?” I said. “There is no conspiracy against the Council.”
“It is the position of the entire Senior Council,” Morgan shot back.
“Okay, smart guy,” I said. “Explain what happened to you.”
He glowered again, only with more purple.
I nodded sagely, then turned to Molly. “This place should protect you from most tracking spells,” I said. “And the avoidance wards should keep anyone from wandering by or asking any questions.”
Morgan made a growling noise.
“Suggestions, not compulsions,” I said, rolling my eyes. “They’re in common usage and you know it.”
“What do I do if someone does come?” she asked.
“Veil and run,” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to open a way to the Nevernever, Harry. You haven’t shown me yet.”
“I can show her,” Morgan said.
Both of us stopped and blinked at him.
He was very still for a second and then said, “I can do it. If she watches, maybe she’ll learn something.” He glared at me. “But doors open both ways, Dresden. What if something comes in through it?”
Mouse went over to the open space and settled down about six inches away from it. He sighed once, shifted his weight a bit, and went to sleep again, though his ears twitched at every noise.
I went to the first footlocker and opened it, took out a boxed fruit drink, and passed it to him. “Your blood sugar’s getting low. It’s making you grumpy. But if you do get an unexpected visitor from the other side…” I went to the second locker, opened it, and drew out a pump-action shotgun, its barrel cut to well below the minimum legal length. I checked it, and passed the weapon to Molly. “It’s loaded with a mix of steel shot and rock salt. Between that and Mouse, it should discourage anything that comes through.”
“Right,” Molly said. She checked the weapon’s chamber and then worked the pump, chambering a shell. She double-checked the safety, and then nodded at me.
“You taught her guns,” Morgan said. “But not how to open passages to the Nevernever.”
“There’s enough trouble right here in the real world,” I said.
Morgan grunted. “True enough. Where are you going?”
“Only one place I can go.”
He nodded. “Edinburgh.”
I turned toward the door and opened it. I looked from Morgan with his juice box to Molly with her shotgun. “You two play nice.”
Chapter Thirteen
