[alansplace]

“Do you ever stop joking around?”

“I mutter off-color limericks in my sleep.”

“Just promise me that you’ll watch your back,” Murphy said.

“There once was a girl from Nantucket,” I said. “Her mouth was as big as a bucket.”

Murphy flipped both her hands palms up in a gesture of frustrated surrender. “Dammit, Dresden.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You seem worried about me.”

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“I’m not an idiot. The Wardens keep track of everything. Everyone knows that.”

I sighed. “Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning. I was hoping you could just talk to me for a little while, the way you would with a human being.”

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She stopped at an open doorway. “Here we are,” she said, smiling. “If there is anything I can do for you, just pick up the phone on Ms. Demeter’s desk and I’ll answer right away.”

Twenty minutes later, footsteps approached.

A large man came through the door.

“Hendricks,” I greeted Marcone’s primary enforcer with convivial cheer. ”‘Sup?”

Beady eyes settled on me for a second. Hendricks made a growling sound in his throat, checked the rest of the room, and said, over his shoulder, “Clear.”

Marcone came in.

He wore a gunmetal grey Armani suit with Italian leather shoes, and his shirt was open one button at the throat. He was an inch or two above average height, and had looked like an extremely fit forty-year-old ever since I had known him. His haircut was perfect, his grooming immaculate, and his eyes were the color of worn dollar bills. He nodded pleasantly and walked around the large mahogany desk to sit down.

“Wow,” I said. “Ms. Demeter, you look almost exactly like this criminal scumbag I met once.”