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Murphy.
    “There hasn’t been anything specific,” Murphy said, “but people up the line from SI have made it very clear that you are persona non grata.”
    That stung a bit, and my voice turned a shade more brittle than I had intended. “Oh, obviously. The way I keep helping CPD with things they couldn’t handle themselves is just inexcusable.”
    “I know,” Murphy said.
    “I’m lucky they haven’t charged me with gross competence and contributing to social order and had me locked away.”
    She waved a tired, dismissive hand. “It’s always something. That’s the way organizations are.”
    “Except that when the country club gets a bug up its nose and decides that someone is out, nobody dies as a result,” I said, and added, “mostly.”
    Murphy glared at me. “What do you want me to do about it, Harry? I called in every chip I’d ever collected just to keep my fucking job. There’s no chance at all of me making command again, much less moving up to a position where I could effect real change within the department.”
    I clenched my jaw and felt a flush rising up my neck. She hadn’t said it, but she’d lost her command and any bright future for her career because she’d been covering my back. “Murph—”
    “No,” she said, her tone calmer and steadier than it might have been. “I’d really like to know, Dresden. I’ve paid you out of my own pocket when the city wouldn’t spend it. The rest of SI throws in all the money they can spare into the kitty to be able to pay you when we really need you. You think maybe I should moonlight at a burger joint to pay your fees?”
    “Hell’s bells, Murph,” I said. “It isn’t about the money. It’s never been about the money.”
    She shrugged. “So what are you bitching about?”
    I thought about it for a second and said, “You shouldn’t have to tap-dance around the demands of all the ladder climbers to do your job.”
    “No,” she said, her tone frank. “Not in a reasonable world. But if you haven’t noticed, that world must be in a different area code. And it seems to me that you’ve had to end-run your superiors once or twice.”
    “Bah,” I said. “And touché.”
    She smiled faintly. “It sucks, but that’s what we’ve got. You done whining?”
    “Hell with it,” I said. “Let’s work.”
    Murphy jerked her head at the rubble-choked alley between the damaged building and its neighbor, and we started down it, climbing over fallen brick and timber where necessary.
    We’d gone about three feet before the stench of sulfur and acrid brimstone seared my nostrils, sharp even through the smell of the gutted apartment building. There’s only one thing that smells like that.
    “Crap,” I muttered.
    “I thought it smelled familiar,” Murphy said. “Like back at the fortress.” She glanced at me. “And…the other times I’ve smelled it.”
    I pretended not to notice her glance. “Yeah. It’s Hellfire,” I said.
    “There’s more,” Murphy said quietly. “Come on.”
    We pressed on down the alley until we passed the edge of the wrecked portion of the gutted building. One step, there was nothing but wreckage. The next, the brick wall of the building reasserted itself. The demarcation between structure and havoc was a rough, jagged line stretching up into the dust and the snow and the smoke—all except for a portion of wall perhaps five feet off the ground.
    There, instead of a broken line of shattered brick and twisted rebar, a perfectly smooth semicircle bit into the wall.
    I leaned closer, frowning. The scent of Hellfire grew stronger, and I realized that something had melted its way through the brick wall—a shaft of energy like a giant drill bit. It had to have been almost unimaginably hot to vaporize brick and concrete and steel, leaving the rim of the area it had touched melted to smooth glass, though half of the basketball-sized circle was missing, carried away by the collapsing wall.
    Any natural source of heat