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be bothered by trolls on this bridge for a long, long time.”
    “I can’t believe it,” Nick said again. “I thought we were so dead. I can’t believe it.”
    I glanced back over the bridge. On the far side, the girl was standing up on her tiptoes, waving. Soft pink light flowed from the ring on her right thumb. I could see the smile on her face. The cop was watching me, too, her expression thoughtful. It turned into a smile.
    Modern living might suck. And the world we’ve made can be a dark place. But at least I don’t have to be there alone.
    I put an arm around Nick’s shoulders and grinned at him. “It’s like I keep telling you, man. You’ve got to have faith.”

VIGNETTE
    Takes place between Death Masks and Blood Rites
    This was a very short piece I wrote at the request of my editor, Jennifer Heddle, who needed it for some kind of promotional thing—one of those free sampler booklets they sometimes hand out at conventions, I believe. I lost track of it in the clutter of life, then realized the deadline was the following morning.
    It probably would have been helpful to have remembered at seven or eight, instead of at two a.m.
    I’m not even sure I can claim to be the author of this piece, since it was almost entirely written by a coalition of caffeine molecules and exhausted twitches.
    I sat on a stool in the cluttered laboratory beneath my basement apartment. It was chilly enough to make me wear a robe, but the dozen or so candles burning around the room made it look warm. The phone book lay on the table in front of me.
    I stared at my ad in the Yellow Pages:
    HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD
    Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or
Other Entertainment
    I looked up at the skull on the shelf above my lab table and said, “I don’t get it.”
    “Flat, Harry,” said Bob the Skull. Flickering orange lights danced in the skull’s eye sockets. “It’s flat.”
    I flipped through several pages. “Yeah, well. Most of them are. I don’t think they offer raised lettering.”
    Bob rolled his eyelights. “Not literally flat, dimwit. Flat in the aesthetic sense. It has no panache. No moxy. No chutzpah.”
    “No what?”
    Bob’s skull turned to one side and banged what would have been its forehead against a heavy bronze candleholder. After several thumps, it turned back toward me and said, “It’s boring.”
    “Oh,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw. “You think I should have gone four-color?”
    Bob stared at me for a second and said, “I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.”
    I glowered up at the skull and nodded. “Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama.”
    “More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts.”
    I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. “I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it.”
    “I didn’t say anything about legs. But as long as we’re on the subject . . .”
    I set the Yellow Pages aside and picked up my pencil again. “I’m doing formulas here, Bob.”
    “It’s formulae, O Maestro of Latin, and if you don’t drum up some business, you aren’t going to need those new spells for much of anything. Unless you’re working on a spell to help you shoplift groceries.”
    I set the pencil down hard enough that the tip broke, and I stared at Bob in annoyance. “So what do you think it should say?”
    Bob’s eyelights brightened. “Talk about monsters. Monsters are good.”
    “Give me a break.”
    “I’m serious, Harry! Instead of that line about consulting and finding things, put, ‘Fiends foiled, monsters mangled, vampires vanquished, demons demolished.’”
    “Oh yeah,” I said. “That kind of alliteration will bring in the business.”
    “It will!”
    “It will bring in the nutso business,” I said. “Bob, I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but most people don’t