"Bob, wake up," I said, lighting candles. "I need to pick your brain."
Lights, orange and nebulous, kindled deep in the shadows of the skull's eye sockets. The skull quivered a little bit on its shelf and then stretched its toothy mouth open in an approximation of a yawn. "So was the kid right? Was there some portent-type action going on?"
"Rain of toads," I said.
"Real ones?"
"Yeah."
"Ouch," said Bob the Skull. Bob wasn't really a skull. The skull was just a vessel for the spirit of intellect that resided inside and helped me keep track of the constantly evolving metaphysical laws that govern the use of magic. But "Bob the Skull" is a lot easier to say than "Bob the Spirit of Intellect and Lab Assistant."
I nodded, breaking out my Bunsen burners and beakers. "Tell me about it. Look, Bob, I've got kind of a difficult situation here and - "
"Harry, you aren't going to be able to do this. There is no cure for vampirism. I like Susan too, but it can't be done. You think people haven't looked for a cure before now?"
"I haven't looked for one before now," I said. "And I've had a couple of ideas I want to look at."
"Aye, Cap'n Ahab, arr har har har! We'll get that white devil, sir!"
"Damn right we will. But we've got something else to do first."
Bob's eyelights brightened. "You mean something other than hopeless, pointless vampire research? I'm already interested. Does it have to do with the rain of toads?"
I frowned, got out a pad of paper and a pencil, and started scratching things down. Sometimes that helped me sort things out. "Maybe. It's a murder investigation."
"Gotcha. Who's the corpse?"
"Artist. Ronald Reuel."
Bob's eyelights burned down to twin points. "Ah. Who is asking you to find the killer?"
"We don't know he was killed. Cops say it was an accident."
"But you think differently."
I shook my head. "I don't know a thing about it, but Mab says he was killed. She wants me to find the killer and prove that it wasn't her."
Bob fell into a shocked silence nearly a minute long. My pen scratched on the paper until Bob blurted, "Mab? The Mab, Harry?"
"Yeah."
"Queen of Air and Darkness? That Mab?"
"Yeah," I said, impatient.
"And she's your client?"
"Yes, Bob."
"Here's where I ask why don't you spend your time doing something safer and more boring. Like maybe administering suppositories to rabid gorillas."
"I live for challenge," I said.
"Or you don't, as the case may be," Bob said brightly. "Harry, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. You don't get tangled up with the Sidhe. It's always more complicated than you thought it would be."
"Thanks for the advice, skull boy. It wasn't like I had a choice. Lea sold her my debt."
"Then you should have traded her something for your freedom," Bob said. "You know, stolen an extra baby or something and given it to her - "
"Stolen a baby? I'm in enough trouble already."
"Well, if you weren't such a Goody Two-shoes all the time ..."
I pushed at the bridge of my nose with my thumb. This was going to be one of those conversations that gave me a headache, I could tell already. "Look, Bob, can we stick to the subject, please? Time is important, so let's get to work. I need to know why Reuel would have been knocked off."
"Gee whiz, Harry," Bob said. "Maybe because he was the Summer Knight?"
My pencil fell out of my fingers and rolled on the table. "Whoa," I said. "Are you sure?"
"What do you think?" Bob replied, somehow putting a sneer into the words.
"Uh," I said. "This means trouble. It means ..."
"It means that things with the Sidhe are more complicated than you thought. Gee, if only someone had warned you at some point not to be an idiot and go making deals."
I gave the skull a sour look and recovered my pencil. "How much trouble am I in?"
"A lot," Bob said. "The Knights are entrusted with power by the Sidhe Courts. They're tough."
"I don't know much about them," I confessed. "They're some kind of representative of the faeries, right?"
"Don't call them that to their faces, Harry. They don't like it any more than you'd like being called an ape."
"Just tell me what I'm dealing with."
Bob's eyelights narrowed until they almost went out, then brightened again after a moment, as the skull began to speak. "A Sidhe Knight is mortal," Bob said. "A champion of one of the Sidhe Courts. He gets powers in line with his Court, and he's the only one who is allowed to act in affairs not directly related to the Sidhe."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if one of the Queens wants an outsider dead, her Knight is the trigger man."
I frowned. "Hang on a minute. You mean that the Queens can't personally gun down anyone who isn't in their Court?"
"Not unless the target does something stupid like make an open-ended bargain without even trying to trade a baby for - "
"Off topic, Bob. Do I or don't I have to worry about getting killed this time around?"
"Of course you do," Bob said in a cheerful tone. "It just means that the Queen isn't allowed to actually, personally end your life. They could, however, trick you into walking into quicksand and watch you drown, turn you into a stag and set the hounds after you, bind you into an enchanted sleep for a few hundred years, that kind of thing."
"I guess it was too good to be true. But my point is that if Reuel was the Summer Knight, Mab couldn't have killed him. Right? So why should she be under suspicion?"
"Because she could have done it indirectly. And Harry, odds are the Sidhe don't really care about Reuel's murder. Knights come and go like paper cups. I'd guess that they were upset about something else. The only thing they really care about."
"Power," I guessed.
"See, you can use your brain when you want to."
I shook my head. "Mab said something had been taken, and that I'd know what it was," I muttered. "I guess that's it. How much power are we talking about?"
"A Knight of the Sidhe is no pushover, Harry," Bob said, his tone earnest.
"So we're talking about a lot of magic going AWOL. Grand theft mojo." I drummed my pen on the table. "Where does the power come from originally?"