Meciel, who has been sitting next to Melkor and staring out the window, looks over. “Two Church agents in the inner circles of the fight against darkness, betraying their oaths in the space of forty-eight hours? He may think it’s a coincidence, but God is not the only one who can orchestrate behind the scenes.” She thinks briefly. “We may find a bit more than we are bargaining for at this safe house. It’s unusual enough for void-crazed Denarians to operate independently, and if someone is corrupting Church agents…”

Melkor stares grimly into the distance. “Then the death-fox may be loose in the soul-henhouse.”

He shakes it off. “Sorry, how rude of me Michael, please continue. Your daughter got kidnapped, your bodyman Harry here had the artifact…”

Harry jumps in. “The guy thought he had me dead to rights, with his extensive anti-magic training from the Church. Which, in fact, he did. I couldn’t get anywhere near without setting off a bomb he had strapped to her, the bastard. But he didn’t count on us calling a… outside operator. This guy was able to track her down and extract her without using any magic at all. Hell of a thing.”

Hmmmmmmmm…

:That outside operator might be nobody.: he talkthinks at Meciel. :Might be a hostage-sherpa from the Amazon, or whatever. Or it might be my old nemesis from the other side of the void, Hunty McHuntface.:

Melkor shifts his weight uncomfortably, and adopts a blasé tone. ”Huh, quite a feat to pull off. This guy sounds like a god among men.”

Dresden looks suddenly cagey, but is playing it cool. “Hah! Good one. For all we know he could be, wouldn’t be the first time we accidentally worked with a lowercase-g-god, eh Michael?”

”Now Melkor, remind me how you know about this place, and what we’re expecting to find?”

It takes every ounce of Melkor’s not not insubstantial willpower to stop himself from saying “divine revelation.”

”Well my super secret sources tell me that the Denarians operate a private bed ‘n’ breakfast slash hidey-hole for their agents out of a fancy-pants little mansion in Lake Providence. Which is on Lake Michigan. Not, like, on the lake, it’s not like a lake on top of another lake — it’s a town. Next to the lake. Lake Providence is the town. Lake Michigan is the lake.”

Melkor collects himself. ”A pair of none-too-sane coin brutes sustained major injuries after a recent bout of thuggery gone wrong. So this is like, the tutorial level, where we drop in on some no-name demons getting their bedrest, and exorcise their heads from their bodies.”

“Lake Providence, huh?” He remembers a house steeped in suffering and black magic, going up in flames. “Oh goody.”

”And is there a plan, beyond ‘waltz in there and blow em up?’” Not that he really has any room to throw stones about that level of planning.

“Waltzing in there and blowing them up are steps 3 and 4, respectively. Step 5 is smoking cigars and drinking miniature bottles of champagne.”

“Step 1 is to sneak in undetected and ensure the intel is up to date, identify any electrified doorknobs or cans of paint hanging above stairways, confirm the position of the targets, etc. That’ll be me playing scout. I’ll have a dead man’s link going with both of you so you get timely picture-in-picture updates, and if I step on a well-hidden rake and knock myself out, you’ll be the first to know.”

”Step 2 is for you two to lock down all known escape points and wait for my signal to start the waltz. Step 0 is to actually you know what I think this bit is played out, you get the gist.”

Dresden looks at him in the rear view mirror. “Not gonna argue with you there, pal.”

“And Meciel is confident that she can pass your sensory data on to us while we are outside?” Michael asks. “This isn’t something I’ve heard of Denarians being able to do before.”

Melkor waves off Michael’s pretty reasonable concern with a chuckling pssh. “Dude, Meciel is the Renegade. She can do all sorts of cool shit the other coin-op crazies can’t do. Except for basically any offensive magic, tying her own shoes, or seeing why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

“God himself can’t see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Melkor, why would I be able to?”

“Michael,” Melkor says with utmost seriousness, “can God himself see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch? And follow-up: is your god seriously named ‘God,’ and you just, like, capitalize it?”

“That is how we call him, in this day and age, although He has been called by many other names.” Michael says serenely, but then gets a glint in his eye. “The origin of the term is actually quite interesting, Molly did a paper on it back when she was in school. Popular folk etymology relates the word god to ‘good’ but this is not historically accurate, and indeed, the word itself predates the religious notion that god would, in fact, be good.

“Our word ‘god’ actually derives from an old Germanic word, ‘gutham,’ which is of uncertain origin. It may come from the Proto-Indo-European word ‘ghut’ - ‘that which is invoked.’ But some trace it to the same language’s ‘ghu-to-‘ from root ‘gheu-,’ which means to pour, and could refer to the poured earth of the burial mound, hinting at a link to the notion of the spirit which is present at a grave.”

Melkor is wowed into silence by this nigh-elven display of word-nerdery.

He does elbow Meciel in the ribs when Michael mentions that not everybody used to think God would in fact be good.

He does not press the CTC question, and rides the rest of the way in relative silence.

Harry navigates the Beetle through Lake Providence, where it is quite out of place due to being a rust bucket, and not in a cool, ironic sort of way. He decides to park in the lot of a convenience store along the road through town, which will leave them with a bit of a walk, but hopefully not alert the Denarians to their presence.

Melkor crouches down on the asphalt and opens his Meciel-provided illusory briefcase, bottles and blister packs and blunts packed volumetrically within. He scans over his options with a outstretched finger.

”Shaddle-dee-dum, shaddle-dee-dee, what kind of me should Melkor be…?”

Harry watches this little ritual with mixed feelings. A little disturbed, somewhat entertained, and maybe also a bit wistful, though he wouldn’t admit that to himself. As he watches Melkor pantomime, his eyes widen a bit. “Is… the coin providing you with a bunch of different ways to get high?” He asks incredulously.

“It’s how I do my best work,” Melkor says, pinching an invisible postage stamp between his fingers and planting it on his tongue.

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose. He knows exactly what that pantomime means - although it was a long time ago - though frankly it was awesome, and now he kind of wishes he’d realized - Lash could’ve hooked him up! But he firmly halts that thought. “This might get weird,” he mutters to Michael instead.

Michael does not at all know what the pantomime means. But he nods to acknowledge Harry’s warning.

“Let’s get busy lyserging or get busy diethylamiding!” He swings his heel around and knocks the briefcase shut, and strides off toward the lake house.

Before they’re out of the parking lot, Melkor executes the agreed-upon signal for Meciel to take him into stealth mode, namely throwing an imaginary smoke bomb at his feet and then making hissing noises and breaking into a crouching run.

Meciel rolls her eyes at him but does the cloaking. Her illusion runs silently alongside him, and she crafts the spell which will show Michael and Harry what he’s seeing.

Harry puts a Veil over himself and Michael (though it’s not nearly as good as the Denarian’s), and they also start off towards the lake house, more slowly. 

As Melkor trots along the winding side road toward the lake, the houses go from “serviceable trad house” to “did somebody say McMansion” to “actually tastefully designed, dang.” At the same time, the sky goes from a last dregs of spilled ember sunset to soft star-emblazoned purple velvet, and the blossoming flowers and plump wild fruit and buzzing bees riotous in the flowing joy of their own automaticity —

“Oh man I think it’s starting to kick in,” Melkor reports, as the multi-story glass-and-steel lake house is birthed from the parting willow trees.