“You’re going to have to sit down with me and catch me up on these ambush tactics,” Michael says seriously. “It sounds like things have changed a lot since I was a young man…” He loses it and cracks a grin. “Just kidding. Where do we start? Got any leads?”

There’s a gleam in Melkor’s eye. “Let me tell you a little ditty about a house on Lake Michigan…”

“… so then I slammed my boot right into his windpipe and bam! Duel complete, Melkor: 1, Fingo-Fango: 0.”

Melkor is sitting in the middle of a pretty narrow bench of seats in the back of a banged up, rusty VW bug. After the Carpenters’ spacious chariot, this coach truly does feel like cramming inside the exoskeleton of a blue beetle.

Sitting shotgun is Michael, stone cold badass with a holy sword of destiny chilling in the trunk waiting for him. Sitting behind the wheel is the gangly, ill-mannered chauffeur, who looks like he got his hair cut 6 months ago in the dark by himself, and smells faintly of cat urine and stale Coca Cola. He’s got a staff or something.

They are headed east along the shore of Lake Michigan, the two lane highway increasingly encroached upon by greenery. They could have made faster time on the interstate, but Harry didn’t want to go that way for some reason. They’ve already crossed over into Indiana and will have to go just over the border into Michigan before they reach Lake Providence, where their destination lies.

“But enough about my sick exploits.” Melkor leans forward, elbows on his knees, and turns toward Michael. “What doubtlessly rad shit have you been up to since Crab Taco Night?”

Michael looks over at Dresden, then at Melkor behind him. “Well - and I should start by saying that this all turned out fine - my daughter was kidnapped yesterday from her softball practice.”

“It wasn’t me man! I had nothing to do with that, you gotta believe me.”

Michael smiles a little bit. “To the best of my understanding, the timing was a coincidence. I know that you weren’t involved. It was actually another rogue agent of the Church.”

“So weird how that works. It makes sense when there’s a rogue agent of like, a rogue’s guild or something. You’d think members of the church would be better at conformity I MEAN matters of loyalty and conscience.”

“Yes, it’s not a great look for the Church. There clearly needs to be a re-evaluation of trust.

“The man wanted an artifact that had been entrusted to Harry’s care, and thought to threaten one of my children as a bargaining chip.”

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.