THE DRESDEN FILES

Harry's Notes

EPISODE ONE

I've been having these dreams.

Now, I'm a wizard-for-hire-in the phone book and everything—and I face the stuff of nightmares regularly. Lately, I've been dreaming about me and Dad when I was a kid and he was a lousy stage magician. This was after my mother—a wizard like me—died, and Dad was trying hard to keep me out of the family business.

Bob says having this dream all week means something, and maybe the old spirit is right, but that isn't my biggest concern—it's a boy named Scott.

When he hired me, I figured he's a normal kid who let the monsters in his closet get to him, and I blew him off. But Bob kept hounding me to check Scott's situation out just in case. He's persistent, and probably pissed that I ruined his equations for building a powerful talisman called a Doom Box.

So I reluctantly asked Melissa, one of my sources, to check High Council records for any mention of Scott. She said she found nothing. I played it safe, and gave the kid a protection symbol to keep the nasties out.

Along the way, I met Scott's teacher, Ms. Timmons. That last part's important, because right then I got a call from Murphy, the Chicago cop who sometimes asks me to help with the weird cases. This time, it was a woman who'd been skinned, but her clothes had been left intact and bloodless.

Looking at pictures in the victim's apartment, it was clear that Timmons was the victim. She'd already been killed and replaced by a skinwalker when I met her. The skinwalker, wearing a new Timmons suit, was after Scott.

I ran to Scott's house, but he'd already been taken—by Ravens, who're neutral, and can't be stopped by my protection symbol. I theorized that the Ravens are working for the skinwalker. Melissa, too. She lied about Scott not being on the High Council's radar. Scott has huge magic potential, and the Council would certainly know about him.

Then the skinwalker herself showed up and blew my theory all to hell by torturing me to find Scott. Whoops.

Bob, who hates the sight of my blood even more than I do, caved and gave up the Ravens. "Timmons" left to track Scott, but I got to the Ravens first, and Bob finished work on his Doom Box.

I convinced them to let Scott go to his mother while I took care of the skinwalker. She was fascinated when I gave her the Doom Box—which lived up to its name, and disintegrated her. Bob does good work.

This isn't the last time someone's gonna come after Scott, especially once his powers start to manifest. His mother promises to call me if something else happens, but still, I worry....

Episode 2

Ghosts — they're really echoes of past wrongs. The trick is to understand what's broken, and then fix it. Because if you don't, well, you're gonna end up haunted.

An antiques dealer named Harding came to me about his dead daughter, Lisa, haunting him. In investigating, Lisa actually made me relive her murder. A recently released ex-con named Gus Boone knocked Harding out, shot Lisa, and stole an Egyptian tablet called the Lock of Anubis.

Interestingly, Harding had tried to sell the object online but withdrew it after disappointing bids. One bid came from someone in prison, but it wasn't Boone.

Boone dropped and shattered the tablet before being shot and killed while carjacking a guy named Edward Miller.

So, I visited the wealthy Mr. Miller, who claimed to know nothing about Boone or Lisa. He gave me little more than my fill of evasive snottiness, and he asked me to leave so he could get to his scheduled massage. I left, but not before seeing Miller's Egyptian hieroglyphics tattoo and a statuette of Egyptian deity Anubis.

I found out Lucas Sabin was the prisoner who unsuccessfully bid on the Lock — and that Sabin was Boone's cellmate at the time. In fact, Sabin was an Egyptophile who had killed and mummified a child. We met, and I saw that he had the same tattoo that Miller had. He claimed to have given the same tat to Boone before Boone was released.

Somehow, Boone had no tattoo in the autopsy photos.

Murphy took me with her to Miller's house, where she started asking some of the same questions I had been asking, which freaked Miller out. Then he freaked me out by shooting himself in the head and, apparently, transferring his soul into Murphy's body.

It all became clear to me. Having the tattoo and the Lock of Anubis enabled people to switch bodies. Sabin gave Boone the tattoo, and was supposed to steal the tablet so he could switch into a guard's body and release Sabin.

Too bad for Sabin that Boone had no intention of breaking him out. I used that fact to get all the information I needed to right things.

Using magic and psychology, I lured Boone/Murphy to Harding's store, where I was able to knock his soul out into the apparently painful ether. Lisa's ghost looked on and, after giving her father a settled but still mournful look, faded.

Episode 3

The cops call me to consult on the freaky cases. Mina Watkins was found dead, naked with her hair and canines removed and her clothes shredded nearby. Witnesses saw a dark-haired man running around, and there was blood about 50 yards from the body. As I would learn later, it was a man's blood.

I got the backstory from Mina's roommate Heather: She and Mina had gone to a bar during a business trip in South Bend, Ind. Heather had left early. Mina was getting harassed by some blonde until a stranger named Jim stepped in. Jim and Mina went out last night. Now she's dead, and Jim's missing.

Later, I took Bob (in his convenient carrying case/skull) so that he could do his spirit thing to help me solve this case. Bob touched the blood at the scene, and morphed into the person it had bled from: a man, probably Jim. Bob did the same thing with Mina's body, and he became a werewolf.

Mina had been a lycanthrope.

That was as far as I got, officially, because FBI Special Agent Kelly Raskin had taken over the case from Murphy. First thing she did was kick me to the curb.

But I knew more was going on, so I called Heather. I figured she was holding something back. Heather had felt a bad vibe in South Bend from the blond woman, and so she'd left the bar. But Mina wouldn't go. When Mina came back home, she had scratches on her — which could've been a bite — and was sick for a day.

I needed to go to this bar. Heather insisted on coming along.

I magicked the bar's mirror to make it show what happened a week earlier. I saw the face of the blonde, and it was none other than Special Agent Raskin in a wig.

That was when the FBI showed up. They took Heather, arrested me, and brought me back to Chicago, where I met Special Agent Zachary Bushnell: the guy whose blood was in the park.

I managed to escape with Heather — but not before Raskin bit her. She and I converged at my office, where I put together what Raskin and Bushnell were doing:

"Kill nine, remove the sign." That's a saying that means if a werewolf can kill nine lycanthropes from the same bloodline before those new werewolves can kill anyone, the reluctant werewolf is cured. In this case, that werewolf was Raskin. He'd been turning them into lycanthropes (making them part of his bloodline), and killing them. Mina was No. 8, and Heather was on deck.

Raskin and Bushnell chased Heather to my office, but Heather had bitten Bushnell. When he changed, Special Agent Raskin killed fellow FBI agent and werewolf Bushnell.

That cured Raskin, but she went nuts over Bushnell's death.

That just left Heather as a lycanthrope. But I've known others who've survived this; she would, too.

Episode 4

Sometimes you live the cliché: A dame in a short skirt and high heels walked into my office. She said her name was Nikki Slovak, looking for a man named Donald Primko who took money from her aunt Frieda. She provided a toothpick that Primko had used, which I used to track him to an empty apartment filled with Primko's burned corpse and the smell of brimstone. Aw, hell….

When I find a body burned by hellfire, my first call isn't to my client; it's to the High Council's Chicago enforcer, Morgan. Morgan's not my favorite person, but then I'm not Morgan's, either. He can find the thing responsible for this kind of crime: a hellion.

Murphy and I went to Slovak's apartment, although it turns out that Slovak's real name was Caryn Harris. We got there in time to see a demon tossing her apartment, looking for something. The nasty fried my wand, bounced me across the room, and fled through a window.

Caryn came home, and tried to run, but I stopped her. Rather than tell me the truth, she fired me. Maybe it was karma, but she ended up being held on suspicion of Primko's murder. Murphy, meanwhile, was dust Caryn's apartment, and came up with prints of Matthew Jacobs, a thief and Caryn's boyfriend.

I snuck into the morgue and called forth Mr. Crispy's true face, that of a hellion who, according to Morgan, worked for a particularly demonic demon named Sirota. Sirota was the guy last seen jumping from Caryn's apartment.

Morgan reluctantly took me to see Sirota, who had started this whole drama when he turned Jacobs into a hellion. Too bad for Sirota, Jacobs stole the magical chain that had made him Sirota's slave.

Sirota sent another hellion-slave, Primko, after Jacobs. Primko got broasted for his trouble. Now Jacobs was an AHOL (angry hellion on the loose).

Caryn got sprung from lockup, and I rushed to save her from her hellion boyfriend. I saw that Jacobs was preparing a ritual that would transform him back into a human—he wanted to live happily ever after with Caryn. But someone had pulled Jacobs' chain, which he needed for the ritual.

I tracked the chain to a church, where no self-respecting hellion would be caught dead, and used it to summon Jacobs, and convinced him that I was on his side. But we still had to pull the wool over Sirota's eyes, because as far as he was concerned, Jacobs was his stolen property.

In the end, with some help from Bob and Morgan, we convinced Sirota that Jacobs was dead, and the lovebirds were able to live happily ever after.

Episode 5

I'd just had a fight with my uncle, and I was broken and bleeding. It was five years ago, and Bianca hid me from the High Council, which was unhappy that my uncle had died. During our argument.

The catch? Bianca's a vampire of the Red Court.

Last night, after someone tried to kill Bianca and her new girl-toy Natalie, Bianca called in the favor, asking me to find the would-be killers. Getting involved with vampires is never a hot idea, but I owed her.

It looked like master-assassin Clive was responsible. Clive's done a lot of work for the High Council, so I made some discreet inquiries. The Council's local enforcer, Morgan, insisted that Clive had retired — which was reinforced when Clive himself grabbed me to insist A) that he really is out of the business, and B) that I leave him alone.

Just then, a murder of assassins converged to kill Clive. I assumed Bianca sent them, but she protested her innocence, and had alibi witnesses.

To make matters worse, Morgan showed up — with Ancient Mai, the big cheese of the High Council. She also assumed that Bianca had killed Clive, and was looking for her. I half-convinced Mai when I told her that I didn't know where Bianca was. She gave me shackles that I was to put on Bianca. They would summon Mai when they were locked onto Bianca.

So who should step out of the shadows after Mai and Morgan leave? Bianca. Someone was trying to force a confrontation between Bianca and the Council, and I was stuck in the middle.

I was able to magic up an image of Clive's killer, who Bianca recognized as Black Court vampire Arvin. The low-lifes of the vampire set, the Black Court and the Red Court fought endlessly and tediously.

Whoever hired Arvin bought him with Third Eye — a new drug in the undead community. Bianca won't touch the stuff, but its presence led her to the prime suspect: Jake Darius, her former partner, who parted ways with Bianca because she wouldn't let him sell Third Eye.

We set up a meeting with Jake — but he wasn't the one doing the setting up, he had just bought the Third Eye. His seller? Natalie.

Turns out that Bianca's protégée wanted to play with the big boys, and so she tried to get the Council to get rid of Bianca. I managed to slap on Ancient Mai's cuffs, and Mai herself showed up to take care of Natalie.

That left me and Bianca even … for now.

Episode 6

Kelton Franks came into my office saying that he had a premonition that he was gonna die.

And then he dropped dead.

Murphy took the body away, and I figured that was it. Butters, the medical examiner, said it was a heart attack.

Then the widow — Nancy — came by. She wanted to know why Kelton came to see me, and got more and more agitated …

And then she dropped dead.

Murphy ordered an autopsy on Nancy, but Det. Kirmani came back from the funeral home with ashes. Kelton had been cremated.

Luckily, I didn't need solid remains. I snuck off with a few ashes and had Bob determine whose they were. To our surprise, they belonged to an old woman.

I tracked down the mortician, who admitted that Kelton's body was taken by someone from the coroner's office, whose description matched that of Butters's new assistant, Sharon.

With the money Sharon used to bribe the mortician, I cast a tracking spell, and found myself in suburbia. And who's in the house I break into?

Kelton Franks.

Except he never met me and he wasn't Kelton. So I zapped him and brought him back to the office. His ID said he was Paul Woods. Turned out that he'd also been having premonitions about his own death. Murphy had some more news: Sharon had worked in coroner's offices all over, including Atlanta and Tallahassee.

Kelton's fingerprints got two matches, one in Atlanta, one in Tallahassee, different names — but Kelton's face on both driver's licenses, and both dead. And each listed a wife as next of kin They all looked like Nancy. It was a life-insurance scam: Create IDs, kill the husband, collect the money, and move on.

Bob had a revelation of his own: Paul had been resurrected several times using black magic.

When we went back to Paul/Kelton, we found him dead. Again. Only this time, he was stabbed. Also Nancy's body was gone from the morgue, and the Woods house was torched. Sharon was tying up loose ends.

So when Sharon and Nancy broke into my office, I thought they'd try to kill me. Instead, they hit me with a drug and told me I was Jerry Tilden.

I woke up in Milwaukee, Nancy serving me breakfast in bed, complete with magicked orange juice to make me suggestible. I threw it in Nancy's face, and held her off until Murphy and the Milwaukee PD showed up, tipped off by Bob.

It turned out that Bob's insight was personal. His use of that same ol' black magic was what got him sentenced to life in a skull for eternity.

Episode 7

I was walking outside my office when a driver hit and killed a very unhappy-looking woman.

Her name was Raychelle Banton, and she'd been coming to see me: My Yellow Pages ad and a picture labeled "Caleb" were in her date book. And she'd left me a frightened voicemail.

The car used to kill her was found abandoned with an old-fashioned tallow candle burning in the cup holder.

Raychelle wore a University of Chicago fraternity pin, and when I checked the frat, I saw the guy from the picture in her appointment book. He was Dante, Raychelle's boyfriend.

Dante's friends, Carson and Brady, gave me static when I tried to talk with them, but not Dante. He said he had no idea why Raychelle would visit me. Dante also said he was with his stroke-victim mother when Raychelle died.

My next stop was Raychelle's apartment, where I found a necklace that was way out of the price range of a student on a scholarship — or her boyfriend.

I got jumped by someone who ran into Raychelle's closet. When I went in after him, he was gone, as was the necklace.

I don't think it's a coincidence that there had been a bag of thefts in the city, with no triggered alarms, no forced entry, nothing.

Murphy told me that the parents of Carson and Brady were well-heeled, and as such, they couldn't possibly be involved in a hit-and-run. Translation: Leave them alone.

Of course, that made me think all the more that they, so I magicked three wasps and sent them into Dante's room to be my eyes and ears.

All three of them were there, and Carson and Brady didn't look too good. They mentioned someone named Caleb like he was a mentor or helper or something, and they talked about robbing a bank next. Two minutes later, they got into their car to do just that.

Only Brady and Dante made it out of the bank. Carson was cut in half — his torso out in the alley, his legs inside the vault, and his internal organs were rotting away.

They all were being corrupted from the inside by the thieving spirit Caleb, who was being channeled through a wax hand that let the boys walk through walls.

Caleb had forced Brady to run down Raychelle when she got suspicious. He killed Brady and was not working on the rest of the Apple Dumpling Gang. Caleb was working on Dante, but I was able to take the hand away before he could succeed.

Caleb manifested himself — like his hand, in wax — I was able to destroy him with some magic heat.

Episode 8

My day started with a visit to a crime scene, where Murphy showed me two bodies, those of mobster Tommy Tom and his girlfriend, Jennifer Randall. Their hearts had exploded, but the bodies were untouched, and there was no sign of a forced entry. I figure that someone did this from a distance using thaumaturgy, a form of black magic.

I didn't want to get near this case. In fact, I told Murphy I wouldn't take it, but the High Council had other ideas. Morgan took me to Ancient Mai, who informed me that I was their prime suspect for this use of the black. The only way for me to avoid being executed was to find the real culprit.

Lucky me.

I checked out Jennifer's large apartment and found a picture of her with her two best friends, Grace Cutler and Linda Atwater. The best way to find an enemy is to start with a friend. First, I went to Grace — whose mother informed me that her daughter died of an overdose, and her husband took his own life out of grief. Mrs. Cutler blamed Jennifer and Linda for her daughter's death.

After I left, something tried to attack me, which meant I was on the right track. That night, I invited my sometime-girlfriend Susan Rodriguez, an investigative reporter, over for a date. Before we got started, though, a demon showed up. I managed to banish it after a rough fight in which Susan got hit on the head — and after seeing a nice car with a vanity plate drive away.

Murphy ran the plate, and it belonged to — surprise — Linda. I found her car crashed into a lamppost, her heart having exploded out of her chest — and Bianca the last number on her cell phone's call log.

Things were starting to make sense. Bianca's club wasn't the best place for wide-eyed college girls, but it they went anyhow. At Bianca's Jennifer found Tommy Tom, Linda found wealth and luxury, and Grace — Grace found magic. The demon who tried to kill me? She summoned it, and it killed her when she messed something up.

This was why amateurs shouldn't use magic. Summoning a demon wasn't for the unskilled. Now someone else was summoning the demon, and using The Black for revenge. When I found a trunk full of grimoires in the Cutler house, I knew we had our guy: Mr. Cutler, who'd faked his own death and was taking revenge on the people who killed his little girl.

I tracked him down, but not before he could summon the demon again. The demon killed him, and was about to come after me when Morgan banished him — now, finally, believing I was innocent.

Lucky me.

Episode 9

The brass at the Chicago PD, in their infinite bureaucracy, said I needed private-investigator certification to keep consulting for them. So I took a class, given by old-school P.I. Jim Brennan. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up with the tuition. When I went to Brennan's office to plead poverty, I found him dead — with evidence of magic as the weapon.

Brennan's assistant, Liz Fontaine — she doesn't think Brennan died of natural causes, either, and she's as determined as I am to find out who killed him.

I wasn't the only one on the case. While it looked to the cops like Brennan had suffered a stroke, his assistant, Liz Fontaine, thought he'd been murdered, and so did I. Detective Murphy gave me Brennan's coded notebook to decipher, and it led me to Ronald Jones. It also led Liz there, and we decided to work together. Jones said he'd hired Brennan to tail his wife, who he thought was having an affair. However, Jones said he was mistaken, and that was that.

Liz didn't buy it, so I humored her. We tailed Jones's wife to a fertility clinic. Posing as a couple looking to have a kid, we went inside to meet with the clinic's head, Dr. Overland. I snuck into the "alternative therapy" room, which was full of weird tea, candles and a strange symbol over the bed. Using Brennan's camera — on loan from Liz — I took pictures right up until the moment Overland's assistant, Anya, walked in with Mrs. Jones.

Liz and I hot-footed it out of the clinic. She went to develop the film, and I checked out the tea. According to Bob, the drink had magical ingredients that combine to "open" the mind and body, diminish inhibition and memory, and heighten "spiritual energy" — kind of a magical date-rape drug. When Liz came back with the pictures, Bob identified the symbol above the bed as an incubatic portal — a gateway through which an incubus can enter this plane of existence. Bob guessed that an incubus was trying to bring an offspring into the world, using Mrs. Jones as the conduit.

Our conversation was rudely interrupted when someone threw a bomb through my window. Good news: I magically contained the explosion. Bad news: Liz saw me do it. So much for being discreet.

We went to talk with Overland again, but we found him dead — killed with an acupuncture needle. Anya, the clinic assistant, was starting to look like our prime suspect.

Bob, meanwhile, was looking at the pictures, including ones that Brennan took of the clinic. There was a smudge on the photo that moved — somehow, the photograph had captured the embryonic incubus's essence.

By this point we had only one suspect left: Jones. He wasn't the one who'd hired Brennan — Overland had, to find out what was happening in his own clinic. Jones was the incubus. Luckily, I was able to zap him back to his own realm. Anya was left to take the fall, Mrs. Jones was left without a husband, and Liz was left with a P.I. business — which is a helluva lot more than I got out of this….

Episode 10

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