Marcone

I checked the clock and frowned. Dawn was only minutes away, and Bob wasn't back yet. Bob was a spirit being, a spirit of intellect from one of the more surreal corners of the Nevernever. He wasn't evil as much as he was magnificently innocent of any kind of morality, but as a spirit, daylight was a threat to him as surely as it was to the vampires of the Red Court. If he got caught out in it, it could kill him.
Dawn was about two minutes off before Bob returned, flowing down the ladder and toward the skull.
Something was wrong.
Bob's manifestation of a candle flame-colored cloud of swirling lights bobbed drunkenly left and right on its way back to the shelf with the skull. Purple globs of glowing plasm dribbled from the cloud in a steady trail, striking the floor, where they winked out into blobs of transparent goo. The cloud flowed into the skull, and after a moment, faint violet flames appeared in the skull's empty eye sockets.
"Ow," Bob said, his voice tired.
"Hell's bells," I muttered. "Bob, you all right?"
"No."
Bob? Monosyllabic? Crap. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No," Bob said, faintly. "Rest."
"But- "
"Report," Bob said. "Have to."
Right. He'd been sent out on a mission and he was feeling pressured to finish it. "What happened?"
"Wards," Bob said. "Marcone's."
I felt my mouth fall open. "What?"
"Wards," Bob repeated.
I sat down on my stool. "How the hell did Marcone get wards?"
Bob's tone became a shade contemptuous. "Magic?"
The insult relieved me a little. If he was able to be a wiseass he'd probably be okay. "Could you tell who did the wards?"
"No. Too good."
Damn. A spell had to get up pretty early in the morning to get around Bob. Maybe he'd been hurt worse than I thought. "What about Ortega?"


Death Masks Chapter 9, Page 94