White Night by Jim Butcher

near the top, then descended into fewer notes on the next strip down, and so on, forming a vague V-shape. At the top of the V rested a single, square yellow sticky note.
    That note read, in a heavy hand, Ordo Lebes? Find them.
    "Dammit, Thomas," I murmured quietly. I addressed Lasciel. "Get rid of it."
    Lasciel nodded and the illusion disappeared. "There is something else you should know, my host."
    I eyed her. "What's that?"
    "It may concern your safety and the course of your investigation. May I show you?"
    The word no came strongly to mind, but I was already in for a penny, so to speak. Lasciel's wealth of intelligence and experience made her an extremely capable adviser. "Briefly."
    She nodded, rose, and suddenly I was standing in Anna Ash's apartment, as I had been that afternoon.
    "My host," Lasciel said, "Remember you how many women you observed entering the building?"
    I frowned. "Sure. As many as half a dozen had the right look, though anyone who arrived before Murphy and I got there could have already been inside."
    "Precisely," Lasciel said. "Here."
    She waved a hand, and an image of me appeared in the apartment's entry, Murphy at my side.
    "Anna Ash," Lasciel said. She nodded toward me, and Anna's image appeared, facing me. "Can you describe the others in attendance?"
    "Helen Beckitt," I said. "Looking leaner and more weathered than the last time I saw her."
    Beckitt's image appeared where she had been standing by the window.
    I pointed at the wooden rocking chair. "Abby and Toto were there." The plump blond woman and her dog appeared. I rubbed at my forehead. "Uh, two on the sofa and one on the love seat."
    Three shadowy forms appeared in the named places.
    I pointed at the sofa. "The pretty one, in the dance leotard, the one worried about time." She appeared. I pointed at the shadowed figure next to her. "Bitter, suspicious Priscilla who was not being polite." The shadowy figure became Priscilla's image.
    "And there you go," I said.
    Lasciel shook her head, waved her hand, and the people images all vanished.
    All except the shadowy figure sitting on the love seat.
    I blinked.
    "What can you remember about this one?" Lasciel asked me.
    I racked my brain. It's usually good for this kind of thing. "Nothing," I said after a moment. "Not one damned detail. Nothing." I added two and two together and got trouble. "Someone was under a veil. Someone good enough to make it subtle. Hard to tell it was there at all. Not invisible so much as extremely boring and unremarkable."
    "In your favor," Lasciel said, "I should point out that you had crossed the threshold uninvited, and thus were deprived of much of your power. In such a circumstance it would be most difficult for you to sense a veil at all, much less to pierce it."
    I nodded, frowning at the shadowy figure. "It was deliberate," I said. "Anna goaded me into walking over the threshold on purpose. She was hiding Miss Mystery from me."
    "Entirely possible," Lasciel concurred. "Or…"
    "Or they didn't know someone was there, either," I said. "And if that's the case…" I tossed the notebook aside with a growl and rose.
    "What are you doing?" she asked.
    I got my staff and coat, and got Mouse ready to go. "If the mystery guest was news to the Ordo, she's right in among them and they could be in danger. If the Ordo knew about her, then they played me and lied to me." I ripped open the door with more than my usual effort. "Either way, I'm going over there to straighten some things out."

CHAPTER
     Ten

    I swept the Beetle for bombs again and got the impression that I was going to get heartily sick of the chore, fast. It was clean, and off we went.
    I parked illegally on a street about a block from Anna Ash's apartment, and walked the rest of the way in. I rang buzzers more or less at random until someone buzzed me in, and headed back up the stairs to Anna's apartment.
    This time, though, I went in armed for bear. As I rode up in the elevator, I got out my jar of