and the ceiling were covered in sigils, runes, and magical formulae. They weren’t proper wards, like the ones I had on my home, but they worked on the same principles. Without a threshold to build them upon, no single one of the formulae was particularly powerful—but there were lots of them. They began to gleam with a silvery glow in the light coming from my amulet.
“Wow,” Molly said, staring slowly around her. “What is this place, Harry?”
“Bolt hole I set up last year, in case I needed someplace quiet where I wouldn’t get much company.”
Morgan was looking, too, though his face was pale and drawn with pain. He swept his eyes around and said, “What’s the mix?”
“Concealment and avoidance, mostly,” I replied. “Plus a Faraday cage.”
Morgan nodded, glancing around. “It looks adequate.”
“What’s that mean?” Molly asked me. “A Faraday what?”
“It’s what they call it when you shield equipment from electromagnetic pulses,” I told her. “You build a cage of conductive material around the thing you want to protect, and if a pulse sweeps over it, the energy is channeled into the earth.”
“Like a lightning rod,” Molly said.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Only instead of electricity, this is built to stop hostile magic.”
“Once,” Morgan corrected me primly.
I grunted. “Without a threshold to work with, there’s only so much you can do. The idea is to protect you from a surprise assault long enough for you to go out the back door and run.”
Molly glanced at the back of the storage unit and said, “There’s no door there, Harry. That’s a wall. It’s kind of the opposite of a door.”
Morgan nodded his head at the back corner of the space, where a large rectangular area on the floor was clear of any runes or other markings. “There,” he said. “Where’s it come out?”
“About three long steps from one of the marked trails the Council has right of passage on in Unseelie territory,” I said. I nodded at a cardboard box sitting in the rectangle. “It’s cold there. There’re a couple of coats in the box.”
“A passage to the Nevernever,” Molly breathed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Hopefully whoever was coming after me wouldn’t, either,” I said.
Morgan eyed me. “One can’t help noting,” he said, “that this place seems ideally suited to hiding and sheltering a fugitive from the Wardens.”
“Hunh,” I said. “Now that you mention it, yeah. Yeah it does seem kind of friendly to that sort of purpose.” I gave Morgan an innocent look. “Just an odd coincidence, I’m sure, since I happen to be one of those paranoid lunatics, myself.”
Morgan glowered.
“You came to me for a reason, Chuckles,” I said. “Besides. I wasn’t thinking about the Wardens nearly so much as I was . . .” I shook my head and shut my mouth.
“As who, Harry?” Molly asked.
“I don’t know who they are,” I said. “But they’ve been involved in several things lately. The Darkhallow, Arctis Tor, the White Court coup. They’re way too handy with magic. I’ve been calling them the Black Council.”
“There is no Black Council,” Morgan snapped, with the speed that could only have been born of reflex.
Molly and I traded a look.
Morgan let out an impatient breath. “Any actions that may have been taken are the work of isolated renegades,” he said. “There is no organized conspiracy against the White Council.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Gosh, I’d have thought you’d be right on board with the conspiracy thing.”
“The Council is not divided,” he said, his voice as hard and cold as I had ever heard it. “Because the moment we turn upon one another, we’re finished. There is no Black Council, Dresden.”
I lifted both eyebrows. “From my perspective, the Council’s been turning on me for most of my life,” I said. “And I’m a member. I have a robe and everything.”
“You,” Morgan spat, “are . . .” He almost seemed to be choking on something before he blew out a breath and finished, “. . . vastly irritating.”
I beamed at him. “That’s the Merlin’s line, isn’t it?” I said. “There is no conspiracy against the Council.”
“It is the position of the entire Senior Council,” Morgan shot back.
“Okay, smart guy,” I said. “Explain what happened to you.”
He glowered again, only with more purple.
I nodded sagely, then turned to Molly. “This place should protect you from most tracking spells,” I said. “And the avoidance wards should keep anyone from wandering by or asking any questions.”
Morgan made a growling noise.
“Suggestions, not compulsions,” I said, rolling my eyes. “They’re in common usage and you