"Bob," I said, "wake up."
Orangish flames kindled wearily to life inside the open eye sockets of the skull. "Oh for crying out loud," a voice from within complained. "Can't you take a night off? It'll be finished when it's finished, Harry."
"No rest for the wicked, Bob," I said cheerfully. "And that means we can't slack off either, or they'll outwork us."
The skull's voice took on a whiny tone. "But we've been tinkering with that stupid thing every night for six months. You're growing a cowlick and buck teeth, by the way. You keep this up and you'll have to retire to a home for magical geeks and nerds."
"Pish tosh," I said.
"You can't say pish tosh to that," Bob grumped. "You don't even know what it means."
"Sure I do. It means spirits of air should shut up and assist their wizard before he sends them out to patrol for fungus demons again."
"I get no respect," Bob sighed. "Okay, okay. What do you want to do now?"
I gestured at the table. "Is it ready?"
"Ready?" Bob said. "It isn't ever going to be ready, Harry. Your subject is fluid, always changing. Your model must change too. If you want it to be as accurate as possible, it's going to be a headache keeping it up to date."
"I do, and I know," I told him. "So talk. Where are we? Is it ready for a test run?"
"Put me in the lake," Bob said.
I reached up to the shelf obligingly, picked up the skull, and set it down on the eastern edge of the table.
The skull settled down beside the model city of Chicago. I'd built it onto my table, in as much detail as I'd been able to afford with my new paycheck. The skyline rose up more than a foot from the tabletop, models of each building made from cast pewter-also expensive, given I'd had to get each one made individually. Streets made of real asphalt ran between the buildings, lined with streetlights and mailboxes in exacting detail-and all in all, I had the city mapped out to almost two miles from Burnham Harbor in every direction. Detail began to fail toward the outskirts of the model, but as far as I'd been able to, I modeled every building, every road, every waterway, every bridge, and every tree with as much accuracy as I knew how.
I'd also spent months out on the town, collecting bits and pieces from every feature on my map. Bark from trees, usually. Chips of asphalt from the streets. I'd taken a hammer and knocked a chip or two off every building modeled there, and those pieces of the originals had been worked into the structure of their modeled counterparts.
If I'd done it correctly, the model would be of enormous value to my work. I'd be able to use various techniques to do all kinds of things in town-track down lost objects, listen in on conversations happening within the area depicted by the model, follow people through town from the relative safety of my lab-lots of cool stuff. The model would let me send my magic throughout Chicago with a great deal more facility and with a far broader range of applications than I could currently manage.
Of course, if I hadn't done it correctly...
"This map," Bob said, "is pretty cool. I'd have thought you would have shown it off to someone by now."
"Nah," I said. "Tiny model of the city down here in my basement laboratory. Sort of projects more of that evil, psychotic, Lex Luthor vibe than I'd like."
"Bah," Bob said. "None of the evil geniuses I ever worked for could have handled something like this." He paused. "Though some of the psychotics could have, I guess."
"If that's meant to be flattering, you need some practice."
"What am I if not good for your ego, boss?" The skull turned slowly, left to right, candleflame eyes studying the model city-not its physical makeup, I knew, but the miniature ley lines that I'd built into the surface of the table, the courses of magical energy that flowed through the city like blood through the human body.
"It looks..." He made a sound like someone idly sucking a breath through his teeth. "Hey, it looks not bad, Harry. You've got a gift for this kind of work. That model of the museum really altered the flow around the stadium into something mostly accurate, speaking thaumaturgically."
"Is that even a real word?" I asked.
"It should be," he said with a superior sniff. "Little Chicago might be able to handle something if you want to give it a test run." The skull spun around to face me. "Tell me that this doesn't have something to do with the bruises on your face."
"I'm not sure it does," I said. "I got word today that the Gatekeeper-"
Bob shivered.
"-thinks that there's black magic afoot in town, and that I need to do something about it."
"And you want to try to use Little Chicago to find it?"
"Maybe," I said. "Do you think it will work?"
"I think that the Wright Brothers tested their new stuff at Kitty Hawk instead of trying it over the Grand Canyon for a reason," Bob said. "Specifically, because if the plane folded due to flawed design, they might survive it at Kitty Hawk."
"Or maybe they couldn't afford to travel," I said. "Besides, how dangerous could it be?"
Bob stared at me for a second. Then he said, "You've been pouring energy into this thing every night for six months, Harry, and right now it's holding about three hundred times the amount of energy that kinetic ring you wear will contain."
I blinked. At full power, that ring could almost knock a car onto its side. Three hundred times that kind of energy translated to... well, something I'd rather not experience within the cramped confines of the lab. "It's got that much in it?"
"Yes, and you haven't tested it yet. If you've screwed up some of the harmonics, it could blow up in your face, worst-case scenario. Best case, you only blow out the project and set yourself back to ground zero."
"To square one," I corrected him. "Square one is the beginning of a project. Ground zero is the area immediately under a bomb blast."
"One may tend to resemble the other," Bob said sourly.
"I'll just have to live with the risk," I said. "That's the exciting life of a professional wizard and his daring assistant."
"Oh, please. Assistants get paid."
In answer, I reached down to a paper bag out of sight below the table and withdrew two paperback romances.
Bob let out a squeaking sound, and his skull jounced and jittered on the blue-painted surface of the table that represented Lake Michigan. "Is that it, is that it?" he squeaked.