"So," she said, between chews. "You want to know about the Shroud, and the people who stole it."

I lifted my eyebrows. "Uh. Yeah, actually. You're pretty good."

"There are two problems."

I frowned. "Okay. What are they?"

Ulsharavas peered at me and said, "First. I don't work for bokkor."

"I'm not a bokkor," I protested.

"You aren't a houngun. You aren't a mambo. That makes you a sorcerer."

"Wizard," I said. "I'm with the White Council."

The doll tilted her head. "You're stained," she said. "I can feel black magic on you."

"It's a long story," I said. "But mostly it isn't mine."

"Some of it is."

I frowned at the doll and then nodded. "Yeah. I've made a bad call or two."

"But honest," Ulsharavas noted. "Well enough. Second is my price."

"What did you have in mind?"

The doll spat to one side, flecks of tobacco landing on the floor. "An honest answer to one question. Answer me and I will tell you what you seek."

"Yeah, right," I said. "You could just ask me for my Name. I've heard that one before."

"I didn't say you'd have to answer in full," the doll said. "I certainly do not wish to threaten you. But what you would answer, you must answer honestly."

I thought about it for a minute before I said, "All right. Done."

Ulsharavas scooped up more tobacco and started chomping. "Answer only this. Why do you do what you do?"

I blinked at her. "You mean tonight?"

"I mean always," she answered. "Why are you a wizard? Why do you present yourself openly? Why do you help other mortals as you do?"

"Uh," I said. I stood up and paced over to my table. "What else would I do?"

"Precisely," the doll said, and spat. "You could be doing many other things. You could be seeking a purpose in life in other careers. You could be sequestered and studying. You could be using your skills for material gain and living in wealth. Even in your profession as an investigator, you could do more to avoid confrontation than you do. But instead you consign yourself to a poor home, a dingy office, and the danger of facing all manner of mortal and supernatural foe. Why?"

I leaned back against my table, folded my arms, and frowned at the doll. "What the hell kind of question is that?"

"An important one," she said. "And one that you agreed to answer honestly."

"Well," I said. "I guess I wanted to do something to help people. Something I was good at."

"Is that why?" she asked.

I chewed over the thought for a moment. Why had I started doing this stuff? I mean, it seemed like every few months I was running up against situations that had the potential to horribly kill me. Most wizards never had the kind of problems I did. They stayed at home, minded their own business, and generally speaking went on about their lives. They did not challenge other supernatural forces. They didn't declare themselves to the public at large. They didn't get into trouble for sticking their noses in other people's business, whether or not they'd been paid to do so. They didn't start wars, get challenged to duels with vampire patriots, or get the windows shot out of their cars.

So why did I do it? Was it some kind of masochistic death wish? Maybe a psychological dysfunction of some sort?

Why?

"I don't know," I said, finally. "I guess I never thought about it all that much."

The doll watched me with unnerving intensity for a full minute before nodding. "Don't you think you should?"

I scowled down at my shoes, and didn't answer.

Ulsharavas took one last fistful of tobacco, and sat back down in her original position, settling her calico dress primly about her. "The Shroud and the thieves you seek have rented a small vessel docked in the harbor. It is a pleasure craft called the Etranger."

I nodded and exhaled through my nose. "All right then. Thank you for your help."

She lifted a tiny hand. "One thing more, wizard. You must know why the Knights of the White God wish you to stay away from the Shroud."

I arched an eyebrow. "Why?"

"They received part of a prophecy. A prophecy that told them that should you seek the Shroud, you will most assuredly perish."

"Only part of a prophecy?" I asked.

"Yes. Their Adversary concealed some of it from them."

I shook my head. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," Ulsharavas said. "You must hear the second half of the prophecy in order to restore the balance."

"Uh. Okay."

The doll nodded and fixed me with that unsettling, unblinking stare. "Should you seek the Shroud, Harry Dresden, you will most assuredly perish."

"All right," I said. "So what happens if I don't?"

The doll lay down on her back, and wisps of light began flowing back out of her, back from whence Ulsharavas had come. Her voice came to me quietly, as if from a great distance. "If you do not, they all die. And this city with them."

I hate cryptic warnings. I know, the whole cryptic-remark concept is part and parcel of the wizard gig, but it doesn't suit my style. I mean, what good is a warning like that? All three Knights and the population of Chicago would die if I didn't get involved-and my number would be up if I did. That sounded like the worst kind of self-fulfilling crap.

There's a case to be made for prophecy; don't get me wrong. Mortals, even wizards, all exist at a finite point in the flow of time. Or, to make it simple, if time is a river, then you and I are like pebbles in it. We exist in one spot at a time, occasionally jostled back and forth by the currents. Spirits don't always have the same kind of existence. Some of them are more like a long thread than a stone-their presence tenuous, but rippling upstream and down as a part of their existence, experiencing more of the stream than the pebble.

That's how oracle spirits know about the future and the past. They're living in them both at the same time they're delivering mysterious messages to you. That's why they only give brief warnings, or mysterious dreams or prophetic knock-knock jokes, or however they drop their clues. If they tell you too much, it will change the future that they're experiencing, so they have to give out the advice with a light touch.

I know. It makes my head hurt too.

I don't put much stock in prophecy. As extensive and aware as these spirits might be, they aren't all-knowing. And as nutty as people are, I don't buy that any spirit is going to be able to keep an absolute lock on every possible temporal outcome.

Maybe- genuine prophecies aside, I could hardly drop the case now. In the first place, I'd been paid up front, and I didn't have the kind of financial breathing space I would need to be able to turn down the money and pay my bills at the same time.

In the second place, the risk of imminent death just didn't hit me the same way it used to. It wasn't that it didn't scare me. It did, in that kind of horrible, uncertain way that left me with nothing to focus my fears upon. But I've beaten risks before. I could do it again.

You want to know another reason I didn't back off? I don't like getting pushed around. I don't like threats. As well-intentioned and polite and caring as Michael's threat had been, it still made me want to punch someone in the nose. The oracle's prophecy had been another threat, of sorts, and I don't let spirits from the Nevernever determine what I'm going to do, either.

Finally, if the prophecy was right, Michael and his brother Knights could be in danger, and they had saved my skinny wizard's ass not long ago. I could help them. They might be heaven-on-wheels when it came to taking on bad guys in a fight, but they weren't investigators. They couldn't run these thieves down the way I could. It was just a question of making them see reason. Once I'd convinced them that the prophecy they'd received wasn't wholly correct, everything would be fine.