Plot

Dresden runs up against the High Council when they suspect him in the deaths of a college coed and a local mobster from black magic.

My day started with a visit to a crime scene, where Murphy showed me two bodies, those of mobster Tommy Tom and his girlfriend, Jennifer Randall. Their hearts had exploded, but the bodies were untouched, and there was no sign of a forced entry. I figure that someone did this from a distance using thaumaturgy, a form of black magic.

I didn't want to get near this case. In fact, I told Murphy I wouldn't take it, but the High Council had other ideas. Morgan took me to Ancient Mai, who informed me that I was their prime suspect for this use of the black. The only way for me to avoid being executed was to find the real culprit.

Lucky me.

I checked out Jennifer's large apartment and found a picture of her with her two best friends, Grace Cutler and Linda Atwater. The best way to find an enemy is to start with a friend. First, I went to Grace whose mother informed me that her daughter died of an overdose, and her husband took his own life out of grief. Mrs. Cutler blamed Jennifer and Linda for her daughter's death.

After I left, something tried to attack me, which meant I was on the right track. That night, I invited my sometime-girlfriend Susan Rodriguez, an investigative reporter, over for a date. Before we got started, though, a demon showed up. I managed to banish it after a rough fight in which Susan got hit on the head and after seeing a nice car with a vanity plate drive away.

Murphy ran the plate, and it belonged to surprise Linda. I found her car crashed into a lamppost, her heart having exploded out of her chest and Bianca the last number on her cell phone's call log.

Things were starting to make sense. Bianca's club wasn't the best place for wide-eyed college girls, but it they went anyhow. At Bianca's Jennifer found Tommy Tom, Linda found wealth and luxury, and Grace Grace found magic. The demon who tried to kill me? She summoned it, and it killed her when she messed something up.

This was why amateurs shouldn't use magic. Summoning a demon wasn't for the unskilled. Now someone else was summoning the demon, and using The Black for revenge. When I found a trunk full of grimoires in the Cutler house, I knew we had our guy: Mr. Cutler, who'd faked his own death and was taking revenge on the people who killed his little girl.

I tracked him down, but not before he could summon the demon again. The demon killed him, and was about to come after me when Morgan banished him now, finally, believing I was innocent.

Lucky me.