Back in street clothes, I came around to the front door to see the angel leaning on the outside.

“Seeing a warrior like you in feminine frippery is amusing.”

“The two things don’t contradict. Tell me this is a social call?”

“‘Fraid not. I need your help.”

“Why?” The angel asking me for my help made me feel suspicious. “Is it Derek?”

“No.” A pause. “Somebody’s managed to trap a dwarf.”

I winced. “What are they doing? Making them work metal for them?”

“Pretty much.”

I nodded slightly. Sarael was handing this over to me much as I was trying to hand demons over to him. “I’ll take care of it if you’ll keep an eye on Derek.”

“Deal. You’ll find the evidence in Rosslyn, Carlton Building.” The angel gave me a sardonic grin and then walked away, the vaguest sense of feathers surrounding him.

I called Kanesha, asked her to bring both swords and meet me in Rosslyn. A trapped dwarf?

Sarael hadn’t given more than that, or he hadn’t felt he needed to. Or hadn’t known. It was hard to tell which it was. Angels didn’t like to give out information, I’d noticed. Even nice ones.

The Carlton Building was hard to miss, though. The sense of something nasty around it reminded me of when I had met Zaid and dealt with an evil priest. So, I was probably dealing with, oh, a bad witch or something.

Except it felt close, familiar. I winced, but waited across the street until Kanesha showed up with weapons.

That made me feel better. “What are we dealing with?” she asked.

“Sarael told me somebody trapped a dwarf.”

“In there.” She narrowed her eyes. It was an apartment block, an older one that had somehow been left behind when the skyscrapers went up. Such as they were – Rosslyn had nothing on New York, but it vaguely tried to be that. Or Chicago.

Thirty stories was a respectable high rise. It only wanted to be an actual skyscraper when it grew up. This building was ten.

“Funny how it hasn’t been replaced by something higher density, isn’t it,” I commented casually, strengthening my ‘nobody notice me’ field so people wouldn’t see the swords.

“Funny ha ha.” Kanesha grinned. “So…”
“So…there’s something nastily familiar about what I’m sensing. I want to work out for sure what it is before we go in.”

She nodded. “Could it be…”

“It’s not fire giants. No, this is mortals messing with stuff, but…” My nostrils flared, I could feel it.

“…it’s people who fancy themselves as priests of the Aesir or something, isn’t it.”

Startled, I glanced at her. Then I nodded. “Yeah. Bound to happen.”

“Let’s go educate them.”

I grinned, and then headed for the door.