All of which had been made possible by Harry Dresden. And the truly galling thing about the entire situation was that it had been the least evil of the options that had been available to me at the time.

I looked up from the circle I’d chalked on the concrete beneath a sheltered overhang in the alley and shook my head. “Sorry. Can’t get anything. Maybe the blood is too dry. Maybe the donor is dead.”

Murphy nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on the morgues, then.”

I broke the circle with a swipe of my hand and rose from my knees.

“Can I ask you something?” Murphy said.

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you ever use pentagrams? All I ever see you draw is circles.”

I shrugged. “PR mostly. Run around making lots of five-pointed stars in this country and people start screaming about Satan. Including the satanists. I’ve got enough problems. If I need a pentagram, I usually just imagine it.”

“You can do that?”

“Magic’s in your head, mostly. Building an image in your mind and holding it there. Theoretically you could do everything without any chalk or symbols or anything else.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because it’s a pointlessly difficult effort for identical results.” I squinted up at the still-falling snow. “You’re a cop. I need a doughnut.”

She snorted as we left the alley. “Stereotype much, Dresden?”

“Cops do a lot of running around in their cars, and they don’t always get to control their hours, Murph. Lots of times they can’t leave a crime scene to hit a drive-through. So they need food that can sit in a car for hours and hours without tasting foul or giving them food poisoning. Doughnuts are good for that.”