"Yeah, I guess. The genocide Lotto."

"And you stopped them."

"I helped do it and lived to walk away. But there was an unhappy ending."

"What?"

"I didn't get paid. For either case. I make more money from flaming demon monkey crap. That's just wrong."

Thomas laughed a little and shook his head. "I don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

"Why you do it."

"Do what?"

He slouched down in the driver's seat. "The Lone Ranger impersonation. You get pounded to scrap every time you turn around and you barely get by on the gumshoe work. You live in that dank little cave of an apartment. Alone. You've got no woman, no friends, and you drive this piece of crap. Your life is kind of pathetic."

"Is that what you think?" I asked.

"Call them like I see them."

I laughed. "Why do you think I do it?"

He shrugged. "All I can figure is that either you're nursing a deep and sadistic self-hatred or else you're insane. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and left monumental stupidity off the list."

I kept on smiling. "Thomas, you don't really know me. Not at all."

"I think I do. I've seen you under pressure."

I shrugged. "Yeah, but you see me, what? Maybe a day or two each year? Usually when something's been warming up to kill me by beating the tar out of me."

"So?"

"So that doesn't cover what my life is like the other three hundred and sixty-three days," I said. "You don't know everything about me. My life isn't completely about magical mayhem and creative pyromania in Chicago."

"Oh, that's right. I heard you went to exotic Oklahoma a few months back. Something about a tornado and the National Severe Storms Lab."

"I was doing the new Summer Lady a favor, running down a rogue storm sylph. Got to go all over the place in those tornado-chaser geekmobiles. You should have seen the look on the driver's face when he realized that the tornado was chasing us."