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"Si bait"

"You will not be bait," Catcher said

"Oh, hell no," she agreed "I’ve already seen one sorceress get chewed up this week" She waved it off "The dragon doesn’t want me anyway, not really Rery Chicago With a little creative spell casting, we can create an offer it won’t be able to refuse"

I glanced at Mallory "When we make that offer, and it shows up, and we kill it, what happens to the Egregore, to the ain, and just set ourselves up for more drama? For another round of this in the future?"

"There’s a risk," Catcher said with a nod "The ic doesn’t dissipate cleanly, just spreads out over don again, and we have more delusions, more violence"

"That would be an unacceptable risk," randfather said

"We need to nail that down," I said "We can’t risk letting the on fall onto don Chicago We need to take the dragon down, and we need to keep that ether"

"Actually," Mallory said, "Portnoy thought of that, too Jeff?" she requested, and he panned the zooes There, the Egregore spark was enclosed in some kind of orb

"He trapped it," Ethan said

"Technically," Mallory said, "he bound it into quartz But yeah, same effect"

"So what do we use to bind it?" Gabriel asked with a grin "World’s largest piece of Tupperware?"

"Could be anything," Mallory said with a sic without breaking"

"Maybe we can keep it simple," I said I unbelted leahts "We’ll already have our swords Can you trap it in steel?"

Catcher opened his ain

"Is that possible?" Ethan asked "To bind ic in steel?"

"Like Mallory said, it just needs to be capable of holding ic, and we know it can The tricky bit would be the size differential The sword is not literally large enough to hold a dragon’s worth of le it" Catcher nodded as he considered "You’ll need a protocol Words, steps I’ll let you know"

My grandfather nodded "In that case, we’ve got the place, the weapons, the bait, the binding"

"And tomorrow at dusk," Ethan said, "we finish the job"

• • •

As dawn approached again, the Ombuddies returned to their offices, the vampires to their Houses Mallory and Catcher returned to Wicker Park to ready the ic We returned to our apartments Ethan closed and locked the door, emotions heavy around us

"This could all be over tomorrow," I said