My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding by Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jim Butcher, P. N. Elrod, Rachel Caine, Esther M. Friesner, Susan Krinard, Lori Handeland, L. A. Banks Page B

"It's her wedding day, Murph."
    "Five minutes," she said at once.
    "I need you to pick something up for me on the way."
    Murphy came through the door eight minutes later. She was the head of Chicago P.D.'s Special Investigations Department. They were the cops who got to handle all the crimes that didn't fall into anyone else's purviewstuff like vampire attacks and mystical assaults, as well as more mundane crimes like grave robbing. Plus all the really messy cases the other cops didn't want to bother with. SI is supposed to make everything fit neatly into the official reports, explaining away anything weird with logical, rational investigation.
    SI spends a lot of time struggling with that last one. Murphy writes more Fiction than most novelists.
    Murphy doesn't look like a cop, much less a monster cop. She's five nothing.
    She's got blond hair, blue eyes, and a cute nose. She's also got about a zillion gunnery awards and a shelf full of opentournament martial arts trophies, and I once saw her kill a giant plant monster with a chain saw. She wore jeans, a white tee, sneakers, a baseball cap, and her hair was pulled back into a tail. She wore her gun in a shoulder rig, her badge around her neck, and had a backpack slung over one shoulder.
    She came through the door and stopped in her tracks. She surveyed the room For a minute and then said, "What did this?"
    I nodded at the twisted Futon Frame. "Something strong."
    "I wish I was a bigtime private investigator like you. Then I could figure these things out for myself."
    "You bring it?" I asked.
    She tossed me the backpack. "The rest is in the car. What's it for?"
    I opened the pack, took out a bleachedwhite human skull, and put it down on the kitchen counter. "Bob, wake up."
    Orange lights appeared in the skull's shadowed eye sockets, and then slowly grew brighter. The skull's jaws twitched and then opened into a pantomime of a wide yawn. A voice issued out, acoustics odd, like when you talk in a racquetball court. "What's up, boss?"
    "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Murphy swore. She took a step back and almost fell over the remains of the entertainment center.
    Bob the Skull's eyelights brightened. "Hey, the cute blonde! Did you do her, Harry?" The skull spun in place on the counter and surveyed the damage. "Wow.
    You did] Way to go, stud!"
    My face felt hot. "No, Bob," I growled.
    "Oh," the skull said, crestfallen.
    Murphy closed her mouth, blinking at the skull. "Uh. Harry?"
    "This is Bob the Skull," I told her.
    "It's a skull," she said. "That talks."
    "Bob is actually the spirit inside. The skull is just the container i t' s in.
    She looked blankly at me and then said, "It's a skull. That talks."
    "Hey!" Bob protested. "I am not an it! I am definitely a he!"
    "Bob is my lab assistant," I explained.
    Murphy looked back at Bob and shook her head. "Just when I start thinking this magic stuff couldn't get weirder."
    "Bob," I said. "Take a look around. Tell me what did this."
    The skull spun obediently and promptly said, "Something strong."
    Murphy gave me an oblique look.
    "Oh, bite me," I told her. "Bob, I need to know if you can sense any residual magic."

    "Ungawa, bwana," Bob said. He did another turnaround, slower, and the orange eyelights narrowed.
    "Residual magic?" Murphy asked.
    "Any time you use magic, it can leave a kind of mark on the area around you.
    Mostly it's so faint that sunrise wipes it away every morning. I can't always sense it."
    "But he can?" Murphy asked.
    "But he can!" Bob agreed. "Though not with all this chatter. I'm working over here."
    I shook my head and picked up the phone again.
    "Yes," said Billy. He sounded harried, and there was an enormous amount of background noise.
    "I'm at your apartment," I said. "I came here looking for Georgia."
    "What?" he said.
    "Your apartment," I said louder.
    "Oh, Harry," Billy said. "Sorry, this phone is giving me fits. Eve just talked to Georgia. She's here at the resort."
    I frowned. "What? Is she all right?"
    "Why