He explained that he'd hired four people. The first was Marjorie, his secretary, a fifty- year-old woman who'd become battle-hardened by twenty-five years of staffing phones in one of the city's more crime-ridden police bureaus. The second was Jeff Christopher, a twenty-one-year-old computer prodigy and, as it happened, a shape-shifter of as-of- yet-unidentified shape. The third was Catcher Bell. Catcher was twenty-nine and, my grandfather said, gruff. Warned my grandfather: "He's pretty, but he's wily. Give him a wide berth."

"That's only three," I pointed out when my grandfather paused.

Silence, then, "There's a vampire. Housed, but his colleagues don't know he works for me. He avoids the office unless absolutely necessary. They do the groundwork," my grandfather continued, "so all I have to do is step in and play good guy." I doubted he was as uninvolved as all that, but - especially in contrast with my father - the humility was refreshing. "You won't believe this," he said on a gravelly chuckle, "but I'm not as spry as I used to be."

"No!" I exclaimed, feigning shock, and he laughed in response. "I can't believe you've been keeping this from us. I can't believe you've been playing with magic for four years and didn't tell me. Me! The girl who wrote about King Arthur for a living."

He patted my hand. "It wasn't you that I was trying to keep the information from."

I nodded in understanding. My father's discovery of my grandfather's secret would have led to one of two results: arranging to have my grandfather fired, or trying to manipulate my grandfather to get closer to the Mayor. Ever scheming was my father.

"Still," I said, watching through the window as the city passed by, "you could've told me."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm now your Ombudsman. And I'm taking you to our secret headquarters."

I looked over at him, watched him try unsuccessfully to hide a smile. "Secret, huh?"

He nodded, very officially.

"Well, then," I said. "That makes all the difference."

The office of the Ombudsman was a low, unassuming brick building that stood at the end of a quiet block in a middle-class neighborhood on the city's South Side. The houses were modest but well tended, the yards surrounded with chain link fence. My grandfather parked the Olds along the curb, and I followed him up a narrow sidewalk. He tapped buttons on an alarm keypad on the wall next to the door, then unlocked the front door with a key. The interior of the building was equally unassuming, and looked like it hadn't gotten a style upgrade since the late 1960s. There was a lot of orange. A lot of orange.

"They work late," I noted, the interior well lit, even given the hours.

"Creatures of the night serving creatures of the night."

"You should put that on your business cards," I suggested.

We walked past a reception area and down a central hallway, then into a room on the right. The room housed four metal desks that were placed at intervals, two back-to-back set out from each facing wall. The front and back walls were covered by rows of gunmetal gray filing cabinets. Posters lined the white walls, most of gorgeous, scantily clad women with flowing hair. The prints looked like they were part of a series: Each featured a different woman wearing a tiny scrap of strategically placed fabric, but the "dresses" were cut in different colors, as were the pennants they held in their hands. One woman was blond, her dress blue, and she held a pennant that read "Goose Island." A second had long, raven-dark hair and was dressed in red. Her pennant read "North Branch." These, I surmised, were some of the Chicago River nymphs.

"Jeff. Catcher."