My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Lately, everyone has been conjuring it at every available opportunity.

"Mr. Dresden, over here!"

"Jeez, one at a time, please!"

Mt. Ebott, or the Alpine Mountain in Wisconsin, turned out to be both hollow and way deeper than people thought not too long ago. And it was filled to the brim with monsters.

"Mr. Dresden, what is your take on the monster situation and how it pertains to your normal line of work?"

"What, the one where I'm a detective? Hey, stop shoving already!"

Thankfully, none of them have turned out to be violent just yet, but rumors say it's been a close thing a few times. What scares the hell out of the wizards of today, what scared the hell out of the wizards back then? These monsters have souls of their own. That's a Big Fucking Deal, capital letters intended.

"Mr. Dresden, why do you believe that magic has such a negative impact on technology when you use it but has no ill effects when the monsters use it?"

"Could be that their tech is more advanced than ours, and other things go wrong around them, or maybe it's because they're supposedly made of magic, so maybe they control it better. I'm kind of a rough hand with delicate equipment, so stop shoving those microphones in my face or they're going to fry! Seriously!"

It gets worse. If a monster is there when a human dies, they can take a human's soul. That's worth repeating: your immortal soul, locked in a monster, used as a power source like a car battery or something, for potentially hundreds or thousands of years. I heard some of the White Council's first thoughts on the matter involved the magical equivalent of leveling Wisconsin, but those got shot down pretty quickly. Sad thing is, the Vatican might support it if they weren't so busy denying the monster's ability in the first place. A friend of mine, Michael Carpenter, has been on the fence between praying for their own souls and wanting to help defend them, and preparing to recover any Christian souls that might be taken. Or maybe just any souls at all, he's not the kind to discriminate.

"Mr. Dresden- no, Jeff, get the camera over- Mr. Dresden, did you just blow out my camera?!"

"For the last freakin' time, PENS AND PAPER, PEOPLE! When emotions run high... get them further back and let me set a goddamn circle! Move back!"

Meanwhile, my name got out as one of the real ones. See, I've known magic is real almost my whole life. Comes with being a Wizard, a Magi, one of the wise. Given time to prepare, we are some of the most tenacious and unbeatable people on the planet, bar none. I'm listed in the phone book under 'Wizards,' and I'm the only one there. Until now, the powers that be, whether they're the people running the government or just the ones out to make my life a living hell, have kept me from being taken seriously on the subject of magic on T.V. or even just in general. That changed when a kid walked out of Mt. Ebott with the monsters, an orphan like me, and he or she (nobody knows for sure) told the story of how human wizards locked the door behind them. Seven of them, in fact, and with a magical barrier designed to only be unlocked with seven more wizards or a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. Or maybe ten bombs. Long story short, it's harder to hide monsters from the world when they're asking for a seat on the U.N. for a twelve year old kid.

So. Magic is real. Wizards are real. And here one is, actually advertising in a phone book, and hits all the checkboxes for being the real deal according to the several thousand year old monster royalty.

Cue an endless stream of reporters who want a professional opinion from one of the 'Wise' on current events. And let me tell you, balancing what I can and can't say about the details of magic to a bunch of vanilla mortals so that I don't inadvertently kick-start World War 3, the one for all the marbles, takes a damned toll on my patience.

Cut to me, now, taking a piece of chalk out of my pocket to draw a perfect circle around me on the pavement. I was walking to Burger King when the newest swarm descended on me. Jerks.

I let a whisper of will out into the circle, and the energy of the rabid crowd died out instantly. I breathed a sigh of relief, closing my eyes to count to ten.

And then some jackass put a microphone past my fucking barrier, blowing through it like it wasn't there, and the energy spiked around me again.

Three shoulder cameras exploded and everyone wearing an earpiece winced and yanked it out.

"NO MEANS NO! DO NOT PASS THE LINE, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT PUSHING ANYTHING OVER THE LINE, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT INFORMATION YOU CAN'T GET ANYWHERE ELSE!" I finally snapped out, shouting over the crowd, and for a few blissful seconds, everyone just stood there, waiting. The microphone that had been shoved into my face hadn't quite burst into flames, but the reporter somehow managed to rub two brain cells together long enough to realize that it was broken, and probably had been since I'd been swarmed.

I took a breath, touched the circle with my foot and a whisper of willpower, and sighed as the invisible barrier jumped back up again.

One, two, three, four, five...

I finished counting to ten and opened my eyes. The reporters, thankfully, had stopped asking questions, waiting now for whatever I was going to follow up with. Now I may be a smartass, but sometimes you have to use small words to beat it into some people's heads, so that's what I decided to try.

"Now," I exhaled again, "the chalk circle, with a touch of will, should stop your equipment from going completely haywire, but only if you stay on your side of the line. So to the guys in the back who have done this before, feel free to turn your cameras on now."

I waited a moment as two of the local news crews who had done this song and dance at least twice now got their cameras rolling. One sweaty, hairy camera man pushed his way forward and actually set up a microphone stand with a boom mic attached to it just in front of my circle, and I stared at it. Huh. They were adapting. That was somewhere between comforting and terrifying.

I cleared my throat.

"So. Yeah." I swallowed again. Not much of a public speaker. "Everybody keeps coming down to find out whether I'm the real deal. So I'll tell you what I tell all my clients:" I waved my arms open, careful to keep them in the circle, "try me.

"Now, I heard from a few friends what kind of questions to expect given the Monsters' plans to try to build homes outside of their mountain. I'll try to answer them as simply as I can, by ignoring most of them. Until I personally meet these monsters, and by that I mean most of them, I can't tell you much more than you'd probably figure out for yourselves. I can take a guess, though, based on some of the things I've met over the years that go bump in the night."

I had a cruel thought, and smiled inwardly.

"The Special Investigations branch of the Chicago Police Department has dealt with numerous monsters and extra-human beings, so the boys in blue might be able to expand on what I say today."

Heh. Good luck with that, guys. Maybe they might get a budget big enough to hire me as a consultant more, eh?

"There are a lot of different monsters out in the world, not just the ones we've met coming out of the ground recently. I've met some seriously nasty customers hiding behind charming smiles, and some true friends that looked like they belonged in a bad Saturday night horror flick. What I'm trying to say is, we can't judge these new monsters, good or bad, until we meet them. And I don't mean one or two, and I don't mean just a couple officials in press meetings.

"I mean the guys who bag groceries or sell hot dogs on the street. Maybe they'll get a great deal in California, or up in Canada, or some other place forgiving of any differences, where they try to embrace them like new styles, or whatever. Maybe a couple people are jerks, hey, that's life. I expect they'll have jerks just like we do. But places like New York, like here in Chicago, the news'll pass and we'll probably treat them like anyone else, because that's what a bunch of us do. It doesn't matter you've got claws and are seven feet tall, because the guy selling hot dogs has to put his kids through school. And if you break the law, Special Investigations is going to book you, and they'll probably figure out how to make a holding cell to keep you there, magic or otherwise.

"Me? I got a feeling this is all going to blow over way sooner than a bunch of people think it is. Yeah, monsters and magic are real. Vampires and werewolves are real, too, and some of you may remember Karrin Murphy killing a particularly dangerous one a while back. A few of my friends are even werewolves, a nice bunch of kids, growing up too fast.

"That's the world we live in. There are a lot of strange things, but we'll turn up our coats and keep moving, at least here in Chicago. I hope most of them are nice people. Can't know unless I meet them. If they aren't, then..."

I set my jaw.

"Then some of us won't seem so nice either."

I waited a moment, then sighed again, trying to slacken my face, make it look calm again.

"Now I don't know about you, but I'm going to Burger King. If I meet any monsters there, I expect we'll both mind our own business unless somebody starts a fight." I shrugged. "Either way, I'll be on the side of the guy who didn't start it. Good luck with the whole reporting thing, and if anybody wants an interview, I charge by the hour. You can find my number in the phone book, but at this point my answering machine is probably fried. Send me a letter at my office or something."

I looked down at the boom mic pointedly, and the sweaty tech guy rushed to pull it away. The cameras at the back were quickly shut off.

"Have a nice day."

I turned and walked through my circle away from the crowd, ignoring the shouted questions at my back.

Humanity finally admitted that monsters and magic were real again. Heh. I couldn't begin to imagine how much that could change.

I expected one hell of a busy season coming up.