A long, long shower and the cleansing force of the rising sun had been enough to wash away the illusion that had obscured my true features.
I visited my brother at his office the next day.
"How's business?" I asked him.
He shook his head, scowling. "You know what? I've been doing so much gopher work for the Council and the Wardens, I think I must be forgetting how to be a private eye."
"Why's that?"
"Oh, I went up against this complete joke of a bad guy yesterday," he said. "Kidnapper. I mean, you should have seen this loser. He was a joke."
"Uh-huh," I said.
"And somehow he manages to get away from me." Harry shook his head. "I mean, I got the kid back, no problem, but the little skeeve skated out on me."
"Maybe you're getting old."
He glowered at me. "The worst part is that the chick who hired me, it turns out, isn't even his mother. She was playing me all along. The kid's been missing for three days, and his real parents are trying to get the cops to freaking arrest me. After I pull him off a freaking sacrificial altar-okay, a cheesy, stupid sacrificial altar, but a sacrificial altar all the same."
"Where's the chick?" I asked.
"Who knows?" Harry said, exasperated. "She's gone. Stiffed me, too. And good luck trying to get the kid's parents to pay me for the investigation and rescue. There's a better chance of electing a Libertarian president."
"The perils of the independent entrepreneur," I said. "You hungry?"
"You buying?"
"I'm buying."
He stood up. "I'm hungry." He put on his coat and walked with me toward the door, shaking his head. "I tell you, Thomas. Sometimes I feel completely unappreciated."
I found myself smiling.
"Wow," I said. "What's it like?"