Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

“He wasn’t in much shape to fight,” I said. I chewed on my lip thoughtfully. “He’d had a long, long day.”

Karrin nodded. “You hurt him putting him in there. Didn’t you.”

“Maybe more than he’s ever been hurt,” I said. “Didn’t have many options.”

“Mother of God.” She looked up at me and then out at the dark. “I’m sorry that you had to do that to him.”

“Didn’t hurt me.”

“Sure. What happens to Thomas if you don’t make it through the fight?”

“He stays there,” I said. “Probably for good.”

“Harry, I need your honesty here. Can he be healed? Or are you just buying him time?”

I shrugged a shoulder and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“Hey, I’m making this up as I go along.” I thought of my brother, trapped in a crystal prison for the next foreseeable eternity. And Justine and his kid, alone. “But I have to try.”

She exhaled through her teeth and nodded. “You do.”

The boat chugged steadily through the water back toward town. We both stood, staring toward it, silent tension rising.

I felt her hand slip into mine.

There were lights shining in the city now, though we couldn’t see them until we got within sight of shore—candles in windows. Larger fires, maybe in trash cans.

The city was silent and dim in the darkness, unnaturally still.

Waiting.

And somewhere inside it, my daughter would be asleep right now, with Mouse somewhere under her feet.

I thought of the hideous scarlet light of the Eye, tearing through Marcone’s little fortress.

“ This …” I breathed. “This is too big.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“It’s too big,” I said. “This isn’t a war-torn nation where it can be explained away. Or an odd-duck private investigator with a quirky shtick. It’s Chicago. Ethniu and King Corb aren’t even trying to keep this quiet. The kind of blood that’s going to be spilled … It will cry out.”

“People will be terrified,” Murphy said.

“And they’ll set out to destroy what frightens them,” I said. “It’ll make the Spanish Inquisition look like a bouncy castle.”

Murphy shuddered. “If Ethniu and Corb pull this off, they’ll set the mortal world and the supernatural world at war.”

I stared ahead at the dim skyline of my city, ghostly in the darkness.

“Yeah,” I growled. “If.”

And I gave the old boat all it had.

Enjoyed Peace Talks?

Reading the next one in the series: Battle Ground