The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4)(11)

Inverno showed his teeth. “Mainly due to your ignorance.”

“Meaning?”

“I assure you, Mister Dresden, that I am quite capable of rattling you. To death, if necessary.”

He said it right. Calmly, evenly, not looking away from my eyes. He wasn’t human. A human would have triggered a soulgaze by doing something like that.

“So how come you haven’t done something already?” I asked.

“I prefer not to be obvious,” he said.

“Or you don’t want to cross Queen Mab.”

He swirled his drink and gave me a confident smile. “I think we both know that Queen Mab wouldn’t waste many tears on a Knight who got himself killed in a foolish fight with a being he did not bother to know.”

I grunted, studying him. Inverno was either as dangerous as he seemed to think, deluded about how powerful he was, or an excellent liar. I’m not bad at making threats, and he’d taken mine without rancor or discomfort.

The problem was, I could sense that he was a member of the Winter Court. As long as he was in good standing with Mab, if I just walked up and aced him, I might well be in a lot of trouble, myself. Mab didn’t take kindly to anyone messing with her people—and I knew damned well she had taken in a lot of strays over the centuries, beings of tremendous power who could bend me over and spank me if they chose to do so. Sure, I’d taken on a Titan—a battered, bloodied, bruised, exhausted Titan, who had been pounded on by every supernatural boss in sight before I ever got to her. I’d only been the Winter Knight for a little while. I’d be a fool to think I knew every badass in the Winter Court.

I wasn’t convinced Inverno was as tough as he said he was.

But I hadn’t survived in my business as long as I had by taking a lot of blind, foolish chances, either.

Besides.

There’d been a lot of blood in my life lately.

“Okay,” I said. “I can play nice a little longer. Who is your principal, so I can make contact?”

“I’m sure that is entirely obvious, Mister Dresden,” Inverno said. “I am currently in the service of the Baron John Marcone.”





Chapter Eight





Gentleman John Marcone, the robber baron of Chicago’s underworld, had become an actual Baron, a rank bestowed upon him when he became the first vanilla human to join the Unseelie Accords—partly thanks to yours truly, who had been one of the representatives of the Signatories who had signed off on the paperwork for his application.

I know, I know.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Only now I knew that he wasn’t a straight up vanilla human anymore—and it had been bad enough when that’s all he was. He was damned intelligent, clever, foresighted, and between his loads of money, expert hirelings, and canny preparation, he’d been a threat every bit as formidable as any number of supernaturally powerful weirdos.

Now he was also a supernaturally powerful weirdo, and it hadn’t changed his operational patterns in the least. He was still cagey as hell, still had the money, and the hirelings, and years of ruthless street-level savvy—and the knowledge of a literally God-damned angel to back him up as well.

Generally speaking, I had enjoyed confronting Marcone. He was a jerk. I had expressed my displeasure with him by knocking down his doors on a number of occasions, and I’d do it again if I had to.

But when it had just been me against the Titan, Marcone alone had stood beside me.

When I’d raised a small army to defend Chicago in the desperate hours of the Titan’s attack, Marcone had done the same thing, only maybe more effectively than me. When my people had needed arms, it had been Marcone’s (and Mab’s) foresight that had provided them.

And when I had been helpless in the moments after casting the binding that had taken the Titan down, it had been Marcone who saved my life.

That wasn’t the kind of thing I could simply ignore.

He was, more than ever, the devil I knew.

I didn’t like Marcone. I wouldn’t ever like him.

But in considering how to approach him I discovered something unpleasant about myself: I respected him. I respected how dangerous he was. I respected his capability. I respected his willingness to put himself in personal danger to defend what he saw as his own. And in that realization, I saw that I couldn’t have respect for him and simultaneously treat him with contempt.

So, I did something I never would have done a few years ago.

I called ahead.

Marcone had me come to one of his buildings to meet him. This one was on the southeastern edge of the Gold Coast, and it had been annihilated by Ethniu and the Eye of Balor. A week later, it was the first building destroyed in the attack to be cleared of debris and was currently going back up again. After only a month, a skeleton of steel had already begun to arise, and hundreds of workers were busily building back whatever building was there, and stronger than it had been in the first place.

Marcone was a jerk.

But he was putting a lot of food in families’ mouths. And I liked the defiance inherent in the rebuilding.

Dammit.

Ms. Gard met me at the gate to the construction site. The Valkyrie wore her usual suit, with steel-toed work boots substituted in, and a white hardhat over her golden hair. She handed me a hardhat as well, and I put it on. Gard was… well, not good people, but she was solid. We’d both lost people close to us in the attack.