This chapter opens with a speech about different kinds of fear likening them to metals. It’s an elaborate metaphor but I found it pretty trite. Point is, Harry is scared and scared in the live wire sense.

And fear for those around me, for the folk who didn’t have the power I had. For Susan. For Michael. For all the young people now laying in the darkness, drugged and dying, or dead already, too stupid or too reckless to have avoided this night.

Ah, nothing says “good guy” like “I nobly care for even the fuckups, the enormous enormous fuckups who are completely to blame for this but I still care about them.”

Also a definitely good sign:

Fear and anger always come hand in hand. Anger is my hiding place from fear, my shield and my sword against it. I waited for the anger to harden my resolve, put steel into my spine. I waited for the rush of outrage and strength, to feel the power of it coalesce around me like a cloud.

But Harry’s tapped: Just a hollow, fluttering sensation, beneath my belt buckle.

He starts shaking and looks around. Like a cornered animal, though that’s not the metaphor he uses and hey, maybe it’s best not to so much as think that when you’re surrounded by predators. The courtyard is walled in by hedges and iron doors.

We also get yet another note on where Harry’s money goes:I gripped my cane with both hands. A sword cane, of course-one made in merry old Jack the Ripper England, not a knock-off from one of those men’s magazines that sells lava lamps and laser pointers. Real steel. But like anger, it still can’t make him stop shaking.

Reason. Reason was my next line of defense.

Yes, noble reason is third in the list.

In fairness, Harry’s a powerhouse and things can come at you fast, so you can see how his mental list would be “murder rage”, “weapons”, “think about it”.

He tells us ignorance is where fear comes from, which does not at all seem to be what’s going on here given Harry is getting more and more terrified as he finds out more, and then things get hilarious.

So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge. I turned back to the front as Bianca started speaking to the crowd, some vainglorious bullshit I didn’t pay any attention to. Reason. Facts.

Yes, this asshole seriously thinks that knowledge is the solution and then immediately tunes out Bianca.

He finally begins to do the detective thing where he thinks about facts. We are only most of the way through the book. So, somebody made ghosts mad, which made the nightmare come out, and we’re going to just ignore the question of why the nightmare needed the others to come out first if it’s stronger and stronger ghosts get out more easily. That somebody is Mavre, who Harry had never met or even known existed. Harry considers that faint possibility that maybe Bianca is actually the one directing it and she’d only learned from Mavre. Yeah, probably.

That said – if Mavre and Bianca are on such good terms, why didn’t she put out any decent food for poor Mavre? This is like inviting your best buddy the diabetic to your all-sugar party. I’d be suspicious there might be another Black Court vamp around. Maybe even an exile from the court, explaining why Bianca seems so inhospitable – she wants Mavre to be distracted by hunger and cranky, so she’ll leave immediately without poking around too much.

Fact four: I was surrounded by monsters, with only the strength of a centuries-old tradition keeping them from tearing my throat out. Still, it seemed to be holding. For now.

Yeah I’m pretty sure that’s just because they all know something hilariously terrible is coming for you. You did everything you possibly could to make them forget about that tradition and go for your throat, and they didn’t, so they know something better will happen if they wait.

Harry then announces he suddenly realizes what’s going on.

The facts started falling into place, about two hours too late. “It’s been a setup from the very beginning. The ghosts. The Nightmare demon. The attacks on our family and friends. All of it.”

No shit.

“She meant to force us to show here from the very beginning. She’s getting set to take a lesson from history,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”
“A lesson from history?” Michael said.
“Yeah. Remember what Vlad Tepesh did at his inauguration?”

Not make his entire plan hinge on Harry just happening to summon the ghost right before the party and just happening to fuck up in precisely the one way that’d bind it to him while just happening to sense there was another power at work and just happen to then leap to the conclusion that he’d find this other power at the party tonight?

I mean I guess this at least explains them dangling the girl in front of Harry’s face while shouting WE THE VAMPIRES ARE BEHIND THIS. If you haven’t been inside Harry’s head, that would seem like a pretty solid plan.

Also, no, I didn’t edit out the part where Harry gives any evidence that Bianca is specifically planning to murder loads of people in an inauguration-style massacre. The most likely answer to what the plan was is that Bianca makes a big deal of inviting him and then tries to get him killed in advance, then when he dies she’s all like “but obviously I didn’t want him dead I’d even given him a formal party invite”, plus all the extra vampires and random superpowered creatures being in town would mean lots of other suspects and hey, maybe Harry being slightly thrown by the party invite is that one little extra distraction that means he doesn’t react in time to a superghost chowing down on him. Harry will not shut up about how important will is to magic, so if you want to kill a wizard, you probably want to pile on as many tiny things to get them off balance as you can.

It is such a great idea to kill Harry right before the party and such a terrible one to kill him during it. Honestly, at this point she’s better off just letting the idiot live through the night and then having someone ambush him as soon as he’s off her property.

“I don’t get it,” Susan said, voice quiet. “What did this guy do?”
“He invited all of his political and personal enemies to a feast. Then he locked them in and burned them all alive. He wanted to start off his administration on a high note.”

Yes, but he was a human who didn’t have any magic laws enforcing hospitality.

This is another flaw of urban fantasy stuff – we make up superstitions based on what’s important to us, but we also remember violations of those. In our world, if you want to murder your own kids or whatever, you don’t get slapped down by any magic, and so plenty of people have done so without any karmic backlash. And we make those people into monsters – but then the monsters have to follow our rules when regular people never did.

Even if Bianca wanted to pull something like this, she just can’t. And there can’t be easy loopholes in it or else nobody would dare go to this party in the first place.

Now, maybe you can argue that there’s a sort of equilibrium to this. It’s significantly harder to murder your enemies at a feast when you’re a vampire, but on the other hand, humans are generally social and not that motivated to commit such murders while vampires are presumably very, very motivated.

The problem is that any such thing should fly right over Harry’s head. If Bianca is planning on murdering Thomas and possibly Mavra and possibly a bunch of the Red Court she doesn’t like and possibly a dragon and possibly another dozen supernatural entities Harry just didn’t mention, then she has to have convinced them that this wasn’t going to be a murderfest, and convincing ancient murderous supercreatures that you, a fellow ancient murderous supercreature who hates them, totally will not murder them when you have the advantage, is going to be way harder than convincing one normalish human.

Also, Thomas is right there with his inhuman murdery mind and actual grasp of vampire politics. He could just tell Harry that fuck, looks like Bianca’s doing that “gather everybody and murder them at a party” thing you do, damn she set that up nice, maybe explain a bit like that Mavra at the doorway there, yeah that means she’s formed an official alliance with Bianca, and between the two of them, they’re strong enough that going on a full offensive against his faction is doable. And yeah, of course Bianca will just turn on the weaker Black Court when she’s finished, but the Black Court is already almost dead and maybe he should’ve mentioned it earlier but it was kinda his people that made sure all those books and movies got made…

Harry and Michael chatter to each other about their inability to just bolt.

“Let me get this straight,” Susan said, quietly, as Bianca’s speech went on. “We can’t leave now because it would be an insult to the vampires.”
“And all the excuse they would need to call for instant satisfaction.”
“Instant satisfaction,” Susan said. “What’s that?”
“A duel to the death.

Okay, so first, thanks for another tidbit (so apparently it’s hospitable to enter and then leave, but not hang out a while and then leave? That kind of makes sense if we assume that you’re stuffing your face the whole time, so for taking advantage of the hospitality you have to stick around for the speeches, but it’d make more sense if Harry’s fuckup was drinking the wine at all.), and second, that doesn’t seem too bad so long as they can’t each do so. Now, if every vampire can challenge, or even if each member of the party does, then yeah, it’s bad, but in general single combat is singular in multiple ways. Especially if Michael can be the champion, what with vampires not even being able to touch him.

But, if they don’t leave, then “Bianca or one of the others finds a way to make us cross the line and throw the first punch. Then they kill us.”

I feel like we’ve just shifted dimensions. THIS Harry has no idea why he or anyone would go to a vampire party. Of course they’ll just trick or force you into a situation where you have to break the rules and then eat you. Everyone knows that! He’ll get to wondering how in the hell he got teleported here as soon as he resolves the more pressing problem of escaping with his blood still on the inside.

Harry decides their only way out is a distraction and as he’s looking for one he finally tunes back in to Bianca’s speech.

“And so,” Bianca said, her voice carrying ably, “we stand at the dawn of a new age for our kind, the first acknowledged Court this far into the United States. No longer need we fear the wrath of our enemies. No longer shall we meekly bow our heads and offer our throats to those who claim power over us.” At this point, her dark eyes fastened directly upon me. “Finally, with the strength of the entire Court behind us, with the Lords of the Outer Night to empower us, we will face our enemies. And bring them to their knees.”

I feel like Harry should probably have been paying attention.

But so, okay, there were no vampires here before. I discussed earlier how really, painfully awkward it is to have European magical creatures colonize the Americas in the same way European humans did, and how it’s generally done with the subconscious belief that this continent was generally just empty of all life. But here, the fact that it’s the turn of the millennium and Bianca’s giving a speech about how amazing it is they’ve gotten as far as Chicago suggests that the native nonhuman life did just fine at repelling invaders.

Of course, there’s the secondary problem that, well, in that case where are they? But maybe they’re just not as into large numbers of people, so they don’t interact as much. That’s probably the most graceful way of handling this you can do.

Tonight, we have guests among us. Guests brought here to witness our ascension to real power. Please, my friends. Help me welcome them.”

So, it turns out the only guests were the tiny handful of people Harry met: Sexy vamp and his sexy carry-on drink, Mavra the wonderful never leave please, Lea, and hanging out with Lea was Mister Ferro, unlit cigarette still between his lips, smoke dribbling out his nostrils, looking martial and bland in his centurion gear, and utterly unconcerned with everything that was going on.

Yeah, he probably is.

See, in another book, the fact a single dragon is in himself a faction would’ve been relevant to the puzzle that is surviving a vampire party. Successfully schmoozing up to, say, Thomas, might not get you anywhere because he’s only a representative and will get in trouble if he acts against the best interests of his group, plus he’s only a symbolic representation of that faction and if that’s not respected he’s only got his personal power, plus whoops he’s already got a target on his head. But an individual powerhouse, or perhaps the head of a court like Mavra, will not only have more clout but be more willing to use it if they feel like doing so.

Would this disinterested dragon necessarily go to bat for Harry, even if he’d actually made an effort at socializing? Maybe, maybe not. My personal read of the dragon actually thinking people are pretty neat would probably not involve wizards in particular, as they kind of lose the interesting social aspects of regular humans. However, could Harry and company hide behind him for a moment? Yeah, quite probably. I’m pretty sure if a dragon is in your way, you go around. And Harry just needs them to not instantly tear his head off while he’s trying to fireball a hole in the hedges or something. Maybe the dragon would even be moved to idly knock down one of the gates for them – you know, give them a sporting chance, fair’s fair.

Anyway, the fact there are a sum total of five other people here (and Justine probably doesn’t count) makes it even more curious where Harry got the idea this was a mass murder thing. Let’s recap what he thinks the idea is:

He invited all of his political and personal enemies to a feast.

I mean, does Bianca seriously have so few enemies? Even if she’s planning to kill everybody somehow, that means everybody is one dragon, two vampires, one fairy, and one wizard. I’d expect a vampire to have a longer enemies list, and I’d expect anyone planning a massive violation of the social norms that’s going to have fallout for centuries to want to accomplish a bit more with it. Mavra’s either hired to murder Harry or her Harry-murder teacher, so it’s unlikely she’s on the chopping block. The dragon can apparently teleport, and I think Lea can too. So this grand feast and incoming complete disregard for the laws of the entire magical community is to kill one wizard and one vampire?

Hell, all she has to do right now is punt Harry back out the door and let the angry ghost finish the job! The angry ghost that nobody except the soon to be too dead to spill the beans Harry knows has any connection to her!

The vampires applaud the speech and Harry is weird about it: There should be some kind of law. Anything that is so bad that its applause is sinister should be universally banned or something.

Anyway, gifty time.

First, the dragon gets a cask with a shiny in it. He is pleased.

He and Bianca exchanged bows where she dipped her head just a fraction lower than his own.

See! Seriously, he was the one to befriend here.

Then it’s Thomas, and while he goes, Justine brings us up to speed on vamp politics.

“Lord Raith is the highest Lord of the White Court. Bianca extended her invitation to him. The Lord sent Thomas in his stead. Thomas is his bastard son. Of the White Court, he is the lowest, the least regarded. His presence here is an insult to Bianca.”

Now, it’s a little weird that being the bastard son of the most important person somehow works out to being the least important, but fine, info! We now know that the invites are not something you should ignore or pass around. If Harry hadn’t shown up, it’d probably have been an enormous insult as well.

Harry asks if there’s a grudge, and we get one of those little disjoints in the conversation that previous books have been so full of:

It’s my fault. Bianca wanted me to come be hers. But Thomas found me first. She hasn’t forgiven him for it. She calls him a poacher.”

But Raith is the one snubbing Bianca’s invite, and after being told that, the assumed reason everyone is glaring daggers at Thomas is because of the insult he represents. It makes no sense to look at that situation and think the question was what existing issues were there between Thomas and Bianca. The question is what Raith has against Bianca, to be insulting her like this, and/or what he has against Thomas to be putting him in this situation.

Now, what could work is if we remove the “insult” part. Raith sent Thomas because Thomas offended Bianca and Raith doesn’t want to be on bad terms with Bianca. A point could be made that Thomas is here without invite protection at all – the safe passage was for Raith only. Or maybe it’s a similar situation as Harry, where they’re both the +1 and Thomas has to relinquish Justine, die, or smooth things over enough with Bianca that she chooses to let them both go.

Harry then, for some reason, says this makes perfect sense even though a major plot point last book was that someone had been one of Bianca’s prostitutes, voluntarily chose to leave, and as I recall was still on good-ish enough terms that Bianca was upset by her death.

Bianca would want someone like Justine-sweet looking, gorgeous, unconsciously sexy. Probably dress her up in a plaid skirt and a starched white shirt with-Down, Harry. Hell’s bells.

So yeah, Harry definitely has this weird domestic kink – innocent schoolgirls, their stay-at-home moms, and a strong father figure who lays down the discipline, ideally has a sword.

But does Bianca actually want that? She provides a service, sure, but unless we’re to believe that because evil is sexy, evil is also in a nonstop orgy, there’s little evidence she’s super invested in personally having one hot girl. And while she does seem possessive of them, it seemed more of the traditional draconic because this is mine I care about it, not a magpie’s coveting of random shinies.

Now, if Justine is softballing here and actually she was working for Bianca and Thomas yoinked her out of the brothel right under Bianca’s nose, that would fit much better, I think. As The Hobbit says about Smaug’s own hoarding issues, nothing is as precious as something you had and then lost, whether or not you cared about it originally. And perhaps it’s partly a vampire issue. She’s obviously fine with humans sleeping with the women, and she’s even fine with one of them leaving her to work for human employers. Maybe this is like how a dog can seem pretty chill until you get near the food dish, and so her behavior toward other vampires isn’t going to bear much resemblance to the behavior we’ve seen from her toward humans. Given how much vampires need to eat compared to how much blood humans have, this even makes sense as an evolved trait for them to be super touchy about anything that competes for food.

Harry speculates Justine sticks by Thomas because she feels guilty he’s hated for this, which is actually some terrible reasoning – he’s going to be hated way more for flaunting her around in the present. Justine just vagues that Harry doesn’t get it.

“I don’t need rescuing, Mr. Dresden,” she said.

And with that, Harry’s desire to do nothing is now wrestling with his intense desire to be chivalrous in the specific way the woman just told him she doesn’t want.

She then says there is something she wants, at which point Harry’s boner and energy immediately die.

I got an edgy feeling and watched the girl warily. “Yeah? Like what?”
“You can take Thomas and me with you when you leave.”
“You guys showed up in a limo, and you want a ride home with me?”

Yup, he’s seriously doing this. When she says she knows they’re planning escape, Harry immediately jumps to the idea she’s not a human, evidently seeking any excuse he can find to leave her to die, but she says she is and just knows lip-reading, then asks again for his help. Harry refuses, she demands, he gets pissy she’s threatening him, she says fuck it fine you want threats?

“We need friends, Mister Dresden. If you won’t help us, then I’ll try to buy Bianca’s favor by exposing your plans to escape and claiming that I heard you talking about killing her.”

And Harry is all offended that merely because he was choosing to leave them to die she’d dare return the favor. She explains that she obviously would like everybody to live but that her options work together and maybe live or sacrifice him in the hopes she and Thomas will survive. There’s no sign the rational part of Harry’s brain is listening to any of this (hell, it must’ve checked out before the conversation began, because they just established the three of them don’t have the strength to escape on their own so they need more people on their side) but she happens to mention what appears to be some of Harry’s trigger words.

make me into one of her pet whores.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen to you,” I said. The words poured out of my mouth before I’d had time to run them past the thinking part of my brain

The objective danger the two of them are in, and the aid Thomas has given them, or even the aid Thomas could continue to give, eh whatever. But this sexy girl is “unconsciously” sexy, the very best kind, and being made into a druggy consciously sexy whore would ruin this, therefore saving will happen.

Justine is all hopeful and Harry clarifies that he is definitely still fine with Thomas dying.

Justine’s eyes filled with tears. “Mister Dresden, please. If there’s anything I can do or say to convince you, I-”
“Dammit,” I swore, earning a glare from Michael. “Dammit, dammit, dammit, woman. All women, for that matter.” That earned me a glare from Susan.

WOW I SURE SEE HOW THESE BOOKS GET BETTER AFTER THE ROCKY FIRST TWO. LOOK AT ALL THAT BETTER. LOOK AT IT.

Harry at least manages to say something coherent now that he’s vented his misogyny buildup, about how she should want to save her predator.

“He’s also a person, Mister Dresden,” Justine said. “A person who’s never done you any harm. Why shouldn’t you care what happens to him?”

Wow, Justine. Is this because Mavra is still in the scene or are you good enough to save this story on your own?

Harry attempts to ward this off with his being a shithead powers: I hate it when a woman asks me for help and I witlessly decide to go ahead and give it, regardless of dozens of perfectly good reasons not to. I hate it when I get threatened and strong-armed into doing something stupid and risky. And I hate it when someone takes the moral high ground on me and wins.

And we get a glimpse into his behavior all those other times when he continues, Justine had just done all three, but I couldn’t hold it against her. She just looked too sweet and helpless.

Harry’s natural impulse to being pushed like this is to lash out, to blame the person for manipulating him and making him feel this way, but in this particular instance Justine is able to perfectly straddle the madonna/whore line. Much like Harry’s issues with makeup, Justine is able to act like she’s not acting, while a less experienced kid like the one we meet in the opening has her more natural behavior dismissed by Harry as totally fake manipulative bullshit.

She let out a little shudder that ran through her most attractively, and then she pressed herself against me. “Thank you,” she murmured, nuzzling her face into the hollow of my throat so that little lightning-streaks of sensation flickered down my spine. “Thank you, Mister Dresden.”

See what I mean? This is all utterly calculated. It has to be – Harry made it super clear that mere decency isn’t going to motivate him. But Harry really believes that no, almost naked chicks just happen to shiver and nuzzle completely oblivious to how sexy they are. I’m sure he’s already got elaborate fanfic explaining how his new waifu is absolutely a virgin.

I coughed, uncomfortably, and firmly shoved back any ideas of extracting a more thorough thanks from her later, despite the clamoring of my sex drive. Probably the vampire venom, I reasoned, making me notice things like that even more.

Oh, so close! Minus that last clause, this almost sounds like Harry is finally recognizing rape isn’t okay. Up until that point, it reads like he’s saying the vampire venom is the reason why he’d be thinking about demanding any sexual payment. And then no, he just means it’s making her more distractingly sexy, not that there’s any general ethical problems with “you owe me sex for not letting your friend die”…or just straight up forcing her, given he’s assuming it’d need to be “extracted”.

My days of hating these books sure are coming to a middle. We all agree that Summer Knight is definitely supposedly good, right? So once I read that and it’s more of the same, people will finally not be able to tell me that I can’t judge this series based on the completely uncharacteristic first books?

Alright, so, Thomas returns and while the dragon got a fucking awesome shiny, he got a single ticket to Hawaii. Oh, Bianca. If only you could’ve been in more of this book.

He and Justine do this whole thing where he says she shouldn’t have asked for help, and she says but oh I had to for you, etc, that I’m going to assume is scripted given if Thomas wasn’t looking for a teamup, he wouldn’t have snuggled up to the group in the first place. I’m thinking what’s going on is that the two of them are the only ones in the city who have any social intelligence.

“I apologize, Mister Dresden. I didn’t want to involve anyone else in my problems.”
I rubbed at the back of my neck. “It’s okay. We can help each other, I guess.”
Thomas closed his eyes for a moment. Then he said, very simply and very openly, “Thank you.”
“Sheesh,” I said.

See? First Justine gets him to agree by explaining her innocence is on the line and then Thomas rolls over on his belly about how oh so sorry mr alpha making my problems yours, ps you’re so so strong, and so Harry’s able to mumble out that yeah actually this is objectively to his own benefit so he guesses they can team up maybe.

Harry then goes up.

Vampires don’t have souls. She didn’t have to fear my gaze.

This isn’t quite what happened last time. Harry says he I saw her anger, her rage, and for just a moment I got a peek inside, saw the source of it. She was furious that I had seen her true form, horrified and embarrassed that I had stripped her disguise away and seen the creature beneath. And she was afraid that I could take away even her mask, forever, with my power. More than anything else, Bianca wanted to be beautiful.

I guess we’re to take it that there was no supernatural component to this and Harry, the guy who can’t usually look at faces at all because he gets hit by a soulgaze is still a champ at reading them even when also they’re secretly giant nonhuman bat monsters.

Now, does Harry actually know they don’t have souls? We know you can’t soulgaze animals, you can soulgaze animal souls in human shells, you can’t soulgaze humans transformed into animals and you can’t soulgaze animals transformed into humans. That suggests the key element is human eyes, and quite possibly Bianca could not only have a soul but a human one so long as her physical form is different. We also know that Harry’s said he knows nothing about vampires and he’s spent this book confirming that.

Bianca then reminds us of why this is happening.

Then she asked me, as she formally inclined her head, for the benefit of the crowd below, “Do you remember Paula, Mister Dresden?”
I returned the gesture, only more shallowly, just to throw the little zing of insult into it. “I remember.
She was pretty. Polite. I didn’t really get to meet her much.”
“No. She was dead within an hour of you setting foot in my house.”
“I thought she might have gone that way,” I said.
“That you might have killed her, you mean?”
“Isn’t my fault if you lost control and ate her, Bianca.”
She smiled, teeth blinding white. “Oh, but it was your fault, Mister Dresden. You’d come to my house.
Provoked me to near madness. Forced me to go along with you under threat of my destruction.”

Here’s the thing – she’s not exactly wrong.

From Harry’s point of view, he came to have a civil chat, she jumped him, he defended himself, then she killed somebody else. But he knows that she only jumped him because from her point of view she thought he was about to kill her if she didn’t strike first, and he knows he badly, badly hurt her in his response. Being he’s kind of a creep, he stuck around to watch her feed a bit and could see that Paula went there voluntarily as if this had safely happened many times before and that Bianca seemed out of it.

Now, normally in this setup it’s made very obvious that the vampire chose to murder the person and is just being petty about it. If Bianca needed to drain someone to put her makeup back on, then saying, “Well, you ruined my makeup, so it’s your fault I killed someone refreshing it,” would be an evil shifting of blame. But Bianca obviously did not choose to do so and it happened because she was actually badly hurt. Harry knows this because he’s referring to it as losing control. And if you tear someone’s skin off, then yeah, a mistake they make immediately afterward can be reasonably connected to you doing that.

There’s also the simple fact that Bianca is obviously deeply upset by this event. You’re not going to convince her of anything by taunting her about how actually it’s her fault. Another Harry, one who has modes other than dick-measuring contests, could try to reason with her by saying this was an accident – that as it is understandable how Bianca attacked him thinking he was there to kill her, so it is understandable Harry defended himself. That the whole thing was a tragic mutual misunderstanding, that the death was an accident, and that Harry did kill the person ultimately responsible and who was behind the other killings of her people who she also loved.

Bianca might still insist it was Harry’s fault (and by this point, it’s probably too late to convince her to stop her revenge plans) but at least Harry would actually have done his best to resolve the situation instead of escalating things. And he could learn that leaving things like this to fester is a bad idea by saying something like “for a moment it seemed like I was getting through to her” but she’s too set in her hatred now, but maybe if he’d apologized immediately for the part he unintentionally played it all could’ve been avoided.

She leaned forward, giving me a glimpse down the flame-dress. She was naked beneath.

Yeah people are in fact generally naked under their clothes. Quality detectiving there, Harry.

Now I get to return the favor. I’m not someone you can simply walk over, slap around, whenever you have a need. Not anymore.”

So yeah, the thing is, he does deserve this.

Again, he acted in self-defense, but he then doubled down ranting to us about how vampires only respect shows of strength and are basically sharks. Looks like they don’t actually appreciate having the rest of their conversation with a shotgun pointed at their face as much as he said they do.

She goes on to say what he did to her is why she’s become stronger, and why she’s been elevated to the Court which suggests there are unaligned vampires, somehow? Was she not originally Red? Is this like vampire prestige classes?

I mean, that’s not impossible. Vampires are magical, so it’s totally reasonable for them to choose a specific allegiance and then get massive physical changes to go with it. Maybe Black were always the wizards, and the reason they look all corpsey is because you have to embrace as many aspects of death as you can to resonate properly with death magic. Maybe Red focus on the living aspect of blood, which is why she’s all decked up in flame and her associations are warmth related, and that lifey surplus makes them the physical powerhouses, explaining why she’s so confident she can win a fight with a wizard when she used to be terrified of him. And Thomas’ people are the socially focused bards, weaker than either but way better at weaseling their way out of situations or not making enemies in the first place, and who tend toward extremely long term and extremely, extremely indirect plans like encouraging a super popular vampire novel then whipping people into a fervor for more vampire novels which will keep repeating the same basic elements that whoopsydaisy just so happen to be how-to guides for murdering other vampire types haha wow how did that happen.

Anyway, she reiterates that everything is his fault, and now that a woman is talking, Harry suddenly gains convenient ethics:

“That’s a lie,” I said, quiet. “I didn’t make you rope Mavra into working for you. I didn’t make you order her to torture those poor ghosts, stir up the Nevernever and bring Kravos’s pet demon back across to send after a bunch of innocents while you tried to get to me.”

Yeah for the exact space of him contradicting her suddenly it’s not only possible to torture ghosts, but specifically wrong to do so.

Bianca can’t call him on his shit because she’s too busy smugging about how apparently he fucked up some part of that analysis.

Harry continues to bring crap writing everywhere he walks, so her gift to him is nowhere near as cute as a ticket to Hawaii.

it read HERE LIES HARRY DRESDEN, above the pentacle. Below it, they read HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING. An envelope had been taped to the side of the tombstone.
“Do you like it?” Bianca purred. “It comes complete with your own plot at Graceland, near to dear little Inez. I’m sure you’ll have ever so much to talk about.

Also really Bianca, you should’ve realized by now that there is no way Harry will die doing the right thing. Die shouting real loud that he’s doing the right thing, maybe, but let’s not validate that by pretending it’s true.

Harry decides to do what, incidentally, you should never, ever do:

“Go ahead,” I said. “Make your move.”

Seriously, they had to put out a PSA explaining to people that saying, “Go ahead and shoot,” gets you shot. Do not do this.

At least it leads into finding out Harry’s even more of an idiot as she explains that no, dumbass, hospitality law! So the whole opening bit about Vlad Tepesh? Nonsense. Harry had no reason to guess it and he doesn’t even have the excuse of reading ahead in the script.

She then explains that she can only kill him in self-defense, but hey, he’s ~so~ dangerous, so some collateral damage is probably inevitable on the counter-attack, like, specifically four people’s worth of collateral damage. For no discernible reason she refers to Justine as Thomas’ “little whore”. I mean, it can’t possibly be to further mark her as evil because Harry spent all of last book demeaning women left and right, so I guess it’s just because that’s just one of the standard nouns for referring to women.

Then there’s a nice-socksing:

“You know what they say about revenge. I hope you got a second tombstone, Bianca. For the other grave.”
My words stung her, and she stiffened.

I shall assume she’s stung by the realization she had to do this much planning and setup to kill such a dumbass.

Right, now it’s Lea’s turn. She gets another mystery case, and says it’s great, then says that since fairies actually give a damn about proper hospitality and shit, HER people always give a gift to the host. What could it possibly be?????? it’s the sword.

Oh no, blathers Harry, this is the trap!!! This completely unpredictable element that happened midway through is totally what the plan hinges on!!!

Mavra’s turn.

“Mavra, you have been a most gracious and honorable guest in my house,” Bianca said. “And I trust that you have found your treatment here fair and equitable.”

You made her spend an hour at your party with nothing but corn syrup to eat, Bianca.

What should’ve been done is that Bianca’s friendship is foreshadowed by her party’s buffet table being stocked with surprising diversity instead of Red snacks only. Harry could be like “wow random old people, Bianca sucks, couldn’t get enough hot chicks for everyone, haha what a loser!”

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered. “Son of a bitch.”
“He didn’t mean it, Lord,” Michael said.

That’s kind of funny, though.

So, Harry says that obviously, the tombstone is gloating about the fact she’s about to make him choose between doing the right thing or not dying. Bianca regifts the sword she was just handed to Mavra and then pulls out Lydia.

Her dark, tousled hair had been trimmed into an elegant cut, and she wore a halter and shorts of black Lycra that emphasized her hips, the beauty of her pale limbs.

You’re a piece of shit, Harry.

Right, so the plan Harry’s been vaguing about is breaking the holy sword by stabbing someone innocent. (Incidentally, this is one of those tropes that really needs to stop showing up in a Christian context. There are many religious traditions that are super into ritual purity and defiling, and Jesus’ big thing was that all being bullshit. When the sacred touches the profane, it sanctifies it, it isn’t profaned by it. Jesus makes the unclean clean again with his touch, instead of being defiled and unclean from it. You can even see this still in things like nuns – nuns do not have sex, and are considered completely disconnected from sex, regardless of how much sex they had beforehand, because that part of their life is over and irrelevant in the face of their vows. God trumps all aspects of the physical world.)

I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to lift a finger. All I had to do, to get out of here alive, was to sit still. To do nothing. All I had to do was stand here and watch while they murdered a girl who had come to me a few days before, begging me for protection. All I had to do was ignore her screams as Mavra gutted her.

Yeah, all you need to do is ignore one more innocent person like you’ve ignored everyone else they’ve killed so far. And what luck, it’s the person you’ve spent all book happily ignoring already! You’ve obviously got a rare talent for this, so I’m not sure why Bianca thinks this is a great plan.

All I had to do was let the monsters destroy one of the major bastions standing against them. All I had to do was let Michael go to his death, claim the protection of the laws of hospitality upon Susan, and I could walk away. Michael nodded at me, then drew both knives and turned toward the dias.

But lucky for Bianca, he brought Michael. And Michael cares about the sword. And Harry cares about not looking like a wussy beta while Michael charges alpha-y into certain death, and/or fears Charity murdering him once she finds out he left her husband to die. So he draws his sword! And Thomas, accepting that well, he tried, might as well stab someone on the way to his inevitable death, draws his crystalline sword whatever that is.

Over to one side, Lea laid her hand on Mister Ferro’s arm, frowning faintly, standing well out of the way.

So in conclusion, Harry should’ve made friends with the dragon.