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realize what you were doing in retrospect,” I said. “The Red Court’s war with the White Council must have been the best thing to happen to the Fellowship in ages.”
    “I’ve only been with them for slightly over one hundred years,” Martin said. “But it was the best thing to happen in that time, yes. The White Council is one of the only organizations on the planet with the resources to seriously threaten them. And every time the Council won a victory—or even survived what should have been a crushing defeat—it meant that the Red Court was tearing itself to shreds internally. Some of them have had millennia to nurse grudges with rivals. They are appropriately epic in scale.”
    “Call me wacky,” I said, “but I had to watch a few too many children die in that war you helped guarantee. No hard feelings?” I smiled at him—technically. “Marty, believe me when I say that you don’t want me to get in touch with my feelings right now.”
    I felt Martin’s eyes shift to me, and a little tension gather in his body. His shoulder twitched. He was thinking about his gun. He was pretty good with firearms. The night of my duel with the Red Court vampire named Ortega, Martin had put a round from one of those enormous sniper rifles into Ortega about half a second before the vampire would otherwise have killed me. It had been a gross violation of the Code Duello, the set of rules for resolving personal conflicts between individuals of the nations who had signed the Unseelie Accords.
    The outcome of a clean duel might have put an early end to the war between the Red Court and the White Council of Wizards, and saved a lot of lives. It didn’t turn out that way.
    “Don’t worry, guy,” I told him. “Ortega was already in the middle of breaking the Code Duello anyway. It would have fallen out the way it did regardless of what you had done that night. And your being there meant that he ate a bullet at the last second instead of me. You saved my life. I’m cognizant of that.”
    I kept smiling at him. It didn’t feel quite right, so I tried to do it a little harder. “I’m also aware that if you could have gotten what you wanted by putting the bullet in my back instead of his chest, you would have done it without blinking. So don’t go thinking we’re pals.”
    Martin looked at me and then relaxed. He said, “It’s ironic that you, the mustang of the White Council, would immediately cling to its self-righteous position of moral authority.”
    “Excuse me?” I said quietly.
    He spoke dispassionately, but there was a fire somewhere deep down behind the words—the first I’d ever heard in him. “I’ve seen children die, too, Dresden, slaughtered like animals by a threat no one in the wise and mighty Council seemed to give a good goddamn about—because the victims are poor, and far away, and isn’t that a fine reason to let them die. Yes. If putting a bullet in you would have meant that the Council brought its forces to bear against the Red Court, I would have done it twice and paid for the privilege.” He paused at a stop sign, gave me a direct look, and said, “It is good that we cleared the air. Is there anything else you want to say?”
    I eyed the man and said, “You went blond. It makes you look sort of gay.”
    Martin shrugged, completely unperturbed. “My last assignment was on a cruise ship catering to that particular lifestyle.”
    I scowled and glanced at Susan.
    She nodded. “It was.”
    I folded my arms, glowered out at the night, and said, “I have literally killed people I liked better than you, Martin.” After another few moments, I asked, “Are we there yet?”

    Martin stopped the car in front of a building and said, “It’s in here.”
    I eyed the building. Nothing special, for Chicago. Twelve stories, a little run-down, all rented commercial space. “The Reds can’t—Look, it can’t be here,” I said. “This building is where my office is.”
    “A known factor, for Red