"Engh," I said, frustrated. "Yeah."

"Go back to Chicago," he said, turning away, "and keep being yourself."

"Wait," I said. "I need help."

At that, he paused. He looked back at me and gave me a quiet smile. "I know precisely how it feels to be where you are." He gestured back toward the battleground. "Precisely." He seemed to think about it for a moment, and then nodded. "I will do what I can. If we both survive the next several hours, I will settle matters between you and the Council, which knows only as much about our roles as it needs to-and that isn't much. I will verify your return and that you are indeed yourself, and will see to it that your back pay as one of the Wardens is forwarded to you. There's some paperwork to fill out to get the Council's office to reestablish your official identity with the government, but I'll see to it that it happens. I think I remember all the necessary forms."

I stared at him for a second and said, "You'll . . . you'll help me with White Council paperwork."

He held up a finger. "Do not underestimate the depth of this favor," he said soberly, but his eye was twinkling. "And on a similar note, do not underestimate yourself. You haven't been given the power and the knowledge and allies and the resources you possess for no reason, Harry. Nothing I have to say can possibly make this task any easier for you. The only way to do it is to do it." He lifted his chin. "You don't need help, Warden. You are the help."

"We're in trouble," I said.

He winked at me, restored his hood to its usual position, and said, "We always are. The only difference is, now you know it. God be with you, my friend. I will cover this end. You see to yours."

He took several rapid paces out from under the towering gates and gestured. A second later, I kid you not, a freaking woven carpet, maybe ten feet by twenty, came sailing neatly down out of the sky, coming to hover about six inches off the ground beside him. Rashid stepped onto the carpet, slipped his boots into some kind of securing straps on it, and then lifted his staff. The carpet and the Gatekeeper rose serenely up out of sight, and a second later went streaking out over the storm-lit battlefield in a howl of whirling winds.

And that's when it hit me. I mean, when it really, really hit me.

It was up to me.

There wasn't a backup plan. There wasn't a second option. There wasn't any cavalry coming over the hill. The White Council was the next-best thing to clueless about what was happening, and would never in a zillion years admit that they were.

Tonight, a catastrophe that could kill millions of people, including my daughter, was going to happen unless I stopped it. And on top of that, there was a deadly turbulence happening inside the Winter Court, and depending on which side I threw in on, Icould save or destroy the world as we knew it. Walking away from this one was not an option.

No dodges, no delays, no excuses. It would happen or it wouldn't, depending on me.

I looked down at my bruised hands. I slowly closed them into fists and then opened them again. They were battered hands, and they didn't have anywhere near as much skill as I could have wished were in them-but they were what I had. I had earned the scars on them. They were mine.

I'd done this before. Never on this scale, maybe, but I'd done it before. I'd saved the day, mostly, more or less, on several occasions. I'd done it before, and I could do it again.

There wasn't any other way it was going to happen.

The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you're going to go.

I felt like throwing up. But I stiffened my back and straightened my shoulders and walked quickly over to Mother Summer as she finished standing up from tending to the last of the wounded Sidhe.

"Ma'am," I said quietly. "I'd appreciate it if you could take me home. I have work to do."

Chapter Thirty-five

With all the benevolence she'd had going on, I sort of forgot that Mother Summer wasn't human. She took me from the gates back to her cottage in silence, smiled, touched my head with her hand-and sent me back to my freaking grave.

I landed on my ass in the muddy broken ice-and could still hear the echoes of the crackling detonation when Mother Winter's ugly mitt had smashed up through it and grabbed my noggin. I could still hear the raucous cawing of startled crows. Time had all but stopped while I was gone-or, more accurately, time had flown by extremely swiftly where I had been, in the Nevernever, relative to Chicago. I'd been on the other side of that kind of time dilation while dealing with beings of Faerie before, but this was the first time I'd actually benefited from it, gaining time rather than losing it.

Which I hadn't even considered until now. If things had gone the way they usually did when one got pulled into Faerie business, I could have been gone for an hour and come back a year later, to what would presumably have been a blasted wasteland. The thought made my stomach churn with anxiety.

But I suppose I hadn't exactly volunteered for the trip. It wasn't like I'd taken a hideous risk on that score-it had been something entirely outside of my control.

That was scary, too.

While I was sitting there wondering whether that meant that I was a control freak or just sane, a Goth kid poked her head into view atop my grave and peered down at me. She took a cigarette in one of those long holders out of her mouth, exhaled smoke through her nose, and said, "Dude. That is pretty hard-core down there. Are you, like, gonna cut yourself or something?"