I leaned my head back to Michael a little and said, “You and I definitely need to have a talk with the Church about what the word ‘safekeeping’ means.”

Michael glanced at me with a faint frown, to let me know that this was not the time.

Lasciel laughed, musically, the sound of it pure pleasure on the ears. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “Did you really think that it’s possible to pick up corruption in a nice clean handkerchief and lock it away in a box? No, of course not. Forces such as we cannot be contained by mortals, my lover. We are a part of you all.”

Michael leaned his head back a little toward me and asked, “Lover?”

I twitched one shoulder in answer and said, “It’s complicated.”

“Oh dear.”

I turned to Lasciel and said, “Hey, Hannah. Take it from someone who knows. You really don’t want to be doing what you’re doing.”

Ascher’s human eyes narrowed. “Oh, sure,” she said, in her own voice. “Because the high road is just so awesome. Wardens of the White Council have been trying to kill me for most of my adult life because when I was seventeen years old I defended myself against three men who tried to rape me.”

“I’m not defending them,” I said. “But you killed people with magic, Hannah. You broke the First Law.”

“Like you haven’t,” she snarled. “You hypocrite.”

“Hey, whoa,” I said. “Hold on there. Me and Lasciel have some history, but even if we’ve been on different sides of the law, you and I don’t have a personal quarrel.”

“The hell we don’t,” she said. “After a few years on the run, I got in with the Fellowship of St. Giles. You remember them, right? Bunch of folks who fought the Red Court? They gave me training, safe places to live. Hell, I lived on the beach in Belize for six years. I had a life. Friends. I even fought the good fight.”

“Yay?” I said, trying not to sound as baffled as I felt. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Everything!” she screamed, and the purple mist around her was suddenly suffused with sullen, glowing flame.

I swallowed, despite myself.

“When you destroyed the Red Court, you killed most of the Fellowship with it. All the half vampires more than a few decades old just withered away in front of our eyes. People who had given me trust. Respect. My friends.” She shook her head. “And, you arrogant son of a bitch, I’ll bet you never gave them a thought before you did it, did you?”

“If I’d known it was going to happen,” I said, “I’d have done it anyway.” Because if I hadn’t, Maggie wouldn’t have survived the night.

“The world fell apart after that,” Ascher spat. “The finances, thecoordination, the communication. I was on the street. If Binder hadn’t found me . . .” She shook her head.

“Yeah, Binder and his Rule Number One,” I said. “He doesn’t know about what you’ve done, does he?”

She narrowed her eyes and her voice became a degree hotter. “Nicodemus and Lasciel and the other Denarians have treated me with respect,” she said. “They’ve talked to me. Trusted me. Worked with me. Made me rich. When one side treats you like a sad freak and a hunted animal and the other treats you like an equal, it gets really easy to decide where you stand.”

Hard to argue with that. But I tried. “Doesn’t mean you have to run everything exactly the way he wants you to do it,” I said.

She let out a harsh laugh. “But I do want to do it,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to it. Every time you looked at me, flirted with me, spoke with me.”

“As have I,” said Lasciel’s voice, from the same mouth. “No one’s ever turned me down before, Harry. Not once. And to think that I liked you.”

“We wouldn’t have worked out, babe,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not. In any case, be assured that I may have one of the few accurate perspectives in the universe when I say that ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’”

Ah. So that’s what my subconscious had been trying to warn me about. That Lasciel was right there in front of me, and itching for payback.

“Meaning what?” I asked her.

“Meaning that since a whisper in your ear that should have killed you seems to have failed, I intend to skip the subtlety, rip your head apart, and collect our child. She’s far too valuable a resource to be allowed to die with you.”

My eyes widened. “You, uh, you know about that.”

“Child?” Michael said, baffled.

“Complicated,” I said through clenched teeth.

Well. At least now I knew which side Ascher was taking.

“I’d tell you to give me the knife, Dresden,” Nicodemus said, still smiling. “But unlike your friend, I don’t do second chances. And you won’t have any need for it in a moment.”

Ursiel made a sound that I normally only associate with tractor-trailer rigs, and which might have been a hungry growl. Then he stepped over the four-foot block with no particular difficulty and padded in near silence to my left. Lasciel took up station a bit to my right, with Nicodemus making the third point of a lopsided triangle surrounding us.

This day was going bad a little more rapidly than I had anticipated. It had, in fact, sprayed gravel on the windshield of my worst-case scenario as it went rocketing past.