—
Carter LaChaise showed up at the front doors of the castle precisely at midnight. He was a ghoul, but he looked like a big, beefy man with grizzled muttonchops to his jawline, dressed in a white linen suit and a pinkMiami Viceshirt, along with gold chains around his neck and rings on every finger. Bear and a couple of Knights of the Bean escorted him into the great hall, where I was sitting at a table.
“Harry Dresden, I do declare,” LaChaise said, his deep Southern accent full of bourbon and gumbo. “I cannot imagine what would cause you to invite me to your lovely home.”
“LaChaise,” I said. I didn’t like ghouls. By which I meant I was willing to torture them to death, given a chance and half an excuse. I nodded at the chair across the table from me and swallowed my bile. “Have a seat.”
“No,” LaChaise said genially. “Not until you’ve acknowledged your role as host.”
I showed him my teeth. “Please. Be my guest.”
LaChaise glanced over his shoulder at Bear and the guards and then sauntered to the table. “She’s a deluxe-sized morsel, isn’t she? Even I couldn’t handle that in one sitting.”
“Pretty sure you couldn’t handle her in any number of sittings,” I said.
LaChaise rumbled out a low laugh. “To what do I owe the honor of this invitation?”
“There are ghouls in Chicago,” I said.
“Oh my goodness,” LaChaise said.
I drummed my fingers on the tabletop once. I left a moment of silence before I said, “They’re killing people.”
“That does sometimes happen,” LaChaise said, nodding sympathetically.
I took a deep breath and said, “It stops. Now.”
LaChaise regarded me for a moment, a patently false smile on his lips. “Oh, Sir Dresden. You are, I am very much afraid, proceeding under a false assumption.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“I am no more in charge of every ghoul than you are in charge of every wizard, or every fae,” he said, grinning broadly. “I am the lord of the LaChaise clan, of course, and a number of varied and sundry tribes that have allied themselves with my house.”
I smiled with my mouth only. “I’m supposed to believe the most notorious ghoul in the world can’t make something happen if he wants to.”
LaChaise put a hand on his chest modestly, beaming—but his eyes were cold. “Why, Sir Dresden. I’m flattered you think so much of one of my kind.”
I met his eyes for a long moment and nothing much happened. You’ve got to have a soul to set off a soulgaze. He was just a thing. A clever, dangerous thing.
“Let me put this another way,” I said. “In an attempt to communicate clearly.”
“Oh,” he purred. “By all means.”
“I’ve just declared this city off-limits to ghouls,” I said. “Effective as of sunrise tomorrow. From that point on, any ghoul found within the city limits of Chicago or any of its suburbs will forfeit its life.”
LaChaise’s gold-old-boy smile faded. “Some of my people call this fine metropolis home.”
“Which is fine,” I said. “Until sunrise.”
“Is this meeting, then, for the purpose of the Winter Court declaring war on my house, Sir Dresden?”
“Nothing so formal,” I said, without blinking or moving. “Just me.”
LaChaise stared at me for a long moment. Then he smiled slowly, eyed me, and licked his lips. “You feeling up for a scuffle, then, son?”
“If I were you,” I said, “I’d be asking myself some questions.”
“Such as?”
