Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)

by Jim Butcher

There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There’s a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands.

You always fear what you don’t know, what you don’t understand, and the first step to having understanding of something is to know what to call it. It’s a habit of mine to give names to anything I wind up interacting with if it doesn’t have one readily available. Names have power—magically, sure, but far more important, they have psychological power. Something horrible with a name holds less power over you, less terror, than something horrible without one.

“Miss Ascher, Mr. Dresden. Phase One will require us to breach a secure building. We may need to make entry through a wall, neatly, without an explosion, and we will certainly need a loud and obvious distraction to occupy the attention of local security forces while we enter. Those tasks will fall to you two.” I grunted and eyed Ascher. “You want walls or noise?” “He said loud and obvious,” Ascher replied, her voice light. “That screams Dresden to me.”

“One doesn’t destroy an empire built on pain and terror neatly,” Michael said, “if history is to be any indicator.”

Mouse wriggled all over and gave my hands a few slobbery kisses and in general behaved exactly like a happy dog and not at all like a mystic, super-powered guardian creature from Tibet.

Michael snorted. “You destroy buildings, fight monsters openly in the streets of the city, work with the police, show up in newspapers, advertise in the phone book, and ride zombie dinosaurs down Michigan Avenue, and think that you work in the shadows? Be reasonable.”

“Oh, cheer up, Mr. Carpenter,” Nicodemus said. “By the time the sun rises this morning, you may be twenty million dollars richer.” “I have a family. I am already rich beyond measure,” Michael said. “But I really wouldn’t expect you to understand that.” Nicodemus’s face went blank, his eyes cold.

“You think your power is what shapes the world you walk in. But that is an illusion. Your choices shape your world. You think your power will protect you from the consequences of those choices. But you are wrong. You create your own rewards. There is a Judge. There is Justice in this world. And one day you will receive what you have earned. Choose carefully.”

The big downside of the plan to infuriate an emotionally traumatized psychopath into trying to kill me was part two, where the lunatic actually did it.

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.

Wow. Mac’s beer is an excellent argument that there is a God, and that furthermore, He wants us to be happy.

“Are you all right, Harry?” “Nothing two months asleep in a good bed won’t cure,” I said.

Michael smiled at me a little. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did.” “What mistake?” “You all think the critical word in the phrase ‘Sword of Faith’ is ‘sword.’”

There are moments in your life that, when you look back at them, you realize were perfect. A hundred million things had to happen, to all come together at the same time, for such moments to come into existence—so many things that it beggars imagination to think that they could possibly have happened by random chance. This was one of them.

“Some men fall from grace,” he said slowly. “Some are pushed.”

Uriel smiled again. “I must admit,” he said, “I never foresaw that particular form of faith being expressed under my purview.” “Belief in a freaking movie?” I asked him. “Belief in a story,” Uriel said, “of good confronting evil, of light overcoming darkness, of love transcending hate.” He tilted his head. “Isn’t that where all faith begins?” I grunted and thought about it. “Huh.” Uriel smiled. “Lot of Star Wars fans out there,” I noted. “Maybe more Star Wars fans than Catholics.” “I liked the music,” he said.

I sighed. Maggie’s limp, warm little body was emitting a barrage of some kind of subatomic particle that was making me drowsy. Probably sleepeons. Mouse snored a little, generating his own sleepeon field. The gentle night wasn’t helping things, either. Nor was my battered body.

Sometimes you realize you’re standing at a crossroads. That there are two paths stretching out ahead of you, and you have to pick one of them. Without a word, I took Amoracchius and settled it where I could reach it easily when it was time to stand up.