It was the second time in as many days that one of the Big Bads in my life had come around to talk. It really was the end of the world.

I didn't ask how Kincaid had gotten Ivy in here, and I didn't want to. I also didn't ask how they were doing, because Ivy had grown and Kincaid had noticed. It wasn't obvious, not very much so anyway, but the way he stood just a little bit apart from her and the way he watched her wasn't entirely bodyguard-like. It was also the attitude of a man who expects the girl he's spending time taking care of to try to jump him at any given moment. Most people wouldn't have seen it, but by now I'd seen some things out of Kincaid that I hadn't expected. It made me watch harder for more things I might not have expected before.

Ivy didn't look like she would try to jump him at any given moment. She didn't look like anything but the Archive. But I knew, too, how that could change and how quickly. Unnervingly quickly. Evidently she'd at least once succeeded in unnerving Kincaid, too.

The thought made me smile. I liked that thought, just because it was light and ordinary and belonged to the life we'd had, or at least that I'd had, before all this went down.

"The sorcerer you know as Cowl wishes to speak with you," she told me, hands clasped in front of her, face perfectly straight. "He wishes us to be present so that you will know he means you no harm."

Not unreasonable, considering what had happened last time. I was a little surprised that he was shelling out all this money or influence just to talk to me with the Archive as a guarantee. It seemed like overkill. "It's all right with me if it's all right with everyone else. Where and ..."

I was in the middle of saying 'what time' when Cowl stepped right out of the shadows. Literally, right out, as though he'd turned ninety degrees and just appeared. No rip in reality, no tearing sound, he just turned and appeared like a line drawing suddenly rendered in 3D.

"Jesus Frog, man! Don't do that!" My voice did not break, and I was very proud of that. "What the hell? Showoff." That last part came out muttered. Ivy and Cowl just stared at me. Kincaid, who would have taken any opportunity to laugh at my discomfort (and had done in the past) said nothing at all.

We were all way too serious.

"All right," I heaved a long-suffering sigh when it became obvious that no one else was going to say anything. "You wanted to talk, so talk."

He didn't, not at first. He stayed silent long enough that I was starting to wonder what he wanted when he did speak, tired and at a normal, if raspy, voice.

"You look so much like your mother."

It was the last thing I expected out of him.

Neither Kincaid nor Ivy said anything. They might as well not have been there, or we might as well not have been there, for how blank they looked. I think I was grateful for that. At least, I definitely didn't want anyone else commenting on my mother. Or what Cowl had said. Or anything until I had a chance to process that Cowl thought I looked like my mother.

"How did you know my mother?"

Did every supernatural powerhouse on the continent know my mother?

He ignored me, of course. "I am tired of this war, Dresden. I am tired of dealing with the incompetents with whom I am forced to work, I am tired of being the villain in a badly scripted melodrama."

"You're the only one writing your dialogue, as far as I know, so you have only yourself to blame." Sometimes I just can't help myself. Kincaid's jaw tightened but otherwise, no one said or did anything. I waited for Cowl to smash me into the wall or at the very least make some sort of scornful remark, but he didn't say anything. I had the distinct impression that he rolled his eyes. Maybe he was rolling them in some way that meant deadly insults in crazy-land.

And still no one said anything, so I went on. "So you're tired of the war. So stop it."

"I can't."

Two words left me feeling nauseous and dizzy. Two words had enough hate and frustration behind them to knock down city walls. This was the Cowl I knew, who had nearly cleaned my clock about half a dozen times before. And who would do it again if I kept mouthing off at him.

"So what are we here to talk about?"

The second the words were out of my mouth I knew what he wanted, and it wasn't to stop the war. Maybe that would have been a nice little side effect, but he ultimately didn't care about the war. Whatever goals he'd had getting into it, he'd decided he wouldn't achieve. And whatever goals those were, without Kumori, without the chance to achieve that, they were meaningless to him. He just didn't care anymore.

The only question that remained was how much damage he was going to do on the way out.

"I am going to give you a chance to survive," he told me. Still grating his words out like he was chewing corrugated sheet metal. "I am going to give you one chance to strike at the Council, or what part of it will be here when this madness is at its peak. You will only have this one chance, and you will not get another."

Because when it was over they would know what was going on, they'd know what Cowl had done, and they would kill him. And if he believed they could kill him...

... I was really glad I hadn't eaten anything earlier.

"What's going to happen?"

Cowl... sighed. There was no other word for it. He sighed, and his hood and shoulders slumped. One scarred hand came up to scrub over his face, or at least, that's what I assumed was happening under there. For all I knew he could have been picking his nose.

"They will, at the full moon, open a portal to the dimension in which I have been working. I believe you encountered some of its creations a few years ago, when the Malvora was involved." There was a definite note of disgust in his voice, and I was just thankful that it wasn't directed at me. "There will be five of them."

"Five??" I yelped. I'm not ashamed to admit it. One of Cowl was bad enough, but five of him was not something I wanted to even think about coming up against. Unfortunately, I not only had to think about it, I had to come up with a way for all of us to live through it.

"Five of them. I will tell you everything I know about them, all the information I have gathered on their forms, weaknesses, and abilities. And you will destroy them for me. While the portal is opening, I will do my best to sabotage it from within, while you will attack from without. Between myself and you and your people..." I would have sworn he was smiling. "We may even stand a chance."

I folded my arms and did the best belligerent glare I could without having much of a leg to stand on. It was the best chance I was ever going to get, and everyone knew it. "You're serious."

Kincaid cleared his throat, but that was all he had to do to remind me of the lengths Cowl had gone to to set up this meeting. He wouldn't have done that if he wasn't serious, and he wouldn't have chosen Ivy and Kincaid if he hadn't meant for me to trust him.

And what was up with the talking about my mother?

"How will I know when you're making your move?" It was a cheap shot. A way to try and keep him talking, but he just laughed softly.

"You'll know. You always were the clever one, quick on your feet. Perceptive. Intuitive." A trickle of ice was crawling down my back. "I never could fool you quite as well. Perhaps it's turned out for the better."

God, no. The fire, he had been pulled out of a fire, and he knew my mother.

"How did you say you knew my mother, again?"

He didn't answer. "Good luck, Dresden," was all he said, and then he turned sideways and he really was gone. I could have run circles around the spot where he'd been (and I only did it one and a half times, anyway) but he was really and truly gone.

And I just stood there, staring at the place where he'd been.

"He wants to talk to you."

The phones were working, which was a bittersweet miracle. Molly had taken advantage of this to call Carlos and tell him what we were planning. It hadn't been going well when I'd left the room. She'd had that watery broke-down look like she was about to cry, and I tried to remind her that she didn't have to do this. Volunteers only.

She'd glared at me and told me to get out. I was still thinking about hogtying her and shuttling her out with Marcone and my brother, but my chances of doing that would be slim and I'd only get one shot.

"Carlos. I'm sorry." Sorry for getting your girlfriend into this. Sorry for getting your girlfriend killed. Sorry for starting all this.

"Don't worry about it, man." Sometimes a clear phone line could be a curse, though. I could hear how strained his voice was. "You and I, we've been in tighter spots than this. You think you got a chance with this thing?"

He meant, did I think I had a chance at getting Molly out alive. I couldn't lie to him. And I couldn't destroy that hope.

"I think we've got a better chance the way things have lined up than we would have otherwise. And I think we've got a better chance than we had in those caves." We had two out of three swords, although I didn't know where Sanya was to give him the heads up. Murphy was agreeing to wield the sword as an officer on loan from another department, so that was something. It would have taken too much time, and I didn't want to cut into his time with Molly. "Yeah, I think we got a shot. You want me to put her back on?"

"Sure." Neither of us moved. "You know, if she comes to harm..."

"I know." Either he'd kill me or himself, I knew what he meant. Sure, he wouldn't really do it, but that was what he wanted to say. "I know, man."

"Okay." Pause. "Can I talk to Molly, now?"

I left them to it, and hoped she wouldn't cry too much. I'd be stuffing her in the trunk of the limo faster than you could say you chivalrous idiot if she started crying.

Murphy was waiting for me in the doorway, and we went out to join Elaine at the table to wait. None of us felt like saying anything. We could still hear the hushed voice in the other room and I think we all figured it was the price we were paying for dragging a kid into this.

Someone had to say something. All I could think of were bad Charlie's Angels jokes.

"Harry?" Elaine hadn't looked up from the table where she was knuckle-rolling a bullet. Nice trick; I wondered who had taught it to her.

"Yeah?"

She did look up now, and there was something scary in her eyes. Scary-broken, not scary-deadly. Which was even more terrifying. I wanted scary-deadly. This Elaine looked a lot more like she had when we were teenagers, which was not at all what I wanted to see and I was pretty sure it wasn't what she wanted to be feeling.

"Can I talk to you..." She jerked her head to one side, in the direction of the other room.

I blinked, nodded, and got up. Wasn't like I had anything else to do tonight, right? "Sure..." I looked over at Murphy to make sure she'd be all right. She flapped a hand at me. So, she was going to be okay. "Yeah, sure."

Putting an arm around her shoulders, I had to steer her into the doorway rather than into the door. Had she been like this all night and I hadn't noticed? What the hell was going on?

This was not what I wanted. Not now. "Elaine..." When the door was closed behind us so Molly definitely couldn't hear. "Come on, okay, babe, you're scaring me..."

I should have known she had something even worse in mind.

"What do you know about Cowl?"

I closed the door almost completely behind me so that we could have some privacy and still hear them call if they needed us. Now that was the kind of question that could be an honest question or could lead to me learning more than I ever wanted to know about my fine fearsome friend. I frowned and shook my head. "Not much. Just what he told me about himself and Kumori, that he's on the Black Council and that he's more powerful than just about any wizard I've ever met." I didn't know if he was more powerful than the Merlin, but I didn't want to find out anytime soon. I didn't think Cowl did either. "Why?"

"I just..." she shivered, rubbed her hands over her upper arms like she was cold. "Doesn't this sit uneasy with you, Harry? The fire. The way he talks to you, the things he says. Are you just... okay with this?"

"Right." I put my hands on her arms and tugged her over to sit on the bed, perching on the end of it like some gawky old stork on growth hormone. "And you're asking..."

"Do you know what that means, Harry? Who he could be?"

Her voice was getting a little shrill and starting to carry. I tugged her closer and rubbed my hand along her back, being as comforting as I could. "I don't know who he is. I know ... a couple people he could be, and none of them are people I'd like to run into in a dark alley at night." Hell, I wouldn't even want to run into me in a dark alley at night, usually because I also wouldn't want to run into whatever I was running from. Whole other issue, though.

Elaine was tired. She was breaking badly, because I had come to her with someone who sounded enough like our old mentor and surrogate father (and yes, I could admit it if only to the two of us) to scare her, and she didn't need that pressure right now. And that was my fault.

"I don't know who he is," I told her, holding her as close as I could. Hoping I didn't sound as tired as I thought I did because we both didn't need to be breaking down right now. "I don't have any proof any which way, and there is no way I'm going to come out and ask him if the fire he survived..." Um. Yeah. "Kumori isn't around to ask, and as far as I know that leaves only Cowl to tell us the truth. And would you really trust him to tell us the truth?"

"He could show his fool face," Elaine grumped into my chest. "That would tell us the truth."

Unless he was burned beyond recognition. Unless he had changed his face or gotten scarred up by the Darkhallow or something else had happened. Unless our memories were so distorted, mine by time and Elaine's by his magic, that we didn't recognize him.

Shut up, Harry.

I took a breath and tried to be smart. I wasn't good at being smart. That was always her thing, and Justin's. I was quick on my feet, but that wasn't the same thing. "Elaine..." And I wanted to ask if it really mattered if Cowl was Justin, he was still a bad guy and we still needed to take him down. But, it obviously mattered to her. And I didn't want to ask why because I knew why. "If you did know he was Justin," I said, slowly, hoping it was the right question. "What would you do?"

"I don't know."

It was at least the right question to keep her from breaking any further. I patted myself on the back for that one. "It's the end of the world. At least for us, it is... they've gutted Chicago, and there's no way of knowing who's going to come out of this one." I said it like I would have told a child I loved her. That it was going to be okay. Talk about mood dissonance. "Cowl doesn't think he's going to survive this. Whoever he was before, whatever he did, he's risking it all to help us take down this Black Council. I don't know if I'd call them allies, but..."

"And you think that makes up for what he did?" Elaine sat up and pulled back a little, eyes blazing. "You think that makes up for what happened in those caves, and..."

Wrong thing to say to her. "No! No, Elaine, no... I don't think that makes up for it. But... I think maybe it means that it's time ..." To let go. Maybe it was time to let go of Justin, to stop carrying him and what he did to us around. Could it be that simple? Elaine was looking to me, angry and hurt, for a finish to that.

"Maybe it's just time to let him go. We don't even know if Cowl is... we just know that Cowl is someone who used to do really, really bad things, and now he wants to do this one last good thing before he dies. That's what we know, for a fact. Are we really going to try and stand in the way of that?" Except, if she wanted to, I would let her. God help me.

She shook her head, shoulders falling, head falling to land with a soft but forceful thud against my chest. I held her for a little while as she cried, and she let me.

I guess the idea of there finally being a Justin to get revenge on for everything he had done to us had its appeal. God knows, I found it pretty damn appealing. Not to mention the idea of being able to gloat about getting one over on Cowl. But, everything aside, it didn't entirely line up. Cowl was too powerful to be as young as I thought Justin had been, and even if he was Justin's age he'd gained an awful lot of power in a very short time. Fires happened to a lot of wizards, especially those who messed around with things they shouldn't have been messing with; I had the left hand of doom to prove that. It could have been anything. And it did sound like my mother had known most of the powerful supernatural boogeymen in the Chicago area, at least. Cowl could have been any one of them.

And I wasn't getting any younger. But my enemies list just kept on growing. I was tired of accumulating notches on my gun for no damn reason. I was tired of chasing people down, and I was tired of starting fights I might not be able to win. Hell, I was tired of fighting in general. I was about ready to retire somewhere with Mouse, if my brother would give him up, and Molly and Carlos and their fifty kids, raise a litter of Foo puppies and be quiet somewhere. I was tired of this whole damn war.

Wasn't everyone?

No, no they weren't. Or it wouldn't still be going on.

We sat there like that for a long while, until there were voices at the door. Molly was off the phone, and it sounded like Murphy was letting someone in. I had no idea how long Elaine and I had been in the room with the door closed, but it had been a while. Elaine frowned at me. "Who..."

"Don't know." But it had to be someone Murphy recognized. The voices didn't get loud enough for her to be alarmed or calling for backup.

When we came out, Molly had burrowed into Carlos's arms and was almost lost in his trench coat. I didn't want to think about how uncomfortable it had to be pressed against all those weapons he had to be hiding under there. I grinned at him, and he showed me some of his teeth in return.

"Heard you were planning a party and didn't invite me. That's just mean, man."

There was something about making our last stand on a golf course that made all the bad jokes come swimming up to the top of my brain. I looked over at Carlos and he shrugged back at me. "Kinda wish you'd brought your dinosaur."

I laughed. "Yeah... Me too."

We turned our eyes to the front and stared. It wasn't just the legions of darkness we were planning on taking down, it was all of it. The throng down by the sand trap was twenty or thirty creatures deep. Creatures, not people. Some were vampires, some were zombies controlled by the beats of at least three drummers that I could hear, some were ghouls, some were things I didn't even know the names for. We were probably already spotted by the creatures that were flying around over our heads. Banshees and shapeshifters and about the only thing I didn't see up there was a Nightflyer. Thank god.

Murphy had the sword at her back and her gun at her waist, a replacement P-90 strung across her chest. Maybe that was the real reason Kincaid had stopped by, but I didn't ask, on account of Murphy would probably threaten to test it out on me. Molly was armed with the best Carlos and I could give her, looking very small under all those gun-belts. Elaine had the chain around her waist to make room for the grenades.

You could tell just by looking that none of us planned on coming back alive.

It would have been nice. Maybe we should have held out hope that we could, but this was pretty big, even for me. The Council, apart from Ancient Mai and the Merlin and two other members whose names I didn't even remember because they were so new, was gone. The Wardens had withdrawn from the city. It was just us.

"We few, we happy few..." Carlos murmured, fingers curling around Molly's.

"We band of brothers?"

Molly snorted. "I'm not anyone here's brother, and you better be glad about that."

Carlos laughed. Murphy snorted; everyone laughed, and we'd needed that. I felt my head coming up, shoulders back and down. All right, then.

"Come on, angels," I said, and stepped out of the way before Murphy could hit me. "And sidekick. We got work to do."

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