something under his breath. Whispers rolled from the shadows around him. I didn’t recognize the language, but I did recognize the tone. I wondered if the angelic tongue had swear words, or if they just said nice words backward or something. Doog! Teews doog!
Nicodemus’s sword came up as swiftly as a flickering snake’s tongue and came to rest against my throat. I didn’t have time to flinch; it was that fast. I sucked in a quick breath and held very, very still.
“These marks,” he murmured. “Thorned Namshiel’s strangler spell.” His eyes drew a line from the last apparent mark on my neck down to the duster pocket that the bag of coins had been in. “Ah. The strangulation was the distraction. He picked your pocket with one of the other wires before he was incapacitated. He did that to Saint…someone-or-other, in Glasgow in the thirteenth century.”
There’s nothing like getting taken with an old trick, I guess. But that meant that Namshiel had been working together with someone else—someone else who had to have been hanging around to collect the coins after he’d taken them from my pocket and tossed them off to the side in the confusion. Someone who hadn’t been pulling a fade after all.
“Tessa and Rosanna,” I said quietly. “They got their collection of thugs back. They bailed at just the right moment to ruin your plan, too.”
“Deceitful bitches,” Nicodemus murmured. “One of them is our own Judas; I was sure of it.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “What?”
“That’s why I let them handle the more, shall we say, memorable aspects of the Archive’s initiation to our world,” Nicodemus said. “I suppose now that the child is free, she’ll have some rather unpleasant associations with those two.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s somewhat ironic, Dresden, that I can talk to you about this particular aspect of family business. You’re the only one that I’m sure hasn’t gone over to this new force—this Black Council of yours.”
“How can you be so sure about me?” I asked him.
“Please. No one so obstreperous has been corrupted by anything but his own pure muleheadedness.” Nicodemus shook his head, never taking his eyes off me. “Still. My time here has not been wasted. The Knights carried away Namshiel’s coin, so Tessa has lost her sorcery teacher. I heard Magog’s bellow end quite abruptly a few moments ago, just before you walked out of the same building, so with any luck Tessa’s heaviest bruiser is out of the game for a time as well, eh?” Nicodemus smiled cheerily at me. “Perhaps his collar is in one of your pockets. And I have Fidelacchius. Removal of one of the Three is profit enough for one operation, even if I did lose this chance at gaining control of the Archive.”
“What makes you think,” I said, “that you have Fidelacchius?”
“I told you,” Nicodemus said. “This is endgame. No more playing.” The pitch and intonation of his voice changed, and though he still spoke in my direction, it was clear that he was no longer speaking to me. “Shadow, if you would, disable Dresden. We’ll talk some sense into him later, in a quieter setting.”
He was talking to Lasciel’s shadow.
Hell, wizards didn’t have a monopoly on arrogance.
Neither did the Knights of the Cross.
I stiffened in place, my mouth half-open. Then I fell over sideways, body resting against the boat’s steering wheel, my spine ramrod straight. I didn’t move, not one little twitch.
Nicodemus sighed and shook his head. “Dresden, I truly regret this necessity, but time is growing short. I must act, and your talents could prove useful. You’ll see. Once we’ve cleared some of these well-intentioned idiots out of our way…” He reached for Fidelacchius.
And I punched him in the neck.
Then I seized the noose and jerked it tight. I hung on, pulling it tighter. The noose, another leftover from Judas’s field, made Nicodemus more or less invulnerable to harm—from everything but itself. Nicodemus had worn the thing for centuries. As far as I knew,
I was the only one who had worked out how to hurt him. I was the only one who had truly terrified him.
He met my eyes for a panicked second.
“Lasciel’s shadow,” I told him, “doesn’t live here anymore. The Fallen have no power over me. And neither do you.”
I jerked the noose a little tighter.
Nicodemus would have screamed if he could have. He thrashed uselessly, reaching for his sword. I kicked it out of reach. He reached up and raked at my