did for their progenitors. The island seemed almost alive, aware of my presence in a sense that I couldn’t really tangibly define—aware of it and sullenly, spitefully hostile to it.
But that wasn’t the creepy part.
The creepy part was that it felt familiar.
Walking up those stone steps, my legs settled into a steady pattern of motion, as if they’d already walked up that path a thousand times. I swerved slightly on one step, for no reason that I could see, only to hear Michael, behind me, continue walking in a straight line and slip as the stone he stepped on shifted beneath his foot. I found myself counting silently to myself, backward, and when I hit zero we mounted the last step and reached the summit of the hill.
Somehow I knew, even before I saw it, that one side of the old lighthouse would be torn open to the sky, revealing an interior that was as hollowed-out and empty as the inside of a rifle barrel. I knew that the little stone cottage built against the base of the tower would still be reasonably intact, though about half of the slate-tile roof had collapsed inward and would need repairs. I knew that it had been made from the stones of the collapsed lighthouse. I knew that the front door rattled when you opened it, and that the back door, which wasn’t in sight from here, would swell up during a rain and get stuck in its frame, much like the door at…
…at home.
I also knew that as freaking weird as all of that was, I couldn’t afford to let any of it matter right now.
Nicodemus and company were waiting for us.
The sleeting rain was starting to cover everything in a thin layer of ice, but the bonfire laid on the ground before the opening in the wall of the tower was large enough to ignore it. The flames leapt ten or twelve feet in the air, and burned with an eerie, violet-tinged light, and the ice forming everywhere created the illusion of a purple haze that clung to anything inanimate.
Beside the bonfire stones had been piled up into something that resembled the throne of some ancient pagan king. Nicodemus sat atop them, of course. Tessa stood at his right hand, entirely in human form for the first time since I had seen her. She was a little slip of a girl who barely looked old enough to hold a driver’s license, and was dressed in something black and skintight. Deirdre knelt at Nicodemus’s feet, and with the three of them together like that, I could see the blending of the parents’ features in their daughter. Especially around the eyes. Deirdre’s showed a full measure of both Nicodemus’s soulless calculation and Tessa’s heartless selfishness.
Magog crouched at the base of the pile of stones, apelike and enormous, sullen eyes burning with bloodlust. The spined Denarian I had beaten down with the silver construct-hand lay reclining on the ground beside Magog, his face twisted with hate, one hand twisting and clenching—but his maimed body was otherwise motionless.
My heart sped up in sudden excitement. There were still six of them. They hadn’t broken Ivy yet.
I held up a hand. We came to a stop, while Rosanna lightly mounted the steps to kneel down at Tessa’s right hand.
“Wow,” I drawled. “That isn’t a contrived tableau or anything. Are you here to do business, or did you get lost on your way to auditions for Family Feud?”
“Gunman in the cottage,” Sanya murmured, very quietly.
“Beasts in the shadows behind the tower,” Michael whispered.
I kept myself from looking. If my friends said there were bad guys there, they were there, end of story.
“Good evening, Dresden,” Nicodemus said. “Have you brought the merchandise?”
I jingled the Crown Royal bag and bumped the hilt of Shiro’s sword, hanging over my shoulder, with the side of my head. “Yep. But you knew that already, or Rosie, there, wouldn’t have brought us this far. So let’s skip the small talk. Show me the girl.”
“By all means,” Nicodemus said. He gestured with one hand, and the shadows—his shadow, I should say—suddenly fell away from the interior of the ruined lighthouse tower.
Red light filled that space, pouring up from the sigils and glyphs of the most elaborate greater circle I had ever seen—and I’d seen one made of silver, gold, and precious stones. This one incorporated all of those things plus art—grotesque pieces, mostly—sound, ringing forth in gentle, steady waves from upright tuning forks and tubular