and misery. They'll spread out from Central America to Africa, the Middle East, all those places that used to be Stalin's stomping grounds and haven't gotten a handle on things yet, the bad parts of Asia. Then they'll expand the franchise. The White Court will move in on all the places that regard themselves as civilized and enlightened and wisely do not believe in the supernatural." I shrugged. "You guys will be on your own."
"You guys?" Murphy asked me.
"People," I said. "Living people."
Mouse pressed his head a little harder against my boot. There was silence, and I felt Murphy's stare.
"Come on, Karrin," I said. I winked at her and pushed myself wearily to my feet. "That isn't gonna happen while I'm still alive."
Murphy rose with me. "You have a plan," she stated.
"I have a plan."
"What's the plan, Harry?"
I told her.
She looked at me for a second and then said, "You're crazy."
"Be positive, Murph. You call it crazy. I call it unpredictable." She pursed her lips thoughtfully for a second and then said, "I can't go any higher than insane."
"You in?" I asked her.
Murphy looked insulted. "What kind of question is that?"
"You're right," I said. "What was I thinking?" We left together.
* * *
CHAPTER
Thirty-Three
I was up late making arrangements that would, I hoped, help me take out Madrigal and his Malvora buddy, and put an end to the power struggle in the White Court. After which, maybe I would try turning water to wine and walking on water (though technically speaking, I had done the latter yesterday).
After I was through scheming, I dragged my tired self to bed and slept hard but not long. Too many dreams about all the things that could go wrong.
I was rummaging in my icebox, looking for breakfast, when Lasciel manifested her image to me again. The fallen angel's manner was subdued, and her voice had something in it I had rarely heard there—uncertainty. "Do you really think it's possible for her to change?"
"Who?"
"Your pupil, of course," Lasciel said. "Do you really think she can change? Do you think she can take control of herself the way you would have her do?"
I turned from the fridge. Lasciel stood in front of my empty fireplace, her arms folded, frowning down at it. She was wearing the usual white tonic, though her hair seemed a little untidy. I hadn't slept all that long or all that well. Maybe she hadn't, either.
"Why do you ask?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "It only seems to me that she is already established in her patterns. She disregards the wisdom of others in favor of her own flawed judgment. She ignores their desires, even their will, and replaces them with her own."
"She did that once," I said quietly. "Twice, if you want to get technical. It might have been one of her first major choices, and she made a bad one. But it doesn't mean that she has to keep on repeating it over and over."
There was silence as I assembled a turkey sandwich and a bowl of Cheerios, plus a can of cold Coke: the breakfast of champions. I hoped. "So," I said. "What do you think of the plan?"
"I think there is only a slightly greater chance of your enemies killing you than your allies, my host. You are a madman."
"It's the sort of thing that keeps life interesting," I said.
A faint smile played on her lips. "I have known mortals for millennia, my host. Few of them ever grew that bored."
"You should have seen the kind of plans I came up with a couple of years before you showed up. Today's plan is genius and poetry compared to those." There was no milk in the icebox, and I wasn't pouring Coke onto breakfast cereal. That would just be odd. I munched on the Cheerios dry, and washed each mouthful down with Coke in a dignified fashion. Then I glanced at Lasciel and said, "I changed."
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the crunching of tasty rings of oats or baked wheat or something. I just knew it was good for my heart and my cholesterol and for all the flowers and puppies and tiny children. The box said so.
The fallen angel spoke after a time, and her words came out quiet and poisonously bitter. "She has free will. She has a choice. That is what she is."
"No. She is what she does," I said quietly. "She could choose to change her ways. She could choose to take up