“A random hardpoint of irrational morality?” he asked. “I’ve heard your reputation, Dresden. You don’t mind killing.”

“If I’ve got to, I will,” I said. “If I don’t have to do it, I don’t. Besides. It’s smarter.”

Grey opened his eyes all the way and turned his head toward me. “Smarter?”

“You kill someone, there’s always someone close to them who is going to take it hard,” I said. “Maybe a lot of someones. You remove one enemy, but you make three more.”

“Do you honestly think Harvey has someone ready to avenge him should we take his life?” Grey asked.

“He’s got whoever he works for,” I pointed out. “And he’s got the cops and the FBI. If we make a corpse of him, we risk warning our target and setting large forces in motion that could skew this whole deal.”

“Kill them as well,” Deirdre said sullenly.

“I thought we were on a schedule,” I sniped back at her waspishly. I turned to Grey again. “The point is, killing someone is almost never the smart move, long term. Sometimes it’s got to be done if you want to survive—but the more you do it, the more you risk creating more enemies and buying yourself even more trouble.”

Grey seemed to consider that for a moment, and then shrugged. “The argument is not entirely without merit. Tell me, wizard, does it give you some sort of satisfaction to protect this man?”

“Yeah.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Hmm.”

“Good, you want to keep him alive now,” I said. It’s just possible that I might have sounded sarcastic. “That was easy.”

Grey resumed his waiting posture, eyes slipping out of focus again. “It doesn’t matter to me, either way. I’ve no objection to killing for professional reasons, and no need to do it when doing so would be stupid.”

“I thought you said it would be fun.”

That made Grey bare his teeth in a smile. “Always. But just because something is pleasurable doesn’t mean it is appropriate.”

“Look,” Deirdre said, her voice suddenly intent.

I did. Three people in overcoats were walking up to Harvey’s building. They skipped the entrance in front and headed for the staircase in back. Two of them were men, fairly bulky. The third was a petite woman.

All three moved with a clarity and intensity of purpose that marked them as predators.

“Poachers,” Grey noted. There was a low, growling tone to his voice.

I peered at the woman a little more closely, and shot Deirdre a look over my shoulder. “Is that—?”

Her eyes were wide. She nodded tightly. “My mother.”

Fantastic.

Polonius Lartessa was another Knight of the Blackened Denarius, the bearer of Imariel. She was alsoNicodemus’s estranged wife, a sorceress, and an all-around piece of bad news.

“What’s she doing here?” I demanded.

Deirdre stared intently at the woman. “I’m not sure. She’s supposed to be in Iran. She wasn’t supposed to know that—” Deirdre cut herself off abruptly.

So. The wife was cutting in on Nicodemus’s action—assuming Deirdre was telling the truth, which I couldn’t.

“We can’t let her take the factor from us,” Grey said calmly. He unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car. “Come on.”

Deirdre bit her lip. But then she got out, following Grey, and I went with them.

Seventeen

“Grey,” I said, hurrying to catch up.

“Hmm?”

“How is walking up and starting a fight with Tessa any better than doing it with Harvey?”

“It isn’t,” he said. “But the alternative may be losing him. Unacceptable.”

“Then we don’t lose him,” I said. “How good is your Nicodemus impersonation?”

Grey narrowed his metallic eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

“You two go up and distract them,” I said. “One big happy family. I go in the front door and get Harvey the hell out of there. Quietly.”

Grey considered it for a moment and then nodded once. “I doubt I’ll be able to fool his wife for more than a moment. But then, you only need a moment.”

Deirdre grimaced. “Just press your lips together as hard as you can and keep quiet. He gets like that when he’s angry. I’ll talk.”

Grey’s mouth turned up into a grin. Then he winked at me and just melted.

One second, the plain man in jeans and an athletic jacket was there. The next, it was Nicodemus, head to toe, black suit and all—and not just in appearance. Grey’s posture changed, along with his walk, the way he held his head, right down to the smug, wary eyes. “Why, thank you, Deirdre,” he said in a perfect imitation of Nicodemus’s gravelly voice. “Such a dear child.”

Deirdre stared at Grey for a second in something between fascination and disgust. Then she said to me, “Hurry. Imariel will realize Anduriel isn’t there before long.”

I nodded and took off at a jog. I vaulted a large cast-iron fence behind the building (Parkour!) and hustled down an alley no wider than my shoulders between the bank building and its neighbor, keeping the bank between me and the approach of Tessa and her goons, the way a squirrel will circle and hide behind the trunk of a tree. I stopped at the corner to check and be sure that they’d gone out of sight, found the coast clear, then ran down the length of the front side of the bank and went up the stairs to Harvey’s office three steps at a time.