I wasn’t convinced Inverno was as tough as he said he was.
But I hadn’t survived in my business as long as I had by taking a lot of blind, foolish chances, either.
Besides.
There’d been a lot of blood in my life lately.
“Okay,” I said. “I can play nice a little longer. Who is your principal, so I can make contact?”
“I’m sure that is entirely obvious, Mister Dresden,” Inverno said. “I am currently in the service of the Baron John Marcone.”
Chapter Eight
Gentleman John Marcone, the robber baron of Chicago’s underworld, had become an actual Baron, a rank bestowed upon him when he became the first vanilla human to join the Unseelie Accords—partly thanks to yours truly, who had been one of the representatives of the Signatories who had signed off on the paperwork for his application.
I know, I know.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Only now I knew that he wasn’t a straight up vanilla human anymore—and it had been bad enough when that’s all he was. He was damned intelligent, clever, foresighted, and between his loads of money, expert hirelings, and canny preparation, he’d been a threat every bit as formidable as any number of supernaturally powerful weirdos.
Now he was also a supernaturally powerful weirdo, and it hadn’t changed his operational patterns in the least. He was still cagey as hell, still had the money, and the hirelings, and years of ruthless street-level savvy—and the knowledge of a literally God-damned angel to back him up as well.
Generally speaking, I had enjoyed confronting Marcone. He was a jerk. I had expressed my displeasure with him by knocking down his doors on a number of occasions, and I’d do it again if I had to.
But when it had just been me against the Titan, Marcone alone had stood beside me.
When I’d raised a small army to defend Chicago in the desperate hours of the Titan’s attack, Marcone had done the same thing, only maybe more effectively than me. When my people had needed arms, it had been Marcone’s （and Mab’s） foresight that had provided them.
And when I had been helpless in the moments after casting the binding that had taken the Titan down, it had been Marcone who saved my life.
That wasn’t the kind of thing I could simply ignore.
He was, more than ever, the devil I knew.
I didn’t like Marcone. I wouldn’t ever like him.
But in considering how to approach him I discovered something unpleasant about myself: I respected him. I respected how dangerous he was. I respected his capability. I respected his willingness to put himself in personal danger to defend what he saw as his own. And in that realization, I saw that I couldn’t have respect for him and simultaneously treat him with contempt.
So, I did something I never would have done a few years ago.
I called ahead.
Marcone had me come to one of his buildings to meet him. This one was on the southeastern edge of the Gold Coast, and it had been annihilated by Ethniu and the Eye of Balor. A week later, it was the first building destroyed in the attack to be cleared of debris and was currently going back up again. After only a month, a skeleton of steel had already begun to arise, and hundreds of workers were busily building back whatever building was there, and stronger than it had been in the first place.
Marcone was a jerk.
But he was putting a lot of food in families’ mouths. And I liked the defiance inherent in the rebuilding.
Dammit.
Ms. Gard met me at the gate to the construction site. The Valkyrie wore her usual suit, with steel-toed work boots substituted in, and a white hardhat over her golden hair. She handed me a hardhat as well, and I put it on. Gard was… well, not good people, but she was solid. We’d both lost people close to us in the attack.