Previously on the Dresden Files:

Previously, in the first 14 books, 20-ish short stories, and 6 comic books of The Dresden Files leading up to the most recent book, Skin Game:

Part 1: The cast of characters

Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only wizard private investigator. He cobbles together a hardscrabble living from a combination of finding lost objects, tracking down missing people, purifying haunted houses, and helping the police deal with the occasional troll, ghoul, or goblin. However, over the past several years Chicago has been getting more dangerous and Harry has found himself forced to fight off warlocks, demons, and other increasingly powerful monsters to protect his city. 

Harry’s quest is made more difficult because of his strained relationship with the White Council of Wizards, the world’ governing body for human magic users. When Dresden was younger, his mentor Justin du Morne tried to kill him, and though Dresden managed to defeat and slay Justin, the White Council was skeptical that Dresden had truly acted in self-defense. They thus put him under the Doom of Damocles, a condition that means he would be immediately executed if he were believed to have broken any more rules of the Council, including the rule against using magic to kill. Dresden thus is largely isolated from other wizards, with the exception of his mentor Ebenezer McCoy, the only wizard willing to give Dresden a second chance.

Despite his lack of support from other wizards, though, Dresden is aided in his efforts to protect Chicago by several allies. One of the most important of these is Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, who runs the Special Investigation (SI) department of the Chicago police. SI is in charge of any supernatural occurrences; they have the duel obligations of defeating any monsters or warlocks who threaten the populace, and covering up the evidence of magic to keep the populace calm. Most of SI’s previous leaders had no idea what to do and were quickly turfed, but Murphy, by virtue of hiring the wizard Dresden as a consultant, is able to use his knowledge and expertise to fend off the monsters and keep the city safe.

Dresden’s other allies include members of his household: Bob, a skull-bound knowledge spirit which provides Dresden information about various magical matters, Mister, Dresden’s grumpy cat, and Mouse, Dresden’s gigantic Foo Dog, a loyal, loving beast that is as smart as a human and is capable of tearing through vampires, ghouls, and fairy lords with ease. Outside of his own home, Dresden is also aided by Susan Rodriguez, a tabloid reporter who wants to learn the truth about the supernatural world; Thomas Raith, Dresden’s incubus half-brother who rejects his species’ evil ways; “Mac” McAnally, the proprietor of a pub for wizards who occasionally gives Dresden advice and support; and the Knights of the Cross, three heroes who wield holy swords that can smite evil with devastating effect, provided they are used in accordance with strict rules decreed by God Himself. Of these knights, Dresden is the closest with Michael Carpenter, a paladin also known as the Fist of God. Carpenter’s family includes his wife Charity Carpenter, who despises Dresden (ostensibly because Michael gets injured more often when Dresden fights by his side), and the oldest of the seven Carpenter children Molly Carpenter, who idolizes Dresden. The other two knights, Shiro Yoshimo and Sanya Ivanovitch, also get on well with Dresden, but he isn’t as close to them as he is with Michael.

Of Dresden’s enemies, one of the most significant is the Red Court of vampires. Seductive blood drinkers a la Dracula, the Red Court prey on humans and kill them with impunity. During an early mission, Dresden wounds the leader of the Red Court in Chicago, a vampire named Bianca St. Claire. Bianca drinks blood from one of her thralls to heal but accidentally killed the thrall, and thus forms a grudge against Dresden.

Another significant enemy group is the Order of the Blackened Denarius, also called the Denarians. They are comprised of 30 individuals, each who possess one of the silver coins given to Judas in exchange for betraying Jesus. Each silver coin is possessed by a powerful demon, and the Denarians have full access to the powers of their demons. They are split into two factions. One, led by the 2000-year old human Nicodemus Archleone and his demon Anduriel, favor long-term, methodical plans to cause chaos and slaughter; the demons in his faction choose their recruits based on long-term talent, and Nicodemus is willing to spend years nurturing people into becoming monstrous villains if need be. Anduriel takes the form of a living shadow that can fight enemies for Nicodemus, and Archleone also wears Judas’ noose around his neck, which protects him from literally all harm except for being strangled by the noose itself. The other, led by Archleone’s ex-wife Polonius “Tessa” Lartessa and her demon Imariel, favor shorter-term evil plans; she chooses her minions based on who is most powerful and brutal at the moment, and she burns through them very rapidly. Her alternate Denarian form looks like a gigantic praying mantis, and her combat powers follow that theme. Their daughter Deirdre is also a Denarian and follows Nicodemus; her powers involve shifting into a gorgon-like body with sword-like prehensile strands of hair that are horrifyingly deadly in battle. Archleone additionally has a small army of followers who are willing to kill or die for him at his order, and whose tongues Nicodemus removes as a way to ensure loyalty. 

The Denarians are the arch-nemeses of the Knights of the Cross, who fight to stop the Denarians’ plans but are hampered by the requirement that they must try to save their opponents and may only kill them if the Denarians (or other enemies) cannot be stopped by any non-lethal means. Additionally, if an enemy surrenders his powers and claims to surrender, the Knights must honor it even if they do not really believe that enemy. Denarians do reform on very rare occasion—Sanya was one such case, switching from being a Denarian to being a Knight of the Cross—so the Knights have to try to get the Denarians to repent, even though the Denarians can exploit this to pretend to surrender and then launch sneak-attacks later. The Knights must also keep their words and truces (and are literally incapable of using their Swords to break promises), but the Denarians have no such restrictions and exploit this ruthlessly.

A third villain group is the mob outfit of John Marcone. Marcone is an absolutely ruthless gangster who, by virtue of his limiting civilian casualties and his strict refusal to let children become involved in any sort of criminal business in his city, is nonetheless tolerated by the Chicago police. Marcone tries to hire Dresden as his wizard enforcer, but when Dresden makes his refusal clear, Marcone looks elsewhere and begins acquiring supernatural power. Dresden and Marcone know that they will one day fight to the death, but until then they see each other as lesser evils and maintain a wary neutrality. 

Finally, there is the Unseelie Court, and in particular its Queen, Mab, and one of her handmaidens, the Leanansidhe (also called Lea). Lea was made Harry’s godmother by Harry’s now-deceased birth mother, Margaret Gwendolyn LeFay Dresden, and after Dresden makes an additional deal with Lea, Mab purchases his debt and brings Harry into her service. Mab is terrifying and utterly ruthless, but she is also necessary for humanity; her jobs include defending the ‘Outer Gates’ of reality from Lovecraftian monsters called “Outsiders” that want to break in and unmake reality itself. Mab forces Harry to accomplish various tasks for her in order to pay off his debt. She simultaneously tries to extend her control over him by urging him to take up the office of the Winter Knight, which would make him her personal enforcer for as long as he lives. Harry, however, resists these offers, knowing how awful it would be to get stuck in Mab’s service forever.

Part 2: Wars and Sacrifice

Over the first eleven books of the series, several major plot arcs play out. The first is the conflict against the Red Court. Seeking revenge for her thrall’s death, Bianca executes a complicated scheme in which she captures Susan Rodriguez and infects her with bloodlust, turning her into a Red Court Infected individual. Red Court Infected can use a variety of powers such as supernatural strength and speed, but they are constantly longing for blood, and if they ever give in and drink somebody dry they will become a full-blown, always-chaotic-evil Red Court vampire. Bianca mocks Dresden and tells him that his only options are to walk away and let her fully turn Rodriguez, or attack her and cause a full-scale war between the White Council and Red Court. Dresden chooses to attack and kill Bianca, thus starting a major war.

The war drags on for years, resulting in massive casualties on both sides. Multiple members of the White Council’s leadership, the Senior Council, are killed, as is is its field commander Donald Morgan, who dies killing a traitor in the Council that Dresden unmasks. Over 70 percent of the Council’s Wardens, its combination military-slash-police force, are killed in a single battle, and the situation becomes bad enough that Dresden himself is drafted into their ranks. However, the White Council is ultimately able to hold out.

Dresden’s battles in the war are assisted by Rodriguez, who joins the Fellowship of Saint Giles, a group of Red Court Infected who use their powers to try to stop Red Court vampires from hurting or killing innocents. Rodriguez and another St. Giles member named Martin visit Chicago to help Dresden survive a fight with Red Court hitman Duke Paulo Ortega. During this time Dresden and Rodriguez briefly resume their romance and have sex, though Rodriguez leaves town with Martin soon after the fight with Ortega, since they have to continue fighting the Red Court elsewhere. Of course, Dresden acquires new enemies as well, including the Ortega family as well as a man named Ernest Armand “Binder” Tinwhistle. Binder is a professional mercenary who can summon a massive clan of humanoid monsters which have mouths in their hands, wield firearms, and follow even the most suicidal of Binder’s orders without question. Finally, Dresden finds himself hunted by a naagloshii (a.k.a. 'skinwalker')--an extremely powerful, extremely evil, shapeshifting semi-divine entity of Navajo origin--that he dubs Shagnasty. Dresden and his allies are eventually able to kick Duke Ortega, Shagnasty, and Binder out of Chicago, but the war goes on.

Also during the war, Dresden’s opinions on the White Council begin to change. In some ways they change for the worse; after discovering that McCoy is the Council’s Blackstaff, the only wizard with a legal and metaphysical exemption from the Laws of Magic (including the ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill With Magic’ law, which McCoy demonstrates when he kills Ortega by dropping a satellite on his estate), Dresden has a crisis of faith in his mentor that takes years to heal. However, he also grows to see that not all of the Council are evil or hostile to him, and he becomes close to some, including fellow Warden Carlos Ramirez. Additionally, while Dresden refuses to help hunt down and execute warlocks, after the Senior Council leader Arthur Langtry brings a captive warlock who murdered a bunch of people to Chicago and gets Dresden to agree that there’s no way to save or confine him, Dresden is forced to acknowledge that sometimes killing warlocks is the only option outside of letting the warlocks go on to kill again. While he maintains his general wariness of the Council, and he desperately wants to find some way to deal with warlocks besides murder, he becomes able to accept why Langtry, Morgan, and others in the Council are so suspicious of him, and acknowledges that their lethal tactics towards warlocks are based in necessity and not laziness or bloodlust.

Second, John Marcone continues to accrue supernatural power. He hires the services of the Valkyrie Sigrun Gard from Odin (who now goes by Donar Vadderung and runs a world-class private military organization), and later he goes back to Odin and hires several Einherjaren, immortal warriors who come back to life whenever they die and thus can attain centuries or even millennia of training and experience. Next, when Dresden is forced to ask Marcone for help fighting a powerful villain, Marcone’s price is for Dresden to provide a White Council endorsement for him, Marcone, to be a Freeholding Lord under the Unseelie Accords. The Accords are a series of laws that Mab wrote which regulate conduct between magical entities and establish serious, usually lethal consequences for any who break those rules. Upon obtaining all the required endorsements, Marcone is officially dubbed the Baron of Chicago with authority over all magical doings in the city, further extending his power and prominence. He is the only mortal human to be a Freeholding Lord, and despite having no magic of his own he proves able to defend his territory against the mages, monsters and others who would take it from him.

The third overarching plot arc involves the Denarians. Like with the Red Court, Dresden stands with his allies against them, but also like with the Red Court, some of those allies are killed or permanently weakened. During a mission to stop Archleone from causing a major plague, Shiro Yoshimo dies to save Dresden, and although Dresden is able to work with remaining Knights and Marcone to foil the Denarians, Shiro’s loss is still a major blow. Next, during a mission in which Archleone captures and tortures Baron Marcone as well as a magical child known as the Archive (or Ivy to Dresden), Dresden and his friends again save the day, but not before Michael is shot several times. He survives but is injured so badly he has to retire from being a Knight. The remaining Knights give the Swords of the fallen ones to Dresden, saying God told them that Dresden would know who to give them to next, but Dresden is unable to find replacement wielders.

Furthermore, Archleone has plans for Dresden. He flings one of the silver coins at Michael’s youngest child Harry Carpenter while Dresden is present, knowing that Dresden would grab the coin first to protect the child. The coin is possessed by the demon Lasciel the Seducer, and the act of Dresden touching the coin creates a copy (or ‘shadow’) of that demon in Dresden's head. The copy, whom Dresden names Lash, tries to tempt Dresden into willfully taking up the coin itself and bringing the full-fledged Lasciel into him as well. Dresden does his best to hold out, though his increasingly-brutal battles force him to call upon a few of the coins’ minor powers such as Lash’s eidetic memory and Hellfire-enhanced destructive spells, and though he also became increasingly short-tempered, irritable, and brutal to his enemies as a result of the shadow’s prodding. However, just as Lash has an effect on Dresden, Dresden has an effect on Lash and is able to eventually convince her to stop serving Lasciel and join the side of good. Lash then dies protecting Dresden from a psychic bullet, but in doing so, births a parasitic entity which begins to grow in Dresden’s head. Dresden does not know this, as the only sign of the entity is Dresden developing gradually worsening headaches.

Dresden does gain allies during his battles against the Denarians and their ilk. One is Anna Valmont, a world-class art and artifact thief who takes a job for Marcone only for Archleone’s minions to slaughter everyone else on her team in order to get the artifact for themselves. She helps Dresden, Marcone, and the Knights stop Archleone before escaping into the night. Another is the archangel Uriel, whom Dresden meets in a church after shouting about how unjust it is that Michael was so badly injured after working so hard for God. Uriel gives Dresden the ability to use Soulfire to compensate for losing Hellfire (which he lost when Lash died); Soulfire is stronger than Hellfire and can be applied to constructive as well as destructive spells, but if Dresden overuses it he will burn out his soul and die. A third is Waldo Butters, a brilliant and honest but timid coroner who winds up dragooned into helping Dresden on a quest. During the quest he bonds with Bob (who appreciates Butters’ intellect), and at one point Butters arrives with Mouse just in time to save Dresden from a vengeful ex-Denarian. Finally, a fourth is found during Dresden’s fight to rescue Marcone and Ivy. At that time, Dresden visits Demonreach, a mysterious island in Lake Michigan which has an extremely powerful genius loci spirit. Dresden manages to make contact and forge an alliance with the spirit (also called Demonreach) and thus becomes the magical Warden of the island. He later discovers the island is in fact a prison for Lovecraftian monsters, and that as Warden he alone has the power to free any or all of the monsters, or trigger the self-destruct to set off a titanic explosion and annihilate them (as well as a substantial portion of the USA and Canada). He doesn't want to free the monsters or blow up the island, for obvious reasons, but he does gain one benefit from befriending the spirit: it is an Intellectus—it has intuitive, perfect knowledge within a certain domain, and that domain is ‘things on the island’—so by allying with it, when Dresden is on the island, he also has an instinctive knowledge of everything else there. This means he can go there and not worry about being ambushed, because he will know the moment anyone sets foot on the island. Furthermore, while the genius loci spirit cannot leave the island and has some restrictions in terms of how much agency it has, it is even stronger than Mab should she be on the island, and thus acts as a very powerful ally to Dresden while he is there. 

Lastly, Molly Carpenter also undergoes an arc. During one case, Dresden discovers that Molly has magical talent, particularly regarding veils and mind-control magic. Unfortunately, mind-control magic is both illegal under the Laws and extremely dangerous, and Molly’s first forays into using it—trying to brainwash her friends to get off drugs—drives most of those friends insane or comatose. Molly is then abducted by Mab’s forces who are drawn to her use of black magic. Dresden, along with Charity and Murphy (the latter of whom is leading a police investigation into people killed by those same winter forces) storm Mab’s fortress to rescue Molly, after which Dresden then pleads Molly’s case before Langtry and the rest of the Senior Council. Between Dresden making an excellent case for mercy and Molly's father Michael having previously saved the lives of many members of the jury, the Senior Council ultimately votes to spare Molly despite Langtry's staunch resistance. However, Langtry does have the Council put both Harry and Molly under the Doom of Damocles, meaning if Molly uses black magic again then both she and Harry will be executed. To prevent this outcome, Dresden takes Molly as his apprentice.

Molly’s rescue and subsequent apprenticeship had profound effects on Dresden and his friends. For one thing, during the foray into Mab’s fortress to rescue Molly, one of Dresden’s allies stretched time so that a full day passed on the outside while only a few minutes passed within the fortress. This helped Dresden’s team by delaying reinforcements (since it took them a full day to get into position to counterattack, by which time Dresden and his crew were gone), but it also meant that Murphy was absent for a full day during a case she was supposed to be leading. She was subsequently demoted and lost command of SI, and though she was able to hang on to a job as a standard police officer, she was told she no longer had any hope of promotion or advancement. Second, Dresden finally made peace with Charity, who acknowledged that her hate for Dresden stemmed from how she (Charity) herself had once had magical talents, but had used those talents to get involved with an evil cult and then almost died before Michael saved her from the cult’s dragon patron. Realizing how she had used her talents to serve an evil master, she grew to hate her own magic and let it wither and die. Seeing Dresden using his magic productively—and seeing her husband befriend him, and her daughter idolize him despite his use of magic—caused her to hate Dresden at first, but now she is over it because Dresden helped save Molly. Finally, Molly’s apprenticeship goes on for a few years. Dresden tries to train her gently, using kindness and eschewing the brutal ways of his own mentor Justin, but Molly’s eagerness to get into the action causes several problems. The worst of these is a relapse into mental magic, which, fortunately, nobody tells the White Council about. However, Dresden is generally able to keep Molly on the straight and narrow, and get her on her way to becoming a productive member of wizard society.

Part 3—The end of the Red Court and beyond

Everything changes, however, when Rodriguez calls Dresden and tells him that not only does he have a daughter Maggie—whom Rodriguez bore after she and Dresden had sex during the Ortega mission—but Duchess Arianna Ortega, the vampire who turned him into a vampire and married him, has abducted Maggie and plans to kill her in a powerful ritual sacrifice during which the entire Red Court will be present. The ritual, if successful, will kill her (Dresden’s daughter) and any siblings if she had them, then kill her parents (Dresden and Rodriguez) and any of their siblings such as Thomas, and so on, up through their entire family tree. Unfortunately, as Dresden scrambles to work out a plan to rescue Maggie, Red Court assassins begin hounding him throughout Chicago. Eventually one succeeds in firebombing his house, and as Dresden tries to rescue his upstairs neighbors he is blasted off a ladder by an exploding gas tank and breaks his back. Sanya arrives in the nick of time and saves the neighbors, but Dresden is rendered helpless with only hours to go before his daughter is killed.

Thinking that everything which has gone wrong is his fault, Dresden can see no options outside of selling himself to the most powerful beings he knows in exchange for the power he needs to save Maggie. He starts by summoning Uriel and asks for power, but Uriel says Heaven doesn’t work like that; Harry's injury was a consequence of choices he freely made, and Heaven won't act to override a mortal's free will. Dresden next summons Mab and says he’ll be her Winter Knight if she gives him enough power to first rescue his daughter; he also tells her that if she refuses this deal, he'll summon the Lasciel coin and get power that way. Mab takes him into faerie to accept his deal and has Dresden slit the throat of the previous Winter Knight, who had betrayed her and then been tortured for the past eight years; this serves as a warning to Dresden about what will happen if he tries to back out later. She then has sex with Dresden with all the winter fey watching to seal the contract and formally grant Dresden the status of Winter Knight. Dresden also, however, calls up Ivy’s hitman/bodyguard Jared Kincaid (who owes him a favor for saving Ivy) and puts a hit on himself, to be performed after he comes back from saving Maggie. This way Dresden can rescue Maggie and then be killed before Mab turns him into a monster. Dresden finally has Molly erase his memory of hiring Kincaid so he doesn’t get tempted to back out later or accidentally tip off Mab.

The Red Court hit the White Council stronghold in Edinburgh with a sickness spell to disable Dresden's wizard allies (except for McCoy, who wasn't there at the time). Marcone puts Dresden in contact with Odin, who informs him that Maggie is being held at the Red Court stronghold Chichen Itza in Mexico. Dresden then summons every remaining ally he can get, including Bob, Susan, Martin, Murphy, Sanya, Mouse, Lea, Molly, and Thomas, to rescue her, and he intuitively loans the spare Swords to Murphy and Susan for the fight. Upon arriving, Dresden first defeats Arianna in a duel and kills her, though not before she hints that Dresden wasn’t the only target of the ritual sacrifice. He and his team then storm the pyramid where the Red King Kukulcan is overseeing the ritual. Reinforcements, including McCoy and Odin, arrive, and with their help Dresden’s team manages to fight through Kukulcan’s armies and breach his inner sanctum. However, while they’re struggling against the overwhelming power of Kukulcan and his most powerful minions, Martin reveals that he’s actually a traitor who spent the last few centuries sabotaging the Fellowship from within, and who spent the last few days in particular orchestrating the slaughter of every Fellowship of Saint Giles base south of the American border. Dresden, horrified, locks eyes with Martin and uses his wizard power of soulgazing to see the truth: Martin was indeed a Red Court spy at first, but after centuries of serving undercover in the Fellowship he grew to hate the Court, and thus implemented a master plan to exterminate them. The ritual curse will wipe out the siblings, parents, parents’ siblings, grandparents, grandparents’ siblings, etc., of whoever is sacrificed, so if the newest Red Court vampire is sacrificed, then—because Red Court sires are metaphysically considered ‘parents’ to those they sire, and are all thus some relation of parents and siblings to each other—the Red Court will be exterminated. Dresden sees what he’s trying to do and can’t find any way to save his daughter besides going along with it, so he tells Susan that Martin just confessed to being responsible for Maggie being abducted and slated to be sacrificed. Martin confirms this and Susan rips out his throat, killing him and initiating her full transformation into a Red Court vampire. As her soul begins to turn evil, she begs Dresden to sacrifice her and end the Red Court menace forever, which he does. He slits her throat on the altar, killing every Red Court vampire in existence.

Dresden then staggers out of the pyramid and talks to McCoy, finally realizing what Arianna meant—the ritual curse wasn’t intended for him but for McCoy, who in addition to being the White Court’s assassin and one of the people the Red Court most desperately needed to kill in order to win he war, also turns out to be LeFay’s father, Harry’s grandfather, and Maggie’s great-grandfather. They bond before McCoy teleports Dresden’s team back to Chicago, with Lea taking Rodriguez's body away to receive a proper burial. Dresden entrusts Maggie to Murphy, and they agree she will keep the Swords until he comes back (which Dresden doesn’t think he’ll ever do, because he knows Mab will collect him soon). He and Murphy agree to have a date in a couple hours if Mab hasn’t scooped Harry up by then. However, when Dresden goes to wait for Murphy by his brother’s boat, Kincaid shoots Harry in the heart and his body falls into Lake Michigan.

As a result of all this, several major events happen:

* With the Red Court dead, a power vacuum forms. A group of Lovecraftian/Innsmouth-esque fish monsters called the Fomor begin to abduct magic users and try to establish themselves as a major power in their own right. They are powerful mages, and their magic tends to be heavy with water spells, entropy magic, and bio-manipulation (like adding gills to people so those people can perform slave labor under the sea, adding venomous spit to their minions so those minions can kill their enemies more effectively, or grafting animals together to make stronger, more brutal hybrid beasts).

* The Red Court Infected all revert to baseline humans, including magically aging to whatever age they would be if they hadn’t been infected. For most of them, this makes them centuries old and they die of old age on the spot. A few of the younger Red Court Infected, who were infected just a couple of years or decades in the past, manage to survive growing to their chronological age. The Fellowship of Saint Giles is destroyed as all of its older members die, and the few younger ones that survive both Martin’s slaughter and their rapid aging aren’t able to keep it going, especially as they no longer have their powers. 

* The Carpenters adopt Maggie Dresden, and also take in Mouse. Michael receives angelic protection for his loved ones as one of the perks of his job as a Knight, and the angels remain even though he retired, so the Carpenter house is the safest place for her since the angels will stop any hostile magical creature from setting foot on the property. Because the angels cannot interfere with free will, mortal humans could still theoretically break in and try to harm her, but the virtual invulnerability to supernatural entities makes the house still safer than just about anywhere else. 

* Butters recovers Bob and begins using him as a personal magic tutor, learning how to build magical devices despite not being sensitive to magic at all.

* Murphy, on account of an Internal Affairs investigation that a Red Court mole initiated before Dresden exterminated the Court, is fired from the police. She still has the Swords, and she also takes in Dresden’s cat Mister, but she but no longer has a job. 

* Marcone buys the lot containing Dresden’s destroyed boardinghouse and builds a literal fortress there. He uses the fortress to headquarter an alliance called the Brighter Future Society with several other groups and individuals, including some of the incubi and succubi, Murphy, a pack of werewolves Harry had allied with, an ectomancer who deals with ghosts, and a coalition of minor magical talents called the Paranet, in order to keep Chicago free of warlocks, Fomor, and other monsters. The fortress includes training facilities, armories, medical wards, jail, daycare (for people who have reason to believe the Fomor or others will go them or their families), hotel (for Paranetters and others who are just passing through town and need a safe place to stay), and so on. Murphy tends to handle the warlocks (and proves able to take down even Council-level dark wizards), while the rest fight various other supernatural monsters such as ghouls.

* Marcone also fights, defeats, and kills a Fomor sorcerer who storms one of his buildings. During this battle he reveals several anti-magic and anti-wizard strategies and techniques, and notes to himself how he's getting ready for the ultimate showdown with Dresden.

* The psychic trauma of the massive battle at Chichen Itza—and of helping Harry kill himself—wear on Molly’s psyche, and she becomes increasingly unstable. This isn’t helped by the fact that Dresden’s death triggers the Doom of Damocles and requires the Wardens to execute her if they find her (though Ramirez, knowing Molly is good at heart, assigns himself the job of catching her and then keeps deliberately missing her), or by the fact that Lea uses the excuse of Harry’s death to make herself Molly’s godmother instead and subject her to a brutal training regimen. Between Molly's battered psyche and Lea’s lessons (which all involve placing Molly in mortal peril and forcing her to master some skill to save her life), Molly finds herself broke, homeless, and increasingly out of control during fights. She even begins to scare Murphy and the other members of the Paranet and Marcone’s organization.

* Harry’s spirit is kicked out of his body and he learns that, before he can pass on to whatever comes next (which he thinks is surely the afterlife), he has to solve his own murder, help defeat another supervillain, and bring Molly some peace. 

Harry finishes that quest and ‘passes on’ only to find that Mab outsmarted him; she recovered his body and took him to Demonreach, where she, the spirit Demonreach, and the parasite Lash left in his head have kept his body alive until his spirit returns. Dresden, alive and in his body once more, is thus forced to become Mab’s Knight. However, Uriel reveals to Dresden that the reason he killed himself was because a demon manifested and whispered in Harry’s ear that all the disasters were his fault; had the demon not cheated and done that, Harry wouldn’t have been in despair enough to kill himself. Because the demon broke the rules, Uriel can break them in the same way, and he places a new whisper in Harry’s ear—that despite being Mab’s minion, he still has free will. Dresden realizes this is true and tells Mab that he will work for her as agreed, but if he feels she is being too bloodthirsty or cruel, he will refuse to think for himself and will only obey Mab’s literal commands. Mab can force Harry’s body to do anything, but she can’t order his mind to think, so if Harry refuses to think for himself he’ll quickly become a useless Knight unless Mab is willing to hang around puppeting him. Mab, happy that she finally has a knight who recognizes his real worth is in his mind and not just his physical ability to murder people, and who would in fact prefer a more surgical Knight rather than a slaughter-happy psychopath, accepts.

Dresden thus becomes the Winter Knight, which grants him vastly improved strength, speed, stamina, and magic, and also empowers him with the Winter Mantle (which makes him more violent, sexually aggressive, and irritable), though all his new powers can be disabled by anything that would disable winter fey, such as cold iron or trying to violate winter law. After some brutal physical therapy by Mab (which mostly involves her trying to kill him and him barely fending her off), she introduces him to her court, where he meets and befriends Santa Claus, who turns out to also be Odin. When that is done Mab dispatches Dresden on his first mission: to kill one of her daughters, Lady Maeve, who has been infected by a corrupting Outsider called Nemesis. Killing her will allow her mantle to transfer to Mab’s other daughter, Sarissa, who has not been infected and can fulfill the crucial duties of her mantle. 

Dresden meets up with his allies and learns more about what they’ve been up to, including Butters’ technowizardry and Molly’s continuing struggles. During this time he tells Murphy that he’s returned and wants the Swords back as agreed, but she refuses on the grounds that he may have been corrupted by Mab and can’t be trusted with them. He and his allies (including Murphy and Molly) do ultimately manage to corner Maeve on Demonreach, where Maeve is trying to kill the Demonreach spirit and release the imprisoned monsters, but Nemesis outmaneuvers them by having Maeve kill her partner in the Seelie Court Lady Lily, whom Maeve/Nemesis maneuvered to be on the island as well. When Lily dies, her mantle goes to the next most suitable wielder present, Sarissa, and since one person can’t have both a Seelie and Unseelie mantle, she can no longer take over for Maeve. Murphy is then forced to shoot Maeve, and Meave’s mantle transfers to the next most suitable person in the vicinity: Molly Carpenter. It turns out this was Lea’s real reason for training her so brutally; Mab anticipated that they might lose Sarissa and wanted a backup with enough magical power to take on Maeve’s mantle and responsibilities. Molly is thus forced into the Winter fae against her will, and Dresden can do nothing for her other than promise to not tell her parents so that she herself can tell them when she thinks the time is right. (Molly later discovers her duties include being Mab’s draft officer, who goes around collecting fae children so they can be trained to fight and die protecting the Outer Gates. This horrifies her, but like Mab, she can’t think of any way to stop the Outsiders without doing this.)

All the while, the spirit in Dresden’s head continues to grow bigger and causes him increasingly debilitating headaches. Only the Demonreach spirit is able to make the headaches go away. As such, Dresden soon finds he can no longer leave the island without being incapacitated by the headaches caused by his head-spirit. He is thus forced to remain living on the deserted island.

And that brings us to Skin Game!

(Well, okay, that isn’t everything. I cut out a lot, including the White Court vampires, Black Court vampires, werewolves, White Council politicking, a recurring group of necromancer villains, two more of Dresden’s romances-that-get-horribly-screwed-up, most of Nemesis’s earlier actions, etc. But this is all you need to know for Skin Game.)