He gave me a level stare.
“I hear that sometimes, some things can be done. But apparently it’s tricky as hell. And I’ve got no idea how,” I said.
“So can you?”
“No,” I said.
“In other words,” he said, “despite all the things you know, and all the incredible things you can do . . . you’re only human.”
I frowned at him and swigged beer.
“Then why,” Michael asked, “are you expecting perfection out of yourself? Do you really think you’re that much better than the rest of us? That your powers make you a higher quality of human being? That your knowledge places you on a higher plane than everyone else on this world?”
I eyed the beer and felt . . . embarrassed.
“That’s arrogance, Harry,” he said gently. “On a level so deep you don’t even realize it exists. And do you know why it’s there?”
“No?” I asked.
He smiled again. “Because you have set a higher standard for yourself. You think that because you have more power than others, you have to do more with it.”
“To whom much is given, much is required,” I said, without looking up.
He barked out a short laugh. “For someone who repeatedly tells me he has no faith, you have a surprising capacity to quote scripture. And that’s just my point.”
I eyed him. “What?”
“You wouldn’t be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn’t care.”
“So?”
“Monsters don’t care,” Michael said. “The damned don’t care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.”
My view of the kitchen blurred out. “You think?”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Michael said. “I think that you aren’t perfect. And that means that sometimes you make bad choices. But . . . honestly, I don’t know if I would have done any differently, if it had been one of my children at risk.”
“Not you,” I said quietly. “You wouldn’t have done what I did.”
“I couldn’t have done what you did,” Michael said simply. “And I haven’t had to be standing in your shoes to make those same choices.” He tilted his beer slightly toward the ceiling. “Thank you, God. So if you’ve come here for judgment, Harry, you won’t find any from me. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve failed. I’m human.”
“But these mistakes,” I said, “could change me. I could wind up like these people around Nicodemus.”
Michael snorted. “No, you won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know you, Harry Dresden,” Michael said. “You are pathologically incapable of knowing when to quit. You don’t surrender. And I don’t believe for a second that you actually intend to help Nicodemus do whatever it is he’s doing.”
I felt a smile tug at one corner of my mouth.
“Hah,” Michael said, sitting back in his chair. He swallowed some more beer. “I thought so.”
“It’s tricky,” I said. “I’ve got to help him get whatever he’s after. Technically.”
Michael wrinkled his nose. “Faeries. I never understood why they’re such lawyers about everything.”
“I’m the Winter Knight,” I said, “and I don’t get it either.”
“I find that oddly reassuring,” Michael said.
I barked out a short laugh. “Yeah. Maybe so.”
His face grew more serious. “Nicodemus knows treachery like fish know water,” he said. “He surely knows the direction of your intent. He’s smart, Harry. He’s got centuries of survival behind him.”
“True,” I said. “On the other hand, I’m not exactly a useless cream puff.”
His eyes glinted. “Also true,” he said.
“And Murphy’s there,” I said.
“Good,” Michael said, rapping the bottle on the table for emphasis. “That woman’s got brains and heart.”
I chewed on my lip and looked up at him. “But . . . Michael, she wasn’t . . . for the past year . . .”
He sighed and shook his head. “Harry . . . do you know what that island is like, for the rest of us?”
I shook my head.
“The last time I was there, I was shot twice,” he said. “I was in intensive care for a month. I was in bed for four months. I didn’t walk again for nearly a year. There was permanent damage to my hip and lower back, and physically, it was the single most extended, horribly painful, grindingly humiliating experience of my life.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And,” he said, “when I have nightmares of it, you know what I dream about?”
“What?”
“The island,” Michael said. “The . . . presence of it. The malevolence there.” He shuddered.
Michael, Knight of the Cross, who had faced deadly spirits and demons and monsters without flinching, shivered in fear.
“That place is horrible,” he said quietly. “The effect it has . . . It’s obvious that it doesn’t even touch you. But I don’t know if I could go back there again, by choice.”
I blinked.
“But I know Molly went back there. And you tell me Karrin did, too. And Thomas. Many times.” He shook his head. “That’s . . . astounding to me, Harry.”
“They . . . they never said anything,” I said. “I mean, they never spent the night, either, but . . .”
“Of course they didn’t,” he said. “You already beat yourself up for enough things that aren’t your fault. People who care don’t want to add to that.” He paused, and then added gently, “But you assumed it was about you.”
I finished the beer and sighed. “Arrogance,” I said. “I feel stupid.”
“Good,” Michael said. “It’s good for everyone to feel that way sometimes. It helps remind you how much you still have to learn.”
What he said about the island tracked. I remembered my first moments there, how unsettling it was. I had talent and training in defending myself against psychic assault, and I’d shielded against it on pure reflex, shedding the worst that it could have done to me. Wizard. And not long after that, I’d taken on Demonreach in a ritual challenge that had left me the Warden of the place, and exempt from its malice.
Thomas hadn’t had the kind of training, the kind of defenses I did. Molly, who was more sensitive than me to that kind of energy, must have found it agonizing. And Karrin, who had been assaulted psychically before . . . damn.
They’d all picked up more scars for me, on my behalf, without a word of complaint—and I’d been upset because they hadn’t been willing to take more.
Michael was right.
I’d gotten completely focused on myself.
“It occurs to me,” I said, “if I wasn’t being the Winter Knight . . . Mab would have picked another thug.” Mab had even told me who she would have gone after—my brother, Thomas. I shuddered to think what might have happened, if the temptations of Winter had been added to those he already bore. “Someone else would be bearing this burden. Maybe someone it would have destroyed by now.”
“It occurred to you just now?” Michael asked. “I thought of it about five seconds after I heard about it.”
I laughed and it felt really good to do it.
“There,” Michael said, nodding.
“Thank you.”
I meant it for a lot of things. Michael got it. He inclined his head to me. “There is, of course, an elephant in the room, of which we have not spoken.”
Of course there was.
Maggie.
“I don’t want to make her into a target again,” I said.
Michael sighed patiently. “Harry,” he said, as if speaking to a rather slow child, “I’m not sure if you noticed this. But things did not turn out well for the last monster who raised his hand against your child. Or any of his friends. Or associates. Or anyone who worked for him. Or for most of the people he knew.”
I blinked.
“Whether or not that was your intention,” Michael said, “you did establish a rather effective precedental message to the various predators, should they ever learn of her relationship to you.”
“Do you think Nicodemus would hesitate?” I asked. “Even for a second?”
“To take her from this house?” Michael asked. He smiled. “I’d love to see him try it.”
I lifted my eyebrows.
“A dozen angels protect this house, still,” Michael said. “Part of my retirement package.”