“Will,” I said. “Get your game face on.” I turned to Will to find the young man gone and a burly dark-furred wolf sitting in his place next to a pile of loose clothes. “Oh,” I said. “Good.”

I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable. I straightened my back, nodded once, and began to stride toward the cottage door. “Let’s go, people. Party time.”

It was getting darker over the enormous expanse of the lake. Twilight is a much different experience when you’re far away from the lights of a city or town. Modern civilization bathes us in light throughout the hours of darkness—lighted billboards, streetlights, headlights, airplane lights, neon decorations, the interior lights of homes and businesses, floodlights that strobe across the sky. They’re so much a part of our life that the darkness of night is barely a factor in our daily thinking anymore. We mock one another’s lack of courage with accusations of being afraid of the dark, all the while industriously making our own lights brighter, more energy efficient, cheaper, and longer-lasting.

There’s power in the night. There’s terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when the darkness itself was enough to makes us cry out in fear.

Get a good ways out from civilization—say, miles and miles away on a lightless lake—and the darkness is there, waiting. Twilight means more than just time to call the children in from playing outside. Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood. Night is when unseen beings with no regard for what our people have built and no place in what we have deemed the natural order look in at our world from outside, and think dark and alien thoughts.

And sometimes, just sometimes, they do things.

I walked down the ancient hillsides of Demonreach and felt acutely aware of that fact; night wasn’t falling, so much as sharpening its claws.

I walked out to the end of the floating dock alone. Billy and Georgia remained behind, in the woods. You would not believe how sneaky a wolf is capable of being until you’ve seen one in action. Wolves acting with human-level intelligence—and exceptional human intelligence at that—are all but invisible when they choose to be.

A boat was rounding the buoy that marked the opening in the reef. It was a white rental boat, like any number available to tourists in the area, a craft about twenty feet long and rigged for waterskiing. The wind had risen, coming in from the southwest, and the lake was getting choppier. The rental boat was wallowing a little, and bouncing irregularly against the waves, throwing up small shocks of spray.

I watched it come in over the last few hundred yards, until I could see who was on board. The boat was fairly new. Its engine made an odd, clattering noise, which served to identify the occupants. The White Council, it seemed, had arrived on time.

Ebenezar McCoy was at the wheel of the boat, his bald head shiny in the rain. Listens-to-Wind sat in the passenger seat, wearing a rain poncho, one hand gripping the side of the boat, the other holding on to the dashboard in front him. His weather-seamed face was grim.

In the center of the rear bench was a tiny figure in white silk embroidered with red flowers. Ancient Mai was Chinese, and looked as delicate and frail as an eggshell teacup. Her hair was pure white and long, held up with a number of jade combs. Though she was now old, even by the standards of the White Council, she was still possessed of a sizable portion of what would have been a haunting, ethereal beauty in her youth. Her expression was serene, her dark eyes piercing and merciless.

She frightened me.

Veteran Wardens sat on either side of Ancient Mai, dour in their grey cloaks, and three more were sitting or crouching elsewhere in the boat—all of them from the hard-bitten squad that had been on standby back in Edinburgh. They were all armed to the teeth, and their expressions meant business. Apparently Mai scared them at least as much as she did me: one of them was holding an umbrella for her.

I waited at the end of the dock, inviting Ebenezar by gesture to pull up on the side opposite the Water Beetle. He brought the boat in with considerably more skill than I had shown, killed the ailing engine while it was still moving, and got up to toss me a line. I caught it and secured the boat to the dock without taking my eyes off of anyone in the boat. No one spoke. Once the engine had fallen silent, the only sound was rain and wind.

“Evening,” I ventured, nodding to Ebenezar.

He was staring hard at me, frowning. I saw his eyes scan the shoreline and come back to me. “Hoss,” he said. He rose and stepped out onto the dock. One of the Wardens tossed him another line, and he secured the back end of the craft. Then he got off, walked up to me, and offered me his hand. I shook it.

“Rashid?” he whispered so low I could barely hear it over the rain.

“With us,” I replied as quietly, trying not to move my lips.

His head tipped me a tiny nod, and then he turned to beckon the others. Wardens and Senior Council members began clambering out of the boat. I walked down the dock beside Ebenezar, watching the Wardens over my shoulder. They were the sort of men and women who had no illusions about violence, magical or otherwise. If they decided that the best way to deal with me would be to shoot me in the back, they wouldn’t hesitate.

I stepped off the dock and onto the island again, and immediately felt the presence of Demonreach. At the moment, the only persons on the island were those I had brought with me.

Ebenezar followed me, and I felt it the instant he stepped onto the shore. It wasn’t as if someone had whispered in my ear. I simply knew, felt it, the way you know it when an ant is crawling across your arm. He stopped a step later, and I kept going until I was about ten feet away. I turned to face them as their group came down the dock to stand on the shore. I kept close track of them through the link with the island, making sure that there weren’t any Wardens hiding behind veils so that they could sneak up behind me and start delivering rabbit punches.

Ebenezar, Ancient Mai, and Listens-to-Wind, his expression bearing a faintly greenish cast, stood side by side, facing me. The Wardens fanned out behind them, wary eyes watching every possible route of approach, including from the lake.

“Well, Wizard Dresden,” Ebenezar said. He leaned on his staff and regarded me blandly. “We got your note.”

“I figured,” I said. “Did you get as far as the part where I said if you wanted a fight, I would oblige you?”

The Wardens didn’t actually bare their teeth and start snarling, but it was close.

“Aye, aye,” Ebenezar said. “I thought it might be more profitable if we could talk about things first.”

“Indeed,” said Ancient Mai. Her voice was too smooth and too confident to match the tiny fragile person speaking in it. “We can always kill you afterward.”

I didn’t actually break out into rivulets of sweat, but it was close.

“Obviously, the disrespect you have offered the White Council merits some form of response,” she continued. “Do not flatter yourself by thinking that we have come to you because we lack other options.”

Ebenezar gave Mai a mild look. “At the same time,” he said, “your reputation as an investigator is unrivaled within the Council. That, added to the nature of your relationship with the alleged murderer, is reason enough to hear what you have to say.”

“Wizard Dresden,” Listens-to-Wind said. “You said you had proof of Morgan’s innocence. You said you had a witness.”