Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 11

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This is the one with Chaunzy! Chauncy? Harry's got him in a summoning circle, and he's shrieking and banging on it trying to get out. Apparently, this is required of a demon who gets summoned, and if they escape they're required to do their best to kill the summoner. Honestly, the amount of rules and vocabulary established in this scene leads me to suspect that at some point, demons and the "down below" were intended to play a much larger role in the series than ended up being the case. Apparently Hell has a whole hierarchy? And the way demons are talked about here makes them sound more different from other creatures of the Nevernever than is established in later books. (I don't remember which of the early-middle books it is, but we're told that "demon" is essentially a catch-all term for hostile non-fae entities from the Nevernever, or anywhere else outside mundane reality. Chaunzy, who's part of Hell, is a demon. So was that toad thing from the last book. So are Outsiders.) I don't know if Dresden's impression that down below "make Santa Claus look like an amateur" in terms of their ability to gather information is born of ignorance about who and what Santa Claus actually is in this setting, or if this is accurate and we just haven't had occasion to see it. For obvious reasons, I'm hoping for the former. 

Harry's attempts to research Harley MacFinn and the Northwest Passage Project through mundane means, and by having Bob talk to more benign spirits, didn't turn anything up. He still needs answers, and he's willing to trade Chaunzy one of his middle names for information. (The demon already has his first and last). There's a little back and forth during which Chaunzy points out that Harry's behavior is more like a dark sorcerer than a proper member of the White Council, and he's skirting the edges of the laws of magic by even doing this summoning. According to Harry, since he's not trying to mentally influence Chaunzy, he's in the clear on the Fifth Law, which tracks, and he's not violating the Fourth Law because there's a legitimate reason for the summoning, which... doesn't so much. The Fourth Law of Magic, "the shalt not enthrall", does not generally consider the summoning of beings from the Nevernever a violation, even though summoning often involves a mall amount of magical suggestion. This seems to be based on a combination of it only being the smallest possible amount of mind control, and nonhumans not counting as much as humans do, or in some cases at all, where the Laws of Magic are concerned. Actually binding a demon, or even one of the Fae, to your will is considered a violation less because it imposes on the free will of the one bound than because of the threat a mortal wizard with such a creature in their control poses to their fellow mortals. Legitimacy of purpose doesn't enter into it. I don't know if Harry is wrong, or lying, or if Jim Butcher was still feeling out the exact parameters of the Fourth and Fifth laws at this point in the series. The lattermost would be understandable - they're both pretty fuzzy. 

Chaunzy tells Harry that MacFinn is the heir to a railway and coal mining fortune, a Vietnam veteran, and one of the ten wealthiest men in the United States. His favorite color is red, and we'll never know his shoe size, because Harry cuts Chaunzy off, asking him to skip anything "trivial". This seems like it's giving Chaunzy way too much room to leave out important details, but my recollection is that it doesn't turn out that way, so I guess we don't need to worry about it. The next relevant detail is that MacFinn is a Loup Garou, cursed by St. Patrick to turn into a ravening beast at every full moon. The curse is hereditary, and stipulates that there will always be a new generation to whom it can be passed on. To be absolutely clear, this means there is a 100% chance that MacFinn has a child at least conceived by the end of this book. Could be some accident from a previous relationship that MacFinn didn't know about - we know it was his hope and intention that the cure would die with him. But it seems more likely that Terra West is pregnant during this book, and either doesn't know yet or hasn't told MacFinn. I also think it's likely that it's Fitz, but we can talk about that more when we get to Ghost Story. 

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For the past while, MacFinn has been divesting of business assets, and buying up land in the Rocky
Mountains, with the intention to donate it to the federal government to create a "migration size" wildlife preserve stretching from New Mexico up into Canada. Industrialists are... not happy about this, and there's been some opposition, including from Harding, one of the victims of last month's attacks. Harding was apparently working with Marcone on this, and Marcone is set to carry on talks about the Northwest Passage Project with MacFinn tomorrow night. This means Marcone technically stood to benefit from Harding's death, and Harry briefly toys with the idea that Marcone is controlling the Streetwolves, getting them to to the murders. He seems to have forgotten that he already ruled out the Streetwolves' involvement, and Marcone is the one who tipped him to this lead in the first place. Increasingly, I think this scene was either written ahead of the rest of the book, or got missed in the course of a fairly serious revision. 

The last thing Harry gets on MacFinn is his home address, or at least the address of his place in Chicago, and then Chaunzy starts hinting that he has information about Harry's family, his parents' deaths, and living relatives "every bit as alone and tormented as you are". That would be Thomas and McCoy, notwithstanding the possibility of secret Dresden half-siblings. He says they had a particular interest in Margaret Le Fay, which I think is the first time we encounter that title, but they didn't get he in the end. Cue the single, cringey use of the word "wizardess" in the series, and Harry wondering if his own interest in dark magic is...genetic? What? Harry gives maybe 2 seconds of series thought to trading his other middle name for this info, before he realizes he's being played, and pretty transparently at that. If Chaunzy has any motivation other than getting his soul, he would have been up front about having this, when they were initially negotiating. Harry refuses, and Chaunzy freaks the fuck out, screaming about how they'll get him eventually, he walks in shadows and some day he'll slip and they'll be there to claim him, et cetera, et cetera. Harry banishes Chaunzy, and spends some time sitting and thinking about how he'd underestimated Chaunzy, had cordial interactions with him in the past. Then the phone rings, forcing him to rush upstairs to answer it. It's Murphy, and she wants Harry to meet her at an address... the same address the same address he just got from Chaunzy. 

Thanks for reading! I'm sort of behind on everything right now, but when you're a writer there's really nothing to do about that except to keep on keeping on. Expect that next chapter, or something, later this week. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things.