Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 8

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Harry's apartment is an absolute mess, kinda skirting the line between "just really messy" and "legitimate safety issue". There are dirty clothes all over the floor, notes and papers all over the furniture, and coke cans and pizza boxes spilling out of the kitchen trash can. I guess Harry has been getting carry-out pizza since the bomb incident. Most of the description of the apartment is old information for someone reading the series in order, but this is also when the Star Wars poster is introduced. Apparently it was a gift from Billy, which means that either he and Harry have actually started spending more time together since Susan left, or that they were already hanging out regularly between Fool Moon and Grave Peril and it just didn't get mentioned because Billy wasn't included in the plot of Grave Peril. This is reasonable, since we're still several books away from Harry treating Billy like an adult who can handle himself with the broader supernatural world (he had to have that realization with Murphy before he could even consider applying it to anyone else), but may also be an implicit refutation of the way World of Darkness associates werewolves with the spirit world, although I don't know if that was as much of a thing in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Werewolf: The Forsaken wasn't out yet. Elayne comments disapprovingly on the mess, but Harry doesn't respond to that directly since he's still pretty focused on the thing where she's alive. His first, not unreasonable assumption, is that it's a trick, or she's some kind of creature out of the Nevernever, but she points out that she was able to cross his threshold and knows his wards, and when that doesn't make the point, begins bringing up personal details. Apparently Harry failed his drivers test three times in one week. I didn't know they even let you take the test three times in a week, although it may have been different in the 1980s. She also makes reference to "our locker combination", which is a really nice little detail for illuminating how enmeshed the two of them were when they were together. At least I think it illuminates that. None of the three high schools I attended actually had lockers.

He asks why she didn't contact him, and she says that at first she didn't know where he was or if he was alive, and then she wasn't sure if he'd want to hear from her since "so much happened". Harry says that's putting it mildly, since she tried to "destroy" him, and there's a little bit of back and forth while they establish what actually happened, most especially the part where Elaine was already Justin's thrall when Justin made his attempt to get in Harry's head. I don't think it had occurred to Elaine that Harry wouldn't have at least considered the possibility that she was magically controlled, considering what Justin tried to do to Harry. That's honestly a more reasonable conclusion than that she just up and betrayed him out of nowhere, and it speaks well of her that she gave Harry credit for being able to figure it out. When she says 'so much happened", she's talking about the possibility that Harry associates her with the trauma of Justin betraying them, about the stuff he went through after with the Council, and probably her fear that Harry would blame her for hiding in the Summer Court and leaving him to face that alone, that by the time she felt ready to look for him it had been years and of course he hadn't just spent all that time waiting for his high school sweetheart to come back to him, he probably moved on. She may also be talking about the secret Mordred baby she 90% probably had by him, but we don't need to get into all that. We do, however, need to talk about the pentacle thing, because I said back in Fool Moon Chapter 20 that we would. Listen, I agree that it's unlikely that Harry and Elaine are blood siblings. For one thing they were born like 6 months apart, and for another they don't look anything alike except for their height. But there's clearly something going on there. It's possible that Justin actually gave Elaine her pentacle, maybe to discourage Harry from asking questions about his. We know Maggie LeFay and Justin DuMorne were associated somehow, so for all I know, Harry and Thomas have those particular pentacles because Maggie picked them up from an occult store near Justin's house, and either Justin got Elaine the same one as part of grooming her (it's still grooming even if the end goal isn't sexual), or Elaine got it herself from the same damn store, or Harry got it for her from there. It's also possible that Elaine is the child of a different associate of DuMorne's, although no candidates are immediately jumping out at me. She doesn't look like anyone on the White Council, or any of the minor practitioners we met, so far as I can recall. She... oh hang on a damn second. Okay this is a reach but she does have gray eyes. Is it possible the connection is that she's the child of another, ah, associate of Lord Raith? We know from what happened to Inari that her Hunger would probably never have manifested, since she and Harry were in love. On the one hand, it's a bit of a stretch, but on the other hand, this series is absolutely dripping in Wheel of Time references, and there's a pretty significant subplot there about Rand, the protagonist, needing to work out that he's not related to one of his love interests, Elayne, but that they do have a dark haired, roughly 6 foot tall, unnaturally pretty half sibling in common. Now unless Elaine is much older than she appears to be, her mother isn't in Lord Raith's portrait gallery, but it's not like, totally inconceivable that he didn't keep adequate track of someone. 

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Harry tells Elayne that he looked for her, that he scryed for her and sent spirits looking for her, but found no sign that she was alive. Which is, of course, why he spent the last like, decade assuming she betrayed him. If she turned out to be evil, and he killed her, that's horrible and tragic but it's still basically something that happened to him. It's a manageable amount of guilt.  If Justin enthralled her, if she was a victim like he was, even if he didn't realize that at the time, and he killed her, that's... that's not a manageable amount of guilt. That's the kind of thing that destroys you. But it might be asking a bit much for Elayne to have put all those pieces together while she was hiding out among the fae and trying to get through her own trauma about the whole betrayal and enthrallment thing. Anyway, Elaine says she's in trouble, and Harry volunteers to help literally on reflex. The whole chivalry reflex thing is still weird and misogynistic, but at least it isn't belabored here. Elaine explains that she found asylum in Summer, and that now she has to pay off her debt. She says there's been a murder in faerie, and Harry figures out that she's the Summer Emissary before she has a chance to say it, letting her know that he's Winter's Emissary in the process. I might be alone in this, but I tend to remember her as just having shown up at his place like "Hi, I'm alive and also the Summer Emissary!" but that is not, in fact, what happened. She had zero idea when she broke into Harry's house that he was already mixed up in the same trouble she was. She honestly just came to him for help. Which I think really cements that she did not expect Harry to still believe that she'd willingly betrayed him. She expected him to figure it out eventually, even if he didn't know while it was all happening. And honestly, if it weren't for all the fucking emotions and guilt and trauma tied up in the situation, that's a pretty fair estimation of Harry's reasoning abilities. If he hadn't needed to believe that she was a villain, he would have figured out years ago that she was compelled to do what she did. 

Harry's in a bit of a spot now, of course, because he and Elaine need different outcomes from the investigation to succeed in their respective missions. Elaine is expected to prove Mab's culpability, Harry is expected to prove her innocence, and whichever of them fails to produce that result is going to be in for a very bad time. After a minute of desperate and ineffectual thought, Harry's best idea is that they go to the White Council and ask for help and protection. I'm gonna go ahead and chalk that one up to the sleep deprivation, because dude, they literally just tried to feed you to the vampires like, six hours ago. They're not gonna suddenly be reasonable about you, or about DuMorne's Other Apprentice, apparently returned from the dead. Among other things, she's an even better suspect than Harry for what happened at Archangel, and since she's not One Of Their Own even to the limited extent that Harry is, there would be no political ramifications to punishing her for it, nor any need for a fully investigation. It wouldn't immediately buy them peace with the Red Court the way handing Harry to the vampires would, but honestly if he wanted to take some of the pressure off of himself around this whole mess, presenting Elaine to the council would be a pretty solid way to do it. Elaine, who trusts Harry a fuck of a lot more than he trusts her, or maybe just doesn't know all the relevant details, does not seem to consider this possibility, but does ask Harry if he's crazy. Harry tries to argue that there are good people on the Council who will help them, even if the Council as a whole kind of sucks, and Elaine points out that those people mostly don't want anything to do with the Council. I do notice that McCoy is probably still in town, and they could approach him directly. I don't think he ever interacts with Elaine, and I'm not entirely sure he knows she exists, much less what he thinks about her if he does. Harry's cognizant that if the Council finds out about Elaine, it will put her under suspicion, and if they find out he knew, it will put him under suspicion, although there's an odd bit here where says she might be "a violator of the First Law". I don't know where that's coming from. Who, exactly, does he think Elaine might have killed with magic? He assures her that he won't report her if she really doesn't want to talk to them, but is on the point of persuading her anyway when Warden Morgan starts pounding on the door. 

Man, I wish I wrote fast enough to do cliffhanger chapter endings like that in my fiction. I am trying to get these posts out faster, I promise, but I still have to do at least some work for like, money. If you want me to spend less time working for money and more time writing about urban fantasy for your education and enjoyment, you are welcome and indeed encouraged to support me on Patreon. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!