Twelve Months

Autorentext

Jim Butcher is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera, and the Cinder Spires novels. He lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Klappentext

Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, has always managed to save the day—but in this powerful #1 New York Times bestselling entry in the Dresden Files, can he save himself?

One year. 365 days. Twelve months.

Harry Dresden has been through a lot, and so has his city. After Harry and his allies narrowly managed to save Chicago from being razed to the ground, everything is different—and it’s not just the current lack of electricity.

In the battle, Harry lost people he cared about. And that’s the kind of loss that takes a toll. Harry being Harry, he’s doing his level best to help the city and his friends recover and rebuild. But it’s a heavy load, and he needs time. 

But time is one thing Harry doesn’t have. Ghouls are prowling Chicago and taking out innocent civilians. Harry’s brother is dying, and Harry doesn’t know how to help him. And last but certainly not least, the Winter Queen of the Fae has allied with the White Court of vampires—and Harry’s been betrothed to the seductive, deadly vampire Lara Raith to seal the deal. 

It's been a tough year. More than ever, the city needs Harry Dresden the wizard—but after loss and grief, is there enough left of Harry Dresden the man to rise to the challenge?

Zusammenfassung
**AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
AN INSTANT USA TODAY AND INDIE BESTSELLER

Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, has always managed to save the day—but, in this powerful entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files, can he save himself?**

One year. 365 days. Twelve months.

Harry Dresden has been through a lot, and so has his city. After Harry and his allies narrowly managed to save Chicago from being razed to the ground, everything is different—and it’s not just the current lack of electricity.

In the battle, Harry lost people he cared about. And that's the kind of loss that takes a toll. Harry being Harry, he’s doing his level best to help the city and his friends recover and rebuild. But it’s a heavy load, and he needs time. 

But time is one thing Harry doesn’t have. Ghouls are prowling Chicago and taking out innocent civilians. Harry’s brother is dying, and Harry doesn’t know how to help him. And last but certainly not least, the Winter Queen of the Fae has allied with the White Court of vampires—and Harry’s been betrothed to the seductive, deadly vampire Lara Raith to seal the deal. 

It's been a tough year. More than ever, the city needs Harry Dresden the wizard—but after loss and grief, is there enough left of Harry Dresden the man to rise to the challenge?

Leseprobe
One

Pain is a fire.

That's true for all of the people, some of the time. If you've never had to stand in that fire, be patient: Your turn is coming.

Whether the pain is physical or purely mental doesn't really matter-it turns out that your brain reacts to it the same way, lighting up many of the same centers of perception. Some brainy types in lab coats proved that one fairly recently. The suffering from a broken heart is similar to that from a gunshot wound, in terms of how our minds react over the long term.

It all hurts.

When you have to live with that hurt, with that pain, when there's no way to turn it off or get away from it, you start to make adjustments. Your choices in how you deal with your pain determine the course of your recovery. That's why people who go through a difficult ordeal sometimes come out stronger, and sometimes they come out broken-but they always come out . . .

Changed.

Pain is a fire.

I opened my eyes so I could stop seeing Murphy's cold, dead face.

Her lips, turning blue.

"Murph?" I mumbled, looking around.

But I was alone.

I checked my windup Mickey Mouse alarm clock. Three thirty a.m. That meant I had slept fifteen minutes longer than I had the night before. Almost one hour and thirty minutes of rest.

Progress.

It had been somewhere around three weeks since Karrin Murphy died and a big bite of the city got stomped flat. Three weeks since Chicago had lost tens of thousands of innocent lives, seen a million people displaced from their homes, and had its infrastructure wrecked by an EMP-an energetic magical pulse. Three weeks since I had seen young wizards I had helped train, friends, die before their enemies. Three weeks since I had been cast out from the White Council of Wizardry entirely.

Three weeks since the battle with Ethniu had announced to an entire metroplex of poor innocent normies that the things under the bed and hiding in the closet weren't just in their imaginations anymore.

The alarm was set for five a.m. Which gave me about ninety minutes of my own time when no one with a kind, concerned expression was watching me.

Alone time.

I let the pain have me. Replayed old memories of those who were gone. Relived the most hideous moments of the battle, and of battles past.

I don't win them all.

I cried. I cried and I screamed into my pillow until my stomach muscles were sore and my throat ached. In the snug, lonely little chamber in the basement of the castle, with stone walls a foot thick, no one was going to hear me.

That used up maybe thirty minutes. Then I sort of sank into a stupor, staring while tears came steadily.

When the alarm rang, I started putting myself back together as best I could. I got up and washed my face and brushed my teeth. I went through a stretching routine that the ignorant would call yoga. I made the bed.

I still had a broken arm. The gunshot wound in my calf had closed and healed up nicely. My ankle wasn't swollen anymore. Those didn't really trouble me. None of the physical injuries did.

The real pain was all in my head.

That's why the routine was important. Fires are all chaos. Putting them out requires the imposition of order, and getting your head back into order means routine. I didn't feel like doing any of the standard morning things-mostly I wanted to lie there and hurt. But that wasn't the same thing as healing.

There would be time to let myself bleed again tomorrow.

And there were people who needed me.

So I followed the routine, trusting that the pain would slowly grow less. It hadn't, that I could tell, but it would.

I kept telling myself that. Out loud. I'd been devastated before. I'd healed before.

I just needed time.

I got dressed in exercise clothes and shambled out into the castle's early morning. Pain focuses the mind wonderfully-since you can't really think about very much else. I went to the kitchen to make myself eat some breakfast, get the morning report, and then I would hit the gym for a couple of hours.

Squats focus the mind wonderfully, too.

Will Borden was waiting for me in the kitchen. He looked like a statue of Hercules at three-quarters scale, maybe a little under five and a half feet of heavy muscle. He wore jeans, a button-down shirt, and a blazer, all tailored to fit someone of his unusual proportions, and his eyes were thick with sleep. Will had been living in guest quarters in the castle (which was to say on an air mattress in a dank stone chamber) and had taken some time off from being a successful engineering consultant to serve as my de facto castellan.

"Harry," Will said with a yawn and passed over a cup of steaming coffee, black.

I felt seen.

I picked up the coffee, mumbled something that could have been a curse or a greeting under my breath, and drank liquid …