She frowned, and looked down at the hilt of her sword. "Dresden… the Wardens are not, as a rule, concerned with compassion or empathy. But they were children. I am not proud of my every act as a Warden. But I would sooner hurl myself to the demons than leave a child to die."

I frowned at her. "You would," I said thoughtfully. "Wouldn't you?"

She smiled a little, her iron-grey hair plastered to her head with the rain, and it made many wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. "Not all of us share Morgan's attitudes. But even he would never have turned aside from children in danger. He is an enormous ass at times. But a brilliant soldier. And beneath all his flaws, a decent man."

The door to the building slammed open and Morgan came through, sword gripped in both hands. "I told you," he said viciously to Luccio. "I told you he would turn on us. This latest violation of the laws only proves what I've said all along…" His voice trailed off slowly as he caught me from the corner of his eye and turned to see me standing there, and Sue crouched a couple of yards behind me.

"Yeah," I told Luccio, and my voice was the only dry thing about me. "I see what you mean."

"Morgan, he found the book." She looked at me. "Tell him."

I relayed everything I had learned to Morgan. He glowered at me with enormous suspicion, but by the time I got to the part where thousands of people would die if we failed to stop the spell, his face became drawn with anxiety and then hardened with determination. He listened without interrupting.

"We need to get to the center of the spell," I finished. "Attack them just as they try to draw it down."

"It's impossible," Morgan said. "I got close enough to see them when we went in for the children. They're in a little patch of grass and picnic tables between the buildings. There are several hundred animated corpses in our way."

"As it happens," I said, jerking my head at Sue, "I brought an animated corpse countermeasure along with me tonight. I'll get us through."

Morgan stared at me for a second and then nodded, the idea clearly gathering momentum in his thoughts. "Yes, then. We try to hit them as they complete the spell. That gives them the most time to backstab one another, and if we disrupt a working that powerful, the backlash will probably kill them."

"Agreed," Luccio said. "How's Yoshimo?"

"Ramirez says her thigh is broken," Morgan growled. "She's not in danger but she won't be doing any more fighting tonight."

"Dammit," Luccio said. "I should have caught that one before it went through."

"No, Captain," Morgan said implacably. "She should never have tried her sword on it. She was an unremarkable fencer, at best."

"Gosh you're a sweetheart, Morgan," I said.