"Okay, Marcone," I said. "You can give me the Shroud or you can explain it to the police when they come out here to search this place."

"You can't," he said, his voice quiet. "You can't do that to her. She'd be in danger."

My eyes widened. "She's yours?"

"I'll kill you," he said in that same soft voice. "If you so much as breathe in her direction, I'll kill you, Dresden. Myself."

I believed him.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Persistent vegetative state," he said. "Coma."

"You wanted it to heal her," I said quietly. "That's why you had it stolen."

"Yes."

"I don't think it works like that," I said. "It isn't as simple as plugging in a light."

"But it might work," he said.

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"I'll take it," he said. "It's all I have."

I looked back toward the window and was quiet for a minute. I made up my mind and said, "Three days."

He frowned. "What?"

"Three days," I said. "Three's a magic number. And supposedly that's how long Christ was wrapped in it. In three days, three sunrises, you should know whether it's going to help or not."

"And then?"

"Then the Shroud is returned in a plain brown wrapper to Father Forthill at Saint Mary of the Angels," I said. "No note. No nothing. Just returned."

"And if I don't, you'll expose her."

I shook my head and stood up. "No. I won't do that. I'll take it up with you."

He stared at me for a long moment before his expression softened. "All right."

I left him there.

When I'd first met Marcone, he'd tricked me into a soulgaze. Though I hadn't known the specifics, I knew then that he had a secret-one that gave him the incredible amount of will and inner strength needed to run one of the nation's largest criminal empires. He had something that drove him to be remorseless, practical, deadly.

Now I knew what that secret was.

Marcone was still a black hat. The pain and suffering of the criminal state he ruled accounted for an untold amount of human misery. Maybe he'd been doing it for a noble reason. I could understand that. But it didn't change anything. Marcone's good intentions could have paved a new lane on the road to hell. But dammit, I couldn't hate him anymore. I couldn't hate him because I wasn't sure that I wouldn't have made the same choice in his place.

Hate was simpler, but the world ain't a simple place. It would have been easier to hate Marcone.

I just couldn't do it.

***

A few days later, Michael threw a cookout as a farewell celebration for Sanya, who was heading back to Europe now that the Shroud had been returned to Father Forthill. I was invited, so I showed up and ate about a hundred and fifty grilled hamburgers. When I was done with them, I went into the house, but stopped to glance into the sitting room by the front door.