Tessa kicked me in the ribs again, hard enough to keep me from breathing much or talking at all. “When I want an opinion from you, Dresden,” she said, “I’ll read it in your entrails.”

Ivy took two steps forward at Tessa’s gesture and narrowed her blue eyes. “For the benefit of the slow, Polonius Lartessa, I will repeat myself. I will not allow you to harm him. Step away.”

Tessa’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “You know my name.”

“I know everything about you, Lartessa,” Ivy said, her tone flat, passionless. “It was all recorded, of course. Everything was, in Thessalonica in those days. Your father’s failing business. Your sale to the temple of Isis. If you like, I could draw you a cost-benefit analysis of your training versus your earnings in your first year at the temple, before Nicodemus came. I could use charts to make it easier for you to understand. And color them in with crayons. I enjoy crayons.”

I wasn’t certain, but it sounded like the kid was trying to give the bad guys some guff on my behalf. She needed to work on her technique, but it was the thought that counted. If I could breathe, I might have gotten a little choked up.

“Do you think I’m intimidated that you know where I come from, child?” Tessa snarled.

“I know more about you than you do,” Ivy replied, her voice steady. “I know far more precisely than you how many you’ve harmed. How many bad situations you’ve made worse. Cambodia, Colombia, and Rwanda most recently, but whether in this century, the Wars of the Roses or the Hundred Years’ War, your story is the same stupid little story, told over and over again. You learned your lessons when you were a child, and you’ve never swerved from them. You’re a vulture, Lartessa. A maggot. You survive on diseased flesh and rotting meat. Anything whole and healthy frightens you.”

The little girl didn’t see the Denarian that came creeping through the ferns behind her and flung itself at her back, several hundred pounds of scales and fangs.

“Ivy!” I choked out.

She had it covered. There was a flash of light, an overwhelming scent of ozone and fresh laundry, and a silver denarius rolled away from a mound of ash that fell to the ground without ever getting within three feet of the small form of the Archive. The coin rolled past her, on a straight line toward Tessa—but Ivy stomped on it with one small shoe, flattening it to the floor and preventing it from returning to Tessa’s grasp.

“Tiny,” I said, in an overblown imitation of Sanya’s Russian accent, unable to keep a crazed giggle out of my voice. “But fierce.”

Tessa regarded the fallen coin with a faint smile. “Costly. How many such spells do you think you can manage before you are out of energy, little one?”

Ivy shrugged. “How many minions can you throw away? How many will be willing to die for you?”