First, that's a pretty big assumption. I'm having trouble accepting that something that seemed to require ritual involving physical components can happen anyway essentially by accident. The Red Court have always seemed the most "physical" of the vampire courts, and the literal, physical blood seems to have been necessary to elevate Bianca.

As for them being more powerful... eh, I'm not totally sold on that. They have a few crippling and -- most importantly -- well-known weaknesses that let pre-infection Susan take a few of them out.

Truth is we don't know what all their servitors can do. Having minions that don't have glaring weaknesses or an addiction to blood might be worth the trade-off of power.
If there were more than the two most cowardly examples of the species, I'd agree with you more.

Think of it this way, though. Let's say they show up in Peace Talks on official business. Harry knows where they were last seen. He's on speaking terms with the guy who had them. You don't think he's going to ask? You don't think everyone else -- like the White Council contingent -- is going to notice that the Fomor had been allied with a group that had so recently tried to genocide them?

The Fomor or Nemesis would have to show a few of their holding cards to get them out and keep them out. I don't think it's worth it.

I mostly agree that the Eebs are dead anyway, but it might be interesting if they show back up with the Fomor as sponsors, which is an angle I didn't consider. What if they're planning to use the peace talks to demand restitution for, you know, genocide? Is there an equivalent of the Geneva Convention and the Hague? If Harry and, by extension, the White Council (and with Winter's support and tacit approval), committed a war crime, there might be an Accords provision that puts him, Mab, and the Merlin in the hot seat. Hell, with Cristos on the Senior Council, things might get real complicated real quick.

Speaking of which, has the full text of the Unseelie Accords been produced? It's one of those things I'd really like to read, considering how often they show up.

I thought of it like an epidural. He was going through labor, after all.

It's fun to think about how him taking the coin would've played out. Certainly Harry's view of the Outsider situation would be drastically different. And, if you believe that Nic is working to protect our universe from the Outsiders in the long-term (because nobody gets to break his toys but him), Harry's role in supporting that effort would be crazy fun.

I sort of see Nicodemus as our reality's answer to Nemesis, a kind of counterspy working to plant false leads and sabotage their efforts. The key difference is that while Nemesis has access to allies via some kind of hivemind-type thing, Nic is no longer trusted by anyone.

In the end, though, I think Mab is just more Harry's style, and a far, far safer bet than Lasciel. The Coin would have completely changed him, and I believe that Lasciel is perfectly capable of dominating Harry rather than working alongside him, as she claims.

There is one big advantage to the Coin, though: Harry could have set it aside afterward. Michael would have saved him, I'm certain of it. It's going to be much harder to get out of being the Winter Knight, at least until next Halloween.

Rudolph annoyed the crap out of me. I hope the next time we see him is in a padded cell with a straitjacket. As far as Langtry goes, I see him as a reluctant supporter of Harry due to Harry's actions in Changes and his ties to Mab.

Oh yeah, me too. I was mostly joking, though I do think Rudolph might show up. It was only a minor consolation that Rudolph got screwed over every time he showed up. I still don't get what was behind his extreme character derailment after Fool Moon. He was too stupid for it to be Nemesis, at least directly.

I'm with you on Langtry. I don't see him as directly antagonistic toward Harry. In my opinion, his actions are motivated by The Greater Good. He was trying to avoid a war, and trading one wizard's life is worth it—I couldn't say that I wouldn't try to do the same in his position. It's also worth noting that we haven't really seen him much since Peabody's ink has left his system. The one time we did, he was far, FAR more ready to throw down with the Reds than he had been, and might have been willing to support Harry's attack if the White Council wasn't crippled by Cristos later on.

He'll probably still be pissed at Harry for creating such a huge power vacuum after Changes, and he'll likely be annoyed that Harry is beyond his reach now that he's the Winter Knight. If he also knows that he's the Warden, I think he'll have a minor heart attack, just at the thought of so much power being in one person's hands.

To be honest, the highlight for me won't be returning villains, it'll be seeing most (if not all) of the people we haven't for several books.

Rudolph will return, trying to kill Harry and Murphy after the events of Changes ruined his life and he barely skated on corruption charges. His criminal defense was funded by Larry Fowler, who will also appear, leading a mass media campaign for Harry's arrest, pending charges of domestic terrorism.

She may have felt Titania was infected, but that does not explain why she piled everyone in winter on the border of summer.   That action effectively prevented either from participating in the fighting. 

Mab could have achieved the same objective by having summer and winter bring equal forces to the battlefield while still keeping back a substantial force to defend winter.   Winter is still protected from betrayal by summer, but she also targets the red court which attacked her borders -- and is clearly allied with outsiders.    Yet she did not do this.  She had some clear reason to keep summer and winter out of the fighting.  A reason important enough that she was willing to let the white council fall. 

Yet this compelling reason did not prevent her from standing by while Dresden brough summer fire to the heart of winter.  No way that little butterfly of summer power was missed by Mab.    Which had a huge effect on her borders. 

Which means she
a) was testing summer's reaction
b) was compelled to do what she did (block summer and winter from going to war) by some promise or debt. 
c) she was testing Maeve

"a" is a pretty weak reason as it is a pretty unreliable test.  Even if summer attacked winter in full force, it would not accomplish much.  So a corrupted winter would do little.   "C" is a possibility especially as Small Favor was after this attack, but what about Maeve's behavior would reveal she was infected to Mab.  After all, if Mab was insane, then Maeve's actions would have been loyal to Winter. 

B is the easiest explanation - but that is still a pretty big favor.

Not trying to shore up my failing hypothesis here, but what if it was also about the White Council traitor? At the end of the book, Ebenezer points out that the Reds were able to hit the White Council (coinciding right around the attack on Arctis Tor) at their Baby Warden camp, presumably through the NeverNever. He mentions that only a handful of people knew where it was. It might've been motivated by an attempt to narrow down the suspect pool, or confirm an existing one, and could've been part of an agreement between Mab and the Gatekeeper.

Note, it's only that Ebenezer fails to consider the paperwork that Peabody wasn't on the list; he clearly did know everything, he was just beneath notice, like an evil Ehren.

Maeve may have tried to get Summer to kill Harry early by claiming that he was the emissary; I can see that happening, and it almost worked. It would have, actually, and might've even had the added bonus of killing Molly and Charity during the first attack.

Mab might have then made his emissary status official to prevent Summer from seeing division within Winter. It seems to me that the Fae courts take great pains to posture and appear stronger than they are, especially to one another. If it looks like Maeve and Mab aren't on the same page, then Summer might perceive that as weakness, and strike, which Mab can't afford—her Knight is off the table, so the appearance that her Lady is working against her might be too tempting to pass up. I do think that Mab knows for a fact that Maeve is infected at this point; she's speaking entirely through Cait Sith, for the first time (as far as I recall; I'm finishing my annual reread, and have only hit Proven Guilty), and I've always understood her anger to be because she realized her daughter had been taken and there was no turning back. I figure that she didn't move against Maeve officially because (A) she was her daughter and didn't want to hurt her if possible, and (B) she wanted to project a unified front for as long as she could. She did push for Dresden to accept pretty hard in this one, harder than she had in the past, and may have dropped any pretenses and ordered him to kill Maeve as soon as possible if he had signed up.

In my opinion, Small Favor has almost as many unanswered questions as Proven Guilty because of all this kind of thing.

No, truth is he couldn't he had been mostly dead for half of that year and in rehab for the rest...  She also had good reason to believe he was dead in Ghost Story, so why weren't her first words to Harry, "HARRY!  YOU'RE ALIVE! I thought you were dead, what happened?"  But no, about her feeling betrayed because he didn't call or write....

Murphy didn't know about Harry being held by Mab. When he tells her, she even points out that it's really unlikely that Harry couldn't have figured out how to contact her. Dresden's narration agrees that yeah, if he had really wanted to, he probably could have, but didn't. Thomas is the only one who really has the reaction a lot of fans probably want, and I get it, but hers is perfectly consistent with her character.

Point here is, she knows she shouldn't wield one, her instincts are right...  But she brings it anyway... Does she even ask Harry's opinion on whether or not that was a good idea considering?  No...  Did she trust that he might agree with her? No..  Instead she hides it like a fat lady hiding a candy wrapper thinking no one would notice..  For all her smarts, she displayed her ignorance because she should have known that Nick was listening in and would set her up.. Harry realized it the minute she pulled the Sword out that he didn't know she had with her, but it was too late then..

She doesn't have to ask Harry for permission. First, she has the swords already, and Dresden has accepted that by Skin Game. He doesn't say "Bring the swords," he says, "Are you going to bring the swords?"

Second, she really doesn't have to ask him if it's a good idea, because he had already told her it was.

Skin Game, from pages 40-41 on my Nook:

Anyway, Harry makes his opinion clear. He thinks they should be used, Murphy says she has to be careful.

And, again, her making a mistake doesn't mean she makes that mistake out of distrust. I didn't say that she was smart to hide it—in fact, I said quite the opposite. I'm not sure what Nic listening in has to do with anything; he didn't hear anything about the Sword, because she didn't say anything about it.

Not cheerleader, but supportive...  If you have a alcoholic that has stayed off the booze for a year, do you berate him because he went off to kick the habit?  Or do you say something to the effect that he looks great or keep up the good work you are there for him?  That's what friends do...

I'm not sure which point you're referring to. In Cold Days, Harry isn't an alcoholic who laid off booze for a year, he's an alcoholic who's been sipping amaretto for the past hour and insisting that he's fine, and she's trying to make sure he doesn't have his car keys. In Skin Game, I don't see any berating at all.

Evidence?  The fact that she keeps reminding him he could turn into a monster... That means she thinks he could still turn into a monster... No, my friend she doesn't completely trust that he won't.

She mentioned it at the beginning and the end of Cold Days, because Harry keeps saying so. He arranged his own suicide because he was terrified that he might turn into one. She then says that she's afraid because she might like it too much.

And yet she spent the rest of Cold Days right there with him, trusting him enough to charge at the Wild Hunt, then, you know, drive a motorcycle across Lake Michigan.

In Skin Game, the only time (that I can recall) that she comes close to saying "Oh my God Harry you're going to murder us all" is when they first get to the slaughterhouse, and Harry starts creepily listing off reasons not to murder someone with zero context. They see someone, and the temperature in the car drops, and Harry starts saying, "Reason one: witnesses," and so on. Even then, her response isn't to, you know, run, or say "Harry you're an animal and should be locked up," it's the following:
Skin Game, page 45-46 on my Nook:

In the above, she's acknowledging that he has a problem, which, to continue with the alcoholism comparison, is kind of important. Harry is explaining his experience, and she agrees that it's bad, because, you know, it is. He just spent a few minutes talking himself out of murder. Then she tells him that he can figure out a way to get out of it. She's telling an alcoholic that he needs to get help.

In what way is that not supportive? If I were to read Harry's conversation with Michael cynically, it's not a stretch to say that Michael is simply enabling him. Harry tells him he's worried he might change. Michael just says, "You won't. You're Harry!" I get it, and Michael is probably my favorite character, but it's a little dangerous to feed that kind of thinking for too long.

It makes Harry feel better, and he probably needed to hear something like it at that particularly low moment (less than an hour after he failed to protect yet another innocent man) but I think most people would agree that just cruising along as he has is not a long-term solution. Harry needs to lose the Winter Knight's mantle, or he's not going to last too much longer.

Don't get me wrong, that's not the way I read the conversation, really, but my point is that pretty much any conversation, viewed cynically enough, is bad for Harry.

Do you think Butters would have come to mistrust Harry in a vacuum?  She may not have added to it, but I bet she didn't disabuse him of that notion either.

She disabuses him of it on the page, in front of us. We get to see her do it. We don't see what happens between Cold Days and Skin Game, so we don't know what took place between them. Murphy's reaction to Butters doesn't indicate one way or another that she's heard any of it before.

We do know Butters's reasons for distrusting him, and he doesn't mention Murphy at all.