No body, the witness was Harry. I suspect Rudy will get medical retirement, and Bradley go to SI, as tragically Rawlings has subsequently died from cliche poisoning opening up a space.

This. Zero chance of a conviction for Rudy, but enough people will believe it that he'll have to retire.

I still think there's a real chance that Rudy's suffering from the mental damage of the Eeb's mind control/domination.

What makes me worry that we haven't seen the last harmful fallout -- Sanya saying: "He is no threat to you."

That's what they thought. Harry and Murphy were sure he wasn't really a threat, just a nuisance.  That's why Rudolph was still around to harass them.

One of the big themes of this book is Supers not taking Humans seriously enough. That's nice when it's decent people with shotguns taking out fomor, but not so nice when it makes a scared idiot more dangerous to Murphy than a freaking Jotun.

I don’t think he can help it, the feeding is addictive. The attraction felt by his victims is like a drug. That makes it rape in my book. Not as bad as most Raiths I know but even the mildest form has problems.

Remember that Thomas isn't going out on the street to whammy some unsuspecting, non-consenting woman. (Or let his Hunger whammy them for him, like he used to.)

Justine is going out and finding a woman who is willing (or perhaps eager) to come home to have sex with her and her smoking-hot boyfriend. (Perhaps she showed them pictures?) No mind-whammy involved. Willing consent.

And it doesn't seem like they are taking repeat customers, so there's no addiction issues.

What more would you like to see Thomas and Justine doing, to be certain that the women really do consent?

The svartalves *are* repeat customers, but they also know exactly what they're getting into, and Evanna doesn't appear to be at all under Thomas's sway, given the events of Peace Talks.

Perhaps Rudolph isn't anyone's catspaw anymore.

We know he *was* working for the Red Court, possibly with lots of mind-magic manipulation to make him obsessed with Harry and Murphy.

Then the Red Court died.

A lot of what's happened since is about the unintentional fallout of destroying the Red Court and leaving a vaccuum.

Perhaps Rudolph is another example -- without his Red Court handlers, the magical obsession is driving him on its own without intelligent direction.

Unfortunately, yeah, Harry is guilty of felony-rule murder with respect to the security guard.

There probably isn't enough evidence to convict him of it, but he can't just tell Tilly everything and get out of it. He was indeed part of a bunch of felonies -- trespassing, breaking and entering, kidnapping, etc. And the death of a guard was a foreseeable consequence.

Of course, Harry's been committing actual crimes throughout the series. In Storm Front, *we* understand his violent assault on Marcone's restaurant -- in front of dozens of innocent bystander witnesses -- but there's no *legal* justification for it.

And it just gets worse from there. Imagine if there were evidence that he set the fire at Bianca's in Grave Peril. In Dead Beat, he commits grand theft dinosaur.

Working on a bank heist with legitimately evil folks... there's a reason Harry balked at that.

Maybe, but if that were true, I don't think Harry would break down and weep like that, I think it is more... it has to be Murphy.

I do expect Murphy to die... but...

I can imagine the same emotional impact from a long list of people and places destroyed. Mac's burned to the ground with Mac, Billy, Georgia and a bunch of other eager young paranetters dead because Harry gave them a rousing pep talk rather than urging them to run for the hills; Butters, Andy and Marci dead getting Harry a shot at Ethniu that doesn't pay off; Michael's house firebombed by Nic's goons while the fae are distracted; half the city flattened with an unrecognizable skyline; Yoshimo and Wild Bill dead in an attack Harry led them on; Fix cut down in a blaze of glory -- leaving exactly zero of the changling kids he tried to protect in Summer Knight; Luccio ambushed, bringing a cohort of wardens to reinforce the defenses; Eb killed without a chance to ever take back the things Harry said when they fought on the docks; Justine and the baby dead because Harry pulled off Goodman Grey to look into something else...

The loss he talked about on Christmas Eve was the cumulative loss of a whole bunch of people -- and his usual arrogance of blaming himself for all of it, not just the loss of one lover.

But, yeah... I think Murphy's toast. I just want to see her get a blaze of glory on the way out.

Good point. Maybe the introduction didn't count as a true favour, more as a 'you wouldn't deny someone who Winter owes a favour such a nothingness?'

That was my take.

I kind of got the impression that this one has a different loophole. That loophole is that the threshold doesn't protect Mac.

Yep. Like it redirects any attack against the people sheltering there into an attack on Mac.

Perhaps some sort of parallel to Jesus on the Cross taking on all of the sins of the world for everyone.

I'm beginning to wonder if The Talk between Molly and her family is going to happen, or she's going to continue avoiding it indefinitely.

I think she literally can't.

It's not going to happen until Harry forces it -- and in having to force it, realizes how much free will Molly has lost to Winter.

I'm really looking forward to what follows *that*.