Cold Days characters

Appears from the start

Chicago's professional wizard, back from the dead and paying for it: after months of brutal recuperation at the heart of Winter, Harry begins his service as Mab's Winter Knight - the mortal enforcer of the Queen of Air and Darkness. The mantle gives him strength and endurance and whispers to him in impulses of predatory cruelty that he must fight every hour. His first assignment looks impossible even by his standards, and taking it home to Chicago means facing friends who buried him a year ago.

Appears from the start

The Queen of Air and Darkness, sovereign of the Winter Court - Harry's new employer. Mab oversees her Knight's recovery personally, with a regimen of daily murder attempts in place of physical therapy, and opens his service with a single command that seems designed to be impossible. Her cruelty is real, but so is a deeper pattern: Mab does nothing without purpose, and the shape of her true war is one of the book's revelations.

Appears from the start

A composed, careful mortal woman assigned to oversee Harry's recovery at Arctis Tor - part physical therapist, part social handler, guiding him through the lethal etiquette of the Winter Court. Sarissa has survived years among the Sidhe by being unfailingly controlled and giving nothing away, and she treats the new Knight with the wariness of someone who has watched what the mantle does to its bearers. There is far more to her history with Winter than she offers.

Also known as The Winter Lady

First appears in chapter 4

Mab's daughter, the Winter Lady - the youngest of Winter's three queens, eternally young, gleefully vicious, and bored in the way only an immortal can be. Maeve greets the new Winter Knight with mockery, provocation, and malice dressed as play. She is the subject of Mab's first command to Harry, and the question of why - what a Queen of Faerie could want done about her own daughter - drives the whole book.

Also known as Toot-Toot

First appears in chapter 9

A pizza-loving dewdrop faerie, perhaps a foot and a half tall, who has served as Harry's scout and vassal for years and commands the Za-Lord's Guard - the militia of tiny fae Harry retains at the price of regular pizza. Fierce beyond his size and devoted beyond all reason, Toot is among the first of Harry's old allies to welcome him back from the dead, entirely unbothered by the details.

First appears in chapter 12

Harry's former apprentice, still carrying the scars of the year she spent fighting a guerrilla war while Harry was dead - and the secret they share about how he died. Her talents for veils and mind magic have matured into real power. Molly's loyalty to Harry has never wavered, and when he returns needing eyes, cover, and someone who will not flinch, she steps in without being asked. Winter has touched her life before, and it is not finished with her.

First appears in chapter 14

Harry's half-brother, a White Court vampire, keeper of the Water Beetle and one of the few people who never quite gave up on Harry's return. The years - a skinwalker's torments, Harry's death, the secret of their kinship - have left marks on him, but when Harry needs a boat, a fighter, and family, Thomas provides all three without hesitation.

Also known as Alfred

First appears in chapter 18

The genius loci of the island in Lake Michigan - a vast, ancient awareness bound to the place, to which Harry bonded himself as warden two years ago. The island summons its warden home with escalating urgency, and what it has to show him reframes everything: Demonreach is not merely a stronghold, and the calm above its shores conceals what the place was actually built to do.

First appears in chapter 20

Formerly of Chicago PD, the city's most capable mortal defender and the person whose judgment Harry trusts most. Murphy greets Harry's return from the dead with a cop's skepticism - verify first, feel later - and then does what she always does: shows up armed. The unspoken thing between her and Harry has survived his death; whether either of them will act on it is another matter.

Also known as The Summer Knight

First appears in chapter 22

The Summer Knight - once a timid, mop-haired changeling in Harry's orbit, now a seasoned warrior and the Summer Court's mortal champion. Fix owes Harry old debts and old friendship, but he serves Titania's court, and Summer's dread of what the new Winter Knight might be - or might already be compromised by - puts the two men on a collision course neither wants.

Also known as The Summer Lady

First appears in chapter 26

The Summer Lady, youngest queen of the Summer Court - once a frightened changeling waitress whom Harry helped, elevated years ago to one of the most powerful positions in Faerie. Lily has grown into her mantle's grace and authority, but she is deeply afraid of something she will only discuss in guarded terms: a corruption moving unseen through the courts, against which she believes drastic measures are justified.

First appears in chapter 10

A spirit of intellect in an enchanted skull, currently residing with Butters, holding centuries of arcane knowledge. Bob is Harry's indispensable consultant on the things nobody else will explain: the physics of immortality, the politics of Faerie, and the fine print of the Winter mantle now wired into Harry's soul. Some subjects, though, frighten even Bob into silence.