Skin Game characters

Appears from the start

The Winter Knight - Chicago's wizard, a year into self-imposed exile on the prison island of Demonreach, with a magical parasite growing in his skull that gives him crippling headaches and a hard deadline on his life. Mab drags him off the island for the worst assignment of his career: loaned out, on her honor, to the crew of the one person Harry may hate most in the world. He has to play along, plan a double-cross that will not violate Mab's word, and stay himself the whole way down.

First appears in chapter 2

The Queen of Air and Darkness. Mab owes a debt, and she pays her debts with terrifying exactness: Harry's services are the coin. She hands her Knight to a monster with instructions to fulfill the letter of her obligation - and Harry knows her well enough by now to understand that Mab never loses, and that being her payment and being her weapon are not mutually exclusive.

Also known as Nick

First appears in chapter 3

Leader of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius, host of the fallen angel Anduriel, and a two-thousand-year-old monster in the shape of an affable gentleman. Nicodemus has tortured, betrayed, and nearly killed Harry before. Now Mab's debt puts Harry at his service for a single job: a heist, with a crew of specialist villains, against a target no sane thief would touch. Every plan Nicodemus makes has at least one more layer than anyone can see.

First appears in chapter 3

Nicodemus's daughter and most devoted follower, host of a fallen angel whose demon-form is a thing of living metal blades. Deirdre has served her father's schemes for centuries with absolute loyalty - the one bond that seems genuinely to matter to either of them. She is his second on the heist, and wherever Nicodemus is at his most dangerous, Deirdre is beside him.

First appears in chapter 4

Formerly of Chicago PD and now the person Harry trusts at his back before anyone else. When Mab's bargain shackles Harry to Nicodemus's crew, Murphy comes along as his own set of eyes - a mortal with a gun, a conscience, and no illusions about their employer. She carries something else too: the holy sword Fidelacchius has been in her keeping, waiting for a wielder, and Nicodemus knows it.

First appears in chapter 6

A quiet, forgettable-looking man who is anything but: a shapeshifter of frightening ability who can wear other people's faces down to the fine details, hired onto the heist as its infiltration specialist. Grey is precise, professional, and utterly committed to the terms of a contract - a trait worth remembering. What he actually is, and who he is actually working for, are questions worth asking twice.

First appears in chapter 6

A warlock on the run from the White Council for years, recruited to the heist for her gift with fire magic - she burns through wards and defenses that should be impossible for a mortal talent. Ascher is charming, capable, and easy to like, which in this company is its own kind of warning. She works alongside her longtime partner, the summoner Binder.

First appears in chapter 6

A towering creature out of the wild places - a Bigfoot-kin gone bad, massive beyond even its kind, with a talent for earth magic and a taste for killing. The Genoskwa joins the crew as its heavy muscle and takes an immediate, patient, personal hatred to Harry. It moves far too quietly for something that size.

First appears in chapter 7

A world-class professional thief and safecracker, the last surviving member of a crew that once crossed paths with Harry and the Denarians over the Shroud of Turin. Valmont is brought onto the job for the mortal side of the heist - locks, vaults, and security systems - and she joins knowing exactly how expendable everyone on this crew is to its leader.

First appears in chapter 9

A medical examiner turned self-taught monster-fighter, keeper of Bob the skull since Harry's death and one of the sharpest analytical minds in Harry's circle. Butters has grown into real courage without ever acquiring real power, and he is deeply, vocally worried about what the Winter mantle is doing to Harry - a mistrust that costs both men. His story in this book goes somewhere no one, least of all Butters, expects.

First appears in chapter 24

A retired Knight of the Cross, carpenter, and father - the best man Harry knows. Michael hung up Amoracchius years ago after wounds that ended his fighting life, and lives under angelic protection with his family, including Harry's daughter Maggie, whom the Carpenters have taken in. When the heist's cost in blood starts climbing, Michael faces a choice about what retirement is allowed to mean.