Turn Coat recap

Donald Morgan, the Warden who spent years hoping to catch Harry Dresden breaking the Laws of Magic, turns up half-dead at Harry's door - a fugitive accused of murdering Senior Council member Aleron LaFortier. Convinced the real killer is a traitor inside the White Council, Harry hides Morgan and investigates, dodging a bounty-fueled manhunt, a mercenary summoner named Binder, White Court schemers, and a skinwalker - a monstrous naagloshii that captures Thomas and tortures him. To control the endgame Harry performs a ritual on the island of Demonreach, binding himself to its genius loci as its sanctum, and lures every faction there: the trade for Thomas, the Wardens, the White Court, and the traitor. The traitor proves to be Peabody, the Council's mild-seeming secretary, who has been subtly mind-controlling young Wardens with alchemical inks and who used Luccio as his instrument to kill LaFortier. The skinwalker is driven off by Listens-to-Wind, Peabody dies fleeing, and Morgan - mortally wounded shielding others - falsely confesses to the murder as he dies, protecting Luccio and the Council's unity. Harry's relationship with Luccio ends, Thomas emerges from captivity changed and distant, and the Black Council is no longer a theory.

Previously in the series: Harry Dresden is Chicago's only professional wizard, a private investigator who consults for the police and, these days, a Warden of the White Council - the wizards' governing body that once nearly executed him. As a boy he killed his corrupt master, Justin DuMorne, in self-defense, and Warden Donald Morgan spent years afterward watching him, certain Harry would turn warlock. The Council has been at war with the Red Court of vampires ever since Harry burned down a Red noble's house rescuing his then-girlfriend Susan Rodriguez; Susan, half-turned by the vampires, left him to fight them abroad. Along the way Harry has gathered allies: Karrin Murphy of Chicago PD's Special Investigations; his apprentice Molly Carpenter, herself once nearly executed for mind magic and now under his supervision; Waldo Butters, a polka-loving medical examiner; Bob, a spirit of intellect in a skull; the huge temple dog Mouse; and Thomas Raith of the White Court of vampires - secretly Harry's half-brother. Anastasia Luccio, captain of the Wardens and trapped in a young body since a necromancer's body-swap, has become Harry's girlfriend. Harry has also crossed the Denarians and their leader Nicodemus, served the winter faerie Queen Mab to pay down debts, and seen his friend Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross, crippled into retirement. Beneath it all runs a growing suspicion that a hidden faction - the Black Council - is working traitorously inside the supernatural world's institutions, including the White Council itself.

Donald Morgan - the Warden who spent years trying to catch Harry breaking the Laws of Magic - appears at Harry's apartment door gravely wounded and asks for help. Morgan stands accused of murdering Senior Council member Aleron LaFortier: he was found standing over the body with the murder weapon, was arrested, and escaped custody. He swears he is innocent, and Harry believes him for a simple reason - Morgan is a fanatic about the Laws, not a traitor - and because framing the Council's most famously loyal Warden is exactly what a hidden enemy would do. Hiding the Council's most wanted fugitive, Harry brings in Waldo Butters to treat Morgan's wounds, with Molly assisting, and starts working the problem quietly. Word from Edinburgh, the Council's headquarters, makes the stakes plain: the Wardens are mobilized, a very large reward has been offered, and the Council is boiling with fear and politics, since LaFortier's death looks to its enemies like weakness and to its members like proof of a traitor within. Harry knows that if Morgan is found in his care, both of them will be executed, and that the only way out is to find the real killer himself.

Harry's problems multiply. A naagloshii - a skinwalker, an ancient shapeshifting horror out of Navajo legend - attacks in pursuit of Morgan, radiating a corrupting dread and shrugging off nearly everything thrown at it; Harry barely manages to escape it, and it becomes clear something has hired the creature to collect the fugitive. Harry also discovers he is being tailed by a mortal private investigator, Vince Graver, meaning someone with money wants eyes on him. Then Binder, a cheerfully mercenary summoner who calls up squads of grey-suited creatures from the Nevernever, comes after Morgan too, and Harry and Murphy have to fight through his hirelings. Murphy, now read in on the situation, helps hide and move Morgan despite the enormous professional risk. The trail of who is paying for all this attention points toward the White Court of vampires, where Lara Raith rules from behind her father's throne and her cousin Madeline schemes on her own account. Between attacks, Harry pushes on the question underneath everything: LaFortier was killed inside the most secure facility the Council has, which means whoever did it - or whoever aimed Morgan at the blame - had inside access. The traitor is real, and close.

The skinwalker strikes again and takes Thomas. It had come for Morgan; it settles for a hostage it can trade, and Harry - who cannot tell most of his allies why the White Court vampire matters so much to him - is left carrying the knowledge that his brother is in the hands of a creature that enjoys cruelty. Harry deals directly with Lara Raith, negotiating for White Court help and learning that Madeline Raith has been freelancing in the affair, paying for mercenaries and surveillance. In Edinburgh, Harry works the inside angle: LaFortier's killing required access and preparation no outsider could manage, and the behavior of some of the younger Wardens - and of people close to the investigation - is subtly off. Luccio, who has grown closer to Harry than ever, coordinates from within the manhunt even as suspicion inside the Council curdles toward anyone associated with him. Harry becomes convinced the frame around Morgan is the point: the traitor does not just need LaFortier dead, but needs the Council tearing itself apart over the trial and execution of its most loyal soldier. To beat an enemy inside the walls, Harry decides he needs ground of his own choosing.

Harry chooses his ground: Demonreach, the uncharted island in Lake Michigan he first set foot on a year before. With Bob's help he researches and performs a sanctum invocation, a ritual that bonds him to the island's genius loci - a vast, hostile awareness that accepts him as its warden. The bond gives him intellectus of the island: while standing on it, he simply knows where everything on it is. It costs him too - the island's attention is a heavy, alien thing - but it turns Demonreach into the one battlefield where no one can hide from him, ambush him, or sneak anything past him. With the ground secured, Harry sets the trap. He arranges to trade Morgan to the skinwalker in exchange for Thomas on the island, and makes sure the location leaks to every interested party: the White Court, the mercenaries, and - through channels the traitor is known to read - the Council itself, so the Wardens will arrive to find the real players assembled. Morgan, still dying by inches from his wounds, consents to being used as bait; clearing his name has become a secondary goal next to dragging the traitor into the open. Everything now depends on the enemy believing Harry is desperate rather than deliberate.

Every faction converges on Demonreach, and the trap springs. The skinwalker arrives with Thomas - starved, brutalized, and barely recognizable as the person Harry knows - and the exchange collapses into open battle as the Wardens descend on the island. In the chaos the traitor is finally forced into the light: Samuel Peabody, the Council's fussy, forgettable secretary, who for years has been lacing his official inks with alchemical compounds that let him nudge and steer the minds of the wizards whose paperwork passes through his hands. The younger Wardens, seeded with his suggestions, turn on each other and on their commanders, and it becomes clear how LaFortier really died: Peabody used a mind-controlled Anastasia Luccio as his weapon, then arranged for Morgan to be found with the body. Against the skinwalker, the Senior Council member Listens-to-Wind steps forward and meets it shape for shape in a duel of transformations that finally sends the mauled creature fleeing. Morgan, past saving but refusing to stay down, spends what strength he has left protecting others as the fight rages. Peabody runs for the Nevernever with his secrets, and Harry - the only person on the island who can know exactly where everyone is - goes after him.

Peabody does not escape: fleeing into the Nevernever with the evidence of his treason, he is brought down and killed, and what he leaves behind proves the conspiracy was never one man - he was an agent of the Black Council, and his inks have been quietly editing the minds of a generation of young Wardens. Morgan, mortally wounded, makes the book's defining choice: he confesses to LaFortier's murder as he dies. The lie protects Luccio, whose controlled hands did the killing, and hands the Council a closed case instead of a public admission that its members' minds can be rewritten - stability bought with his own name. Harry, who set out to clear him, has to accept that Morgan's last act of loyalty is to be remembered as a traitor. The costs settle in everywhere. Luccio learns that among the things Peabody adjusted in her head was her affection for Harry, and their relationship ends. Thomas survives, but the skinwalker's torments forced him to embrace the predator in himself, and he walks away from Harry cold and changed. Cristos, whom Harry cannot prove is anything worse than ambitious, rises to the Senior Council. Harry keeps his bond with Demonreach to himself, pays his debts, and is left with the war's real shape: the enemy is inside the walls, patient, and still unnamed.

Morgan, dying of his wounds after the battle on the island, publicly confesses to LaFortier's murder - a crime he did not commit - so that the White Council can present a closed case to its enemies and so that Luccio, whose hands were used for the killing while her mind was Peabody's puppet, is never blamed. He dies with his name blackened and only a handful of people knowing he was innocent, and Harry, who spent the whole book trying to clear him, has to let the lie stand for the Council's sake. Peabody, the real traitor, is dead, but the evidence he leaves behind proves the Black Council is real and has been quietly editing the minds of young Wardens for years, and there is no way to know how deep the rot goes. Cristos, whom Harry suspects of being either a traitor or a dupe, is elevated to the Senior Council. Luccio learns her feelings for Harry were among the things Peabody nudged, and the relationship ends. Thomas survives his captivity, but what the skinwalker did to him - starving him and forcing him to feed savagely to survive - has stripped away his hard-won restraint; he pulls away from Harry, colder and more openly a predator than before. Harry keeps two secrets of his own: his sanctum bond with Demonreach, whose true nature he has barely begun to glimpse, and the knowledge that the Council's greatest threat is already inside its walls.