Twelve Months

The eighteenth novel in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, Twelve Months picks up three weeks after the catastrophic Battle of Chicago. Harry Dresden, a professional wizard who also serves as the Winter Knight, the mortal champion of Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness in the Faerie Winter Court, is barely functioning. His lover, former police detective Karrin Murphy, was killed in the battle. Harry sleeps less than ninety minutes a night, cries into his pillow, and zones out mid-conversation. His new home, a medieval castle in Chicago, shelters roughly thirty displaced residents, but Harry can barely care for himself.

Chicago is in ruins. A magical pulse from the Eye of Balor, a supernatural superweapon, destroyed all electronics. Tens of thousands are dead, a million people have been displaced, and the city operates under curfew by candlelight. Harry's ally Will Borden, a werewolf, manages the castle's daily operations. Molly Carpenter, the Winter Lady and Harry's former apprentice, visits to assess his mental state before his first arranged date with Lara Raith, the de facto ruler of the White Court of vampires, a species that feeds on human life energy through physical intimacy. Their engagement was decreed by Mab to seal a political alliance. Molly probes whether Harry might let Lara's psychic feeding consume him as a form of escape; Harry admits the temptation but says his daughter, Maggie, keeps him from the edge.

At the first date, Harry asks Lara for beds, a doctor, and medical supplies for his residents. Lara agrees, and within days she sends mattresses, a physician, and a Valkyrie bodyguard named Bear, a seven-foot warrior contracted through Monoc Securities, the corporation run by Vadderung, also known as Odin. Bear becomes a stabilizing force, training residents in combat and offering blunt, compassionate advice about surviving trauma.

After the date, Mab issues two commands. Harry must seduce Lara to cement the alliance, and he must resolve the blood feud between King Etri of the svartalves, a race of master craftsmen from Norse mythology, and Harry's half-brother Thomas Raith, who killed one of Etri's retainers while possessed by a spirit called Nemesis. Thomas remains in magical stasis on Demonreach, Harry's island prison in Lake Michigan. When Harry resists, Mab threatens Maggie; Harry counters by implying he has arranged for Demonreach to release the imprisoned Titan Ethniu if anything happens to him.

Mort Lindquist, an ectomancer, or wizard who communicates with spirits of the dead, brings Harry a young man named Fitz whose magical talent erupted during the battle. Harry takes Fitz as an apprentice despite the risk that the White Council of Wizardry, the governing body of human magic-users which expelled Harry, could react violently. Training Fitz gives Harry structure, forcing him to articulate principles of emotional discipline he needs to internalize.

Harry's second date with Lara takes them to Demonreach, where Thomas's projection reveals he is lucid but deteriorating, his Hunger slowly consuming him. Lara warns she will save Thomas by any means necessary. Etri gives Harry one year to resolve the blood debt. Through autumn, Harry plays Monopoly nightly with a shade of Murphy he summons as a fragile thread to the person he lost. One night he drinks too much and collapses; Bear carries him to bed and sings him to sleep for the first time since Murphy died.

Ghouls drawn by the mass death are killing roughly thirty people a night. When Harry, Bear, and Fitz set up an ambush, Harry's magic fails entirely: He tries to summon fire and nothing happens. Daniel Carpenter, eldest son of Michael Carpenter, a retired Knight of the Cross and one of Harry's closest friends, arrives with the Brotherhood of St. Brigid, an armed Catholic militia, and they rout the ghouls. On Halloween, the ancient Drakul, father of Dracula, appears at Lara's party to challenge the White Council, hinting at a coming conflict tied to Harry's status as a starborn, a rare being with innate power over Outsiders.

In November, the Wardens, enforcers of the White Council, visit the castle. Harry confronts Mab about Murphy's death, accusing her of using psychic power to suppress Murphy's pain so she could fight while fatally injured. At a Sunday dinner, Michael tells Harry that demanding perfection of himself is hubris and reveals that Maggie keeps a light in her window at night for her father. In December, Harry moves Maggie into the castle and reconciles with his grandfather, Ebenezar McCoy, over a duel they fought the previous year.

On New Year's Eve, Lara reveals the White Court's origin: The Hungers are larvae of an Outsider entity, a "mad god" an ancient sorcerer accidentally summoned. Harry realizes that as a starborn he can potentially separate Thomas from his Hunger. He performs a modified exorcism on Lara as proof of concept, successfully separating and reintegrating her Hunger. But Mab later reveals that by feeding Lara's Hunger three times with his starborn magic, Harry has unknowingly made Lara physiologically dependent on him, delivering the White Court into Winter's control. Harry and Lara, both horrified, perform a soulgaze, a wizard's ability to perceive someone's true nature through sustained eye contact, and agree to work together to undo Mab's trap.

Harry also traces a series of torture curses targeting Brotherhood members to Bock Ordered Books, where local practitioners have been retaliating against a rogue Brotherhood faction that has been beating and harassing the supernatural community. Harry confiscates the dangerous grimoire, and Daniel confronts the ringleader, invoking trial by combat and ordering the harassment to stop.

In February, Harry says goodbye to Murphy's shade for the last time. Bear tells him bluntly to stop treating himself worse than he treats others. On the spring equinox, Harry uses a boon to bind Mab to aid in saving Thomas, finding Thomas's partner Justine, who remains possessed by Nemesis, and resolving the debt to Etri. In a crystalline chamber beneath Demonreach, Harry enters a ritual circle in spiritual form and wrestles Thomas's Hunger while feeding it energy from the island itself. He negotiates directly with the entity: Cooperating to sustain Thomas means centuries of feeding, while devouring everything leaves it with nothing. The Hunger agrees. Mother Summer delivers Thomas and Justine's newborn son safely, but the price demands the child be given to Etri as weregild, a life to settle the blood debt. Thomas, devastated, surrenders his son.

Thomas is restored but emotionally shattered and asks for space. Anti-supernatural protests escalate through spring, and Lord Raith, Lara's father, orchestrates a coordinated assault on the castle: Black Court elders, Malvora vampires who feed on fear, ghouls, and mind-controlled human thralls known as Renfields attack at sundown. Harry channels the castle's ley lines, rivers of natural magical energy, to summon a storm and terrify the mortal crowd into fleeing. Allies converge: Lara's forces, Regional Commander Carlos Ramirez, the Knight of the Cross Waldo Butters, Daniel, the Alphas, a werewolf pack allied with Harry, and the Brotherhood. Harry lures three Black Court elders inside and drops the enchanted stone of the second floor onto them.

On the anniversary of the battle in June, Harry's grief returns, but he meditates, exercises, and comes downstairs to find Maggie and Michael have made him pancakes. That afternoon, he captures sunlight in a handkerchief, a spell requiring genuine happiness to work. Thomas returns, driving a restored Volkswagen Beetle he rebuilt as a birthday gift. Though still hurting, he accepts Harry's invitation for ice cream. Harry reflects that pain is a fire, that twelve months is not enough to heal from the worst burns, but it is "enough time to make a damned good start." Peace and happiness are distinct but related: One is the other in action, and neither has to be perfect to be real.