Power over bargainers

"Sweet boy." Lea sighed. "Poor child." She knelt down beside me again, and stroked my hair. It felt nice, through my nausea and pain. I think the nausea and pain definitely cut down on the seductive potential of it, though. "Would you like me to help you?"
I managed to look up at her lovely face. "Help me?" I asked. "H-how?"
Her eyes sparkled. "I can give you what you need to save the White Knight's Lady."
I stared up at her. All the pain, the terror, the stupid, rainy cold made me ache horribly. I heard Charity whimper. I had tried. Dammit, I had done my best to help the woman. She didn't even like me. It wasn't my fault if she died, right? I had done everything in my power.
Hadn't I?
I swallowed down the sickly taste of bile and acid and asked, "What do you want, Godmother?"
She shivered and drew in a swift breath. "What I have always wanted, sweet boy. This bargain is no different than the one we made years ago. It is, in fact, a part of the same. I give you power. And in return, I get you." Her eyes flashed. "I want your promise, wizard. I want your promise that when the woman is safe, you will come to me. You will take my hand. Here, tonight."
"You want me to go back with you," I whispered. "But you don't want me like this, Godmother. All torn up. I'm empty inside."
She smiled, and stroked the hellhound's head. "Yes. In time, you will heal. And I will make that time pass swiftly, my sweet." She leaned closer to me, golden eyes burning. "Such pleasures I will teach you. No man could wish for a merrier passing." She looked up again, over the bier that hid my view of Charity and the Nightmare. "The White Knight's Lady sees such things, now. Soon, she will be trapped, as is the police woman."
"How did you know about Murphy?" I demanded.
"I know many things. I know that you may die, if you do nothing, my sweet. You may die here cold and alone."
"I don't care about that," I said. "I ..."
Charity let out a choking, sobbing sound nearby. Lea smiled, and murmured, "Time is fleeting, child. It waits for no one, not man nor sidhe nor wizard."
Lea already had me over a barrel. If I deepened our pact, reconfirmed it, I'd be letting her nail it closed with me inside. But I couldn't get up. I couldn't do a damned thing to save Charity without getting some help.
I closed my eyes, and saw Michael's little daughter. I thought of her growing up without a mother.
Damn it.
"I accept your bargain, Godmother." When I spoke the words, I felt something stir against me, something that sealed closed.
Lea gasped, eyes closing as she shuddered again, then opening with a feral glow. She leaned down and murmured, "The answer, my sweet, is all around you." Then she kissed my forehead and was gone in a flicker of shadows.
I found myself thinking clearly again. It still hurt to move - stars, did it hurt, but I managed it. I clambered to my feet, leaned against the bier, and looked up to let the rain wash the blood from my eyes.

Grave Peril Chapter 21, Page 204-206


The doctor who examined me wore a nameplate that read SIMMONS. She was broadly built and tough-looking, hair going grey in sharp contrast to her rich, dark skin. She sat down on a stool in front of me and leaned over, putting her hands on either side of my head. They were large, warm, strong. I closed my eyes.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, releasing me after a moment, and reaching for some supplies on a table next to her.
"Like a supervillain just threw me into a wall."
She let out a soft chuckle. "More specifically. Are you in pain? Dizzy? Nauseous?"
"Yes, no, and a little."
"You hit your head?"
"Yeah." I felt her start to daub at my forehead with a cold cloth, cleaning off grime and dried blood, though there wasn't much left, thanks to the rain.
"Mmmm. Well. There's some blood here. Are you sure it's yours?"
I opened my eyes and blinked at her. "Mine? Whose else would it be?"
The doctor lifted an eyebrow at me, dark eyes glittering from behind her glasses. "You tell me, Mister ..." she checked her charts. "Dresden." She frowned and then peered up at me. "Harry Dresden? The wizard?"
I blinked. I'm not really famous, despite being the only wizard in the phone book. I'm more infamous. People don't tend to spontaneously recognize my name. "Yeah. That's me."
She frowned. "I see. I've heard of you."
"Anything good?"
"Not really." She let out a cross sigh. "There's no cut here. I don't appreciate jokes, Mister Dresden. There are people in need to attend to."
I felt my mouth drop open. "No cut?" But there had been a nice, flowing gash in my head at some point, pouring blood into my eyes and mouth. I could still taste some of it, almost. How could it have vanished?"
I thought of the answer and shivered. Godmother.
"No cut," she said. "Something that might have been cut a few months ago."
"That's impossible," I said, more to myself than to her. "That just can't be."
She shone a light at my eyes. I winced. She peered at each eye (mechanically, professionally - without the intimacy that triggers a soulgaze) and shook her head. "If you've got a concussion, I'm Winona Ryder. Get off that bed and get out of here. Make sure to talk to the cashier on the way out." She pressed a moist towelette into my hand. "I'll let you clean up this mess, Mister Dresden. I have enough work to do."
"But - "
"You shouldn't come into the emergency room unless it's absolutely necessary."
"But I didn't - "
Dr. Simmons didn't stop to listen to me. She turned around and strode off, over to the next patient - the little girl with the broken arm.
I got up and made my bruised way into the bathroom. My face was a mess of faint, dried blood. It had settled mostly into the lines and creases, making me look older, a mask of blood and age. I shivered and started cleaning myself off, trying to keep my hands from shaking.
I felt scared. Really, honestly scared. I would have been much happier to have needed stitches and painkillers. I wiped away blood and peered at my forehead. There was a faint, pink line beginning about an inch below my hair and slashing up into it at an angle. It felt very tender, and when I accidentally touched it with the rag, it hurt so much that I almost shouted. But the wound was closed, healed.
Magic. My godmother's magic. That kiss on the forehead had closed the wound.
If you think I should have been happy about getting a nasty cut closed up, then you probably don't realize the implications. Working magic directly on a human body is difficult. It's very difficult. Conjuring up forces, like my shield, or elemental manifestations like the fire or wind is a snap compared to the complexity and power required to change someone's hair a different color - or to cause the cells on either side of an injury to fuse back together, closing it.
The healing cut was a message for me. My godmother had power over me on earth now, too, as well as in the Nevernever. I'd made a bargain with one of the Fae and broken it. That gave her power over me, which she demonstrated aptly by the way she'd wrought such a powerful and complex working on me - and I'd never even felt it happening.
That was the part that scared me. I'd always known that Lea had outclassed me - she was a creature with a thousand years or more of experience, knowledge, and she had been born to magic like I had been born to breathing. So long as I remained in the real world, though, she'd had no advantage over me. Our world was a foreign place to her, just as hers was to me. I'd had the home field advantage.
Had being the operative word. Had.

Grave Peril Chapter 22, Page 215-217