Grave Peril

Grave Peril is an urban fantasy novel by the American writer Jim Butcher, published by Roc in 2001. It is the third book in The Dresden Files, which follows a wizard in present-day Chicago.

Harry Dresden and Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross, are called to a hospital in Cook County to deal with a ghost that is frightened, dangerous and beyond explanation. The case is complicated by Harry's fairy godmother, the Leanansidhe, who nearly traps him, and by the Chicago police, who arrest him before his girlfriend, Susan Rodriguez, gets him out. His bail is paid and his problems are not, because an invitation then arrives asking him to represent the White Council at a gathering held by the Red Court, the vampires who are the most powerful faction in the city. Harry refuses to take Susan with him and goes looking for a young seer called Lydia instead, which is when the Red Court's vampires find him first.

The novel also carries a trail back in time to a sorcerer, cult leader and serial killer called Leonid Kravos, whom Harry and his colleagues had tried to take three or four months earlier, and the debt from that operation is what has come due.