* The very beginning of the book has the execution of a sixteen year old warlock by beheading. And when Murphy learns of this and is accordingly outraged, Harry reluctantly agrees with the White Council that killing the boy was the only thing that ''could'' have been done to stop him; he was too far gone to rehabilitate and it would be too dangerous to even attempt it. What follows is a very creepy description of how so many young people who discover they have magic powers inevitably get DrunkOnTheDarkSide, by using their abilities to manipulate the minds of their parents, their crushes, etc. The warlock the Council just executed had mind raped most of his family into being his personal slaves; he forced four of them to commit suicide and who knows how many to commit murder, which ended up with at least nine corpses being hidden from the local authorities. The Merlin hazards that out of more than two dozen victims, three of the survivors ''might'' eventually recover their sanity.
* The results of the spiritual mauling of the fetches' [[spoiler: and Molly]]'s various victims, particularly one girl who was driven into a permanent state of catatonia. In Harry's own words, [[MindRape "She's not coming back."]]
* Lloyd Slate's fate. He was a bastard, but nobody deserves that.
* When Harry looks at a heroin addict with the Sight, her addiction manifests as green-black veins under her skin ending at dozens of tiny, hungry mouths opening and closing where her needle tracks were in the real world.
* Murphy gets taken off the Splattercon!!! investigation as punishment for disappearing all day into the Nevernever, so she isn't on hand to spin things in a way that could exonerate Nelson. Considering he went crazy in the wake of [[spoiler: Molly's mind-tampering]] and wandered away from the convention in a fit of paranoia, he probably doesn't have an alibi for the other attacks either, so may have wound up blamed for the murders as well as the theater-owner's beating.
* At [[spoiler:Molly's trial]], the Merlin shows he’s ''not'' a runner for the ReasonableAuthorityFigure he's been building himself up to be. When Harry finishes his speech and beat the Merlin at his own game, the Merlin moves to have [[spoiler:Molly]] executed immediately, ''just to spite Harry''. Thank God, literally, that TheCavalry showed up in time.
** And even worse that that? Think about who this is. Just for a few moments. This is the Merlin, leader of the White Council, the closest thing to actual 'good guys' the Dresdenverse has to offer, at least on a large-scale. He's the wizard who once [[spoiler: held off the entire Red Court with a single, improvised ward.]] And he's the kind of guy who'll execute a [[spoiler: young girl for trying to use black magic to HELP PEOPLE, when she couldn't have known better]], during a War when he's in desperate need of soldiers, just to spite someone who really hasn't earned his ire, and has been doing everything in his power to stay the Hell away from him and his politics ever since. Yes, he started said War, but that's no reason to take it out on [[spoiler: Molly]]. And he's the leader of the good guys.
*** Consider another possibility: Although to Harry's viewpoint it just looks like the Merlin is confirming his JerkWithAHeartOfJerk credentials, [[spoiler: this is occurring during the period when Peabody is influencing the Senior Council to make bad choices by hyping their worst character traits.]] The Merlin might actually not have made the decision he did if all else was normal. It was literally an act of divine intervention that saved him from his own worst self. And on a related note, if [[spoiler: Peabody]] had gotten to the other Senior Councillors before they had a chance to vote, it could have gone against Harry anyway.
*** This isn't the Merlin being a Jerkass or a JerkWithAHeartOfJerk. This is honestly the best choice he could make under normal circumstances. Harry has a reputation for pulling off the impossible, and it's well deserved. If this had been anyone else asking, sparing [[spoiler: Molly]] would have been a horrible, ''horrible'' decision. Warlocks don't recover. And the excuses he uses? They aren't. They are 100% legitimate reasons not to spare [[spoiler: Molly]]. What happened a few moments later wasn't a WhatTheHellHero from [[spoiler: God himself]], it was just a sign that for once, the entirety reasonable course of action can be avoided, or at least postponed. The Council doesn't execute teenager for funzies, it does it because that's the best way to keep the world safe. (Though their reluctance to try new things or create anything like the Paranet casts yet more doubt; after all, plenty of warlocks are created because they don't know any better and aren't found in time. Learning and thinking critically about the world they inhabit shouldn't be harder than an execution. Moverover, Molly proves that Warlock's DO recover if they're caught early enough, as even after [[spoiler: Harry forces her to help arrange his death]] she doesn't directly break the Laws of Magic and is eventually able to pull herself together.)
* This one is coming from the Tabletop books, but Darby showing up and Molly's idea for using fear as motivating factor both come from the same person - [[spoiler:Sandra Marling]]. And if you take some of the banter in the Tabletop RPG books as applicable to the books [[spoiler:she disappeared without a trace after Splattercon!!!]] They could have pulled an elaborate plan on Dresden and Molly that racked up a huge body count and manage to get out with Dresden noticing until he was writing down his case files and could have been working for anyone and are still out there.
* The sheer power and carnage displayed by [[spoiler: the unknown villain(s) who blasted into Arctis Tor and slaughtered all soldiers there via HellFire. Even more disturbing is the possibility suggestion the later books that they were powered by either Lucifer or an Outsider]]