Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13)

by Jim Butcher

So difficult to bring about. So easy to destroy. You’d think we would hold life in greater value than we do. I died in the water. I don’t know if I bled to death from the gunshot wound or drowned. For being the ultimate terror of the human experience, once it’s over, the details of your death are unimportant. It isn’t scary anymore. You know that tunnel with the light at the end of it that people report in near-death experiences? Been there, done that. Granted, I never heard of anyone rushing toward the light and suddenly hearing the howling blare of a train’s horn.

For crying out loud, did I just say that death isn’t scary anymore? Tell that to my glands. I put my hands on my hips and just glared at the oncoming train in disgust. I’d had a long, long day, battling the forces of evil, utterly destroying the Red Court, rescuing my daughter, and murdering her mother—oh, and getting shot to death. That kind of thing.

“So, who are you?” I asked. “And how can you help me?” “You want to call me something, call me Captain. Or Jack.” “Or Sparrow?” I asked.

“Stay close to me,” the marine said. “And shut it.” I swallowed, and Sir Stuart turned back to the front. “You don’t have to be a dick about it,” I muttered. Very quietly. It bothered me that he was right. Without Sir Stuart’s intervention, I’d have been dead again already. That’s right—you heard me: dead again already. I mean, come on. How screwed up is your life (after-or otherwise) when you find yourself needing phrases like that?

And besides. You don’t just let people kick down other people’s doors and murder them in their own home. You just don’t.

Oh. Plus I could run through freaking walls. Granted, I think it would have been more fun to be Colossus than Shadowcat. But you take what you can get, and any day you’ve merely got the powers of an X-Man can’t be all that bad. Right?

“I am an ectomancer, not an action hero!”

“You’re here twenty minutes and I nearly get killed, Dresden. Jesus, don’t you get it?” He leaned forward. “I am not a crusader. I am not the sheriff of Chicago. I am not a goddamned death wish–embracing Don Quixote.” He shook his head. “I’m a coward. And I’m very comfortable with that. It’s served me well.”

I felt my temper flare. “If I didn’t go right through you, I would totally pop you in the nose right now.” Mort bristled, his jaw muscles clenching. “Oh yeah? Bring it, Too-Tall. I’ll kick your bodiless ass.”

“Okay,” Mort echoed, evidently speaking mostly to himself. “I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to join the Council or anything. It’s one hour. Just one little hour. What could happen in one hour?” And that’s how I knew that Mort was telling the whole truth when he said he wasn’t a hero. Heroes know better than to hand the universe lines like that.

Mort drove one of those little hybrid cars that, when not running on gasoline, was fueled by idealism. It was made out of crepe paper and duct tape and boasted a computer system that looked like it could have run the NYSE and NORAD, with enough attention left over to play tic-tac-toe. Or possibly Global Thermonuclear War.

“Kinda glad I’m dead,” I muttered, getting into the car by the simple expedient of stepping through the passenger’s door as if it had been open. “If I were still breathing, I’d feel like I was taking my life into my hands here. This thing’s an egg. And not one of those nice, safe, hard-boiled eggs. A crispy one.” “Says the guy who drove Herbie’s trailer-park cousin around for more than ten years,” Mort sniped back. “Gentlemen,” Stuart said, settling rather gingerly into the tiny backseat. “Is there a particular reason we should be disagreeable with one another, or do you both take some sort of infantile pleasure in being insufferably rude?”

Something stabbed me in the guts and twisted upon seeing her. A rush of memories flooded over me, starting with our first meeting, on a missing-persons case years ago, when I’d still been doing my time as an apprentice PI and Murphy had been a uniform cop working a beat. Every argument, every bit of banter and repartee, every moment of revelation and trust that had built up between us, came hammering into me like a thousand major-league fastballs. The last memory, and the sharpest, was of facing each other in the hold of my brother’s boat, trembling on the edge of a line we hadn’t ever allowed ourselves to cross before.

Her eyes moved over me, past me, through me, without stopping. She didn’t see me. She couldn’t hear me. We weren’t a part of the same world anymore. It was a surprisingly painful moment of realization.

Tears blurred my eyes as I saw Mister. My cat. When the vampire couple, the Eebs, had burned my old apartment down, I knew Mister had escaped the flames—but I didn’t know what had happened to him after that. I’d been killed before I could go round him up. I remembered meeting the cat as a kitten, scrambling in a trash bin, skinny and near starvation. He’d been my roommate, or possibly landlord, ever since I’d come to Chicago. He was thirty pounds of feline arrogance. He was always good about showing up when I was upset, giving me the chance to lower my blood pressure by paying attention to him. I’m sure he thought it a saintly gesture of generosity. It’s a cat thing.

“Dresden,” he said quietly. “There are several creatures approaching from the southeast.” “You are not doing your lack of being named Threepio any good whatsoever, Sir Stuart.”

Tough to blame the kid. I’ve been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men’s auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence.

Mort looked at the cat and sighed. “Oh, sure. Professional ectomancer with a national reputation as a medium tells you what’s going on, and nobody believes him. But let a stump-tailed, furry critter come in and everyone goes all Lifetime.” “Heh,” said Sir Stuart, quietly amused. “What did I tell you? Cats.”

My little girl’s life had been on the line when I made that choice, when I had acquired power beyond the ken of most mortals. I thought of the desperation in the eyes of Fitz and his gang. I thought of the petty malice of Baldy and those like him. Of the violence in the streets. How many other men’s daughters had died because of my choice? That thought, that truth, hit me like a landslide, a flash of clarity and insight that erased every other thought, the frantic and blurry activity of my recent efforts.

Like it or not, I had embraced the darkness. The fact that I had died before I could have found myself used for destructive purposes meant nothing. I had picked up a red lightsaber. I had joined the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. I had become what I always fought.

I folded my arms and stared at Inez. My voice came out ragged and harsh. “You aren’t the ghost of a little girl.” Her little face lit up with another smile. “If I am no ghost, why do you look so haunted?”

I started throwing a punch, vanished again, and reappeared right behind lemur number one. My fist drove into the base of his neck just as I shouted, “BAMF!” There isn’t much honor in a rabbit punch, but it’s a pretty darned good way to down an opponent.

“Then how come I saw a floating skull with blue eyelights helping attack Mort Lindquist’s place last night?” The skull just stared for a moment. Then he suggested lamely, “You were high?”

“Destroying things is easy,” Bob said. “Hell, all you really have to do to destroy something is wait. Creation, now. That’s hard.” “Bob, would you be willing to take on Evil Bob?” Bob’s eyes darted nervously. “I’d…prefer not to. I’d really, really prefer not to. You have no idea. That me was crazy. And buff. He worked out.”

“Butters,” rumbled Skaldi Hair Ball. If he really had broken fingers, it didn’t look like they were bothering him much. “When are you going to get in this ring and train like a man?” “About five minutes after I get a functional lightsaber,” Butters replied easily, much to Hair Ball’s amusement.

“Big guy like that going to town on you,” I growled. “Someone needs to push his face in.” Her eyes glittered as she gave me a sharp look. “Dresden…when, exactly, am I going to fight someone my size and strength?” “Um.” “If you want to wrestle hostile mooses—” “Moose,” Butters corrected absently. “Singular and plural, same word.” “Gorillas,” Murphy continued, hardly breaking stride, “then the best way to train for it is by wrestling slightly less hostile gorillas. Skaldi’s two hundred pounds heavier than me, almost two feet taller, and he has going on two millennium—” “Millennia,” Butters said. “Millennium is the singular.” Murphy pushed a breath out through her nose and said, “Millennia of experience in breaking the backs of annoying little doctors with annoying little grammar fetishes.” Butters grinned.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think Murphy was a princess in a tower. But at the end of the day, she was just one person, standing in defiance of powers that would regard her with the same indifference as might an oncoming tsunami, volcanic eruption, or earthquake. Life is precious, fragile, fleeting—and Murphy’s life was one of my favorites.

“Huh,” Butters said, frowning. “Why send you back?” I shrugged. “Said what came next wasn’t for whiners or rubberneckers.” Murphy snorted. “Sounds like something my father would say.” “Yeah,” I said. “Heh.”

“Your brother-in-law can,” I said. “Dick can.” “Richard,” she corrected me. “He hates that nickname.” “Dick who?” Butters asked, looking between us. I said, “Her brother-in-law,” at the same time she said, “My ex-husband.” Butters’s brow arched even farther and he shook his head. “Man. Catholics.” Murphy gave him a gimlet look. “Richard runs by the book. He won’t help a civilian.” “Come on, Murph,” I said. “You were married to the guy. You’ve got to have some dirt on him.” She shook her head. “It isn’t a crime to be an asshole, Harry. If it was, I’d have put him away for life.”

I didn’t feel like a deluded spirit, but then, I wouldn’t. Would I? The mad rarely know that they are mad. It’s the rest of the world, I think, that seems insane to them. God knew it had always seemed fairly insane to me.

I created a perfect situation for chaos to engulf the supernatural world. The sudden absence of the Red Court might have removed thousands of monsters from the world, but it meant only that tens of thousands of other monsters were suddenly free to rise, to expand into the vacuum I’d created. I shuddered as I wondered how many other men’s little girls had been hurt and killed as a result. And, God help me…I would do it again. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t good. I’d spent less than three hours in the company of my daughter—and so help me, if it meant keeping her safe, I would do it again.

I turned and stared south of me at the Loop, at the skyline I knew so well. There was a rare moment of stillness down Michigan Avenue. Streetlights. Traffic lights. A scattering of fresh snowflakes, enough to keep everything pretty and white instead of slushy and brown. God, my town is beautiful. Chicago. It’s insane and violent and corrupt and vital and artistic and noble and cruel and wonderful. It’s full of greed and hope and hate and desire and excitement and pain and happiness. The air sings with screams and laughter, with sirens, with angry shouts, with gunshots, with music. It’s an impossible city, at war with itself, every horrible and wonderful thing blending together to create something terrifying and lovely and utterly unique. I had spent my adult life here fighting, bleeding, to protect its people from threats they thought were purely imaginary.

This city was more than concrete and steel. It was more than hotels and businesses and bars. It was more than pubs and libraries and concerts. It was more than a car and a basement apartment. It was home. My home. Sweet home Chicago. The people here were my family. They were in danger, and I was part of the reason why. That made things pretty clear. It didn’t matter that I was dead. It didn’t matter that I was literally a shadow of my former self. It didn’t matter that my murderer was still running around somewhere out there, vague prophecies of Captain Murphy notwithstanding. My job hadn’t changed: When demons and horrors and creatures of the night prey on this city, I’m the guy who does something about it. “Time to start doing,” I whispered. I closed my hands into fists, straightened my back, and vanished.

I was ten minutes late to the meeting with Fitz, but he was still there, lurking at a nearby storefront, looking about as innocent as an only child near a fresh Kool-Aid stain.

“They say you’re a lunatic,” Fitz said. “Oh yeah?” Fitz nodded. “They also…” He frowned. I could see the wheels spinning. “They also say you help people.” “So?” “So which is it?” “You’ve got half a clue, Fitz,” I said. “You know that talk is cheap. There’s only one way to find out.”

We went to a street toward the north end of the South Side. Seedy wasn’t a fair description for the place, because seeds imply eventual regrowth and renewal.

Parts of Chicago are wondrous fair, and parts of Chicago look postapocalyptic. This block had seen the apocalypse come, grunted, and said, “Meh.”

I’m telling you, kid, Forthill is one of the good guys.” “That’s make-believe. There ain’t no good guys,” Fitz said. “Or bad guys. There’s just guys.” “You’re wrong about that,” I said.

Rage was a word we used for anger when it was being used in the cause of right—but that didn’t sanctify it or make it somehow laudable. It was still anger. Violent, dangerous anger, as deadly as a flying bullet. It just happened to be a bullet that was aimed in a convenient direction.

Fear next: always fear. It doesn’t matter how personally courageous you are. When something is trying to kill you and you know it, you’re afraid. It’s a mindless, lizard-brain emotion. There’s no way to stop it. Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at you to fight or flee—and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m hoss. When the spells start flying, mine are some of the flashiest, most violent on the planet. I’m like the Andre the Giant of the supernatural world. I’ve got a lot of power and mass to throw around.

Stars and stones. When Molly insisted on going, why didn’t I just tell her, “Of course you can come, grasshopper. I’ve always wanted to create a mentally mutilated monster of my very own.”

“This is my house,” Aristedes said, his expression never changing. “I am the master here, and my will is—” Butters appeared behind Aristedes, from around an upended vat of some kind, and swung three feet of lead pipe into the side of the sorcerer’s knee. There was a sharp, clear crack as bone and cartilage snapped, and Aristedes screamed and went down. “That sound you just heard,” Butters said, his voice tight with fear and adrenaline, “was your lateral collateral ligament and anterior cruciate ligament tearing free of the joint. It’s also possible that your patella or tibia was fractured.” Aristedes just lay there in pain, gasping through clenched teeth. A line of spittle drooled out of his mouth. Butters hefted the lead pipe like a batter at the plate. “Get rid of the knife, or I start on your cranium.”

“Sit tight, Daniel,” Butters called. “I’ll be with you in just a second.” “’M fine,” Daniel groaned from the ground. He didn’t sound fine. But as I watched, I saw him winding pieces of the slashed cloak around the wound in his right arm, binding them closed and slowing the bleeding. Tough kid, and thinking under pressure. Butters focused on Aristedes. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I want to help you. Your knee has been destroyed. You will never walk again if you don’t get medical attention. I’ll take you to a hospital.” “What do you want?” Aristedes growled. “The priest. Fitz. These kids.” He bounced the lead pipe against his own shoulder a couple of times. “And this really isn’t a negotiation.”

Maybe I should have felt a little bit bad for the guy. As far as his world was concerned, he had just died. Only he was still alive to see the unthinkable—a world that existed without him. He was a living, breathing ghost. Maybe I should have felt some empathy there. But I really didn’t.

I mean, go figure. You prepare your home for an assault and you don’t take zombies into consideration. I’d fallen victim to one of the other classic blunders, along with not getting involved in a land war in Asia and never going in against a Sicilian when death was on the line.

Pity for them that the back door from the Nevernever was inside the circle. When the spook squad and I came through, they all had their backs to us. Now, I’m not arrogant enough to think that I was the first guy to lead a company of ghosts into an assault. Granted, I don’t think it happens every day or anything, but it’s a big world and it’s been spinning for a long time. I’m sure someone did it long before I was born, maybe pitting the ancestral spirits of one tribe against those of another. I’m not the first person to assault an enemy fortress from the Nevernever side, either. It happened several times to either side in the war with the Red Court. It’s a fairly standard tactical maneuver. It requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to pull off, as Evil Bob had demonstrated with his Normandy defenses. But I am dead certain—ba-dump-bump-ching—that I’m the first guy to lead an army of spirits in an assault from the spirit-world side…‌and had them start off by screaming, “BOO!”

The sound that came out of all those spirit throats, including mine, seemed to feed upon itself, wavelengths building and building like seas before a rising storm. Our voices weren’t additive, bunched so closely like that, but multiplicative. When we shouted, the sound went out in a wave that was almost tangible. It hit the backs of the gathered lemurs and bumped them forward half a step. It slammed into the walls of the underground chamber and brought dust and mold cascading down. And Mort’s eyes snapped open in sudden, startled shock. “Get ’em!” I howled. The dead protectors of Chicago’s resident ectomancer let out a bloodcurdling chorus of battle cries and blurred toward the foe.

“It’s okay,” Murphy said very quietly. “I get it. Your perspective has changed.” I stared down at her for a moment. Then I said, “Not about some things.” “Relationship ambivalence from beyond the grave,” she said, her mouth turning up at the corners. “Perfect.” “Karrin,” I began. “Don’t,” she said, cutting me off. “Just…don’t. It doesn’t matter now, does it?” “Of course it matters.” “No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn’t pottery class.”

I remembered the way tears felt, sliding free of my eyes, the annoying blockage of congestion when I had a cold, and a thousand other things—little things, minor things, desperately important things. You know. Life.