Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13)

by Jim Butcher

Pain isn’t a lot of fun, at least not for most folks, but it is utterly unique to life. Pain—physical, emotional, and otherwise—is the shadow cast by everything you want out of life, the alternative to the result you were hoping for, and the inevitable creator of strength. From the pain of our failures we learn to be better, stronger, greater than what we were before. Pain is there to tell us when we’ve done something badly—it’s a teacher, a guide, one that is always there to both warn us of our limitations and challenge us to overcome them. For something no one likes, pain does us a whole hell of a lot of good.

He started trying to claw his way up my body to my throat. I declined to allow him such liberties, and communicated that desire to him by thrusting the end of my staff at his neck.

Granted, the imagination was the only place where I was going to get one of these darned things to work. I’d tried the flying-carpet thing before, when I was about twenty. It had been a fairly horrible experiment that had dropped me into a not-yet-closed landfill during a thunderstorm. And then there was the famous flying-broomstick incident of Wacker Drive, which wound up on the Internet as a UFO sighting. After that, I had wisely determined that flying was mostly just a great way to get killed and settled for driving my old car around instead.

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

“She still has her life. Her future. Her freedom. You did save her, you know. The idea to have her call to Mortimer in the closing moments of the psychic battle was inspired.” “I’ve cost her too much,” I said quietly. “I believe that when you went after your daughter, you said something about letting the world burn. That you and your daughter would roast marshmallows.” I nodded bleakly. “It is one thing for you to say, ‘Let the world burn.’ It is another to say, ‘Let Molly burn.’ The difference is all in the name.”

It took several minutes, and when Butters woke up, Andi and Marci, both naked, both rather pleasant that way, were giving him CPR. They’d kept his body alive in the absence of his soul. “Wow,” Butters slurred as he opened his eyes. He looked back and forth between the two werewolf girls. “Subtract the horrible pain in my chest, this migraine, and all the mold and mildew, and I’m living the dream.” Then he passed out.

I stood there watching Karrin for a moment and then turned away. It hurt too much to see her in pain when I couldn’t reach out and touch her, or make an off-color joke, or find some way to give her a creative insult or otherwise show her that I cared. It didn’t seem fair that I should get to say good-bye to her, even if she couldn’t hear it. She hadn’t gotten to say it to me. So I didn’t say anything. I gave her a last look and then I walked away.

We went through the door and were greeted by a low, warning rumble. A great mound of shaggy fur, lying beside the room’s single, twin bed, rose to its feet. “Mouse,” I said, and dropped to my knees. I wept openly as my dog all but bounced at me. He was obviously joyous and just as obviously trying to mute his delight—but his tail thumped loudly against everything in the room, and puppyish sounds of pleasure came from his throat as he slobbered on my face, giving me kisses.

She was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen, like, in the movies or anywhere. But I guess maybe all parents see that when they look at their kids. It isn’t rational. That doesn’t make it any less true.