Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13)

by Jim Butcher

Yet it seems to me that you did her no great kindness by being gentle.”

Death should be a learning experience, after all, or what’s the point?”

Even if her mental house was still on a good foundation, you didn’t need monsters or magic to get damaged by a brush with death. Soldiers coming home from wars had known that for centuries. Post-traumatic stress disorder from life-threatening injuries had screwed up the lives of a lot of people—people who didn’t have supernatural powers as a possible outlet for their anger, fear, grief, or guilt. And who had been there to catch her? The freaking Leanansidhe, deputy of Her Wickedness, with her Nietzsche and Darwin Were Sentimental Pansies outlook on life. Stars and stones.

“Oh, kid,” I breathed to no one. “Molly. I’m so sorry.” It turns out ghosts can cry.

There was, I kid you not, a drumroll.

I had always assumed that Justin had controlled He Who Walks Behind, that my old master had sent him after me when I fled. But what if I’d been a flipping idiot? What if their relationship had worked the other way around?

You…You’re just running around in your freaking soul, man. I mean, for practical purposes, it’s the same thing, but…” “But what?” “But if something happens to you here, now…it’s for keeps. I mean…forever. You could capital-E End, man. Spin right off the wheel altogether. Or worse.”

“Well,” Bob said. He cleared his throat. “You idiot.” “Argh,” I said. “My head hurts.” “No, it doesn’t,” Bob said scornfully. “You just think it should.” I paused and reflected and saw that Bob was right. And I decided that my head hurt anyway, dammit.

swallowed. “So…what do I do?” Bob lunged to his feet. “What do you do?” He pointed at the table of Mother Butters’s feast food. “You’ve got that to maybe get back to, and you’re asking me what to do? You find your freaking killer! We’ll both do it! I’ll totally help!”

It was a forcible reminder that, the way things stood now, Bob was the heavyweight. I was just the skinny newbie. I hated that feeling. That feeling sucked.

More likely, I wouldn’t accomplish anything. But when your friends are in danger, you try anyway.

Together, all of you have determined this reality.” She spread her hands. “Who am I to unmake such a thing?” “Fine,” I said, “be that way.” “I will,” the angel responded serenely.

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.

“And besides. It would be…wrong.” “Wrong?” Fitz asked. “Take away someone’s will, you take away everything they are. Their whole identity. Doing that to someone is worse than murder; if you kill them, they don’t keep on suffering.”

“Kill him.” The flat-eyed children looked at Fitz. Zero started taking a step toward him. Fitz’s voice was a whip crack, sharp and loud in the echoing chamber. “Stop.” And they did. No magic was involved. Fitz had something more powerful than that. He’d cared for those other kids. He’d thought about them, encouraged them, and led them. That was something every bit as real as mystic power and dark enchantment—and it carries a hell of a lot more weight. Love always does.

Fitz faced the crippled sorcerer and shook his head. Then he did what was possibly the cruelest thing he could have done to his former mentor. He turned away and ignored him.

“Wait,” Daniel said. “Fitz…you ran. I don’t blame you. But you came back.” Fitz paused, pursed his lips, and said, “Yeah. I did, didn’t I?” “Why?” Fitz shrugged. “Dresden. He told me that if I ran now, I’d run forever. And I’m sick of that.” “Heh,” Butters said. “Heh, heh. He totally Kenobied the day.” Dark eyes gleaming, he looked at Daniel. “Still have doubts?” Daniel shook his head once, smiling. Then he sank down to the floor with a satisfied groan.

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.

Gandalf never had this kind of problem. He had exactly this problem, actually, standing in front of the hidden Dwarf door to Moria. Remember when… I sighed. Sometimes my inner monologue annoys even me.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” she breathed, her eyes widening as she took in the spook squad. “Harry, is that you in there?” “Two ghosts enter; one ghost leaves,” I replied. Then I vanished from the Spookydome and reappeared in front of her. “Hi.”

Then it struck me where I’d seen this before: the first act of Saving Private Ryan. “Oh, crap,” I breathed.

“Grenades!” I ordered, in a firm and manly tone that did not sound at all like a panicked fourteen-year-old.

And the Lecter Specters went to work. As I stared up the slope, the only thing I could think was that this must be what it looked like in the interior of a tornado. The mad ghosts of Chicago rushed forward with such speed and power that their forms blurred into elongated streaks that jostled to be the first to reach their victims, corkscrewing up the cutting. They ignored ridiculous constraints such as gravity and the solidity of matter, and as they rushed upon the enemy, they changed—and I gained fresh nightmare material.

Ghosts don’t get hungry, I reminded myself. Dead men don’t eat. So there was no reason whatsoever that I should throw up. The thought was hilarious for some reason, so I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I laughed and laughed, even as I realized that I couldn’t just sit there—not having turned loose an elemental force of horror like the Lecters.

But there are things you just don’t do, things you just can’t see, and still be both human and sane. I forced the incipient screams away, too. It took me a minute or two to get it done. When I looked up, Sir Stuart was facing me, his eyes sad, concerned, and empathetic. He knew what I was feeling. He’d known it himself—which probably stood to reason, as the commander, more or less, of the criminal psych ward of Chicago’s ghosts.

I heard slow, heavy, confident footsteps. Clomp. Clomp. Then a pair of black jackboots appeared at the top of the trench. My gaze tracked up the SS officer’s uniform, which included a black leather trench coat not too unlike my own. It wasn’t one of the wolfwaffen. Instead of a deformed, monstrous wolf face, this being had only a bare skull sitting atop the uniform’s high collar. Blue fire glowed in its eye sockets and it regarded me with cold disdain. “A worthy effort for a novice,” Evil Bob said. “I wish you to know that I regret your death as the loss of significant potential.” He lifted what was probably not actually a Luger pistol and aimed it calmly at my head. “Good-bye, Dresden.”

“A relationship,” he replied. “With me.” Yeah. He actually said it like that. “Um,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Maybe you could clarify what you mean by a relationship. Because I’ve got to tell you, Bob, I’ve, uh…I’ve been hurt.” The joke missed him completely.

“I’ve got a strict rule about dating older men.” The spirit looked at me blankly for a moment. Then, as the real Bob sometimes did, he gave me the impression of an expression that simple, immobile bone could not possibly have expressed. His eyes slowly widened. “You…” he said slowly, “are mocking me.”

Worse, he’d given me a chance to start lipping off to him, and that comes so naturally to me that I don’t really need to consciously consider it anymore, except on special occasions.

One mistake at the end of my life couldn’t erase all the times I had stood unmoved at the edge of the abyss and made snide remarks at its expense. They could kill me, but they couldn’t have me. I was my own.

The spirit’s skull mouth dropped open wider and wider and— —a sudden stream of candle-flame-colored energy coalesced into Bob the Skull’s human form, right behind Evil Bob. My Bob lunged forward and snaked his arms beneath the dark spirit’s. Bob’s fingers locked behind the fractured skull of my enemy, gathering the dark spirit into a full nelson.

“How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” I told her seriously.

Possibly the best pop culture reference Jim has pulled.

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.

When it hit them, there was a hideous, explosive cascade of fire and havoc, and they were torn to shreds as if they’d been made of cheesecloth. Holy crap. Either one of those spells would have done the same to me if I’d been a quarter second slower. Dead or alive, Kemmler’s disciples did not play for funsies.

If all I did was keep shielding the Lecters, she’d be free to throw her hardest punches, and I felt certain that anyone from Kemmler’s crew could hit like a truck. Time to get creative.

My will lashed down the hallway and blew the hood back from the Corpsetaker’s face. Maybe she was wearing the form of one of her victims. Maybe I was getting a look at the real Corpsetaker. Either way, she wasn’t a pretty woman. She had a face shaped like a hatchet, only less gentle and friendly.

The wards were down. Murphy and company would be crashing the party at any moment. And…for some reason, the Corpsetaker now wanted them to do it. Right. That couldn’t be good.

“Luck,” I said. She closed her eyes for a second. Then she said, “You can’t save everyone, Dresden. Right now, I’m concerned with the man these victims are torturing and holding prisoner. They’re still people. But they come right after him and everyone here on my worry list.”

I stayed where I was standing, right in front of the door. I mean, what the hell, right? When was I going to get a chance to see an explosion from this angle again? I was a little disappointed. There was just a huge bang, a flash of light, and then a cloud of dust, which was pretty much descriptive of most of the explosions I’d seen.

Wolves in general get underestimated in the modern world—after all, humans have guns. And helicopters. But back in the day, when things were more muscle powered, wolves were a real threat to humans, possibly the number-two predator on the planet.

What she’d just done was hard. In fact, it was what one could only have expected from a member of the White Council. Maybe my godmother had a point.

Hell. I was pretty much crazy already. That being the case…how hard could it be?

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.

I was solid again, at least for a moment. I was myself again, and with my remembered body came a fountain of remembered pain.

“Good Lord, I’m regretting this now,” I muttered. “I have never—ever—smelled BO this bad in my life. And I once had s’mores with a Sasquatch.”

But the universe has a funny sense of humor, and apparently it’s not always aimed at me.

“You want to play head games?” Molly snarled, her blue eyes blazing. “Let’s go.”

For me, the best offense had to be an obstinate defense. Molly, on the other hand…well. Molly was sort of scary.

We’d had the same thought-image set up to signal victory—Vader swooping down in his TIE fighter, smugly stating, “I have you now.” Once that got through, the game was over.

We both worked hard to improve as a result. It was a part of the training I’d taken every bit as seriously as teaching her theory or enchantments or exorcism, or any of a hundred other areas we’d covered over the past few years. But we’d never done it for blood.