Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

He opened his eyes fully and focused on me for the first time. “No,” he said in a gentle voice. “I won’t.”

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll get you patched up.”

Sir Stuart let out a small laugh. “Nay, wizard. Too much of me has been lost. I’ve only held together this long so that I could speak to you.”

“What happened to our world being mutable in time with our expectations? Isn’t that still true?”

“To a degree,” Sir Stuart said affably, weakly. “I’ve been injured before. Small hurts are restored simply enough.” He gestured at his broken body. “But this? I’ll be like the others when I restore myself.”

“The others?”

“The warriors who defended Mortimer’s home,” he said. “They faded over time. Forgetting, little by little, about their mortal lives.”

I thought about the soldiers I’d seen battling the enemy shades and wraiths—silent, severe, seemingly disconnected from the world around them. They’d fought loyally and ably enough. But I was willing to bet that they couldn’t remember why they did so or who they were fighting.

I imagined Sir Stuart like the rest of them—a translucent outline, his empty eyes focused on something else entirely. Always faithful. Always silent.

I shivered.

It could happen to me, too.

“Listen to me, boy,” Sir Stuart said. “We didn’t trust you. We assumed you were mixed up in whatever it is the Grey Ghost wanted.”

“Like hell,” I said.

“You don’t know that,” Sir Stuart said flatly. “For all we knew, you could have been directed by that creature without your own knowledge. For that matter, you don’t have the feel of a normal ghost. It could have created you whole from the spirit world.”

I scowled and began to argue—and couldn’t. I’ve been faced with the odd and unusual and had drawn incorrect conclusions too many times. When people are scared, they don’t think straight. Mort had been terrified.

“Do you still think that?” I asked.

“No reason for you to be here if you were,” Sir Stuart said. “The worst has happened. Were you a plant, you would not have come. Though I suppose you might still be a dupe.”

“Thanks,” I said wryly.

He softened the words with another smile. “But dupe or not, it may be that ye can help Mortimer. And it is critical that you do so. Without his influence, this city will be in terrible danger.”

“Yeah, you aren’t exactly increasing the tension by telling me that,” I said. “We’re already sort of playing for maximum stakes.”

“I know not what you mean,” Sir Stuart replied. “But I tell you this: Those shades standing around the house, one and all, are murderers.”

I blinked and looked back at the still-smoldering house and at the enormous circle of spirits around it.

“Each and every one of them,” Sir Stuart said. “Mortimer gave them something they needed to turn aside from their madness: a home. If you do not restore him to freedom so that he may care for these poor souls, they will kill again. As sure as the sun rises, they won’t be able to help themselves.” He exhaled wearily and closed his eyes. “Fifty years of maddened shades unleashed upon the city all at once. Preying on mortals. Blood will run in buckets.”

I stared at him for a moment. Then I said, “How am I supposed to do that?”

“I’ve not the foggiest,” Sir Stuart replied. He fumbled at his belt and drew that monster pistol. He paused for a moment, grimacing. Then he tossed it weakly at my feet. It tumbled through the circle with a flicker of energies and landed atop the snow without sinking into it—the apparition of a weapon.

I stared for a second. A spirit couldn’t project its power across a circle—and I was sure that power was exactly what the gun represented. So if it had crossed the circle’s barrier, it meant that it was power that no longer belonged to Sir Stuart. On several levels, what he had just done was a violent act of self-mutilation—like chopping off your own hand.

He gestured weakly toward the gun, and said, “Take it.”

I picked it up gingerly. It weighed a ton. “What am I going to do with this?”

“Help Mortimer,” he replied. His shape began to flicker and fade at the edges. “I’m sorry. That I couldn’t do more. Couldn’t teach you more.” He opened his eyes again and leaned toward me, his expression intent. “Memories, Dresden. They’re power. They’re weapons. Make from your memory a weapon against them.” His voice lost its strength and his eyes sagged closed. “Three centuries of playing guardian . . . but I’ve failed my trust. Redeem my promise. Please. Help Mortimer.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I will.”

That faint smile appeared again, and Sir Stuart nodded once. Then he let out his breath in a sigh. He faded even more, and as I watched, his limbs simply renewed themselves, appearing as his shape became more translucent. The damage reversed itself before my eyes.

A moment later, he sat up. He looked around, his gaze passing right through me. Then he paused and stared at the ruined house, his brow furrowed in puzzled concentration—an expression mirrored on the faces of most of the spirits present.

Sir Stuart was nowhere to be seen in the shade’s hollow eyes.

I bowed my head and clenched my teeth, cursing. I had liked the guy. Just like I had liked Morty, whatever insults I may have offered him. I was angry about what had happened to him. And I was angry about the position he had put me in. Now I was the one responsible for somehow finding and helping Morty, when I could barely communicate with anyone without him. All while the bad guy, whatever the hell it was, apparently got to chat it up with its own flunkies at will.

I couldn’t touch anything. I couldn’t make anything happen. My magic was gone. And now not only was I to track down my own murderer, but I had to rescue Mort Lindquist, as well.

Fabulous. Maybe I should make it my new slogan: Harry Dresden—I take responsibility for more impossible situations in the first twenty-four hours of being dead than most people do all day.

More snow was beginning to fall. Eventually, it would break the circle that had trapped what was left of Sir Stuart. Though I didn’t know where he would go to take shelter from the sunrise. Maybe he would just know, the way I had seemed to—some kind of postdeath survival instinct. Or maybe he wouldn’t.

Either way, it didn’t seem like there was much I could do about it, and I hated that fact with a burning passion. Sir Stuart and the other spirits needed Morty Lindquist. Before I died, I might have been Harry Dresden, wizard at large. Now I was Harry Dresden, immaterial messenger boy, persuader, and wheedler.

I desperately wanted to blow something into tiny, tiny pieces—and then disintegrate the pieces.

All things considered, it was probably not the best frame of mind in which to handle a confrontation in a rational, diplomatic manner.

“Ah,” said a whispery, oily voice behind me. “She was right. The tall one returns.”

“Look at him,” said another voice, higher-pitched and inhuman. “He will make such a meal.”

“Our orders are—”

“Orders,” said a third voice, filled with scorn. “She is not here. We shall share him, the three of us, and none shall be the wiser.”

“Agreed,” said the second voice eagerly.

After a pause, the first voice said, “Agreed.”

I turned and saw three of the dark-robed forms from the night before during the attack on Casa Lindquist. Lemurs. Their clothing stirred with lazy, aquatic fluidity at the touch of an immaterial wind. From this close, I could see the faint images of pale faces inside their hoods, and the sheen of gleaming, hungry eyes.