Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

Rage, of course. Rage at the creatures who were trying to harm the innocent or my friends or me. That rage had been both a weapon and armor to me in moments of mortal peril. It was always there, and I always welcomed its arrival—being filled with anger was infinitely preferable to being filled with terror. But seeing it in my heightened memories, it made me feel a little sick. 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.

The White Council blamed me for causing trouble with various supernatural evils, and while I’m not quite arrogant enough to blame all the world’s problems on my mistakes, they probably had a point. I have issues with bullies and authority figures. And I refuse to stand by and do nothing when those too weak to defend themselves become victims.

But how much of that had been courage, and how much of it had been me embracing my probably righteous anger so that I wouldn’t feel the fear? As the memories flipped by, I saw myself again and again throwing myself into the fire—sometimes literally—to help someone who needed it or to kill something that needed killing. The tidal surges of my emotion had propelled me, fueled my magic, and many times they had made it possible to survive when I wouldn’t have otherwise.

But when I’d been running on adrenaline, I’d rarely stopped to consider the extended consequences of my actions. By saving Susan from Bianca of the Red Court, I had offered a high-profile insult to the entire vampire nation. When Duke Ortega had shown up to challenge me to a duel, to restore the honor of the Red Court and forestall a war, it had ended in a bloodbath—and it had never occurred to me to attempt to ensure any other outcome. As a result of the disastrous duel, a wizard named Ebenezar McCoy, my grandfather, had brought an old Soviet satellite down from its orbit, right on top of Ortega’s stronghold. No one survived. Then Arianna, Ortega’s wife, the daughter of the Red King, had sought her own vengeance even as the Red Court launched a fullscale war.

Arianna’s vengeance had materialized in the form of murdering my daughter’s foster family and abducting her. Once Susan heard about it, she got in touch. And again I flung myself into fire without a thought.

None of those things had to happen. I mean, I wasn’t the only guy in the world who had driven that course of events. I knew that. But I had been the guy who had been standing at the tipping point between possible outcomes with depressing regularity. Could I have done something differently? Was it even possible to know?

In my memories, I murdered Susan Rodriguez again.

Time heals all wounds, they say, but I somehow knew I wouldn’t be able to escape this one. Granted, only a few days’ subjective time had passed since the events of that evening, so the memory was still fresh in my painfully clear recollection. But time wasn’t going to help much with what I had done. And it probably shouldn’t.

I wanted to hurt the Grey Ghost and its merry band of shades. I wanted to hurt them badly, make them feel the vitriol burning inside my belly. I wanted to take them on and smash them to flinders upon my will.

But. . .

Maybe I should pause for a moment. Maybe I should think. Maybe I should reject both anger and fear and strive for an outcome beyond kicking down the door and smashing everything in my way. Play it smart. Play it responsible.

“Little late for you to be learning that lesson now. Isn’t it, dummy?” I asked.

No. It was never too late to learn something. The past is unalterable in any event. The future is the only thing we can change. Learning the lessons of the past is the only way to shape the present and the future.

Why did I want this fight so badly?

“Here’s a thought, genius,” I said to me. “Maybe it’s got something to do with Maggie.”

Maggie. My little girl. I would never see her grow up. I would never get to watch for any signs of manifesting talent, so that I could teach her and give her the choice of how to live her life. I would never get to hear her sing a song, or go trick-or-treating, or send her a present for Christmas. I would never . . .

At some point during that dark thunderstorm of regret, fire had erupted from seemingly every surface of my body, a furious red-gold flame. It wasn’t hot at first, but after a few seconds it got uncomfortable and rapidly progressed to actual pain. I ground my teeth, closed my eyes, and forced order upon my thoughts, tried to replace the outrage with cool, steady logic.

Several seconds later, the fire died away. I opened my eyes slowly, eyeing the scorch marks on my coat and a blister or two on my exposed skin. Clear bubbles of ectoplasm dribbled from the blisters.

“So, yeah,” I said. “You may have anger issues where Maggie is concerned, Harry.”

Heh. You think?

“Got a rocket,” I sang, “in your pocket. Turn off the juice, boy.”

Show tunes? Really? It wasn’t bad enough that you’ve started talking to yourself, man. Now you’re doing performing art.

But the musically inclined me had a point.

“Play it cool, boy,” I whispered. “Real cool.”

I approached the Big Hoods’ lair obliquely and cautiously. One might even accuse me of being overly cautious. I circled the lair from all angles, including up above, in a slow, spiral-shaped pattern that only gradually drew closer. I held a veil over myself the entire time, too. It wasn’t any easier as a ghost than it had been in the flesh, and I still couldn’t throw the greatest veil in the world, but I managed to make myself if not invisible, at least difficult to see.

I wasn’t there to fight. I was there to learn. Mort needed my help, but maybe the best way to give it to him wasn’t to go charging in like a rogue rhinoceros. Knowledge is power. I needed all the power I could get if I was going to help Morty.

The problem was that the Grey Ghost had apparently marshaled supporters of both the spirit and the flesh—and I couldn’t fight the damned crazy thugs who just happened to be made of solid matter. I’d need help. Maybe I could hop into Morty again and toss out enough power to let him run away—but that assumed Morty would let me step in at all. He sure as hell didn’t seem to like it the first time. It also assumed that he would be free and able to physically escape, and that I could neutralize his material captors. There was no guarantee either of those things would be the case.

I thought that the tip from Nick was a good one. I think he had identified the right bunch of yahoos, and I had faith in his knowledge of Chicago streets. After a lifetime walking them—and surviving—Nick was an expert. Chicago PD’s gang unit sometimes went to him for advice. Sometimes he even gave it to them.

But any expert could be wrong. If the Grey Ghost was wily enough to have a hideout separate from its material mooks’ living quarters and had stashed Mort there, I was about to waste a whole lot of time. But how would it get a setup of its own without physical help to establish it? If it was strong enough, I supposed, it could have a demesne of its own in the Nevernever—the spirit world. I’d dealt with a ghost named Agatha Hagglethorn once, and she’d had her own little pocket dimension filled with a Victorian-era copy of Chicago.