Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

The Leanansidhe sat at the edge of my grave, her bare, dirty feet swinging back and forth. Her bright red hair had been bound back in a long tail, and she was dressed in the shreds of five or six different outfits. Her head was wrapped in a scarf that had been knitted from yarn duplicating various colors of dirty snow, and the tattered ends of it hung down on either side of her head. It gave her a sort of lunatic-coquette charm, especially considering the flecks of what looked like dried blood on the pale skin of her face. She looked as happy as a kid on Christmas morning.

I just stared up for a moment and then shook my head faintly. “You saw that? What I was thinking?”

“I see you,” she said, as though that explained it. “Not what you were thinking. What you were remembering.”

“Interesting,” I said. It made a certain amount of sense that Lea could discern the spirit world better than I could. She was a creature who was at least partly native to the Nevernever. I probably looked like some kind of pale, white, ghostly version of myself to her, while the memories that were my substance played across the surface.

I thought about the wraiths and lemurs that Sir Stuart had put down on my first night as a ghost, and how they had seemed to bleed images as they faded away.

“Yes,” she said, her tone pleased. “Precisely like that. My, but the Colonial Knight put on a display for you.”

“You knew Sir Stuart?”

“I have seen him in battle on several occasions,” Lea said, her eyes somewhat dreamy. “He is a worthy gentleman, in his fashion. Quite dangerous.”

“Not more dangerous than the Corpsetaker,” I said. “She destroyed him.”

Lea thrust out her lower lip and her brow furrowed in annoyance. “Did she? What a contemptible waste of a perfectly doughty spirit.” She rolled her eyes. “At least, my godchild, you have discerned your foe’s identity—and that of her pet.”

I shivered. “Her and Evil Bob.”

She waved a hand. “Evil is mainly an aesthetic choice. Only the spirit’s power is significant, for your purposes.”

“Not true,” I said mildly. “Though I know you don’t agree.”

Her expression was pensive for a moment before she said, “You have your mother’s Sight, you know.”

“Not her eyes?”

“I’ve always thought you favored Malcolm.” The serious expression vanished and she kicked her feet again. “So, young shade. What happened next?”

“You know. You were there.”

“How do the mortals say it?” she murmured. “I missed that episode.”

I coughed out a surprised little laugh.

She looked faintly miffed. “I do not know what happened between the time you left Justin and the time you came to me.”

“I see.” I grinned at her. “Do you think I just give away stories for free? To one of the Sidhe?”

She tilted back her head and laughed, and her eyes twinkled. Like, literally, with little flashes of light. “You have learned much. I began to despair of it, but it seems you may have acquired wisdom enough, and in time.”

“In time to be dead,” I said. “But, yeah. I’ve worked out by now that the Sidhe don’t give anything away. Or take anything for free. And after however long, I realized why that might be: because you can’t.”

“Indeed,” she said, beaming at me. “There must be balance, sweet godchild. Always balance. Never take a thing without giving such a thing in return; never give a favor without collecting one in kind. All of reality depends on balance.”

I squinted at her. “That’s why you gave Bianca Amoracchius years ago. So that you could accept that knife from her. The one Mab took from you.”

She leaned toward me, her eyes all but glowing with intensity and her teeth showing in a sudden, carnivorous smile. “Indeed. And such a treacherous gift it was, child. Oh, but if that deceitful creature had survived you, such a vengeance I would have wreaked that the world would have spoken of it in whispers for a thousand years.”

I squinted at her. “But . . . I killed Bianca before you could balance the scales.”

“Indeed, simple boy. Why else, think you, that I gifted you with the most potent powers of faerie to protect you and your companions when we battled Bianca’s ultimate progenitors?”

“I thought you did it because Mab ordered you to.”

“Tsk. In all of Winter, I am second in power only to Mab—which she has allowed because I have incurred with it proportionate obligation to her. She is my dearest enemy, but even I do not owe Mab so much. I helped you as much as I did, sweet child, because I owed you for collecting a portion of my due justice from Bianca,” the Leanansidhe said. Her eyes grew wider, wilder. “The rest I took from the little whore’s masters. Though I admit, I hadn’t expected the collection to be quite so thorough .”

Memories flashed in my head. Susan. An obsidian knife. I felt sick.

I’ll get over it, I told myself. Eventually. It hadn’t been much more than a day from my point of view. I was probably still in shock or trauma or something—if ghosts could get that, I mean.

I looked up and realized that Lea was staring at me, at my memories, with undisguised glee. She let out a contented sigh and said, “You do not settle things by half measures, do you, my godson?”

I could get mad at her for being callous about calling those memories to my mind, or I could revile her for taking such joy in so much destruction and pain, but there wasn’t a point in doing so. My godmother was what she was—a being of violence, deceit, and the thirst for power. She wasn’t human. Her attitudes and reactions could not fairly be called inhumane.

Besides. I had gotten to know Lea’s sovereign, Queen Mab, in a fashion so hideously intimate that I could not possibly describe it. And believe me. If Lea had been the high priestess of murder, bloodlust, scheming, and manipulation, then Mab was the goddess my godmother worshipped.

Come to think of it, that was probably an apt description of their relationship.

Six of one, a half dozen of another. My godmother wasn’t going to change. There was no sense in holding what she was against her. So I just gave her a tired, whimsical smile instead.

“Saves time,” I told her. “Do it thoroughly once, and you don’t have to fool around with it again later.”

She dropped back her head and let out a deep-throated laugh. Then she tilted her head and looked at me. “You didn’t realize what would happen to mortal kind when you struck down the Red King and his brood. Did you?”

“I saw the opportunity,” I said, after a moment. “If I’d stopped to think about the trouble it would create . . . I don’t know if I’d have done it any differently. They had my girl.”

Her eyes gleamed. “Spoken as someone worthy to wield power.”

“Coming from you,” I said, “that’s . . . a little bit unsettling, actually.”

She kicked both feet, girlishly pleased, and smiled down at me. “How sweet of you to say so.”

The best thing about my faerie godmother is that the creepy just keeps on coming.

“I’ll trade you,” I said. “The rest of the tale for information.”

She nodded her head in a businesslike fashion. “The tale for questions three?”

“Done.”

“Done, done, and done,” she replied.

So I told her.

Iran and ran for a good long while. I wasn’t on the cross-country team at school, but I often went running with Elaine. It was how we’d hidden sneaking off to make out—and stuff—from Justin. He was a thorough sort of guy, so we made sure to actually do the running, too, in order to make our deception flawless. And the whole time, we thought we were getting away with it.