Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

“It . . . wasn’t phrased quite like that . . .” I began. Only it really had been. Jack had warned me that I might be trapped forever, hadn’t he? “Or . . . well. Um. Yeah. I guess technically I did.”

“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. Just because I was a spirit or a naked soul or whatever didn’t mean I needed to start ignoring who I had been.

“Bob,” I said, lifting my head suddenly. “What does this mean? I mean, why not just let me die and move along like normal?”

Bob pursed his lips. “Um. Yeah. No clue.”

“What if . . . ?” I felt short of breath. I hardly wanted to say it. “What if I’m not . . . ?”

Bob’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oooooohhhhhhhh . Uriel’s people—Murphy’s dad and so on—did they say anything about your body?”

“That it wasn’t available,” I said.

“But not that it was gone?” Bob pressed.

“No,” I said. “They . . . they didn’t say that.”

“Wow,” Bob said, eyes wide.

Mine probably were, too. “What do I do?”

“How the hell should I know, man?” Bob asked. “I’ve never had a soul or a body. What did they tell you to do?”

“Find my killer,” I said. “But . . . that means I’m dead, right?”

Bob waved a hand. “Harry. Dead isn’t . . . Look, even by terms of the nonsupernatural, dead is a really fuzzy area. Even mortal medicine regards death as a kind of process more than a state of being—a reversible process, in some circumstances.”

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

“There’s a difference between dead and . . . and gone .”

I 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!”

The light in the room suddenly turned red. A red-alert sound I remembered from old episodes of Star Trek buzzed through the air.

“Uh,” I said, “what the hell is that?”

“Butters calling me,” Bob said, leaping to his feet. The form of the young man, who I now realized must have looked a lot like Butters when he was a kid, only taller, started coming apart into the sparks of a wood fire. “Come on,” Bob said. “Let’s go.”

Ididn’t actually will myself out of the skull, the way I had gone in. Bob’s passage just sort of swept me along in his wake, like a leaf being tugged after a passing tractor-trailer. 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.

I reintegrated standing in a dusty room. Afternoon sunlight slanted through it, its danger abated by the thick coating of grime over the windows. The place looked like an industrial building’s entryway. There was what had been a heavy-duty desk, maybe for a receptionist or security guard. An alcove housed rows of small personal lockers. Several rectangles of less-faded, commercial-grade taupe paint on the walls had probably been where a time clock and time-card holders had gone. Butters stood nearby, holding Bob’s flashlight, and the eyes of the skull were glowing brightly with Bob’s presence in the physical world, now that he had left his “apartment.” The little ME looked tense, focused, but not afraid.

It wasn’t much of a mystery how they’d gotten into the room: Fitz stood there with a set of bolt cutters with three-feet-long handles held over his shoulder. Fitz looked scared enough for everyone there. The kid was back in the lair of his erstwhile mentor and terrified of his wrath.

Yeah.

I knew that feeling.

Butters fumbled his little spirit radio out of his pocket and asked, in a hushed voice, “Dresden, you here?”

“To your left,” I said quietly.

He shone Bob’s eyelights my way and evidently saw me illuminated by them. “Oh,” he said, looking relieved. “Right. Good.”

I had no clue why he looked relieved. It wasn’t like I could do anything, unless some random ghost came by, in which case my memorybased magic could cook another being incapable of affecting the material world.

But I guess he looked up to me, or at least to my memory, and I owed it to him to help however I could. So I gave him a calm nod and an encouraging clench of my fist. Solid.

“I take it we’ve come in through a blind spot?” I asked Fitz quietly.

Fitz nodded. “The chains on the doors were enough. And he couldn’t extend his guard spells any farther than the main room.”

I grunted. “That’s good.”

“Why?” Butters asked.

“Means Aristedes doesn’t have enough power to just burn you to cinders on the spot.”

Butters swallowed. “Oh. Good.”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t kill you,” I said. “Just that he won’t have a high FX budget when he does.”

“He’s fast,” Fitz said. His voice shook. “He’s really, really fast.”

“Like, how fast?” Butters asked. “Fast like Jackie Chan or fast like the Flash?”

“Little of both,” I said. “He can cover ground fast. And he can hit like a truck.”

Fitz nodded tightly.

“Oh,” Butters said. “Super. We probably shouldn’t fight him, then.” He set the flashlight aside and rummaged in the duffel bag. “Give me just a second.”

A shadow flickered by one of the grime-filmed windows. Fitz let out a hiss and clutched the bolt cutters with both hands, ready to use them like a club. Butters let out an odd little chirping sound and pulled a big, old, cop-issue flashlight–slash-club from his bag.

The shadow passed over another window. Someone outside was moving toward the door, coming in behind us.

I took a quick look at the flashlight and made sure I was standing in the light of Bob’s eyes and out of the path of any direct sunlight that might come through the door. I couldn’t do anything, but if I was visibly standing there when the door opened, maybe I could distract Aristedes, if it was him coming through. Maybe he’d speed-rush right through me and into a wall and knock himself out like a cartoon villain. That would make me look cool upon cool.

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

The door opened and I raised my arms into a dramatic stagemagician’s pose. It felt ridiculous, but body postures draw reactions from human beings on an almost atavistic level. We aren’t that terribly far removed from our primal roots, where body language was more important than anything we said. My stance declared me the ruler of the local space, a man who was in control of everything happening around him, one who others would follow, a mix of maestro and madman that would identify me, to instinct, as the most dangerous thing in the room.

Butters and Fitz hit the wall on either side of the door and raised their improvised weapons as it swung open. The door squealed dramatically on its hinges, and a large, menacing figure entered the building. It hesitated, lifting a hand to shield its eyes, apparently staring at me.

Butters let out a shout and swung his flashlight at the figure. Fitz, by contrast, swept the heavy set of bolt cutters down in silence. Even in that flash of time, I had to admire Butters. The little guy couldn’t fight and he knew it, but he was smart enough to shout and draw the attention of the intruder toward the smaller, weaker, and lighter-armed of the two of them. He had intentionally thrown himself at a larger opponent to force the man to turn so that Fitz could swing at his back.