Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

I didn’t move him—my hands just passed into him, insubstantial—but a sudden frisson seemed to run through him, and he began to pull away.

Too late.

Aristedes’ left arm blurred and struck Butters squarely on the chin. If he hadn’t been drawing back, the blow would have caught him just under the ear, and the sorcerer’s hand was moving fast enough that it might have broken Butters’s neck. Even so, the sharp thump of impact snapped Butters’s head to one side, hard enough to rebound when it had reached maximum torsion. He did a brief bobblehead impersonation on the way to the floor and landed in a boneless heap.

I wanted to scream in frustration. Instead, I poked at my brain, demanding it to come up with something.

To my considerable surprise, it did.

I vanished straight up to the ceiling and spun in a quick circle. There. I spotted Fitz, moving in a low crawl toward one of the exits from the factory floor, keeping a modest pile of junk between himself and Aristedes.

“Fitz!” I bellowed. I vanished and reappeared right over him. “Fitz, you’ve got to turn around!”

“Quiet,” he hissed in a frantic whisper. His eyes were white around the edges. “Quiet. No, I can’t! Leave me alone!”

“You’ve got to do it,” I said. “Forthill’s here in the camp, hurt bad. There’s a freaking angel of death standing over him. He needs help.”

Fitz didn’t answer me. He kept on crawling off the factory floor and into one of the hallways outside it. He was making desperate, small sounds as he reached the door and got out of any possible line of sight to Aristedes.

“Fitz,” I said. “Fitz, you have got to do something. You’re the only one who can.”

“Cops,” he panted. “I’ll call the cops. They can handle it.” He got up and started padding down the hall, toward what I presumed was the nearest exit from the building.

“Butters and Daniel don’t have that kind of time,” I answered. “The cops get tipped off by a runaway, we’ll be lucky if a prowl car cruises by half an hour from now. All three of them could be dead by then. Your boss can’t allow witnesses.”

“You’re the wizard,” Fitz said. “Why can’t you do it? I mean, ghosts can possess people and stuff, right? Just zap into Aristedes and make him jump off the roof.”

I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Look, I’m new at this ghost thing. But it doesn’t work like that. Even the badass ghost of a centuries-old wizard I know of can only possess a subject who is willing. So far, I’ve only been able to move into people who were sensitive to spirits—and they could have booted me out anytime they wanted. Aristedes is neither sensitive nor willing. I’d be like a bug splattering on a windshield if I tried to take him over.”

“Christ.”

“If you want to volunteer, I could take you over, I suppose. I don’t think you’ve got the right wiring for me to use my power, and you’d still be in danger, of course, but you wouldn’t have to make the decisions.”

Fitz shuddered. “No.”

“Good. It’s weird as hell.” I paused and took a breath. “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.”

“Who cares?” Fitz said. “This guy is an animal. Who cares if he gets something bad? He’s earned it.”

“Wrong is wrong, even when you really, really want it not to be,” I said quietly. “I learned that one the hard way. It’s easy to do the right thing when it doesn’t cost you. Not as easy to do the right thing when your back is to the wall.”

Fitz shook his head the whole time I spoke that last, and his pace quickened. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m running for my life.”

I fought down a snarl to keep my voice level. Time to change tactics. “Kid, you aren’t thinking it through,” I said. “You know Aristedes. You know him.”

“Which part of running for my life didn’t come across?”

I grunted. “The part where you leave your friends to die.”

“What?”

“He’s busted up pretty bad right now. Weak. How long do you think it will take him to replace all your crew?”

Fitz’s steps dragged to a stop.

“They’ve seen him weak now. Hell, he’s hurt bad enough that he might be crippled for life. What do you think he’ll do with the kids who saw him beaten? Who saw him get bloodied and smashed to the floor?”

Fitz bowed his head.

“Stars and stones, kid. You started showing signs of independent thought, and he was so threatened by it that he set you up to get killed. What do you think he’ll do to Zero?”

Fitz didn’t answer.

“You run now,” I said quietly, “and you’re going to spend your whole life running. This is a crossroads. This is where your life takes form. Here. Now. This moment.”

His face twisted up as if he was in physical pain. Still, he didn’t respond.

I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, to give him the reassurance of a human touch. The best I could do was to soften my voice as much as I could.

“I know what I’m talking about, kid. Every time you’re alone in the dark, every time you go by a mirror, you’re going to remember this moment. You’re going to see who you’ve become. And you’ll either be the man who ran away while his own crew and three good men died, or you’ll be the man who stood tall and did something about it.”

Fitz swallowed and whispered, “He’s too strong.”

“Not right now, he isn’t,” I said. “He’s on the ground. He can’t walk. He’s got one arm. If I didn’t think you had a chance, I’d be telling you to run.”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t. This isn’t fair.”

“Life hardly ever is,” I said.

“I don’t want to die.”

“Heh. No one does. But everyone does it anyway.”

“That supposed to be funny?”

“Maybe a little ironic, given the source. Look, kid. All that matters is the answer to the question: Which of those men do you want to be?”

Slowly he lifted his head. I realized that he could see his own reflection in the glass of an office door.

I stood behind him, looking down at him and remembering, with a faint sense of irrational disbelief, that I had once been no taller than the boy.

“Which man, Fitz?” I asked quietly.

When I faced my old master, I did it with newly made staff and blasting rod in hand, with the ancient forces of the universe at my call, and with words of power upon my tongue.

Fitz had more courage than I had as a child.

He went to face his demons with no weapon at all.

As his footsteps rapped steadily on the concrete floor, I worried about the kid. He was doing this on my say-so. What if Aristedes wasn’t hurt as badly as I thought? What if he knew some kind of restorative magic? Fitz wouldn’t have a chance—and I would never forgive myself.

I gritted my teeth and told myself not to borrow trouble. Things were bad enough without adding in a bunch of my own worries. That wouldn’t help anybody.

Fitz stepped into sight of Aristedes and stopped in his tracks.

“Easy,” I said quietly. “Calm. Don’t show him any weakness. You can do it.”

Fitz took a deep breath and walked forward.

“Fitz,” Aristedes spat. He was sitting up now, his leg straight out in front of him. Butters’s unconscious body had been dumped next to Daniel, who sat on the ground in a small puddle of his own blood, grimacing in pain and obviously disoriented. He’d bound the wounds closed, more or less, but it was clear that he still needed real medical attention. Zero and the other kids, several obviously detailed to watch Daniel and Butters, were standing around with pipes and old knives. “What do you think you’re doing here, traitor?”