Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

Emergency-service personnel arrived. By the time they got there, weapons had been hidden. Stories had been set. Concerned adults had come to discourage some local homeless youth from playing and living in a dangerous, old, ruined building. There had been an altercation with a possibly drunken vagrant that had gotten out of hand. Things had fallen down, injuring several.

It wouldn’t have taken more than half a brain to see the holes in the story, but Butters knew the med techs, no one had been killed, and no one wanted to press any charges. The techs were willing to keep their mouths shut for a couple of greenbacks. Ah, Chicago.

Forthill was in bad shape, but by the time they’d gotten him onto a stretcher and out to the ambulance, the angel of death was nowhere to be seen. Hah. Up yours, Reaper Girl. The father would live to not-fight another day.

Daniel went with the father. Aristedes rode in his own ambulance. He was still stunned by what had happened, or else smart enough to look disoriented and keep his mouth shut. The techs, after a few quiet words from Butters, strapped his arms and legs down for the ride. He never resisted. He never did anything. The doors of the ambulance shut on a broken man.

As for me, I couldn’t emerge from the old factory into the light. I had to stay in shadowed doorways to watch the proceedings. The afternoon must have been a warm one. The snow had visibly begun to lessen, and water ran and dripped everywhere.

When everyone with immediate medical needs had been taken care of, I went back to where I knew Butters would be. Sure enough, he came into the business entryway to recover his duffel bag and the flashlight containing Bob’s skull.

Butters slung the bag’s strap over his shoulder and pulled the little spirit radio out of it. He dropped that in his pocket and took out the flashlight housing. Then he held it up and said, “Okay, job’s done.”

Orange campfire lights shot in a stream over my right shoulder and past me into the eye sockets of the skull, where they took up their familiar glow. “See? I told you so.”

“Duly noted,” Butters said seriously.

I blinked at him and looked behind me, then back at the skull. “Bob. You were behind me that whole time?”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “The nerd had me shadow you. Sorry, Harry.”

Butters could see me, and I folded my arms and scowled at him. “You didn’t trust me.”

Butters pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Trust, but verify,” he said seriously. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Harry, but the testimony of a cat and a maybe-insane girl—wizard or not—didn’t exactly thrill all of us with its undeniable veracity.”

“Murphy told you to do it,” I said.

“Actually, Murphy didn’t want any of us to take any chances dealing with you,” he replied. “Things have used your appearance to get to her before.”

I wanted to say something heated and ferocious, but all I could have rationally responded with was something like, You’re right . And that wouldn’t have sounded very rational. So I just grunted.

Butters nodded. “And you’ve got to understand how bad the streets have been. The Fomor have no limits, Harry. They’ll use women, children, pets—anything—to get an emotional lever on you, if they can. To fight that, you’ve got to have buckets and buckets of sangfroid.”

I grunted and scowled some more. “But you bucked her orders.”

Butters scratched his nose with one finger. “Well. You know. It sounds cooler if I say I acted on my own initiative. I had a hunch.”

“Listen to Quincy here,” the skull burbled, giggling. “You had me, you dope.”

“I had you,” Butters admitted. “And I trust you.”

“And Murphy doesn’t, much,” Bob said with cheery pride, “which is probably smart. Someone else gets hold of my skull and who knows what they’d do with me? I am a loose cannon! The Wardens would waste me in a hot second!”

“Present company excluded,” I said.

“You don’t count,” the skull said stoutly. “You were drafted.”

“Granted.”

“The point being that I am an outlaw ! And chicks love that!”

“Oy,” Butters said, rolling his eyes. “Enough, Bob.”

“You got it, hombre,” Bob said.

I couldn’t help laughing a little.

“You see what I’ve got to live with,” Butters said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You, uh,” he said. He rubbed at the back of his head. “You’re missed, here, Harry. A lot. After a while, most of us . . . you know. We figured you were gone. We kind of had a wake at your grave. Pizza and beer. Called it a funeral. But Murphy wouldn’t go.”

“Illegal gathering,” I said.

Butters snorted out a breath through his nose. “That was her excuse, yeah.”

“Well,” I said. “We’ll see.”

Butters paused, body motionless for a moment. “We’ll see what?”

“Whether or not this is permanent,” I said, gesturing at myself.

Butters snapped up straight. “What?”

“Bob thinks that there is hinkiness afoot with regard to my, ah, disposition.”

“You . . . you could come back?” Butters whispered.

“Or maybe I haven’t left,” I said. “I don’t know, man. I got suckered into this whole encore-appearance thing. I’m as in the dark as everyone else.”

“Wow,” Butters breathed.

I waved a hand. “Look. That will fall out where it may,” I said. “We’ve got a real problem to deal with, like, right now.”

He nodded, one sharp gesture. “Tell me.”

I told him about the Corpsetaker and her plan for Mort, and her deal with the point guy of the Fomor’s servitors. “So we’ve got to break that up right the hell now,” I concluded. “I want you to get Murphy and her Vikings and tell them to go stomp the Corpsetaker’s hideout.”

Butters sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Ugh. I know there hasn’t been time for a lot of chitchat since you, uh, became departed, but they aren’t Murphy’s Vikings.”

“Whose are they?”

“Marcone’s.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll have to talk to Childs.”

“Marcone’s new guy?”

“Yeah. Him.” Butters shivered. “Guy gives me the creeps.”

“Could be Will and company would be enough.”

Butters shook his head. “Could be Will and company have done too much already, man. Seriously.”

“Something’s got to happen. If you wait, you get a renegade wizard the White Council has nightmares about knocking on your front door. And by knocking I mean ‘converting it from matter to energy.’ ”

Butters nodded. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll figure out something.” He squinted at me. “What are you going to be doing?”

“Covering the ghosty side of things,” I said. “She and her wannabe Bob and her lemurs and all the wraiths she’s been calling up. Assuming things go well on the mortal coil, I don’t want her slipping out the back door and coming back to haunt us another day.”

He frowned. “You’re going to do all that by yourself?”

I showed him my teeth. “Not exactly. Move. There’s not much time.”

“When?” he asked.

“When else?” I answered. “Sundown.”

Ivanished from inside the factory the second I felt sundown shudder through reality. The jumps were longer now, almost double what I’d managed the night before, and it took less time to orient myself between them. I guess practice makes perfect, even if you’re dead. Or whatever I was.

It took me less than two minutes to get to the burnt remains of Morty’s place.

On the way, I could see that southern winds were blowing, and they must have brought a springtime warmth with them. All of the city’s snow was melting, and the combination of the two with the oncoming night meant that a misty fog hung in the air, cutting visibility down to maybe fifty or sixty feet. Fog in Chicago isn’t terribly unusual, but never that thick. Streetlights were ringed with blurred, luminous halos. Traffic signals were soft blurs of changing color. Cars moved slowly, cautiously, and the thick mist laid a rare hush over the city, strangling its usual voice.