Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

Murphy eyed the kid up and down and squared her shoulders. “Um, right. Okay, Josh. There’s one more thing I want you to do for me, and then you can go sit down with your friends.”

“ ’Kay.”

“My friends are up at the top of the stairs. I want you to ask them in.”

Josh furrowed his brow. “Huh?”

“Invite them inside, please.”

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “No one in the secret hideout. Orders.”

“It’s all right,” Murphy said. “I’m giving you new orders. Invite them in, please.”

Josh seemed to waver. “Umm.”

Murphy’s hand dipped into her pocket and he seemed to flinch. Then it emerged holding one of those high-activity protein bars wrapped in Mylar. “You can have this, if you do.”

The way to a dim minion’s heart was evidently through his stomach. Josh snapped up the bar with both hands and said, up toward the top of the stairs, “Won’t you please come inside?”

I took a tentative step forward and felt no resistance. The threshold had parted. Molly did the same and hurried down the stairs.

“Will, Andi, Marci,” Molly said in a calm voice. “Back a couple of steps, please.”

The wolves glanced at Murphy and then started backing up.

“What are you doing?” Murphy asked.

“I’m making sure we don’t need to hurt them, Ms. Murphy,” Molly said. “Trust me.”

“Grasshopper?” I asked.

“It’s legal,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry. And we can’t just stand around. What’s the response time to this block?”

“Eight minutes,” Murphy said calmly. “Ish.”

“It’s been about four since the charge went off,” Molly said. “Ticktock.”

Murphy grimaced. “Do it.”

Molly turned to Josh and said, “Go stand with your friends. You guys look tired.”

Josh had a mouthful of whatever it was. He nodded. “Always tired.” And he shuffled over to the dazed-looking group in the corner.

“A lot of cults do that,” Molly said quietly. “It makes them easier to influence and control.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then took a slow, deep breath and opened them. She lifted her right hand and murmured, in a silken-soft tone, “Neru.”

And the dozen or so Big Hoods just sank down to the floor.

“Mother of God,” Murphy said softly, and turned to stare at Molly.

“Sleep spell,” I said quietly. “Like the one I had to use on you, Murph.”

I didn’t mention that the spell I’d used on Murphy had taken every bit of skill I’d had and ten times as long to put together. Molly had just done the same thing, only a dozen times bigger—touching each individual mind and crafting the spell to lull it to sleep. What she’d just done was hard .

In fact, it was what one could only have expected from a member of the White Council.

Maybe my godmother had a point.

Molly shuddered and rubbed at her arms. “Ugh. They aren’t . . . they aren’t right, Ms. Murphy. They weren’t stable, and they could have had their switches flipped to violence at any time. This will at least make sure they won’t hurt themselves or anyone else until morning.”

Murphy studied her for a moment and then nodded. “Thank you, Molly.”

My apprentice nodded back.

Murphy took up her gun again and then looked at her. She smiled and shook her head. “Rag Lady, huh?”

Molly looked down at her outfit and back up. “I didn’t pick the name.”

The diminutive woman shook her head, her expression firm with disapproval. “If you’re going to create a persona, you’ve got to think of these things. Do you know how many extra PMS jokes are flying out there now?”

Molly looked serious. “I think that just makes it even scarier?”

Murphy pursed her lips and shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah. I guess it might.”

“Scares me,” I said.

Murphy smiled a little more. “Because you’re a chauvinist pig, Dresden.”

“No,” I snorted. “Because I realize a lot better than you two do how dangerous you are.”

Both of them stopped at that, blinked, and looked at each other.

“Okay, ghosty-scout time,” I said. “Sit tight for a second. I’m going to check below.”

“Meet you at the top of the next stairway,” Murphy said.

“Got it,” I said. “Oh. Nice work on that spell, grasshopper.”

Molly’s cheeks turned pink, but she said, casually, “Yeah. I know.”

“Atta girl,” I said. “Never let them think you’re out of your depth.”

I vanished and appeared in the main chamber below. I was unprepared for the sight that waited for me.

Corpsetaker was standing about twenty feet from where Mort hung suspended. Her jaw was . . . was unhinged, like a snake’s, open much wider than it should have been able. As I watched, she made a couple of convulsive motions with her entire body and swallowed down a recognizable object—a child’s shoe, circa nineteenth century. She tilted her head back, as if it helped her slide whichever one of the two child ghosts she’d eaten last down her gullet, and then lowered her chin and smiled widely at Mort Lindquist.

Sir Stuart’s faded form was the only one still visible in the room. The wispy, camera-lit mists of several other spirits were still dissolving, all around the room.

Mort spotted me and slurred, “Dresden. You moron. What have you done?”

Corpsetaker tilted her head back and laughed.

“I wasn’t keeping them shut away because they might hurt this bitch,” Morty said. He sounded hurt and exhausted and furious. “I was protecting them because she was going to eat them.”

I stared for a second.

The Corpsetaker had been going to eat the Lecters. The most vicious, dangerous, powerful spirits in all of Chicago.

Just like she had planned to do to Chicago’s ghosts when Kemmler’s disciples had attempted a ritual called a Darkhallow several years before, I realized—a ritual that, if successful, would have turned the necromancer who pulled it off into a being of godlike power.

“Ahhhh,” the Corpsetaker said, the sound deep and rich and full of satisfaction.

I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“I’m almost full,” she continued. She smiled at me with very wide, very white, very sharp-looking teeth. “Almost.”

One thing you never do in a fight, no matter how emotionally satisfying it might seem, is pause to gloat with an enemy standing right in front of you. Savvy foes aren’t going to just hang around letting you yak at them. They’re going to take advantage of the opening you’re giving them.

The same goes for desperate foes who aren’t interested in trying to win a fair fight.

Before the Corpsetaker finished speaking, I snapped my staff forward and snarled, “Fuego!”

Fire lashed toward her. She deflected the strike with a motion of her hand, like you’d use to ward off a fly. The memory-fire went flying on by her, through the wall and gone.

“Such a pity,” she said. “I was just going to—”

She wanted to keep up the gloating, I was game.

I hit her again, only harder.

This time I sent it flying a lot faster and it stung, though she slapped the fire aside before it could do much more than singe her. She let out a furious sound. “Fool! I will—”

Some people. I swear they never learn.

I’d built up a rhythm. So I gave her my best evocation, a burst of fire and force, sizzling with a lot of curve and English on it, an ogre-buster the size of a softball, blazing with scarlet and golden light.

She swept both arms into an X-shaped defensive stance, fingers contorted in a desperate defensive gesture, and she snapped out a string of swift words. She stopped the strike, but an explosion of flame and force rolled over her and she screamed in pain as she was driven twenty feet back and into the solid rock of the wall.