by Jim Butcher
I guess that’s why they call it sacrifice.
I found Forthill in the church’s kitchen, assembling a meal from leftovers. When I’d been the one taking shelter in the church, it had been sandwiches. Fitz was rating a larger meal. Hot soup; a couple of sandwiches, turkey and tuna, respectively; a baked potato; an ear of corn on the cob; and a small salad.
A few seconds after I walked into the kitchen, Forthill paused, aimed a vague smile at the room, and said, “Hello, Harry. Assuming that’s you, of course.”
“It’s me, Father,” I replied. I mean, he couldn’t hear me and I knew it, but . . . it just seemed sort of rude not to say anything.
“I had a difficult conversation with Karrin this evening,” Forthill said. “She told me that you had found the persons who shot at her home last night. And that you want us to help them.”
“I know,” I sighed. “It sounds insane, but . . .”
“I think that to Karrin, you must have sounded quite insane,” he continued. “But I consider your reaction to be remarkable for its compassion. I can only presume that the boy is one of these gang members.”
He finished off the food preparations and turned to face me, more or less. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of bringing Ms. Murphy into this situation—at least not for the time being. Her judgment has been clouded since your death, and grows more so as the fighting goes on.”
I felt myself relax a little. “I hoped you wouldn’t.”
“I will grant the boy sanctuary here for now. I’ll talk with him. I’m sure he will tell me the particulars of his situation. After that, I will have to act in accordance with my conscience.”
“Can’t ask a man for more than that, Father,” I said. “Thank you.”
He picked up the simple wooden tray laden with Fitz’s meal and stood there for a moment. “It’s a shame we can’t converse. I would love to hear about your experience. I should think it would be fascinating, a chronicle of one of the most enigmatic functions of Creation—Death itself.”
“Nah,” I said. “The mystery doesn’t stop even after you get to the other side. There’s just a lot more paperwork.”
“Also, I find it interesting that you are here on holy ground,” Forthill said. “If I remember correctly, the last ghost who attempted to enter this church couldn’t even touch the building, much less wander freely around it. What does it mean?” He shook his head, bemused. “I suppose you’d be the one to ask, eh?” He tipped his head in a polite, if badly aimed, nod, and left the room.
It was an excellent question, the thing about ghosts and holy ground. When Leonid Kravos, aka the Nightmare, had come to kill one of my clients I’d stashed at the church, he hadn’t been able to get in. He’d torn up several thousand dollars’ worth of landscaping and flower beds in sheer frustration.
The Nightmare had been a more powerful shade than I was at the moment. So why could I make myself at home, when he’d been stopped as cold as the Big Bad Wolf at the third Little Pig’s house?
“Note to self,” I said. “Look into apparent mystic anomaly later. Help your friends now.”
I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.
It was time to pay a visit to the Grey Ghost and the Big Hoods.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I headed for the Big Hoods’ hideout with several important facts in mind.
Fact one: The Big Hoods themselves could not do me harm.
Fact two: There wasn’t diddly I could do to the Big Hoods.
Fact three: The Big Hoods were apparently led by this Grey Ghost, a spirit that had been tossing lightning around with impunity during the attack on Morty’s house. That meant that the Grey Ghost was the shade of someone with at least a sorcerer’s level of talent, and while I felt sure I could defend myself against such an assault if I was ready for it, if I got blindsided, I might end up like Sir Stuart quicker than you could say ka-zot.
Fact four: The Grey Ghost had a bunch of lemurs hanging around. While my own spectral evocations might not be able to affect the living, they would sure as hell work on lemurs and the like. I could handle them easily one-on-one, but it seemed likely that they would come at me in waves, or maybe try to wear me down by throwing a horde of wraiths at me first.
Fact five: If the Grey Ghost was giving the orders to mortal cultists, they might have taken measures of their own to deal with ghosts. There might be circle traps prepared. There might be wards or other magical barriers. There might be dangerous substances like ghost dust. If I went in all fat and happy and confident, I could wander right into serious trouble.
Fact six: There were all kinds of spiritual beings in the wide universe, and ghosts were only a tiny cross section of them. I had to be ready for anything. Another entity of some sort might well wander in, drawn by the conflict. Or, hell, for all I knew, one might already be taking a hand.
“No closed minds, Dresden,” I ordered myself. “Don’t get suckered into thinking this is one limited, small-scale problem. There’s every chance it might be part of a much, much larger problem.”
If my afterlife went anything like my life had, that seemed a safe bet.
Fact seven: Sooner or later, dammit, I was going to start laying out a little chastisement where it was long overdue.
I flashed back to several vivid memories of when I had done exactly that. Images of violence and flame and hideous foes flickered through my head, sharp and nearly real. The emotions that accompanied those memories came along for the ride, but they were one step removed, distant enough to let me process them, identify them.
Rage, of course. Rage at the creatures who were trying to harm the innocent or my friends or me. That rage had been both a weapon and armor to me in moments of mortal peril. It was always there, and I always welcomed its arrival—being filled with anger was infinitely preferable to being filled with terror. But seeing it in my heightened memories, it made me feel a little sick. Rage was a word we used for anger when it was being used in the cause of right—but that didn’t sanctify it or make it somehow laudable. It was still anger. Violent, dangerous anger, as deadly as a flying bullet. It just happened to be a bullet that was aimed in a convenient direction.
Fear next: always fear. It doesn’t matter how personally courageous you are. When something is trying to kill you and you know it, you’re afraid. It’s a mindless, lizard-brain emotion. There’s no way to stop it. Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at you to fight or flee—and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.
The White Council blamed me for causing trouble with various supernatural evils, and while I’m not quite arrogant enough to blame all the world’s problems on my mistakes, they probably had a point. I have issues with bullies and authority figures. And I refuse to stand by and do nothing when those too weak to defend themselves become victims.
But how much of that had been courage, and how much of it had been me embracing my probably righteous anger so that I wouldn’t feel the fear? As the memories flipped by, I saw myself again and again throwing myself into the fire—sometimes literally—to help someone who needed it or to kill something that needed killing. The tidal surges of my emotion had propelled me, fueled my magic, and many times they had made it possible to survive when I wouldn’t have otherwise.
But when I’d been running on adrenaline, I’d rarely stopped to consider the extended consequences of my actions. By saving Susan from Bianca of the Red Court, I had offered a high-profile insult to the entire vampire nation. When Duke Ortega had shown up to challenge me to a duel, to restore the honor of the Red Court and forestall a war, it had ended in a bloodbath—and it had never occurred to me to attempt to ensure any other outcome. As a result of the disastrous duel, a wizard named Ebenezar McCoy, my grandfather, had brought an old
Soviet satellite down from its orbit, right on top of Ortega’s stronghold. No one survived. Then Arianna, Ortega’s wife, the daughter of the Red King, had sought her own vengeance even as the Red Court launched a fullscale war.
Arianna’s vengeance had materialized in the form of murdering my daughter’s foster family and abducting her. Once Susan heard about it, she got in touch. And again I flung myself into fire without a thought.
None of those things had to happen. I mean, I wasn’t the only guy in the world who had driven that course of events. I knew that. But I had been the guy who had been standing at the tipping point between possible outcomes with depressing regularity. Could I have done something differently? Was it even possible to know?
In my memories, I murdered Susan Rodriguez again.
Time heals all wounds, they say, but I somehow knew I wouldn’t be able to escape this one. Granted, only a few days’ subjective time had passed since the events of that evening, so the memory was still fresh in my painfully clear recollection. But time wasn’t going to help much with what I had done. And it probably shouldn’t.
I wanted to hurt the Grey Ghost and its merry band of shades. I wanted to hurt them badly, make them feel the vitriol burning inside my belly. I wanted to take them on and smash them to flinders upon my will.
But. . .
Maybe I should pause for a moment. Maybe I should think. Maybe I should reject both anger and fear and strive for an outcome beyond kicking down the door and smashing everything in my way. Play it smart. Play it responsible.
“Little late for you to be learning that lesson now. Isn’t it, dummy?” I asked.
No. It was never too late to learn something. The past is unalterable in any event. The future is the only thing we can change. Learning the lessons of the past is the only way to shape the present and the future.
Why did I want this fight so badly?
“Here’s a thought, genius,” I said to me. “Maybe it’s got something to do with Maggie.”
Maggie. My little girl. I would never see her grow up. I would never get to watch for any signs of manifesting talent, so that I could teach her and give her the choice of how to live her life. I would never get to hear her sing a song, or go trick-or-treating, or send her a present for Christmas. I would never . . .
At some point during that dark thunderstorm of regret, fire had erupted from seemingly every surface of my body, a furious red-gold flame. It wasn’t hot at first, but after a few seconds it got uncomfortable and rapidly progressed to actual pain. I ground my teeth, closed my eyes, and forced order upon my thoughts, tried to replace the outrage with cool, steady logic.
Several seconds later, the fire died away. I opened my eyes slowly, eyeing the scorch marks on my coat and a blister or two on my exposed skin. Clear bubbles of ectoplasm dribbled from the blisters.
“So, yeah,” I said. “You may have anger issues where Maggie is concerned, Harry.”
Heh. You think?
“Got a rocket,” I sang, “in your pocket. Turn off the juice, boy.”
Show tunes? Really? It wasn’t bad enough that you’ve started talking to yourself, man. Now you’re doing performing art.
But the musically inclined me had a point.
“Play it cool, boy,” I whispered. “Real cool.”
I approached the Big Hoods’ lair obliquely and cautiously. One might even accuse me of being overly cautious. I circled the lair from all angles, including up above, in a slow, spiral-shaped pattern that only gradually drew closer. I held a veil over myself the entire time, too. It wasn’t any easier as a ghost than it had been in the flesh, and I still couldn’t throw the greatest veil in the world, but I managed to make myself if not invisible, at least difficult to see.
I wasn’t there to fight. I was there to learn. Mort needed my help, but maybe the best way to give it to him wasn’t to go charging in like a rogue rhinoceros. Knowledge is power. I needed all the power I could get if I was going to help Morty.
The problem was that the Grey Ghost had apparently marshaled supporters of both the spirit and the flesh—and I couldn’t fight the damned crazy thugs who just happened to be made of solid matter. I’d need help. Maybe I could hop into Morty again and toss out enough power to let him run away—but that assumed Morty would let me step in at all. He sure as hell didn’t seem to like it the first time. It also assumed that he would be free and able to physically escape, and that I could neutralize his material captors. There was no guarantee either of those things would be the case.
I thought that the tip from Nick was a good one. I think he had identified the right bunch of yahoos, and I had faith in his knowledge of Chicago streets. After a lifetime walking them—and surviving—Nick was an expert. Chicago PD’s gang unit sometimes went to him for advice. Sometimes he even gave it to them.
But any expert could be wrong. If the Grey Ghost was wily enough to have a hideout separate from its material mooks’ living quarters and had stashed Mort there, I was about to waste a whole lot of time. But how would it get a setup of its own without physical help to establish it? If it was strong enough, I supposed, it could have a demesne of its own in the Nevernever—the spirit world. I’d dealt with a ghost named Agatha Hagglethorn once, and she’d had her own little pocket dimension filled with a Victorian-era copy of Chicago.
(It burned down.)
(I was not responsible.)
Anyway, I had to wonder if the Grey Ghost didn’t have a similar resource. It would make one fine hidey-hole to avoid annoying things like sunrise, daylight, and recently deceased wizards.
I paused for a moment to consider a notion. I wondered if I could establish a demesne of my own. I mean, theoretically, I knew how it would work. Granted, there’s as much space between theory and practice in magic as there is in physics, but it isn’t an unbridgeable gap. I was reasonably sure that it could be done. Maybe I could get Butters to let me talk shop with Bob for a few minutes. He’d know what I needed to make it happen, I was sure.
But what would I make it look like? I mean . . . in theory, I could make it practically anything I wanted. I’m sure there would be some kind of energy-to-area requirement that would limit it in absolute terms, but if I wanted, I could make it look like the Taj Mahal or the old Aladdin’s arcade where I used to play video games, back before my magic made it all but impossible. I could have a mansion. I could probably make some kind of simulacrum of a butler, if I wanted.
I sighed. Bob would, I was certain, suggest simulacrum French maids tottering around in stiletto heels as his first and most conservative contribution. It would only get more depraved from there.
In the end, there was really only one of a couple of things my demesne could possibly be: a Burger King restaurant or my old apartment. The one that had burned with the rest of my life.
Suddenly, there was no appeal in considering my own demesne anymore.
“Stop wasting time,” I told myself.
I shook off the thoughts and continued my stalk of the Big Hoods’ clubhouse, sniffing around for possible magical defenses; alarm spells seemed most likely, but I had to assume that a ghostly sorcerer could create as much destructive mayhem as a mortal one. I could run into anything from ill-tempered guardian entities to a magical equivalent of claymore antipersonnel mines.
Hell, I’d seen a vampire’s nest that used actual AP mines. Nasty toys. I would be keeping an eye out for any physical defenses as well, in the event I needed to warn Murphy or her crew about them when I showed up for the actual rescue operation.
“For the op,” I corrected myself. “Sounds cooler if you call it the op.” I moved closer, veil in place, senses tuned to the possibility of danger. “Definitely. Murphy would call it the op.”
The entrance to the hideout was just where Nick had said it would be, beneath an overpass where a steel door had once led to an old cityworks storage area. I found no suspect magic in the immediate area around the bridge, which made sense. If I had been spreading detection spells a
round my own hideout, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to set them up where the sunrise would obliterate them every morning.
To make something that lasted longer than a day or two at most, considerable effort was required. At the very least, you’d have to use some kind of physical object to harbor the spell’s energy. Technically, you could use any object, though it was not unheard-of for wizards to utilize whatever they happened to have in their pockets at the time. It’s probably where all the old stories of enchanted spindles, combs, brushes, and mirrors come from.
Most often, the magical energy was channeled into carvings or painted symbols. I’d once set up a rental storage unit as a short-term haven in case things ever went to hell. I’d laid up about a hundred small protective spells on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the place in various colors of paint. The energy inside them was stored in the paint, safe from the sunrise and ready to project a shield whenever the symbols felt the touch of hostile magic.
But a monitoring spell wouldn’t be the kind of thing that could lie dormant. It had to actually be “looking” around all the time. That meant a constant, modest expenditure of energy, which would in turn be exposed and vulnerable to sunrise. Land mine–type spells were a lot easier, like my protective spells, only with more kaboom in them. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t find any of those outside the hideout. Few people would host a picnic underneath the overpass, but it was Chicago, and all sorts of folks would be through this area during the day. Random people being horribly incinerated would certainly draw the attention of the local authorities, and possibly that of the White Council. The Grey Ghost didn’t seem to be an idiot. No death traps were left lying around where some schoolkid or bum might stumble into them.
