by Butcher, Jim
Molly sat down abruptly, missed the couch, and hit the floor instead. “Ohmygod,” she breathed. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. Harry.”
I knelt to be on eye level with her. “Yeah, kid. It’s me.”
“Are . . . are you really . . . really gone?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I am. I’m sorta new at this, and they aren’t in danger of winning any exposition awards around here.”
She nodded as more tears came, but she didn’t look away. “D-did you come to take me away?” she asked, her voice very small.
“No,” I said quietly. “Molly . . . no. I was sent back here.”
“W-why?” she whispered.
“To find my murderer,” I said quietly. “People I care about are in danger if I don’t get the job done.”
Molly began rocking back and forth where she sat. “I . . . Oh. I’ve been trying. . . . The city has become so dark, and I knew what you would expect of me, but I’m not as strong as you. I can’t just s-smash things like you could. . . .”
“Molly,” I said in a calm, clear tone.
Her reddened, exhausted blue eyes looked up at me.
“You know who I want to know about, don’t you? Who I wouldn’t want you to talk about in front of anyone?”
I hadn’t said my daughter’s name since returning to Chicago. Hell, I’d barely dared to think it. As far as the rest of the world knew, Maggie had been engulfed in the conflagration that devoured the Red Court. Anyone who knew of her identity might well hold it against her. I didn’t want that. Not if I wasn’t going to be there to protect her.
My throat felt tight, because I thought it should, I suppose. “You know who I’m asking about?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“Is that person safe and well?”
“As far as I know, yes,” she said. A small smile made her, for an instant, resemble the girl I remembered. “Chewbacca is with her.”
There was only one giant walking carpet to whom she could be referring—my dog, Mouse. The beast was smarter than a lot of people, and was probably the single best supernatural guardian any child could have had. And he was huge and warm and fuzzy, and perfectly content to be a blanket or pillow—or a furious incarnation of preternatural strength and speed, depending on which was needed at the moment. Hell, Maggie was only eight. He was probably spending half his time pretending to be a pony.
I exhaled slowly and felt a little dizzy. The memories I had of Maggie—what few there were—were hammering their way across my consciousness. I mostly remembered holding her in the quiet after it was all over. I’m not sure how long I sat there with her. She had been a small, sleepy warmth in my arms, grateful for the comfort of being held.
“We can go see her,” Molly suggested. “I mean . . . I know where she is.”
I wanted to shout an agreement and leap at the chance. But I couldn’t. So I didn’t.
“Maybe after we take care of business,” I said.
“All right,” Molly said, nodding.
“Better button up your Sight, kid,” I said quietly. “There’s no reason to leave it open so long. Bad things could happen.”
“But . . . I won’t be able to see you. Or hear you. Which . . . seems odd, given that it’s called the Sight . . .”
“It encompasses a lot,” I said loftily. “Kid, you’ve got a gift. Trust your instincts. Which in this case should suggest to you that what you need is the spirit-viewing ointment we made off of Rashid’s faerie-sight recipe, or something like it.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She frowned and bowed her head, and I saw her Sight being withdrawn, the light at her forehead dwindling and finally winking out.
Murphy was sitting at the very edge of her chair, her back straight, her hands in her lap. “Miss Carpenter?”
Molly turned to look at Murphy. It seemed to take her a second or two to focus her eyes. “Yes?”
“It’s him?”
“He greeted me with a quote from The Empire Strikes Back.”
Murphy’s mouth twitched at one corner. “Him.”
My apprentice nodded and didn’t meet Murphy’s eyes.
“So,” Murphy said. “He’s really . . . really gone. That bullet killed him.”
“He’s gone,” Molly said. “The shade is . . . It’s Harry in every practical sense. It will have his memories, his personality.”
“But it isn’t him.”
Molly shook her head. “I asked him about that once. About what happens to a soul when a ghost is left behind.”
“What did he say?”
“That he had no idea. And that he doubted anyone would ever get a straight answer.”
“Molly,” the older woman said. “I know you’re tired. I would like it if you let me offer you some clothes. A meal. A shower. Some real sleep. My house is protected. I’d like to be able to tell your parents that I did at least that much for you, the next time they call me to ask about you.”
Molly looked around the room for a moment, biting her lip. “Yes . . . it . . .” She shivered. “But . . . it’s better if I don’t.”
“Better for who?”
“Everyone,” Molly said. She gathered herself and rose, using the cane to get to her feet once again. She grimaced in the process. It was obvious that using her leg still caused her pain. “Honestly. I’ve been playing a lot of games, and I don’t want any of them to splash onto you.” She paused and then said tentatively, “I’m . . . sorry about the detective remark, Karrin. That was going too far.”
Murphy shrugged. “Least said, soonest mended.”
My apprentice sighed and began pulling her tattered layers about herself a little more securely. “Mr. Lindquist appears to be working in good faith. I’ll come back tomorrow with something that might let you communicate with Harry’s shade a little more easily.”
“Thank you,” Murphy said. “While you’re at it, it might be smart to—”
There was the sudden blaring of a pocket-sized air horn from outside.
Mort hopped up from his seat into a crouch, ready either to run or to fling himself heroically to the floor. “What was that?”
“Trouble,” Murphy said, unlimbering her gun. “Get d—”
She hadn’t finished speaking when gunfire roared outside and bullets began ripping through the windows and the walls.
Chapter Twelve
I did what any sane person would do in a situation like that. I threw myself to the ground.
“Oh, honestly, Dresden,” Sir Stuart snapped. He sprinted toward the gunfire, out through the wall of the house. I actually saw the building’s wards flare up with spectral, blue-white light around him as he went through unimpeded.
“Right, dummy,” I growled at myself. “You’re already dead.” I got up and ran after the elder shade.
The living were all kissing hardwood floor as I plunged into the wall of the house. I wasn’t worried about the wards keeping me in—no one ever designed their wards so that bad things couldn’t leave, only so that they couldn’t enter. Besides, I’d had an invitation to come in, which technically made me a friendly—but I found out that “friendly” wards operated on much the same principle as “friendly” fire. Going out through the warded wall didn’t just tingle unpleasantly. I felt like I’d just plunged naked down a waterslide lined with steel wool.
“Aaaaaaaagh!” I screamed, emerging from the wards and onto Murphy’s front lawn, chock-full of new insight as to why ghosts are always moaning or wailing when they come popping out of somebody’s wall or floor. Not much mystery there—it freaking hurts.
I staggered for several steps and looked up in time to see the drive-by still in progress. They were in a pickup truck. Someone in the passenger’s compartment had the barrel of a shotgun sticking out the window, and four figures in dark clothing crouched in the truck’s cargo bed, pointing what looked like assault weapons and submachine guns at Murphy’s house. They were cutting loose with them, too, flashes of thunder an
d lightning too bright and loud to be real, seemingly magnified by the quiet, still air between the snow and the streetlights.
These guys weren’t real pros. I’d seen true professional gunmen in action, and these jokers didn’t look anything like them. They just pointed the business end more or less in a general direction and sprayed bullets. It wasn’t the disciplined fire of true professionals, but if you throw out enough bullets, you’re bound to hit something.
Bullets went through me, half a dozen flashes of tingling discomfort too brief to be more than an annoyance, and I suddenly found myself sprinting toward the truck beside Sir Stuart, exhilarated. Being bulletproof is kind of a rush.
“What are we doing?” I shouted at him. “I mean, what are we accomplishing here? We can’t do anything to them. Can we?”
“Watch and learn, lad!” Sir Stuart called, his teeth bared in a wolfish grin. “On three, be on the truck!”
“What!? Uh, I think—”
“Don’t think,” the shade shouted. “Just do it! Let your instincts guide you! Be on the truck! One, two . . .” The shade’s feet struck the ground hard twice, like a long jumper at the end of his approach. I followed Sir Stuart’s example on little more than reflex.
A sudden memory flashed into my head—a school playground from my childhood, where mock Olympic Games were being run, students competing against one another. The sun was hot above us, making the petroleum smell of warm asphalt rise from the surface of the playground. I had been competing in the running long jump, and it hadn’t been going well. I forget exactly why I was so desperate to win, but I was fixated on it as only a child could be. I remembered willing myself to win, to run faster, to jump farther, as I sprinted down the lane toward the pink-chalk jump line.
It was the first time I used magic.
I had no idea at the time, naturally. But I remembered the feeling of utter elation that flooded through me, along with an invisible force that pushed against my back as I leapt, and for just an instant I thought I had spontaneously learned to fly like Superman.
Reality reasserted itself in rapid order. I fell, out of control, my arms spinning like a windmill. I went down on the blacktop and left generous patches of skin on its surface. I remember how much it hurt—and how I didn’t care because I’d won.
I broke the Iowa state high school long-jump record by more than a foot. It didn’t stick, though. They disqualified me. I hadn’t even gotten serious about puberty yet. Clearly, something irregular had happened, mistakes had been made, and surely the best thing was to ignore the anomalous leap.
It was a vivid recollection, silly and a little sad—and it was my first time.
It was a powerful memory.
“Three!” Sir Stuart cried, and leapt.
So did I, my eyes and will locked on the retreating pickup full of gunmen.
There was a twisting, dizzying sensation that reminded me very strongly of a potion Bob had helped me mix up when I’d tangled with the Shadowman. It was that same experience: a feeling of flying apart into zillions of pieces, rushing forward at a speed too great to be measured, only to abruptly coalesce again.
There was a sudden cold wind against my face and I staggered, nearly falling off the roof of the pickup as it continued to slowly accelerate down the street.
“Holy crap!” I said, as a huge smile stretched my face. “That was cool. First Shadowcat, now Nightcrawler!”
I turned to find Sir Stuart standing on the bed of the truck, looking up at me with a disapproving eyebrow lifted. One of the shooters’ backs was in the same space as the shade’s right leg.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked him, nodding to his leg.
“Hmmm?” Sir Stuart said. He glanced down and saw what I was talking about. “Oh. I suppose, yes. I stopped noticing it after seventy or eighty years. Now. If you don’t mind, Dresden, might we proceed?”
“To do what?” I asked.
“To teach you what are obviously badly needed lessons,” Sir Stuart said, “and to stop these pirates.” He spat the last word with a startling amount of venom.
I frowned and eyed the gunmen, who were all reloading, having emptied their weapons in sheer, nervous excitement. They weren’t particularly good at reloading, either.
“Hell, one man with a handgun could take them all right now,” I said. “Too bad neither of us has one.”
“We cannot touch flesh,” Sir Stuart said. “And while it is possible for a shade to, for example, move an object, it is impractical. With practice, you could push a penny across a table over the course of a couple of minutes.”
“Too bad neither of us has a penny,” I said.
He ignored me entirely. “That’s because we can put forth only minuscule physical force. You couldn’t lift the coin into the air against the pull of gravity.”
I frowned. This sounded a lot like a basic lesson most young wizards received. Most of the time, when you wanted to move something around, you didn’t have the kind of energy you needed stored inside you. That didn’t mean you couldn’t move it, though. It just meant you had to get the energy to do so from another source. “But . . . you can co-opt energy from elsewhere?”
The big man pointed an index finger at me, a smile stretching his mouth. “Excellent. We cannot interact with something being moved by a living creature. We can’t even touch an object that is being carried too closely to a living body. But . . .” He glanced up at me, inviting me to finish the thought.
I blinked twice, mind racing, and said, “Machines. We can work with machines.”
Sir Stuart nodded. “As long as they are in motion. And there is an enormous amount of energy and motion passing through a nonliving, mechanical engine.”
Without another word, he paced forward, through the back wall of the cab, sat on the passenger’s seat, and leaned to his left. I couldn’t see what he was doing, so I dropped to all fours, took a deep breath, and stuck my face through the roof of the cab. It tingled and hurt, but I had literally spent a lifetime learning to cope with pain. I pushed it to the back of my mind, gritted my teeth, and watched.
Sir Stuart had pushed his hand into the steering wheel of the truck. He pushed the other forward, leaning partly through the dashboard to do it, and waited patiently, watching the road ahead of us. It didn’t take long for the truck to hit a hummock in the ice coating the streets, and the truck bounced, shocks squealing. Just as it did, the shade’s eyes fluttered closed, and he gave a peculiar jerking twist of his arm.
The truck’s air bag exploded out of the steering wheel.
It struck the driver, smacking him back into the driver’s seat, and the man panicked. His arms tightened in surprise as he was hit, and he turned the steering wheel several degrees to one side. Then he broke the cardinal rule of driving on ice and stomped his foot on the brake.
The slight turn and the sudden braking motion put the car into a slide. The driver was trying to push the air bag out of his face, and he didn’t compensate and turn into the slide. The slide became a spin.
Sir Stuart watched in satisfaction, looked up at me, and said, “Not much different from spooking a horse, really.”
The gunmen in the back were screaming in confusion as the car spun through three ponderous circles, somehow putting forth the illusion of grace. They bounced off the snow piled high on one side of the street, and then slid into an intersection, up over a sidewalk, and through the front windows of a small grocery store. The sounds of shattering glass and brick, screaming metal crumpling through its zones, and cracking snow and ice were shockingly loud.
The steadily ringing bell of the store’s security alarm sounded like my old Mickey Mouse alarm clock, in comparison.
The gunmen sat there doing nothing for a moment, clearly stunned, but then they began cursing and scrambling to get gone before the cops showed up.
Sir Stuart vanished and reappeared across the street. I made the same effort of will I had while jumping to the truck, reaching back for that memory once more. Again
I flew apart and came back together, reappearing standing next to Sir Stuart, facing a brick wall.
“Next time turn around on the way,” he advised.
I snorted and looked back at the gunmen. “What about them?”
“What about them?”
“Can’t we . . . I don’t know, possess them and make them bang their heads into a wall or something?”
Sir Stuart barked out a harsh laugh. “We cannot enter unless the mortal is willing. That is the purview of demons, not shades.”
I scowled. “So . . . what? We stand here and watch them walk?”
He shrugged. “I’m not willing to leave Mortimer alone for so much time. You may also wish to consider, Dresden, that dawn is not far away. It will destroy you if you are not within a sanctum such as Mortimer’s residence.”
I frowned, looking up at the sky. City light had wiped away all but the brightest stars, but the sky to the east held only a hint of blue, low on the horizon. Dawn was hard on spirits and shades and magical spells alike. Not because one is inherently good and one inherently evil, but because dawn is a time of new beginnings, and the light of a new day tends to sweep away the supernatural litter from the day before. For spirit beings to survive sunrise, they had to be in a protected place—a sanctum. My trusty lab assistant, Bob, had a sanctum; in his case, a specially enchanted skull designed to protect him from dawn and daylight and to provide a home. A plain old threshold wouldn’t get it done, although my old apartment had probably qualified as a sanctum, given how many layers and layers of defense I’d put up around it.
But I didn’t have either of those things anymore.
“Go back to Mort,” I said. “It was fun playing Maximum Overdrive with these chowderheads, but that isn’t going to protect the people we care about. I’m going to follow the shooters back to their place and see what I can find out about them.”
Sir Stuart frowned at me and said, “The dawn is not something to take chances with, man. I strongly advise against your doing so.”