Ghost Story df-13

by Jim Butcher

  Mort stared at me for a while. Then he said, “You’re here twenty minutes and I nearly get killed, Dresden. Jesus, don’t you get it?” He leaned forward. “I am not a crusader. I am not the sheriff of Chicago. I am not a goddamned death wish–embracing Don Quixote.” He shook his head. “I’m a coward. And I’m very comfortable with that. It’s served me well.”

  “I just saved your life, man,” I said.

  He sighed. “Yeah. But . . . like I said. Coward. I can’t help you. Go find someone else to be your Panza.”

  I sat there for a moment, feeling very, very tired.

  When I looked up, Sir Stuart was staring intently at me. Then he cleared his throat and said, in a diffident tone, “Far be it from me to bring up the past, but I can’t help but note that your lot in life has improved significantly since Dresden first came to you.”

  Mort’s bald head started turning red. “What?”

  Sir Stuart spread his hands, his expression mild. “I only mean to say that you have grown in strength and character in that time. When you first interacted with Dresden, you were bilking people out of their money with—poorly—falsified séances, and you had lost your power to contact any spirit other than me.”

  Mort glowered ferociously at Sir Stuart. “Hey, Gramps. When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”

  Sir Stuart’s smile widened. “Of course.”

  “I help spirits find peace,” Mort said. “I don’t do things that are going to get me taken to pieces. I’m a ghost whisperer. And that’s all.”

  “Look, Mort,” I said. “If you want to get technical, I’m not actually a ghost, per se. . . .”

  He rolled his eyes again. “Oh, God. If I had a nickel for every ghost who had ever come to me, explaining to me how he wasn’t really a ghost. How his case was special . . .”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “But—”

  He rolled his eyes. “But if you aren’t just a ghost, how come I could channel you like that? How come I could force you out of me? Huh?”

  That hit me. My stomach may have been insubstantial, but it could still writhe uneasily.

  Ghosts were not the people they resembled, any more than a footprint left in the ground was the being that made it. They had similar features, but ultimately a ghost was simply a remainder, a reminder, an impression of the person who died. They might share similar personalities, emotions, memories, but they weren’t the same being. When a person died and left a ghost behind, it was as if some portion of his dying life energy was spun out, creating a new being entirely—though in the creator’s exact mental and often physical image.

  Of course, that also meant that they were subject to many of the same frailties as mortals. Obsession. Hatred. Madness. If what Mort said about ghosts interacting with the material world was true, then it was when some poor spirit snapped, or was simply created insane, that you got your really good ghost stories. By a vast majority, most ghosts were simply insubstantial and a bit sad, never really interacting with the material world.

  But I couldn’t be one of those self-deluded shades.

  Could I?

  I glanced at Sir Stuart.

  He shrugged. “Most shades aren’t willing to admit that they aren’t actually the same being whose memories they possess,” he said gently. “And that’s assuming they can face the fact that they are ghosts at all. Self-deluded shades are, by an order of magnitude, more common than those that are not.”

  “So what you’re saying is . . .” I pushed my fingers back through my hair. “You’re saying that I only think I did the whole tunnel-of-light, sent-back-on-a-mission thing? That I’m in denial about being a ghost?”

  The ghost marine waggled one hand in an ambivalent gesture, and his British accent rolled out mellow vowels and crisp consonants as he answered. “I’m simply saying that it is very much poss—Mission? What mission? What are you talking about?”

  I eyed him for a moment, while he looked at me blankly. Then I said, “I’m gonna guess you’ve never seen Star Wars.”

  Sir Stuart shrugged. “I find motion pictures to be grossly exaggerated and intrusive, leaving the audience little to consider or ponder for themselves.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I sighed. “You were about two words away from being called Threepio from here on out.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “God,” I said. “Now we’re transitioning into a Monty Python skit.” I turned back to Morty. “Mort, Jack Murphy met me on the other side and sent me back to find out who murdered me. There was a lot of talk, but it mostly amounted to ‘We aren’t gonna tell you diddly, so just do it already.’ ”

  Mort watched me warily for a moment, staring hard at my insubstantial form. Then he said, “You think you’re telling the truth.”

  “No,” I said, annoyed. “I am telling the truth.”

  “I’m sure you think that,” Mort said.

  I felt my temper flare. “If I didn’t go right through you, I would totally pop you in the nose right now.”

  Mort bristled, his jaw muscles clenching. “Oh yeah? Bring it, Too-Tall. I’ll kick your bodiless ass.”

  Sir Stuart coughed significantly, a long-suffering expression on his face. “Mortimer, Dresden just fought beside us to defend this home—and rushed in here to save your life.”

  Then it hit me, and I eyed Sir Stuart. “You could have come inside,” I said. “You could have helped Mortimer against the shooter. But you wanted to see where I stood when I was under pressure. It was a test.”

  Sir Stuart smiled. “Somewhat, aye. I wouldn’t have let you harm Mortimer, of course, and I was there to help him the instant he called. But it didn’t hurt to know a little more about you.” He turned to Mortimer. “I like this lad. And Jack Murphy sent him.”

  Both Mortimer and I glared at Sir Stuart and then settled slowly back from the confrontation.

  “Head detective of the Black Cats a generation ago,” Stuart continued. “Killed himself at his desk. Sometimes new shades show up claiming they’ve had a run-in with him, and that he brought them back from the hereafter. And you know that he is no deluded fool.”

  Mort didn’t meet Sir Stuart’s eyes. He grunted, a sound that wasn’t exactly agreement.

  “Or maybe Jack Murphy’s shade is simply more deluded than most, and has a talent for nurturing the delusions of other new shades.”

  “Hell’s bells, Morty,” I said. “Next you’ll be telling me that I didn’t even meet his shade. That I deluded myself into deluding myself into deluding him into deluding me that I made the whole thing up.”

  Sir Stuart snorted through his nose. “A fair point.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mort said. “There’s no real way to know.”

  “Incorrect,” Sir Stuart interrupted. “Summon him. That shouldn’t be difficult—if he is just one more deluded shade.”

  Mort didn’t look up. But he said, very quietly, “I won’t do that to Jack.” He looked up and seemed to recover some of his composure. “But even if Captain Murphy is genuine, that doesn’t mean Dresden’s shade is legit. Or sane.”

  “Consider the possibility,” Sir Stuart said. “There is something unusual about this one.”

  Mort perked up his metaphorical ears. “Unusual?”

  “An energy. A vitality.” Sir Stuart shrugged. “It might be nothing. But even if it is . . .”

  Mort let out a long sigh and eyed the shade. “You won’t let this rest, will you?”

  “I have no plans for the next fifty or sixty years,” Sir Stuart said affably. “It would give me something to do. Every half an hour or so.”

  Mort pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Oh, God.”

  Sir Stuart grinned. “There’s another aspect to consider, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “The attack was larger tonight. It cost us more defenders. And the creature behind it revealed itself.” He gestured at his still-translucent midsection. “I can’t keep holding them off forever, Mor
timer. And the presence of a mortal pawn tells us two things.”

  I nodded. “One. The Grey Ghost is bad enough to have its way with mortals.”

  “Two,” Sir Stuart said. “The creature is after you. Personally.”

  Mort swallowed.

  I rose and shuffled over to look down at the still-unconscious intruder. The man let out a low groan.

  “It is a good time to make friends,” Stuart said, his expression serious. “Dresden’s one reason you’ll live the night. And he had allies in this city—people who could help you, if they had a reason to.”

  “You’re fine,” Mort said, his tone uncertain. “You’ve survived worse.” Sir Stuart sighed. “Perhaps. But the enemy isn’t going to give me time to recover before he attacks again. You need Dresden’s help. He’s asking for yours.” His expression hardened. “And so am I.”

  The intruder groaned again and stirred.

  Mort’s forehead broke out in a sudden sweat. He looked at the fallen man and then, rather hurriedly, heaved himself to his feet. He bowed his head. Then he turned to me and said, “Fine, Dresden. I’ll help. And in return, I expect you to get your allies to look out for me.”

  “Deal,” I said. I looked at Sir Stuart. “Thank you.”

  “One hour,” Mort said. “You get one hour.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” Mort echoed, evidently speaking mostly to himself. “I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to join the Council or anything. It’s one hour. Just one little hour. What could happen in one hour?”

  And that’s how I knew that Mort was telling the whole truth when he said he wasn’t a hero.

  Heroes know better than to hand the universe lines like that.

  Chapter Seven

  Mort drove one of those little hybrid cars that, when not running on gasoline, was fueled by idealism. It was made out of crepe paper and duct tape and boasted a computer system that looked like it could have run the NYSE and NORAD, with enough attention left over to play tic-tac-toe. Or possibly Global Thermonuclear War.

  “Kinda glad I’m dead,” I muttered, getting into the car by the simple expedient of stepping through the passenger’s door as if it had been open. “If I were still breathing, I’d feel like I was taking my life into my hands here. This thing’s an egg. And not one of those nice, safe, hard-boiled eggs. A crispy one.”

  “Says the guy who drove Herbie’s trailer-park cousin around for more than ten years,” Mort sniped back.

  “Gentlemen,” Stuart said, settling rather gingerly into the tiny backseat. “Is there a particular reason we should be disagreeable with one another, or do you both take some sort of infantile pleasure in being insufferably rude?”

  Now that the fighting was done, Sir Stuart’s mannerisms were reverting to something more formal. I made a mental note of the fact. The Colonial Marine hadn’t started off a member of proper society, wherever he’d been. The rather staid, formal, archaic phrasing and patterns of speech were all something he’d acquired as a learned habit—one that apparently deserted him under the pressure of combat.

  “Okay, Dresden,” Mort said. “Where to?” He opened his garage door and peered out at the snow. It was coming down even more thickly than earlier in the night. Chicago is pretty good about keeping its streets cleared in winter weather, but it was freaking May.

  From the deep piles of old snow that had apparently been there for a number of weeks, I deduced that the city must have become increasingly beleaguered by the unseasonable weather. The streets were covered in several inches of fresh powder. No plow had been by Mort’s house in hours. If we hit a patch of ice, that heavy, crunchy little hybrid was going to skitter like a puppy on a tile floor.

  Thinking, I referenced a mental map of the city. I felt a little bad making Mort come out into weather like this—I mean, given that he wasn’t dead and all. I was going to feel like crap if something bad happened to him, and it wouldn’t be a kindness to ask him to go farther than he absolutely had to. Besides, with the weather worsening, his one-hour time limit seemed to put further constraints on my options.

  “Murphy’s place,” I said quietly. I gave him the address.

  Mort grunted. “The ex-cop?”

  I nodded. Murph had gotten herself fired by showing up to help me one too many times. She’d known what she was doing, and she’d made her own choices, but I still felt bad about it. Dying hadn’t changed that. “She’s a pretty sharp lady. Better able than most in this town to look out for you.”

  Mort grunted again and pulled out into the snow, driving slowly and carefully. He was careful to keep his expression blank as he did it.

  “Mort,” I said. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Driving over here,” he said.

  I made a rude sound. Then I looked back over my shoulder at Sir Stuart. “Well?”

  Sir Stuart reached into his coat and drew out what looked like a briar pipe. He tapped something from a pouch into it, struck an old wooden match, and puffed it to life. The smoke rose until it touched the ceiling of the car, where it congealed into a thin coating of shining ectoplasm—the residue of the spiritual when it becomes the physical.

  “To hear him tell it,” he said, finally, indicating Mort, “the world’s gone to hell the past few months. Though I’ve got to admit, it doesn’t seem much different to me. Everything’s been madness since those computers showed up.”

  I snorted. “What’s changed?”

  “The scuttlebutt says that you killed the whole Red Court of Vampires,” said Sir Stuart. “Any truth to that?”

  “They abducted my daughter,” I said. I tried for a neutral tone, but it came out clipped and hard. I hadn’t even known Maggie existed until Susan Rodriguez had shown up out of nowhere after years overseas and begged for my help in recovering our daughter. I’d set out to get her back by any means necessary.

  I shivered. I’d . . . done things, to get the child away from the monstrous hands of the Red Court. Things I wasn’t proud of. Things I would never have dreamed I would be willing to do.

  I could still remember the hot flash of red from a cut throat beneath my fingers, and I had to bow my head for a moment in an effort to keep the memory from surging into my thoughts in all its hideous splendor. Maggie. Chichén Itzá. The Red King. Susan.

  Susan’s blood . . . everywhere.

  I forced myself to speak to Sir Stuart. “I don’t know what you heard. But I went and got my girl back and put her in good hands. Her mother and a whole lot of vampires died before it was over.”

  “All of them?” Sir Stuart pressed.

  I was quiet for a moment before I nodded. “Maybe. Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t exactly take a census. The spell could have missed some of the very youngest, depending on the details of how it was set up. But every single one of the bastards nearby me died. And the spell was meant to wipe the world clean of whoever it targeted.”

  Mort made a choking sound. “Couldn’t . . . I mean, wouldn’t the White Council get upset about that? Killing with magic, I mean?”

  I shrugged. “The Red King was about to use the spell on an eightyear-old girl. If the Council doesn’t like how I stopped that from happening, they can kiss my immaterial ass.” I found myself chuckling. “Besides. I killed vampires, not mortals, with that magic. And what are they gonna do anyway? Chop my head off? I’m dead already.”

  I saw Mort trade a look with Sir Stuart in the rearview mirror.

  “Why are you so angry at them, Harry?” Mort asked me.

  I frowned at him and then at Stuart. “Why do I feel like I should be lying on a couch somewhere?”

  “A shade is formed when something significant is left incomplete,” Sir Stuart said. “Part of what we do is work out what’s causing you to hold on to your life so hard. That means asking questions.”

  “What? So I can go on my way? Or something?”

  “Otherwise known as leaving me alone,” Mort muttered.

  “Something like that,” Sir
Stuart said quickly, before I could fire back at Mort. “We just want to help.”

  I gave Sir Stuart the eye and then Mort. “That’s what you do? Lay spirits to rest?”

  Mort shrugged. “If someone didn’t, this town would run out of cemetery space pretty fast.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Then I said, “So how come you haven’t laid Sir Stuart to rest?”

  Mort said nothing. His silence was a barbed, stony thing.

  Sir Stuart leaned forward to put a hand on Mort’s shoulder, seemed to squeeze it a little, and let go. Then he said to me, “Some things can’t be mended, lad. Not by all the king’s horses or all the king’s men.”

  “You’re trapped here,” I said quietly.

  “Were I trapped, it would indicate that I am the original Sir Stuart. I am not. I am but his shade. One could think of it that way nonetheless, I suppose,” he said. “But I prefer to consider it differently: I regard myself as someone who was truly created with a specific purpose for his existence. I have a reason to be who and what and where I am. How many flesh-and-blood folk can say as much?”

  I scowled as I watched the snowy road ahead of us. “And what’s your purpose? Looking out after this loser?”

  “Hey, I’m sitting right here,” Mort complained.

  “I help other lost spirits,” Sir Stuart said. “Help them find some sort of resolution. Help teach them how to stay sane, if it is their destiny to become a mane. And if they become a lemur, I help introduce them to oblivion.”

  I turned to frown at Sir Stuart. “That’s . . . kinda cut-and-dried.”

  “Some things assuredly are,” he replied placidly.

  “So you’re a mane, eh? Like the old Roman ancestral ghost?”

  “It isn’t such a simple matter, Dresden. Your own White Council is a famous bunch of namers,” he said. “Their history is, I have heard, rooted in old Rome.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He nodded. “And, like the Romans, they love to name and classify and outline facts to the smallest, permanently inflexible, set-in-stone detail. The truth, however, is that the world of remnant spirits is not easily cataloged or defined.” He shrugged. “I dwell in Chicago. I defend Mortimer’s home. I am what I am.”