Ghost Story df-13

by Jim Butcher

  “And much more,” Uriel said. “She still has her life. Her future. Her freedom. You did save her, you know. The idea to have her call to Mortimer in the closing moments of the psychic battle was inspired.”

  “I’ve cost her too much,” I said quietly.

  “I believe that when you went after your daughter, you said something about letting the world burn. That you and your daughter would roast marshmallows.”

  I nodded bleakly.

  “It is one thing for you to say, ‘Let the world burn.’ It is another to say, ‘Let Molly burn.’ The difference is all in the name.”

  “Yeah,” I croaked. “I’m starting to realize that. Too late to do any good. But I get it.”

  Uriel gave me a steady look and said nothing.

  I shook my head. “Get some rest, kid,” I called, though I knew she wouldn’t hear me. “You’ve earned it.”

  The scene unfolded. Murphy and the wolves woke up less than a minute after the Corpsetaker was shown to the door. Will and company changed back to their human forms, while Mort, after a whispered tip from Sir Stuart, rushed over to Butters’s fallen body. He worked a subtle, complex magic that made some of mine look pretty crude, and drew Butters’s spirit from the disintegrating tangle of the Corpsetaker’s spell and back down into his physical body.

  It took several minutes, and when Butters woke up, Andi and Marci, both naked, both rather pleasant that way, were giving him CPR. They’d kept his body alive in the absence of his soul.

  “Wow,” Butters slurred as he opened his eyes. He looked back and forth between the two werewolf girls. “Subtract the horrible pain in my chest, this migraine, and all the mold and mildew, and I’m living the dream.”

  Then he passed out.

  The cops showed up a bit after that. Two of them were guys Murphy knew. The werewolves vanished into the night a couple of seconds before the blue bubbles of the cop cars showed up, taking the illegal portions of Murphy’s armament with them. Murphy and Mort told them all about how Mort had been abducted and tortured by the Big Hoods, and if they didn’t tell the whole story, what they did tell was one hundred percent true.

  Molly and Butters got handed off to EMTs, along with several of the Big Hoods who had been knocked around and chewed up. Mort got some attention, too, though he refused to be taken to a hospital. The rest of the Big Hoods got a pair of cuffs and a ride downtown. Boz was carted out like a tranquilized rhinoceros.

  Karrin and Mort stood around outside as the uniforms sorted everything out, and I walked over to stand close enough to hear them.

  “. . . came back to help,” Mort said. “It happens sometimes. Some people die feeling that something was incomplete. I guess Dresden thought that he hadn’t done enough to make a difference around here.” Mort shook his head. “As if the big goon didn’t turn everything upside down whenever he showed up.”

  Karrin smiled faintly and shook her head. “He always said you knew ghosts. You’re sure it was really him?”

  Mort eyed her. “Me and everyone else, yeah.”

  Karrin scowled and stared into the middle distance.

  Mort frowned and then his expression softened. “You didn’t want it to be his ghost. Did you?”

  Murphy shook her head slowly, but said nothing.

  “You needed everyone to be wrong about it. Because if it really was his ghost,” Mort said, “it means that he really is dead.”

  Murphy’s face . . . just crumpled. Her eyes overflowed and she bowed her head. Her body shook in silence.

  Mort chewed on his lip for a moment, then glanced at the cops on the scene. He didn’t say anything else to Murphy or try to touch her—but he did put himself between her and everyone else, so that no one would see her crying.

  Damn.

  I wished I’d been bright enough to see what kind of guy Morty was while I was still alive.

  I stood there watching Karrin for a moment and then turned away. It hurt too much to see her in pain when I couldn’t reach out and touch her, or make an off-color joke, or find some way to give her a creative insult or otherwise show her that I cared.

  It didn’t seem fair that I should get to say good-bye to her, even if she couldn’t hear it. She hadn’t gotten to say it to me. So I didn’t say anything. I gave her a last look and then I walked away.

  I went back over to Uriel to find him conversing with Sir Stuart.

  “Don’t know,” Sir Stuart was saying. “I’m not . . . not as right as I used to be, sir.”

  “There’s more than enough left to rebuild on,” Uriel said. “Trust me. The ruins of a spirit like Sir Stuart’s are more substantial than most men ever manage to dredge up. I’d be very pleased to have you working for me.”

  “My descendant,” Sir Stuart said, frowning over at Morty.

  Uriel watched Mort shielding Karrin’s sorrow and said, “You’ve watched over him faithfully, Stuart. And he’s grown a great deal in the past few years. I think he’s going to be fine.”

  Sir Stuart’s shade looked at Mortimer and smiled, undeniable pride in his features. Then he glanced at Uriel and said, “I still get to fight, aye?”

  Uriel gave him a very sober look and said, “I think I can find you something.”

  Sir Stuart thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Aye, sir. Aye. I’ve been in this town too long. A new billet is just what I need.”

  Uriel looked past Sir Stuart to me and winked. “Excellent,” he said, and shook hands with Sir Stuart. “A man named Carmichael will be in touch.”

  I lingered until everyone had vanished into the thick mist that still cloaked the earth. It took less time than it usually did for these sorts of things; no one had died. No need to call in the lab guys. The uniform cops closed the old metal door as best they could, drew a big X over it with crime-scene tape, and seemed willing to ignore the hole that had been blasted in it.

  “They’re going to be all right, you know,” Uriel said quietly. “Tonight’s injuries will not be lethal to any of them.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “For telling me that.”

  He nodded. “Have you decided?”

  I shook my head. “Show me my brother.”

  He arched an eyebrow at me. Then he shrugged, and once again offered his hand.

  We vanished from the night and appeared in a very expensively furnished apartment. I recognized my brother’s place at once.

  It had changed a bit. The brushed steel décor had been softened. The old Broadway musical posters had been replaced with paintings, mostly pastoral landscapes that provided an interesting counterpoint of warmth to the original style of the place. Candles and other decorative pieces had filled in the rather Spartan spaces I remembered, adding still more warmth. All in all, the place looked a lot more like a home now, a lot less like a dressed stage.

  A couple of things were out of place. There was a chair in the living room positioned in front of the large flat-screen, high-definition television set the size of a dining room table. The chair was upholstered in brown leather and looked comfortable, and it didn’t match the rest of the room. There were also food stains on it. Empty liquor bottles littered the side table next to it.

  The door opened and my brother, Thomas, walked in. He might have been an inch under six feet tall, though it was hard for me to tell—he had worn so many different kinds of fashionable shoes that his height was always changing subtly. He had dark hair, currently as long as my shortest finger, and it was a mess. Not only was it messy, it was simply messy, instead of attractively messy, and for Thomas that was hideous. He had a couple of weeks’ growth of beard; not long enough to be an actual beard yet, but too long to be a sexy shadow.

  His cold grey eyes were sunken, with dark rings beneath them. He wore jeans and a T-shirt with drink stains on it. He hadn’t even pretended to need a coat against the night’s cold, and breaking their easily maintained cover as human beings was something that the vampires of the White Court simply did not do. For God’s sake, he was ba
refoot. He’d just walked out like that, apparently to the nearest liquor store.

  My brother took a bottle of whiskey—expensive whiskey—from a paper bag and let the bag fall to the floor. Then he sat down in the brown leather chair, pointed a remote at the television, and clicked it on. He clicked buttons and it skipped through several channels. He stopped clicking based, apparently, on his need to take a drink, and stopped on some kind of sports channel where they were playing rugby.

  Then he simply sat, slugged from the bottle, and stared.

  “It’s hard for the half-born,” Uriel observed in a quiet, neutral tone.

  “What did you call him?” I asked. Belligerently. Which probably wasn’t really bright, but Thomas was my brother. I didn’t like the thought of anyone judging him.

  “The scions of mortals and immortals,” Uriel said, unperturbed. “Halflings, half-bloods, half-born. The mortal road is difficult enough without adding a share of our burdens to it as well.”

  I grunted. “That skinwalker got hold of him a while back. It broke something in him.”

  “The naagloshii feel a need to prove that every creature they meet is as flawed and prone to darkness as they themselves proved to be,” Uriel said. “It . . . gives them some measure of false peace, I think, to lie to themselves like that.”

  “You sound like you feel sorry for them,” I said, my voice hard.

  “I feel sorry for all the pain they have, and more so for all that they inflict on others. Your brother offers ample explanation for my feelings.”

  “What that thing did to Thomas. How is that different from what the Fallen did to me?”

  “He didn’t die as a result,” Uriel said bluntly. “He still has choice.” He added, in a softer voice, “What the naagloshii did to him was not your fault.”

  “I know that,” I said, not very passionately.

  The door to the apartment opened, and a young woman entered. She was in her twenties and gorgeous. Her face and figure were appealing, glowing with vitality and health, and her hair was like white silk. She wore a simple dress and a long coat, and she slipped out of her shoes immediately upon entering.

  Justine paused at the door and stared steadily at Thomas for a long moment.

  “Did you eat anything today?” she asked.

  Thomas flicked the television to another channel and turned up the volume.

  Justine pressed her lips together. Then she walked with firm, purposeful strides into the apartment’s back bedroom.

  She came out again a moment later, preceded by the click of her high heels. She was dressed in red lace underthings that left just enough to the imagination, and in the same shade of heels. She looked like the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and moved with a sort of subsurface, instinctive sensuality that could make dead men stir with interest. I had empirical evidence of the fact.

  But I also knew that my brother couldn’t touch her. The touch of love, or anyone who was truly beloved, was anathema to the White Court, like holy water was for Hollywood vampires. Thomas and Justine had nearly killed themselves for the sake of saving the other, and ever since then, every time my brother touched her, he came away with second-degree burns.

  “If you don’t feed soon, you’re going to lose control of the Hunger,” she said.

  Thomas looked away from her. He turned up the television.

  She moved one long, lovely leg and, with the toe of her pump, flicked off the main switch of the power strip the television was plugged into. It turned off, and the apartment was abruptly silent.

  “You think you’re going to hurt my feelings if you take a lover, even though I’ve given you my blessing. You are irrational. And at this point, I’m not sure you’re capable of thinking clearly about the consequences of your actions.”

  “I don’t need you telling me how to deal with the Hunger,” Thomas said in a low voice. He looked at her, and though he was at least a little angry, there was an aching, naked hunger in his gaze as his eyes traveled over her. “Why are you torturing me like this?”

  “Because I’m tired of the way you’ve been torturing yourself since Harry died,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. And it hurts too much to watch you do this every day.”

  “He was on my boat,” Thomas said. “If he hadn’t been there—”

  “He’d have died somewhere else,” Justine said firmly. “He made enemies, Thomas. And he knew that. You knew that.”

  “I should have been with him,” Thomas said. “I might have done something. Seen something.”

  “And you might not have,” Justine replied. She shook her head. “No. It’s time, my love, to stop indulging your guilt this way.” Her lips quirked. “It’s just so . . . very emo. And I think we’ve had enough of that.”

  Thomas blinked.

  Justine walked over to him. I swear, her walk would have been enough to try the chaste thoughts of a saint. Even Uriel seemed to appreciate it. With that same slow, gentle sensuality, she bent over—itself quite a lovely sight—and took the bottle from Thomas. Then she walked back across the room and put it on a shelf.

  “Love. I am going to put an end to this Hunger strike of yours tonight.”

  Thomas’s eyes were growing paler by the heartbeat, but he frowned. “Love . . . you know that I can’t. . . .”

  Justine arched a dark eyebrow at him. “You can’t . . . ?”

  He ground his teeth. “Touch you. Have you. The protection of being united with someone who loves you will burn me—even though I was the one who gave it to you.”

  “Thomas,” Justine said, “you are a dear, dear man. But there is a way around that, you know. A rather straightforward method for removing the protection of having had sex with you, my love.”

  A key slipped into the apartment’s door, and another young woman entered. She had dark-shaded skin, and there was an exotic, reddish sheen to her straight black hair. Her dark chocolate eyes were huge and sultry, and she wore a black trench coat and black heels—and, it turned out, when the trench coat fell to the floor, that was the extent of her wardrobe.

  “This is Mara,” Justine said, extending a hand, and the girl crossed the room to slide her arms around Justine. Justine gave Mara’s lips an almost sisterly kiss and then turned to Thomas, her eyes smoldering. “Now, love. I’m going to have her—without deeply committed love, perhaps, but with considerable affection and healthy desire. And after that, you’re going to be able to have me. And you will. And things will be much better.”

  My brother’s eyes gleamed bright silver.

  “Repeat,” Justine murmured, her lips caressing the words, “as necessary.”

  I felt my cheeks heat up and coughed. Then I turned to Uriel and said, “Under the circumstances . . .”

  The archangel looked amused at my discomfort. “Yes?”

  I glanced at the girls, who were kissing again, and sighed. “Yeah, uh. I think my brother’s going to be fine.”

  “Then you’re ready?” Uriel asked.

  I looked at him and smiled faintly.

  “I wondered when we’d get around to that,” he said, and once more extended his hand.

  * * *

  This time, we appeared in front of a Chicago home. There were a couple of ancient oak trees in the yard. The house was a white Colonial number with a white picket fence out front, and evidence of children in the form of several snowmen that were slowly sagging to their deaths in the warm evening air.

  There were silent forms standing outside the house, men in dark suits and long coats. One stood beside the front door. One stood at each corner of the house, on the roof, as calmly as if they hadn’t had their feet planted on an icy surface inches from a potentially fatal fall. Two more stood at the corners of the property in the front yard, and a couple of steps and a lean to one side showed me at least one more in the backyard, at the back corner of the property.

  “More guardian angels,” I said.

  “Michael Carpenter has more than earned them,” Ur
iel said, his voice warm. “As has his family.”

  I looked sharply at Uriel. “She’s . . . she’s here?”

  “Forthill wanted to find the safest home in which he could possibly place your daughter, Dresden,” Uriel said. “All in all, I don’t think he could have done much better.”

  I swallowed. “She’s . . . I mean, she’s . . . ?”

  “Cared for,” Uriel said. “Loved, of course. Do you think Michael and Charity would do less for your child, when you have so often saved their children?”

  I blinked some tears out of my eyes. Stupid eyes. “No. No, of course not.” I swallowed and tried to make my voice sound normal. “I want to see her.”

  “This isn’t a hostage negotiation, Dresden,” Uriel murmured, but he was smiling. He walked up to the house and exchanged nods with the guardian angel at the door. We passed through it, ghost style, though it wouldn’t have been possible for actual ghosts. The Carpenters had a threshold more solid and extensive than the Great Wall of China. I would not be in the least surprised if you could see it from space.

  We walked through my friend’s silent, sleeping house. The Carpenters were early to bed, early to rise types. Inexplicable, but I suppose nobody’s perfect. Uriel led me upstairs, past two more guardian angels, and into one of the upstairs bedrooms—one that had, once upon a time, been Charity’s sewing room and spare bedroom. Hapless wizards had been known to find rest there once in a while.

  We went through the door and were greeted by a low, warning rumble. A great mound of shaggy fur, lying beside the room’s single, twin bed, rose to its feet.

  “Mouse,” I said, and dropped to my knees.

  I wept openly as my dog all but bounced at me. He was obviously joyous and just as obviously trying to mute his delight—but his tail thumped loudly against everything in the room, and puppyish sounds of pleasure came from his throat as he slobbered on my face, giving me kisses.

  I sank my fingers into his fur and found it warm and solid and real, and I scratched him and hugged him and told him what a good dog he was.

  Uriel stood over us, smiling down, but said nothing.