Ghost Story (32 page)

I murdered Susan Rodriguez on a stone altar in Chichén Itzá and wiped out the Red Court. I saved my little girl.

I created a perfect situation for chaos to engulf the supernatural world. The sudden absence of the Red Court might have removed thousands of monsters from the world, but it meant only that
tens
of thousands of other monsters were suddenly free to rise, to expand into the vacuum I'd created. I shuddered as I wondered how many other men's little girls had been hurt and killed as a result.

And, God help me . . . I would do it again. It wasn't right. It wasn't noble. It wasn't good. I'd spent less than three hours in the company of my daughter—and so help me, if it meant keeping her safe, I would do it again.

Maybe the White Council needed an Eighth Law of Magic: the law of unintended consequences.

How do you measure one life against another? Can thousands of deaths be balanced by a single life? Even if Mab had not had time to fully take possession of me, how could I be sure that the very act of choosing to cross that line had not changed me into something monstrous?

I found myself stopped, standing on the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River. The mounded snow filled the night with light. Only the waters below me were dark, a black and whispering shadow, the Lethe and the Styx in one.

I looked up at the towers nearby. NBC. Trump's place. The Sheraton. They stood tall and straight and clean in the night. Lights winked golden in windows.

I turned and stared south of me at the Loop, at the skyline I knew so well. There was a rare moment of stillness down Michigan Avenue. Streetlights. Traffic lights. A scattering of fresh snowflakes, enough to keep everything pretty and white instead of slushy and brown.

God, my town is beautiful.

Chicago. It's insane and violent and corrupt and vital and artistic and noble and cruel and wonderful. It's full of greed and hope and hate and desire and excitement and pain and happiness. The air sings with screams and laughter, with sirens, with angry shouts, with gunshots, with music. It's an impossible city, at war with itself, every horrible and wonderful thing blending together to create something terrifying and lovely and utterly unique.

I had spent my adult life here fighting, bleeding, to protect its people from threats they thought were purely imaginary.

And because of what I'd done, the lines I crossed, the city had gone mad. Fomor and their turtlenecks. Freakish ghost riots. Huddled groups of terrified folks of the supernatural community.

I hadn't meant for that to happen, but that didn't matter. I was the guy who made the choice.

This was all on me.

I stared down at the quiet blackness of the river. I could go down there, I realized. Running water would disrupt supernatural energy, disperse it, destroy the pattern in which it flowed.

And I was made out of energy now.

The black, whispering river could make everything go away.

Styx. Lethe. Oblivion.

My apprentice was bitter, damaged. My friends were fighting a war, and it was tearing at their souls. The one guy who I was sure could help me out had been snatched, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it. Hell's bells, I was doing well just to find someone who could hear me talk.

What could I do?

What do you do to make up for failing everyone in your life? How do you make it right? How do you apologize for hideous things you never intended to happen?

I don't remember when I fell to my knees. Memories, stirred by my rumination, flooded over me, almost as sharp and real as life. Those memories stirred others and brought them along, like pebbles triggering a landslide. My life in Chicago rolled over me, crushed me, all the black pain and bright joy doubling me over, ripping tears out of my eyes.

Later, it was quiet.

It was difficult. A tremendous, slow inertia resisted my desire. But I pushed myself to my feet again.

I turned away from the river.

This city was more than concrete and steel. It was more than hotels and businesses and bars. It was more than pubs and libraries and concerts. It was more than a car and a basement apartment.

It was home.

My home.

Sweet home Chicago.

The people here were my family. They were in danger, and I was part of the reason why. That made things pretty clear.

It didn't matter that I was dead. It didn't matter that I was literally a shadow of my former self. It didn't matter that my murderer was still running around somewhere out there, vague prophecies of Captain Murphy notwithstanding.

My job hadn't changed: When demons and horrors and creatures of the night prey on this city, I'm the guy who does something about it.

“Time to start doing,” I whispered.

I closed my hands into fists, straightened my back, and vanished.

I
was ten minutes late to the meeting with Fitz, but he was still there, lurking at a nearby storefront, looking about as innocent as an only child near a fresh Kool-Aid stain. He had a huge, empty sports-equipment bag hanging over one shoulder. For the love of God. The kid might as well have been wearing a stocking cap and a black mask, with a giant dollar sign printed on the outside of his bag to boot.

I appeared next to him and said, “You look so relaxed and calm. I'll bet any cop that rolls by will ask you for tips on self-control.”

Fitz twitched, clearly controlling an instant instinct to flee. Then he spat on the frozen ground and said, “You're late, Harvey.”

“Forgot to wind my watch,” I said.

“And I was starting to think my brain had thrown a rod after all.” Fitz looked up and down the street and shook his head. “But nothing's ever that easy.”

“Life can be a bitch that way,” I said.

“So, you're real.”

“I'm real.”

Fitz nodded. “You said you would help. Were you serious about that?”

“Yes,” I said.

A gust of wind pulled his longish, curly red hair out to one side. It matched his lopsided smirk. “Fine. Help.”

“Okay,” I said. “Turn left and start walking.”

Fitz put a fist on his hip and said, “You were going to help me with the guns.”

“Never said that,” I said. “You need help, kid, not tools. Guns aren't gonna cut it.” I waited for him to begin to speak before I interrupted him. “Besides. If you don't play along, I've arranged for word to get to Murphy about where you and your band of artful dodgers are crashing.”

“Oh,” he snarled. “You . . . you son of a bitch.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You can go fuck yourself.”

“You need help. I've got it to give. But there ain't no free lunch, kid,” I said in a calm and heartless tone. “You know that.”

“You can kiss my ass is what you can do,” he said, and turned away.

“Go ahead and walk,” I said. “But you're throwing away your only chance to get your crew out from under Baldy.”

He stopped in the middle of taking a step.

“If you bug out now, where are you going to go—back to Baldy? He'll kill you for failing to get the guns. And after that, Murphy's crew and the Rag Lady will take out the whole building. Baldy will probably skate out on your buddies, and do the same thing to some other batch of kids.”

Fitz turned his head in my general direction, his eyes murderous. But he was listening.

“Look, kid. Doesn't have to be the end of the world. If you work with me, everything's peachy.”

I was lying, of course. The last thing I wanted was to hand Murphy a convenient target in her present frame of mind. And I really did want to help the kid—but I've been where he was mentally. He wouldn't have believed in a rescuer on a white horse. In his world, no one just gave anyone anything, except maybe pain. The best you could hope for was an exchange, something for something, and generally you got screwed even then. I needed his cooperation. Handing him a familiar problem was the best way to get it.

“I'm not a monster, Fitz. And honestly, I don't care about you and your goons or what happens to you. But I think you can help me—and I'm willing to help you in return if you do.”

The young man grimaced and bowed his head. “It's not as though I have a lot of choice, is it?”

“We've all got choices,” I said calmly. “At the moment, yours are limited. You gonna play ball?”

“Fine,” Fitz spat. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Groovy,” I said. “Hang a left and get going. We've got some ground to cover.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, his eyes sullen, and started walking. “I don't even know who the hell you are.”

“My name is Harry Dresden,” I said.

Fitz stumbled. “Holy shit,” he said. “Like . . .
that
Harry Dresden? The professional wizard?”

“The one and only.”

He recovered his pace and shook his head. “I heard you were dead.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “but I'm taking it in stride.”

“They say you're a lunatic,” Fitz said.

“Oh yeah?”

Fitz nodded. “They also . . .” He frowned. I could see the wheels spinning. “They also say you help people.”

“So?”

“So which is it?”

“You've got half a clue, Fitz,” I said. “You know that talk is cheap. There's only one way to find out.”

Fitz tilted his head to one side and then nodded. “Yeah. So. Where we going?”

“To visit an old friend.”

 

We went to a street toward the north end of the South Side.
Seedy
wasn't a fair description for the place, because
seeds
imply eventual regrowth and renewal. Parts of Chicago are wondrous fair, and parts of Chicago look postapocalyptic.
This
block had seen the apocalypse come, grunted, and said, “Meh.” There were no glass windows on the block—just solid boards, mostly protected by iron bars, and gaping holes.

Buildings had security fences outside their entrances, literally topped with razor wire. You'd need a blowtorch to get through them. At least one of the fences in my line of sight had been sliced open with a blowtorch. Metal cages covered the streetlights, too—but they were all out anyway. Tough to make a cheap metal cage that stops rounds from a handgun.

Every flat, open space had been covered in spray-painted graffiti, which I guess we're supposed to call
urban art
now. Except art is about creating beauty. These paintings were territorial markers, the visual parallel to peeing on a tree. I've seen some gorgeous “outlaw” art, but that wasn't in play here. The
thump-thud
of a ridiculously overpowered woofer sent a rumbling rhythm all up and down the block, loud enough to make the freshly fallen snow quiver and pack in a little tighter.

There was no one in sight. No one. Granted, it was getting late, but that's still an oddity in Chicago.

I watched as Fitz took in the whole place and came to the same conclusion I had the first time I'd seen it—the obvious squalor, the heavy security, the criminally loud music with no one attempting to stop it.

“This is territory,” he said, coming to an abrupt halt. “I'm alone, I'm unarmed, and I'm not going there.”

“Vice Lords,” I said. “Or they were a few years ago. They're a long-term gang, so I assume they still are.”

“Still not going there,” said Fitz.

“Come on, Fitz,” I said. “They aren't so bad. For a gang. They almost always have a good reason to kill the people they kill. And they keep the peace on this street, if you aren't too far behind on your payments.”

“Yeah. They sound swell.”

I shrugged, though he couldn't see it. “Police response time for this place is way the hell after everything has already happened. People here are more likely to get help from a gang member than a cop if they're in trouble.”

“You're a fan?”

“No,” I said. “It shouldn't be like this. The gangs are dangerous criminals. They rule through force and fear. But at least they don't pretend to be anything else.”

Fitz grimaced and looked down to stare at his open palms for a moment. Then he said, “Guess I'm not in a place where I can throw stones.”

“You couldn't break anything if you did,” I said. “You're of no use to me dead, kid. We're not going down the block. First place on the right. If you don't walk past there, you won't be crossing any lines.”

Fitz frowned. “The place with the metal shutters?”

“Yeah. You remember what I told you to say?”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember the script,” Fitz said, scowling. “Can we get this over with?”

“I'm not the one who can knock on the door.”

He scowled more deeply and started walking.

The building he went to was part of a larger building that had once held four small businesses. One had been a clinic, one a lawyer, and one a small grocery. They were gutted and empty now. Only the fourth one remained. The metal shutter over the doorway held the only thing that looked like actual art: a nearly life-sized portrait of a rather dumpy angel, the hem of his robe dirty and frayed, his messy hair doing nothing to conceal his oncoming baldness. He held a doughnut in one hand and had a sawed-off shotgun pointing straight toward the viewer in the other.

“Heh,” I said. “That's new.”

Fitz regarded the painting warily. “What is this place again?”

“A detective agency,” I said. “Ragged Angel Investigations.”

“Looks kinda closed,” Fitz said.