Ghost Story

Chapter Twenty-two

“What I’ve learned,” Molly muttered, mostly under her breath. “So help me, one of these days, I’ll show you what I’ve learned, you skinny bitch.”

Then she focused on the enemy, took a breath, just as I’d taught her to do under stress, and calmed herself. She began to withdraw, calmly, slowly, one pace at a time. That was smart. Had she turned and sprinted, it would have provoked immediate pursuit. Instead, the guys in turtlenecks kept their professional cool, moving steadily forward in a solid block of muscles and weapons. All of them ready to kill a lone, exhausted young woman.

Scum. No way in hell that was happening to my apprentice.

I hadn’t yet tried any true evocation magic, the fast-and-dirty side of violent wizardry, but I thought I had the basic concept down. So I tuned in to a memory of a particularly powerful evocation, when I had blown a rampaging loup-garou straight through the brick wall of one building and entirely through the building across the street. I left out all the details except for the energy blast itself, vanished, and reappeared in front of the oncoming servitors, and snarled, “Fuego!”

A blast of flame and raw kinetic force exploded from my outflung right hand. It hit the front of the enemy formation like a blazing locomotive—

—and washed completely through them, having no effect whatsoever. I didn’t even ruffle their clothes.

“Oh, come on!” I shouted. “That is just not fair!”

I still couldn’t act, couldn’t touch, couldn’t help.

Molly faced the men alone.

She kept walking back until she emerged from the alley into a small parking lot contained within concrete walls and open to the sky. There were only a handful of cars in it, along with a motorcycle and a couple of mounds of piled snow. There were doors fitted with those magnetic card-swipe locks on two of the lot’s walls—employee or executive parking, obviously. The fourth opening led out to the lower avenue, where dull yellow lights cast a feeble gleam.

Molly walked to the middle of the little lot, looked around her, and nodded. “Well, boys,” she said aloud. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could talk about this over a cup of coffee at Denny’s? I’m starving.”

One of the turtlenecks, presumably their leader, said, “Submit yourself to the will of the masters. Your pain will be much shortened.”

“Right,” Molly said. She rolled her neck as if to loosen it up and nodded at the speaker. “You’re my huckleberry.”

The turtleneck tilted his head to one side, frowning.

Molly blew him a kiss.

A gust of wind, channeled through the lower street, rushed by, tugging at her ragged clothes, pulling her long coattails out like a flag beside her—and then she exploded.

It happened so fast that I could barely understand what was happening, much less anticipate what would come next. Where my apprentice had been standing suddenly became half a dozen identical, leanly ragged figures darting in every direction.

One Molly flew sideways, both arms extended in front of her, firing a pair of 1911 Colts, their hammering wham-wham-wham as recognizable as familiar music. Another flipped into a cartwheel and tumbled out of sight behind a parked car. Two more ran to each door, virtually mirror images of each other, swiping a card key and slamming into the buildings. A fifth Molly ducked behind a mound of snow and emerged with a shotgun, which she began emptying at the turtlenecks. The sixth ran to the motorcycle, picked it up as if it had been a plastic toy, and flung it toward her attackers.

My jaw dropped open. I mean, I had known the kid was good with illusions, but Hell’s bells. I might have been able to do one of the illusions Molly had just wrought. Once, I had managed two, under all kinds of mortal pressure. She had just thrown out six. Simultaneously. And at the drop of a hat, to boot.

My gast was pretty well flabbered.

The turtlenecks clearly didn’t know how to react, either. The ones with guns returned fire, and they all scattered for cover. The motorcycle didn’t hit anyone as it tumbled past the group, though the crashing sound it made when it landed was so convincing that it made me doubt my such-as-they-were senses. The guns barked several times as the illusionary Mollys all sought cover behind the snow mounds and cars.

I gritted my teeth. “You aren’t one of the rubes, Dresden. You’ve got a backstage pass.” I bent my head, touched my fingers to my forehead for a moment, and opened up my own Sight.

The scene changed colors wildly, going from a dull winter monochrome to an abstract done in smearing, interweaving watercolor. The blurs of magic in the air were responsible for all the tinting—Molly had unleashed a hell of a lot of energy in very little time, and she’d done so from the point of exhaustion. I’d been there enough times to know the look.

Now I could see the illusions for what they were—which was the single largest reason why the wizards of the White Council didn’t put much stock in illusion magic: It could be easily nullified by anyone with the Sight, which was the same thing as saying “anyone on the Council.”

But against this band of hipster, emo, mooklosers? It worked just fine.

Molly, behind an almost perfect magical veil, was standing precisely where she had been at the beginning of the altercation. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Her hands were extended at her sides, fingers twitching, and her face was still and expressionless, her eyes shifted out of focus. She was running a puppet show, and the illusions were her marionettes, dancing on strings of thought and will.

The illusionary versions of Molly were very slightly transparent and grainy, like I remembered movies being when I was a kid. The motorcycle had never moved from where it was parked—an illusion had flown through the air, and a short-term veil was now hiding the bike.

The turtlenecks, though, weren’t going to be shut down by half a dozen young women, even if they had just appeared out of nowhere and apparently were possessed of weapons and superhuman strength. At barked orders from their leader, they came bounding over parked cars and mounds of snow in teams of five, moving with the light, lithe grace rarely seen outside of the Olympics and martial arts movies. They advanced with the kind of frighteningly focused purpose you see only in veterans. These men knew how to survive a battle: Kill before you are killed.

If even one of them closed in on Molly, it was over.

I thought of what it might be like to watch my apprentice die with my Sight open, and almost started gibbering. If that happened, if I saw that horror with eyes that would make sure I could never, ever forget it or distance myself from it, there wouldn’t be anything left of me. Except guilt. And rage.

I shut away my Sight.

“It must be difficult,” said my godmother, standing suddenly beside me, “to watch something like this without being able to affect the outcome.”

“Glah!” I said, or something close to it, jumping a few inches to one side out of sheer nerves. “Stars and stones, Lea,” I said between my gritted teeth a moment later. “You can see me?”

“But of course, Sir Knight,” she replied, green eyes sparkling. “My duty to oversee my godson’s spiritual growth and development would be entirely futile could I not perceive and speak to a spirit such as thee.”

“You knew I was there a moment ago. Didn’t you?”

Her laugh was a bright, wicked sound. “Your grasp of the obvious remains substantial—even though you do not.”

A curtain of green-blue fire about seven feet high sprang up and swept rapidly across the width of the parking lot, between the position of the various Mollys and the turtlenecks. The flames emitted eerie shrieking sounds, and the faces of hideous beings danced about inside them.

I just blinked. Holy crap.

I hadn’t taught the kid that.

“Tsk,” Lea said, watching the scene. “She has an able mind, but she is filled with the passions of youth. She rushes to her finale without building anything like the tension required for something so . . . overt . . . to prove effective.”

I wasn’t sure what my godmother was talking about, but I didn’t have time to try to pry an explanation out of her. . . .

Except that I did.

I mean, what else was I going to do, right?

“Whatever do you mean?” I replied in a polite tone. I almost managed not to grit my teeth.

“Such an”—her mouth twisted in distaste—“overt and vulgar display as that wall of fire is worthy only of frightening children or appearing in something produced by Hollywood. It might yield a short-lived panic reaction, if built up and timed properly, but it is otherwise useless. And, of course, in very bad taste.” She shook her head in disapproval. “True terror is much more subtle.”

I gave my godmother a sharp look. “What?”

“Veils are of limited utility with snow upon the ground,” she explained. “The footprints, you see. It’s quite difficult to hide so many individual disruptions of the environment. Thus, she must work in another medium to survive.”

“Stop this. You’re going to get her killed,” I said.

“Oh, child,” the Leanansidhe said, smiling. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time. All teaching involves an element of risk.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and look at what happened to your last student.”

Her eyes glinted. “Yes. From nothing more than a terrified child, in a mere score of years he grew into a weapon that all but utterly destroyed a world power. The Red Court lies in ruins because of my student. And it was, in part, my hand that shaped him.”

I clenched my teeth harder. “And you want to do the same thing to Molly.”

“Potentially. She has a talent for verisimilomancy—”

“Versa what?”

“Illusion, child,” Lea clarified. “She has a talent, but I despair of her ever truly understanding what it is to cause terror.”

“That’s what she’s learning from you? Fear?”

“In essence.”

“You aren’t teaching her, Godmother. Teachers don’t do that.”

“What is teaching but the art of planting and nurturing power?” Lea replied. “Mortals prattle on about lonely impulses of delight and the gift of knowledge, and think that teaching is a trade like metalsmithing or healing or telling lies on television. It is not. It is the dissemination of power unto a new generation and nothing less. For her, as for you, lessons demand real risk in order to attain their true rewards.”

“I won’t let you turn her into a weapon, Godmother.”

Lea arched a red-gold eyebrow, showing her teeth again. “You should have thought of that before dying, child. What, precisely, will you do to stop me?”

I closed my hands into impotent fists.

The turtlenecks had been briefly stymied, but not stopped, by the wall of flame. It wasn’t high enough. I saw three of them moving together. Two of them linked their hands while a third backed off, then sprinted toward the other two. The runner planted his foot on the linked hands of his supporters, and then both men lifted while the runner leapt. They flung him a good twenty feet up and over the wall of flame.

The runner flipped neatly at the top of his arc and landed in a crouch, holding a machete in his right hand, a pistol in his left. He calmly put two rounds directly into the shotgun-wielding Molly, and two more into the pistol-packing version. Before the last shot rang out, a second turtleneck had gone over the wall and landed beside the first—the leader, I noted. He carried no obvious weaponry, though his belt had been hung with several seashells in a manner that suggested they were dangerous equipment. He remained in a crouch when he landed, looking around with sharp, steady eyes, while his partner covered him.

Shotgun Molly crumpled slowly to the ground, still fumbling at a pocket for more shells for the weapon, while scarlet blood stained the fresh layer of thin snow. Two-Gun Molly’s head snapped back as a dark hole appeared in her forehead, and her body dropped to the snow like a rag doll. Motorcycle-Chucking Molly screamed and snatched up her fallen sister’s guns.

The turtleneck on lookout raised his weapon, but Captain Turtleneck moved his hand in a sharp, negative gesture, and the man lowered the weapon again. Both did nothing as the newly armed Molly aimed the guns and began to fire. Puffs of snow flitted up from the ground a couple of times, but neither was hit.

Captain Turtleneck nodded to himself and smiled.

Crap. He’d figured it out. Coordinated squads of bad guys are one thing. Coordinated squads of bad guys being led by someone who remained observant and cool in the middle of combat chaos were far, far worse.

“Ah, disbelief,” Lea murmured. “Once the mark begins to suspect illusion is at work, there’s little point in continuing.”

“Stop them,” I said, to Lea. “Godmother, please. Stop this.”

She turned to blink at me. “And why should I?”

Captain Turtleneck scanned the ground, and I saw his eyes trace the line of footsteps Molly had made when she had backed into the center of parking lot, when the confrontation had begun. His eyes flicked around and I could practically see the thoughts going through his head. A trail of messy, backward tracks suddenly ended in two clear boot prints. The only Molly in sight had proven to be an illusion—and therefore the real Molly must be nearby, supporting the still-active illusions around him. Where would she be standing?

That last set of boot prints seemed a logical place to look.

Captain Turtleneck drew one of the seashells from his belt, murmured something to it, and gave it an expert, effortless flick. It sailed through the air and landed only inches from my invisible apprentice’s toes.

“Oh,” Lea said, setting her mouth into a pouting moue. “Pity. She had such potential.”

I gave my godmother my most furious glare and sprinted forward.

The shell began to glow with a urine-colored light.

It had worked for Morty. Maybe it would work again.

I flung myself at Molly, focusing on protecting her, and I felt myself slide into her, merging and mingling from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. (Which hardly made sense, given how much taller I was than she—one more example of the way physics doesn’t necessarily apply to spirits.)

I suddenly felt utterly exhausted, frightened, and at the same time in a state of euphoric exultation. I could feel the various illusions dancing upon threads of my will, demanding complete focus and concentration. My legs and feet ached. My ribs ached. My face and shoulder hurt.

And then I felt myself choke, then wonder what the hell was happening to me.

It’s me, kid, I thought, as loudly as I could. Don’t fight me.

I didn’t know what the seashell would do, but there wasn’t much time to get particular. I extended my left hand along with my will, and murmured, “Defendarius.”

Blue energy suddenly blazed up around Molly and me in a sparkling sphere.

The seashell shone brighter and exploded into a sphere of pure white fire, as hot and fierce as a microscopic nuclear warhead. It lashed against the blue sphere like a bat hitting a baseball. The sphere went flying, taking us with it. I braced my arms and legs against the sides of the sphere, straining to hold it together. Without my shield bracelet, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up.

The sphere struck a car and bounded off it into the wall of the building. Its path had us careening tail over teakettle, but our braced arms and legs kept us from smashing our head against the sphere’s interior. We wobbled and rolled into a corner of the lot, and I realized dully as I looked around that Molly’s illusions had vanished. My bad. The strength of the shield had cut her off from them and ended her ability to keep them going.

I looked up to find the turtlenecks advancing on us in a crowd, and I dismissed the sphere, landing in a crouch. I gathered more of my will together and swept my arm from left to right with a murmured word, and a second curtain of blue fire sprang up between me and the oncoming bad guys.

One of them gave the wall of flame a disdainful snort and calmly walked into it.

Like I said, I’m not much when it comes to illusions.

I am, however, reasonably good with fire.

The turtleneck didn’t scream. He didn’t have time. When fire is hot enough, you never really feel the heat. Your nerves get fried away and all you feel is the lack of signal from them—you feel cold.

He died in the fire, and he died cold. The cinder that fell backward out of the fire could never have been casually identified as human.

Now, that got their attention.

I stood there holding the fire against the remaining turtlenecks, the heat scorching away the thin layer of snow on the asphalt, then making it bubble and quiver, changing it into my own personal moat of boilinghot tar. It was hard work to keep it going, but I’ve never been afraid of that.

Harry, I need some room, came a thought from Molly, hardly able to be heard over the blaze of concentration necessary for maintaining the fire.

I gritted my teeth. It was like trying to hold an immensely heavy door open while half a dozen friends squeezed in around me. I felt an odd sensation and increased weariness and blocked them both away. I needed to focus, to hold the turtlenecks away from Molly.

Once again, the bad guys impressed me. They knew that an intense magical effort could be sustained for only a limited amount of time. They didn’t risk losing more men to the fire. Instead, they played it smart.

They just waited.

The fire blazed for another minute, then two, and as my control over it began to get shaky, something attracted my attention.

Flashing blue lights, out on the lower avenue.

A CPD prowler had stopped across the entrance to the parking lot, and a pair of cops, guys I’d seen before, got out and walked quickly into the lot, flashlights up. It took them about half a second to see that something odd was going on, and then they had both guns and flashlights up.

Before the turtlenecks could turn their guns on the police, the officers had retreated to the cover offered by their car, out of direct line of sight from the parking lot. I could clearly hear one of them calling for backup, SWAT, and firefighters, his voice tense and tight with fear.

I felt myself giggling with exhaustion and amusement as I grinned at Captain Turtleneck. “Bad boys, bad boys,” I sang, off-key. “Whatcha gonna do?”

That made Molly cough up a chittering belly laugh, which shouldered my awareness aside and came bubbling out of our mouth.

Captain Turtleneck stared at me without expression for a moment. He looked at the fire, the moat, and then at the police. Then he grimaced and made a single gesture. The turtlenecks began to move as a single body, retreating rapidly back the way they had come.

Once I was sure they were gone, I dropped the wall and slumped to the ground. I sat there for a second, dazzled by the discomfort and the weariness, which I had rapidly grown accustomed to missing, apparently. The smell of hot asphalt, a strangely summertime smell, mingled with the scent of charred turtleneck.

I shivered. Then I made a gentle effort and withdrew from the same space Molly occupied. The weariness and pain vanished again. So did the vibrant scents.

The grasshopper looked up and around, sensing the change. Then she said, “Hold on, Harry,” and fumbled at her pockets. She produced a small silver tuning fork, struck it once against the ground, and then said, “I can hear you with this.”

“You can?”

“Yeah, no big deal,” she said, her voice slurred with fatigue. “See you, too, if I line it up right. And it’s easier to carry around than a bunch of enchanted Vaseline.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Before the cops show up. They’d try to lock you up for a long time.”

Molly shook her head.

“Kid, I know you’re tired. But we have to move.”

“No,” she said. “No cops.”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “What?”

“Never were any cops,” Molly said.

I blinked, looked at the empty entrance to the parking lot, and then found myself slowly smiling. “They were another illusion. And you sold it to the turtlenecks because they thought you’d already blown your wad on the flashy stuff.”

“Excellent,” purred Lea, appearing at my side again.

I flinched. Again. Man, I hate that sudden-appearance stuff.

“An unorthodox but effective improvisation, Miss Carpenter,” she continued. “Adding complexity on the meta level of the deception was inspired—especially against well-informed adversaries.”

“Uh-huh, I’m a rock star,” Molly said, her voice listless. “Lesson over?”

The Leanansidhe glanced at me and then back to Molly, still smiling. “Indeed. Both of them.”