Ghost Story

Chapter Forty-nine

I landed in the middle of a war.

There was a ruined city all around me. The sky above boiled with storm clouds, moving and roiling too quickly to be real, filled with contrasting colors of lightning. Rain hammered down. I heard screams and shouted imprecations all around me, overlapping one another, coming from thousands of sources, blending into a riotous roar—and every single voice was either Molly’s or the Corpsetaker’s.

As I watched, some great beast somewhere between a serpent and a whale smashed its way through a brick building—a fortress, I realized—maybe fifty yards away, thrashing about as it fell and grinding it to powder. A small trio of dots of bright red light appeared on the vast thing’s rubble-dusted flanks, just like the targeting of the Predator’s shoulder cannon in the movies of the same name, and then multiple streaks of blue-white light flashed in from somewhere and blew a series of holes the size of train tunnels right through the creature. Around me, I saw groups of soldiers, many of them in sinister black uniforms, others looking like idealized versions of United States infantry, laying into one another with weapons of every sort imaginable, from swords to rocket launchers.

A line of tracer fire went streaking right through me, having no more effect than a stiff breeze. I breathed a faint sigh of relief. I was inside Molly’s mindscape, but her conflict was not with me, and neither was the Corpsetaker’s. I was just as much a ghost here at the moment as I had been back in the real world.

The city around me, I saw, was a vast grid of fortified buildings, and I realized that the kid had changed her usual tactics. She wasn’t trying to obscure the location of her mental fortress with the usual tricks of darkness and fog. She had instead chosen a different method of obfuscation, building a sprawl of decoys, hiding the true core of her mind somewhere among them.

Corpsetaker had countered her, it would seem, by the simple if difficult expedient of deciding to crush them all, even if it had to be done one at a time. That vast beast construct had been something more massive than I had ever attempted in my own imagination, though Molly had tossed some of those at me once or twice. It wasn’t simply a matter of thinking big—there was an energy investment in creating something with that kind of mental mass, and Molly generally felt such huge, unsubtle thrusts weren’t worth the effort they took—especially since someone with the right attitude and imagination would take them down with only moderately more difficulty than small constructs.

Corpsetaker, though, evidently didn’t agree. She was a lot older than Molly or me, and she would have deeper reserves of strength to call upon, greater discipline, and the confidence of long experience. The kid had managed to take on the Corpsetaker on Molly’s most familiar ground, and to play her hand in her strongest suit—but my apprentice’s strength didn’t look like it was holding up well against the necromancer’s experience and expertise.

I stopped paying attention to everything happening—all the artillery strikes and cavalry charges and shambling hordes of zombies and storms of knives that just came whirling out of the sky. The form of any given construct wasn’t as important as the fact of its existence. A flying arrow that could pierce the heart, for example, was potentially just as dangerous as an animate shadow reaching out with smothering black talons. As long as one could imagine an appropriate construct to counter the threat, and do so in time to stop it, any construct could be defeated. It was a simple thing at its most basic level, and it sounded easy. But once you’re throwing out dozens or hundreds—or thousands—of offensive and defensive constructs at a time . . . Believe me—it takes your full attention.

It’s also all you can do to deal with one opponent, which explained why I hadn’t been assaulted by the Corpsetaker instantly, if she had even taken note of my presence at all. She and Molly were locked together tight. The soulgaze had probably played a part in that. Neither was letting go until her opponent was dead.

Both combatants were throwing enormous amounts of offensive constructs at each other, even though Molly was demolishing her own defenses almost as rapidly as the Corpsetaker was. As tactics go, that one had two edges. Molly was hurting herself, but by doing so, she was preventing the Corpsetaker from pressing too closely, lest she be caught up in the vast bursts of destruction being exchanged. A mistake could easily destroy anyone’s mind in that vista of havoc, centuries-old necromancer or not. On the other hand, if she spotted where Molly was fighting from, it looked like she’d have the power to drive in and crush my apprentice. But if she closed in on the wrong target, she’d leave herself wide-open to a surprise attack from the real Molly. Corpsetaker had to know that, just as she had to know that if she simply kept on the pressure, the whole place would eventually be ground down and Molly would be destroyed anyway.

My apprentice had come with a good plan, but she had miscalculated. The Corpsetaker was a hell of a lot stronger than she had expected. Molly was playing the most aggressive defensive plan I’d ever seen, and hoping that she could pressure the Corpsetaker into making a mistake. It wasn’t a good plan, but it was all she had.

One way or another, it wasn’t going to be a long fight. Best if I got moving.

Molly was here somewhere in the sprawl of fake strongholds, and she would be just as hidden from me as from the Corpsetaker. But I had an advantage that the necromancer didn’t: I knew my apprentice.

This wasn’t the Nevernever. We were in Molly’s head, inside a world of thought and imagination. There was no magic involved—not now that we were here anyway. I might be a slender wisp of a ghost, but I still had my brain, and that gave me certain liberties here.

I went over to the ruined building, where the monster thing was groaning through its death. I heaved aside a piece of rubble and pulled a pale blue bathroom rug, stained with dust and weird purple blood, out of the wreckage. It was a tiny piece of an environmental construct, but even so, it was a serious effort to appropriate it as my own. My arms shook with weakness as I lifted the carpet and snapped it once. Blood and dust flew from it as if it had never existed, and then I settled it calmly on flat ground, sat on it, and folded my legs and my arms in front of me.

“Up, Simba,” I said in my best attempt to imitate Yul Brynner, and the carpet quivered and then rose off the ground, staying as rigid and almost as comfortable as a sheet of heavy plywood. It rose straight in the air, and as it did, I gripped the edges surreptitiously. It wouldn’t do to have either my enemy or my apprentice get a glimpse of me flailing wildly for my balance as the carpet moved. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to just fall off, either. I could probably come up with something to keep me from getting hurt when I hit the ground, but it would look awfully bad, and I don’t care how close to dead he might be; a wizard has his pride.

Granted, the imagination was the only place where I was going to get one of these darned things to work. I’d tried the flying-carpet thing before, when I was about twenty. It had been a fairly horrible experiment that had dropped me into a not-yet-closed landfill during a thunderstorm. And then there was the famous flying-broomstick incident of Wacker Drive, which wound up on the Internet as a UFO sighting. After that, I had wisely determined that flying was mostly just a great way to get killed and settled for driving my old car around instead.

But hey. In my imagination, that carpet had worked great—and that was how it went as a guest in Molly’s imagination, too.

I went up high enough to get a good view—and was impressed with the kid. The city of fortresses stretched for miles. There were hundreds of them, and fighting raged all the way through. It was the opposite of what the kid usually did in a mental battle—an inverse Mongol horde, with endless defenders pouring out like angry bees to defend the hive. Corpsetaker, unfortunately, was playing mama bear to Molly’s queen bee. She’d get hurt coming in, but as long as she wasn’t stupid, not very badly. She could crush all the defenders eventually—and then rip the hive to shreds.

I leaned forward a little and the carpet began to gather speed, moving ahead. Shifts of my weight to the left or right let me bank, and it wasn’t long before I was cruising through the rain as fast as I could and still keeping my eyes clear. I flew a spiral pattern, scanning the city beneath me. The battle kept going in the skies, too—mostly flying demon things and lightning bolts that kept smashing them out of the air. It got boring to watch after the first dozen spectacular lightning strikes or so, and I tuned that conflict out, too, as I kept searching.

Finally, I spotted what I was looking for: a ruined building that had been reduced to a crater by an artillery shell or some other explosion. It was impossible to tell what it had been from what was left, and burned rubble covered the area around it, coating a thick-bodied old oak tree and the tree house on its lower branches in dust, dirt, and debris.

I went past the tree house without stopping or slowing down for several more minutes, and then went evasive. I couldn’t be sure the Corpsetaker didn’t know I had ridden in on her coattails, and if she was following me, or had sent a construct to do so, I didn’t want to lead her to Molly. So the carpet went from forty or fifty miles an hour to more than a hundred, and at the same time I constructed a veil around me so that I surged forward and simply vanished. I flew low, snaking through the streets, and only after I’d crossed my own trail five or six times without spotting anything shadowing me did I finally soar in to the tree house.

It looked like a miniature home, with a door and siding and trim and windows and everything. A rope ladder allowed one to climb up to the porch, but it had been pulled up. I floated up to the door on the flying carpet and knocked politely.

“I have you now,” I said, as much like James Earl Jones as I could. I do a better Yul Brynner.

Molly’s strained face appeared at the window and she blinked. “Harry?”

“What’s with the come-hither, grasshopper?” I asked. “You practically vacuumed me in with the Corpsetaker.”

Molly narrowed her eyes and said, “What was I wearing the first time we met?”

I blinked at her, opened my mouth, closed it, thought about it, and then said, “Oh, come on, Moll. I have no idea. Clothes? You were, like, eight years old and your mom tried to shut the door in my face and I was there to see your dad.”

She nodded once, as if that was the answer she’d been looking for, and opened the door. “Come on.”

I went into the tree house with her.

The inside was bigger than the outside. You can do that sort of thing in your imagination. It’s kind of fun. I’ve got one closet of my castle that looks like a giant disco roller rink. The roller skaters come after you like juggernaut, the music makes heads explode, and the mirror ball distributes a killer laser beam.

Molly’s headquarters looked like the bridge of, I kid you not, the U.S.S. Enterprise. The old one. The one that was full of dials that obviously didn’t do anything and that had a high-pitched, echoing cricket chirp going off every five or six seconds.

There was an upside to that setting, though: Molly was wearing one of the old sixties miniskirt uniforms.

Look, I’m not interested in a relationship with the kid. I do love her tremendously. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t look fantastic. Anyone with eyes can see that, and I’ve always been the kind of person who can appreciate gorgeous scenery without feeling a need to go camping in it.

Actually, glancing around, there were about half a dozen Mollys, all of them wearing old sixties miniskirt uniforms, each of them manning a different station. The one who had opened the door had jet-black hair in a neat, almost mathematical, gamine-style cut and slightly pointed ears.

“Star Trek?” I asked her. “Really?”

“What?” she demanded, bending unnaturally black eyebrows together.

“There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly,” I said. “Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This is shocking.”

She sniffed. “This is the post-nerd-closet world, Harry. It’s okay to like both.”

“Blasphemy and lies,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow at me with Nimoysian perfection and went back to her station.

Communications Officer Molly, in a red uniform with a curly black fro and a silver object the size of a toaster in her ear, said, “Quadrant four is below five percent, and the extra pressure is being directed at quadrant three.”

Captain Molly, in her gold outfit, with her hair in a precise Jacqueline Onassis do, spun the bridge chair toward Communications Molly and said, “Pull out everything and shift it to quadrant three ahead of them.” The chair spun back toward Science Officer Molly. “Set off the nukes in four.”

Science Molly arched an eyebrow, askance.

“Oh, hush. I’m the captain, you’re the first officer, and that’s that,” snapped Captain Molly. “We’re fighting a war here. So set off the nukes. Hi, Harry.”

“Molly,” I said. “Nukes?”

“I was saving them as a surprise,” she said.

There was a big TV screen at the front of the room—not a flat-screen. A big, slightly curved old CRT. It went bright white all of a sudden.

“Ensign,” Captain Molly said.

Ensign Molly, dressed in a red uniform, wearing braces on her teeth, and maybe ten years younger than Captain Molly, twiddled some of the dials that didn’t do anything, and the bright white light dimmed down.

From outside, there was a long scream. An enormous one. Like, Godzilla-sized, or maybe bigger.

Everyone on the bridge froze. A brass section from nowhere played an ominous sting: bahm-pahhhhhhhhhhm.

“You’re kidding,” I said, looking around. “A sound track?”

“I don’t mean to,” Ensign Molly said in a strained, teenager tone. She had a Russian accent that sounded exactly like Sanya. “I watched show too much when I was kid, okay?”

“Your brain is a very strange place,” I said. I meant it as a compliment, and it showed in my voice. Ensign Molly gave me a glowing grin and turned back to her station.

I walked to the right-hand side of the captain’s chair and folded my arms. The screen came up to light again, showing a devastated section of the city grid. No, not decimated. Had that part of the city been decimated, one out of every ten buildings would be destroyed. That’s what decimated means. Personally, I think some early-years, respected television personality got decimated and devastated confused at some point, and no one wanted to point it out to him, so everyone started using them interchangeably. But dammit, words mean what they mean, even if everyone thinks they ought to mean something else.

Science Molly spoke in a grim voice. “Nuclear detonation confirmed. Enemy forces in quadrant four have been decimated, Captain.”

I pressed my lips firmly together.

“Thank you, Number One,” Captain Molly said, spinning back to face the front. “Harry, um. Help?”

“Not sure what I can do, grasshopper,” I told her seriously. “I barely managed to steal a bathroom rug from some rubble and whip up a flying carpet. Her stuff goes right through me, and vice versa.”

She looked at me for a moment, and I saw the same look of fear flicker over every face on the bridge. Then she took a deep breath, nodded, and turned to face the front. She started giving smooth orders, and her other selves replied in calm, steady voices.

After a few moments, Captain Molly said, “If you aren’t here to . . . I mean, if you can’t help, why are you here?”

“Because you’re here,” I said calmly. “Least I can do is stand with you.”

“If she wins . . .” Captain Molly swallowed. “You’ll die.”

I snorted and flashed her a grin. “Best thing about being a spook, grasshopper. I’m already dead.”

“Quadrant three is collapsing,” Communications Officer Molly reported. “Quadrant two is at twenty percent.”

Captain Molly bit her lip.

“How many quadrants?” I asked her.

“Four,” she said. “Since, you know. Quadrants.”

I wanted to say something about decimated, but I didn’t. “We’re in quadrant one?”

Captain Molly nodded. “I . . . don’t think I can stop her, Harry.”

“Fight’s not over until it’s over, kid,” I said. “Don’t let her beat you. Make her work for it.”

Science Molly said, in a firm tone, “Death is not the only consequence here. Should the Corpsetaker prevail, she will have full access to our talents, abilities, memories, and knowledge. Even though we have spent the last months distancing ourselves from others to insulate against a situation such as this one, the Corpsetaker could still inflict considerable damage on not only our friends and family, but on complete innocents. That is unacceptable, Captain.”

Captain Molly looked from Science Molly to me and then said, “The fight isn’t over yet. Prepare the Omega Bomb, but do not deploy.”

“Aye, aye,” said Science Molly, and she stood up and strode to the other side of the bridge—and an old wooden cabinet beside an old wooden door.

I blinked at it. “Wow. That’s . . . kind of out of theme.”

Captain Molly coughed loudly. “That? That’s nothing to worry about. Pay it no mind.”

I watched Science Molly get a device the size of a small microwave out of the old cabinet and push one button on it. Then she set it on the console next to her.

“Um,” I said. “Omega Bomb?”

“The Corpsetaker doesn’t get me,” Captain Molly said in a firm tone. “Ever.”

“And it’s in that old wooden cabinet because . . . ?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Captain Molly dismissively. “Ensign, bring up the screen for quadrant two.”

I eased away from Captain Molly as she kept commanding the battle, and went over to stand next to Science Molly. “Um. The captain doesn’t seem to want me to know about that door.”

“Definitely not,” said Science Molly, also in confidential tones. “It’s a need-to-know door.”

“Why?”

“Because if you know about it, you’re one of the ones who needs to know about it,” she replied calmly. “And if you don’t, it’s better that you not know. The captain feels you’ve suffered enough.”

“Suffered enough?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“I have nothing further to say on the subject,” said Science Molly.

“It’s my fault,” Ensign Molly said. “Sorry. Look, I don’t mean to, with the cabinet and the door, okay? But I can’t help it.”

You ever get that feeling you’re standing in a room full of crazy people?

I got that feeling. It isn’t a very nice feeling.

I stared at the door and the old wooden cabinet. It wasn’t a particularly outstanding door in any way—a standard hanging door, if rather old and battered. Ditto the cabinet. Both had been stained a medium brown, apparently a very long time ago. Both were covered with dings and dents, not as though something had tried to break them down, but simply from years and years of use.

They looked sort of familiar.

I studied the door and the cabinet thoughtfully, glancing occasionally at the big old CRT as quadrant two buckled under the Corpsetaker’s assault. The fighting had been fierce, but she still hadn’t revealed herself, and Molly hadn’t managed to kill her with the nukes or the assault would have ended with her. Another quadrant went, and Captain Molly detonated another set of massive nuke constructs. Then a third, and more nukes. Neither of the second pair of detonations was followed by a massive scream, the way the first one had been. Molly had bloodied the Corpsetaker, presumably, but it hadn’t been enough.

“Dammit,” Captain Molly said, clenching one fist and staring at the screen. “She’s got to be near now. But where?”

The streets outside were so full of battling constructs that they were literally piling up with bodies, slowing the progress of the enemy—but not stopping it.

Dammit, I felt helpless. Just standing next to the kid wasn’t going to do her any good, but I was holding on to the world by a thread. I just didn’t have the ability to make things happen, either here or in the real world. All I could do was . . .

. . . was use my freaking brain. Duh.

“Wait,” I said. “Molly, I’ve got an idea.”

All the Mollys turned to look at me.

I turned to Captain Molly. “Slow her down,” I said. “You’ve got to slow the Corpsetaker down. Whatever you have to do, you need to buy some time. Go!”

Captain Molly blinked at me. Then she turned and started snapping orders. The bridge Mollys started twisting dials and punching keys.

I turned to Communications Molly. “Hey, you do communications, right?”

She looked baffled. “Right.”

“We need to communicate,” I said. “You need to make a long-distance call.”

“Now?” Communications Molly said, her eyes widening.

“Right the hell now,” I corrected her. I leaned down and explained what I needed in terse tones.

“That’s going to be tricky,” she said. “We’re already at one hundred percent on the reactor.”

I put on my best Sean Connery voice. “Then go to a hundred and ten pershent.”

Science Molly arched an eyebrow at me and punched a button. “Engineering, Bridge.”

“Aye!” screamed a furious Scottish-accented Molly. “What do ye want now?”

“More power, Engineer.”

The answer was a furious rush of pure profanity—but the deep engine-hum in the background around us went upward a bit, and the floor started to vibrate.

Science Molly pointed at Communications Molly and said, “Go.”

“Mayday,” Communications Molly said into her console. “This is a mayday. Emergency transmission. We urgently require assistance. . . .”

Suddenly everything lurched to one side and we all staggered.

“Oh, I don’t believe this crap,” I muttered.

“She’s found us, Captain,” said Science Molly. “Shields at seventy percent.”

“Hit her with everything!” Captain Molly snapped.

“Finally,” growled Tactical Molly, who sat next to Ensign Molly, wearing a gold uniform almost identical to Captain Molly’s. She’d been sitting there doing absolutely nothing and looking bored the entire time I’d been there. Now she turned and started jabbing buttons, and cheesy sound effects filled the bridge.

“Minimal damage,” reported Science Molly.

The bridge rocked again and we staggered. One of the panels exploded in a shower of sparks. Some Molly in a red uniform who hadn’t spoken crashed limply to the deck.

“Not real,” Ensign Molly said. “Sorry; my bad. Some things you just can’t get rid of.”

Damage alarms started wailing. They sounded like a badly distorted version of a young woman screaming.

“Shields have failed, Captain!” Science Molly reported.

And she reached for the Omega Bomb.

“No!” I snapped. “Stop her!”

Captain Molly took one look at me and then leapt at Science Molly. She seized the Omega Bomb. “Stop!” she ordered.

“There is no room for emotion here,” snapped Science Molly. “It’s over. This is all you can do to protect them.”

“I gave you an order!” snapped Captain Molly.

“You’re letting your fear control you,” replied Science Molly coldly. “This is the only logical way.”

Captain Molly screamed in incoherent rage and slugged Science Molly in the face.

Science Molly screamed back, and swung a fist into Captain Molly’s stomach.

Music started playing. Loud. High-pitched. Strident. Most would recognize it.

“Sorry!” Ensign Molly called, cringing.

I hurried forward to grab at the struggling Mollys—and my hands went right through them. Right. I was an observer here. Welcome, sure, but if I wanted to control what was going on, I had to do it the hard way, like Corpsetaker was doing.

I turned to Ensign Molly and said, “Dammit, do something!”

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said, her eyes uncertain and full of sadness. “They’ve been like that ever since they killed you.”

I stared at Molly and felt my mouth fall open.

Time stopped.

The door. The old wooden door.

The cabinet where Molly had kept her suicide device.

I turned toward them.

My godmother’s voice echoed in my head.

You are currently freed of the shackles of mortality. Your limited brain no longer impedes access to that record. The only blocks to your memory are those you allow to be.

I remembered the door. The cabinet.

I remembered the past.

Sanya had insisted that they keep me on the backboard when they carried me into St. Mary of the Angels, after my apartment burned down. The dark-skinned Knight of the Cross carried me from his minivan and into the church alone, toting the board and my couple of hundred pounds and change on one shoulder, as if I’d been a big sack of doggy chow.

Molly had gone ahead of him, worried, speaking rapidly to someone. I wasn’t sure who—one of the priests, I guessed. I hurt everywhere I could feel. And in the places I couldn’t feel, I only wished I could hurt.

My body, from the waist down, had stopped talking to me altogether.

I’d fallen off a ladder while trying to get some of my elderly neighbors out of the burning building and landed on a stone planter. Landed bad, and on my back. I’ve gotten lucky occasionally. This time I hadn’t. I knew what the fall, the point of impact, and the lack of sensation in my lower body meant.

I’d broken my back.

The Red King had my daughter. I was the only one who was going to do anything about it. And I’d fallen and broken my back.

Sanya carried me into the utility room that was mostly used for storage—particularly for storing a battered wizard and his friends when they needed the refuge the church offered. There were a number of folding cots in the room, stored for use. Sanya set me down, rolled out a cot, put some sheets on it, and then placed me on the cot, backboard and all.

“Might as well leave me on the floor,” I told him. “I’m lying on a board either way.”

“Pffft,” Sanya said, his dark, handsome face lighting up with a white grin. “I do not care to clean the floor after you leave. Someone else can do the sheets.”

“Says you,” I said. “You smell like burning hair.”

“Some of it was on fire,” he said cheerfully. His eyes, though, were less jovial. He put a hand on my chest and said, “You are badly hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“You want a drink?” he asked. One hand hovered near his jacket’s breast pocket, where I knew he kept his flask.

“Pass. Maybe I’ll just cope instead.”

He made another disgusted noise and produced said flask, took a swig from it, and winked at me. “I was never clear on the difference. Da?”

Molly appeared in the doorway, and Sanya looked at her.

“He’s on the way,” Molly said. Her voice was strained. Her day hadn’t been as bad as mine, but she still looked shaken.

Sanya offered Molly a pull from the flask. She shook her head. “Very good,” the big Russian said. “I will talk to Forthill, tell him what is happening.”

“Sanya,” Molly said, putting a hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

He gave her a wide grin. “Perhaps it was just a coincidence I arrived when I did.”

Molly rolled her eyes and gave him a faint shove toward the door. It didn’t move the big man, but he went, and Molly flicked on a little lamp and shut the door behind him. She walked over to me and took a couple of KFC wet wipes from her bag. She knelt down next to the cot, opened them, and started cleaning my face.

I closed my eyes and said nothing.

My little girl was going to die.

My little girl was going to die.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

Oh, I’d been defeated before. People had even died because I failed. But those people had never been my own flesh and blood. They hadn’t been my child. I’d lost. I was beaten.

This was all over.

And it was all your fault, Harry.

If I’d been faster. If I’d been smarter. If I’d been strong enough of mind to make the hard choices, to focus on saving Maggie first and everyone else second . . .

But I hadn’t been. I’d been insufficient to the challenge, and she was going to die because of it.

I broke, right there. I just broke. The task given to me had been more than I could bear. And what followed would be nothing but torturous regret. I’d failed my own child.

My chest convulsed, I made a sound, and my eyes filled until I couldn’t see.

Molly sat beside me, patiently cleaning my face and neck with her wipes. I must have had soot on my face. When I could see again, there were large patches of grey and black on the wipes and my face felt cold and tingled slightly.

“I’ve got to help her,” I said quietly.

“Harry, don’t . . . don’t twist the knife in your own wound,” Molly replied. “Right now you need to stay calm and quiet, until Butters can look at you.”

“I wish you hadn’t gotten him involved,” I said.

“I didn’t even ask him,” she said. “I got halfway through the first sentence and he asked where you were. Then said he’d come see you.”

I shook my head. “No, I mean . . .” I drew a deep breath. “Kid. I’ve got to cross a line.”

Molly froze, one hand still extended.

“I’m not getting up off this bed alone,” I said quietly. “It’s my only option.”

You run in the circles I do, you get more than a few offers of power. It always comes with a price, usually a hidden one, but you get the offers. I’d had more than a few chances to advance myself, provided I was willing to set aside anything like integrity to do so. I hadn’t been.

Not until today.

“Who?” Molly asked simply.

My mouth twitched at one corner. “One is a lot like another,” I said.

She shook her head. “But . . . but if you go over to one of them . . .”

“They’ll make me into a monster,” I said quietly. “Sooner or later.”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“I can’t let that happen,” I said. “For all I know, I could turn into something that would hurt Maggie myself. But maybe I can use them to get her out of danger.”

She inhaled sharply and looked up at me.

“It’s got to be Mab,” I said. “She’s wicked smart, but she isn’t omniscient or infallible. I’ve swindled faeries before. I can do it again.”

She inhaled sharply. “You’re going to be the Winter Knight?” She shook her head. “What if she doesn’t? I mean, what if she won’t?”

I let out a low chuckle. “Oh, she’ll do it. If I go to her, she’ll do it. She’s been after me long enough.”

“I don’t understand,” Molly said. “She’ll . . . she’ll twist you. Change you. It’s what they do.”

I fumbled and put one of my hands on hers. “Molls . . . Whatever happens . . . I’m not going to make it out of this one.”

She stared at me for a minute. Then she shook her head. She shook her head and silent tears fell from her eyes.

“Molly,” I said again, patting her hand. “Kid . . . For everything there is a season.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare quote the Bible at me. Not to justify this.”

“Bible?” I said. “I was quoting the Byrds.”

She burst out in a huffing sound that was both a laugh and sob.

“Look, Molls. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing. And if I’ve got to choose between myself and my daughter? That’s not even a choice. You know that.”

She bowed her head and wept harder. But I saw her nod. Just a little.

“I need your help,” I said.

She looked up at me, bloodshot eyes a mess.

“I’m going to arrange things. But Mab’s going to be wary of me. She knows my history, and if I know what’s going on, she’ll be able to tell I’m lying to her. I don’t have enough of a poker face for that.”

“No,” Molly said, sniffing and briskly swiping at her eyes. “You don’t. You still suck at lying, boss.”

“To the people who know me, maybe,” I said, smiling. “Do you understand what I’m asking you to do?”

She bit her lip and said, “Do you? Have you thought what it’s going to mean for me once . . . once you’re . . .”

“Dead,” I said quietly. “I think Ebenezar or Injun Joe will take over for me, continue your training. They both know how strongly I felt about sheltering you from the Council’s judgment.”

She looked suddenly exhausted. She shook her head slightly. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh,” I said.

Molly had crushed on me since she was a teenager. I hadn’t really thought anything of it. I mean, it had been going on for years and . . .

. . . and crushes probably didn’t last for years. Did they? They faded. Molly’s feelings hadn’t, but I didn’t reciprocate them. I loved her to pieces, but I was never going to be in love with her.

Especially not if I was dead, I guess.

If our positions had been reversed, that might have been kind of hard for me to accept, too.

I patted her hand again awkwardly and said, “I’m sorry. That I wasn’t here longer. That it couldn’t be more than it was.”

“You never did anything wrong by me, Harry,” she said. She lifted her chin and met my eyes again. “This isn’t about me, though, is it? It’s about Maggie.” She nodded, and I saw steel enter her spine. “So of course I’ll help you.”

I lifted her fingers to my mouth and put a gentle kiss on them. “You’re one hell of a woman, Molly,” I said. “Thank you.”

She shivered. Then she said, “How do you want to do it?”

“Bring me a phone,” I said. “Need to make a call. You stay out of it. It’ll be better if you don’t know.”

“Okay,” she said. “Then?”

“Then you come back in here. You put me to sleep. You take the memory of this conversation and the phone call out of my head.”

“How?” she asked. “If I leave any obvious holes, it could hurt you—and it might be visible to something as powerful as Mab.”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “I nodded off in the van on the way here. Set it up so that I was never awake once I was here, until I wake up after.”

She thought about it and said, “It could work. If I do it slowly enough, it might not leave a ripple.”

“Do it like that, then.”

She stood up. She walked over to a battered old wooden cabinet on the wall and opened it. Among other things, there was an old, freestanding rotary phone inside it, attached to a long extension cord, a makeshift line that Forthill had run through the drywall from the next room. She brought the phone to me and set it carefully on my chest. Then she walked to the similarly battered old wooden door.

“You realize,” she said, “that I could change this, Harry. Could find out who you were using to kill yourself. I could take it right out of your head and call them off. You’d never know.”

“You could do that,” I said, quietly. “And I feel like an utter bastard for asking this of you, grasshopper. But I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

“You should call Thomas,” she said. “He deserves the truth.”

Thomas. My brother. My family. He’d be one of little Maggie’s only blood relations once I was gone. And Molly was right. He did deserve the truth.

“No,” I said, barely louder than a whisper. “Tell him later, if you want. After. If you tell him before that, he won’t stand for it. He’ll try to stop it.”

“And maybe he’d be right to do it.”

“No,” I said quietly. “He wouldn’t. But he’d do it anyway. This is my choice, Molls.”

She turned to go and paused. “You’ve never called me Molls before today.”

“Was saving it,” I said. “For when you weren’t my apprentice anymore. Wanted to try it out.”

She smiled at me. She shed one more tear.

Then she left.

It took me a moment to gather myself. Then I dialed an international number on the rotary phone.

“Kincaid,” answered a flat voice.

“It’s Dresden,” I said.

The voice warmed very slightly. “Harry. What’s up?”

I took a deep breath. “You owe me a favor,” I said quietly. “For that thing with Ivy on the island.”

“Damn right,” he said.

“I’m calling it in.”

“Okay,” he said. “You want some backup on something?”

“I have a target for you.”

There was a silence from the other end of the phone. Then he said, “Tell me.”

“The new Winter Knight,” I said.

“There’s a new one?”

“There’s going to be,” I said.

“How do you . . .” More silence. Then he said, “It’s like that.”

“There’s a good reason,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a little girl.”

More silence. “You’ll know it’s coming.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t. I’ll see to it.”

“Okay,” he said. “When?”

They were going to kill my daughter sometime before the next sunrise. I figured it might take me some time to get her home, assuming I didn’t die trying.

“Anytime after noon tomorrow,” I said. “The sooner, the better.”

“Okay.”

“You can find me?”

“Yeah.”

“Be sure,” I said.

“I pay my debts.”

I sighed again. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He let out a soft chuckle. “Thanking me,” he said. “That’s new.”

He hung up. I did the same. Then I called for Molly.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

Molly took the phone and put it back in the cabinet. Then she picked up a slender, new white candle in a holder and a small box of matches. She came over and set the candle on a folding table nearby, where I could see it without moving my head. She struck a match and lit it.

“All right,” she said. “Harry, this has to be a smooth, gentle job. So focus on the candle. I need you to still your mind so that I can work.”

It felt odd, letting the grasshopper take the lead—but I guess that was what I’d been training her to do. I focused on the candle and began to quiet my thoughts.

“Good,” Molly said quietly after a moment, her voice soft velvet. “Relax. Take a nice, slow, deep breath. Good . . . Listen to my voice and let me guide you. Another deep breath now . . .”

And together with my accomplice, I finished arranging my murder.