Ghost Story

Chapter Fifty

I surfaced from the memory, shivering, and looked around in confusion. I was still in Molly’s mindscape, on the cheesy bridge. It was silent. Completely silent. Nothing moved. The images on the screen and the various Mollys were all frozen in place like mannequins. Everything that had been happening in the battle had been happening at the speed of thought—lightning fast. There was only one reason that everything here would be stopped still like this, right in the middle of the action.

“So much for that linear-time nonsense, eh?” My voice came out sounding harsh and rough.

Footsteps sounded behind me, and the room began to grow brighter and brighter. After a moment, there was nothing but white light, and I had to hold up a hand to shield my eyes against it.

Then the light faded somewhat. I lifted my eyes again and found myself in a featureless expanse of white. I wasn’t even sure what I was standing on, or if I was standing on anything at all. There was simply nothing but white . . .

. . . and a young man with hair of dark gold that hung messily down over silver blue eyes. His cheekbones could have sliced bread. He wore jeans, old boots, a white shirt, and a denim jacket, and no youth born had ever been able to stand with such utter, tranquil stillness as he.

“You’re used to linear time,” he said. His voice was resonant, deep, mellow, with the almost musical timbre you hear from radio personalities. “It was the easiest way to help you understand.”

“Aren’t you a little short for an archangel?” I asked him.

Uriel smiled at me. It was the sort of expression that would make flowers spontaneously blossom and babies start to giggle. “Appropriate. I must confess to being more of a Star Wars fan than a Star Trek fan, personally. The simple division of good and evil, the clarity of perfect right and perfect wrong—it’s relaxing. It makes me feel young.”

I just stared at him for a moment and tried to gather my thoughts. The memory, now that I had it again, was painfully vivid. God, that poor kid. Molly. I’d never wanted to cause her pain. She’d been a willing accomplice, and she’d done it with her eyes open—but, God, I wished it hadn’t had to happen to her. She was hurting so much, and now I could see why—and I could see why the madness she was feigning might be a great deal more genuine than she realized.

That had to have been why Murphy distrusted her so strongly. Murph had excellent instincts for people. She must have sensed something in Molly, sensed the pain and the desperation that drove her, and it must have sent up a warning flag in Murphy’s head. Which would have hurt Molly badly, to be faced with suspicion and distrust, however polite Karrin might have been about it. That pain would, in turn, have driven her further away, made her act stranger, which would earn more suspicion, in an agonizing cycle.

I’d never wanted that for her.

What had I done?

I’d saved Maggie—but had I destroyed my apprentice in doing so? The fact that I’d gotten myself killed had no relative bearing on the morality of my actions, if I had. You can’t just walk around picking and choosing which lives to save and which to destroy. The inherent arrogance and the underlying evil of such a thing runs too deep to be avoided—no matter how good your intentions might be.

I knew why Molly had tried to get me to tell Thomas. She’d known, just as I had, that Thomas would try to stop me from killing myself, regardless of my motivations. But she’d been right about something else, too: He was my brother. He’d deserved more than I’d given him. That was why I hadn’t thought of him, not once since returning to Chicago. How could I possibly have remembered my brother without remembering the shame I felt at excluding him from my trust? How could I think of Thomas without thinking of the truth of what I had done?

Normally, I would never have believed that I was the sort of man who could make himself forget and overlook something rather than facing a harsh reality, no matter how painful it might be.

I guess I’m not perfect.

The young man facing me waited patiently, apparently giving me time to gather my thoughts, saying nothing.

Uriel. I should have known from the outset. Uriel is the archangel who most people know little about. Most don’t even know his name—and apparently he likes it that way. If Gabriel is an ambassador, if Michael is a general, if Rafael is a healer and spiritual champion, then Uriel is a spymaster—Heaven’s spook. Uriel covered all kinds of covert work for the Almighty. When mysterious angels showed up to wrestle with biblical patriarchs without revealing their identities, when death was visited upon the firstborn of Egypt, when an angel was sent into cities of corruption to guide the innocent clear of inbound wrath, Uriel’s hand was at work.

He was the quietest of the archangels. To my way of thinking, that probably indicated that he was also the most dangerous.

He’d taken notice of me a few years back and had bestowed a measure of power known as soulfire on me. I’d done a job or three for him since then. He’d dropped by with annoying, cryptic advice once in a while. I sort of liked him, but he was also aggravating—and scary, in a way that I had never known before. There was the sense of something . . . hideously absolute about him. Something that would not yield or change even if the universe itself was unmade. Standing in his presence, I always felt that I had somehow become so fragile that I might fly to dust if the archangel sneezed or accidentally twitched the wrong muscle.

Which, given the kind of power such a being possessed, was probably more or less accurate.

“All of this?” I asked, waving a hand generally, “was to lead me there? To that memory?”

“You had to understand.”

I eyed him and said wearily, “Epic. Fail. Because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Uriel tilted back his head and laughed. “This is one of those things that was about the journey, not the destination.”

I shook my head. “You . . . you lost me.”

“On the contrary, Harry: You found yourself.”

I eyed him. Then tore at my hair and said, “Arrrgh! Can’t you give me a straight answer? Is there some law of the universe that compels you to be so freaking mysterious?”

“Several, actually,” Uriel said, still clearly amused. “All designed for your protection, but there are still some things I can tell you.”

“Then tell me why,” I said. “Why do all this? Why sucker me into going back to Chicago? Why?”

“Jack told you,” Uriel said. “They cheated. The scale had to be balanced.”

I shook my head. “That office, in Chicago Between. It was yours.”

“One of them,” he said, nodding. “I have a great deal of work to do. I recruit those willing to help me.”

“What work?” I asked.

“The same work as I ever have done,” Uriel said. “I and my colleagues labor to ensure freedom.”

“Freedom of what?” I asked.

“Of will. Of choice. The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them. It is my duty, my purpose in Creation, to protect and nourish that meaning.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So . . . if you’re involved in my death . . .” I tilted my head at him. “It’s because someone forced me to do it?”

Uriel waggled a hand in a so-so gesture and turned to pace a few steps away. “Force implies another will overriding your own,” he said over his shoulder. “But there is more than one way for your will to be compromised.”

I frowned at him, then said, with dawning comprehension, “Lies.”

The archangel turned, his eyebrows lifted, as though I were a somewhat dim student who had surprised his teacher with an insightful answer. “Yes. Precisely. When a lie is believed, it compromises the freedom of your will.”

“So, what?” I asked. “Captain Jack and the Purgatory Crew ride to the rescue every time someone tells a lie?”

Uriel laughed. “No, of course not. Mortals are free to lie if they choose to do so. If they could not, they would not be free.” His eyes hardened. “But others are held to a higher standard. Their lies are far deadlier, far more potent.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Imagine a being who was there when the first mortal drew the first breath,” Uriel said. Hard, angry flickers of light danced around us, notable even against formless white. “One who has watched humanity rise from the dust to spread across and to change the very face of the world. One who has seen, quite literally, tens of thousands of mortal lives begin, wax, wane, and end.”

“Someone like an angel,” I said quietly.

“Someone like that,” he said, showing his teeth briefly. “A being who could know a mortal’s entire life. Could know his dreams. His fears. His very thoughts. Such a being, so versed in human nature, in mortal patterns of thought, could reliably predict precisely how a given mortal would react to almost anything.” Uriel gestured at me. “For example, how he might react to a simple lie delivered at precisely the right moment.”

Uriel waved his hand and suddenly we were back in the utility room at St. Mary’s. Only I wasn’t lying on the backboard on a cot. Or, rather, I was doing exactly that—but I was also standing beside Uriel, at the door, looking in at myself.

“Do you remember what you were thinking?” Uriel asked me.

I did remember. I remembered with perfect clarity, in fact.

“I thought that I’d been defeated before. That 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.” I shook my head. “I remember saying to myself that it was all over. And it was all your fault, Harry.”

“Ah,” Uriel said as I finished the last sentence, and he lifted his hand. “Now look.”

I blinked at him and then at the image of me lying on the cot. “I don’t . . .” I frowned. There was something odd about the shadows in the room, but . . .

“Here,” Uriel said, lifting a hand. Light shone from it as though from a sudden sunrise. It revealed the room, casting everything in stark relief—and I saw it.

A slender shadow crouched beside the cot, vague and difficult to notice, even by Uriel’s light—but it was there, and it was leaning as though to whisper in my ear.

And it was all your fault, Harry.

The thought, the memory, resonated in my head for a moment, and I shivered.

“That . . . that shadow. It’s an angel?”

“It was once,” he said, and his voice was gentle—and infinitely sad. “A long, long time ago.”

“One of the Fallen,” I breathed.

“Yes. Who knew how to lie to you, Harry.”

“Yeah, well. Blaming myself for bad stuff isn’t exactly, um . . . completely uncharacteristic for me, man.”

“I’m aware—as was that,” he said, nodding at the shadow. “It made the lie even stronger, to use your own practice against you. But that creature knew what it was doing. It’s all about timing. At that precise moment, in that exact state of mind, the single whisper it passed into your thoughts was enough to push your decision.” Uriel looked at me and smiled faintly. “It added enough anger, enough self-recrimination, enough guilt, and enough despair to your deliberations to make you decide that destroying yourself was the only option left to you. It took your freedom away.” His eyes hardened again. “I attempt to discourage that sort of thing where possible. When I cannot, I am allowed to balance the scales.”

“I still don’t understand,” I said. “How does me coming back to haunt Chicago for a few nights balance anything?”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” Uriel said. “I can only act in a mirror of the offending action, I’m afraid.”

“You . . . just get to whisper in my ear?”

“To whisper seven words, in fact,” he said. “What you did . . . was elective.”

“Elective?” I asked.

“I had no direct involvement in your return. In my judgment, it needed to happen—but there was no requirement that you come back to Chicago,” Uriel said calmly. “You volunteered.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, yes. Duh. Because three of my friends were going to die if I didn’t.”

Uriel arched an eyebrow at me abruptly. Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a cell phone. He made it beep a couple of times, then turned on the speakerphone, and I heard a phone ringing.

“Murphy,” answered Captain Jack’s baritone.

“What’s this Dresden is telling me about three of his friends being hurt?”

“Dresden,” Jack said in an absent tone, as if searching his memory and finding nothing.

Uriel seemed mildly impatient. He wasn’t buying it. “Tall, thin, insouciant, and sent back to Chicago to search for his killer?”

“Oh, right, him,” Jack said. “That guy.”

“Yes,” Uriel said.

There was a guileless pause, and then Jack said, “What about him?”

Uriel, bless his angelic heart, closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep, calming breath. “Collin . . .” he said, in a reproving, parental tone.

“I might have mentioned something about it,” Jack said. “Sure. Guy’s got a lot of friends. Friends are running around fighting monsters. I figure at least three of them are going to get hurt if he isn’t there to back them up. Seemed reasonable.”

“Collin,” Uriel said, his voice touched with an ocean of disappointment and a teaspoon of anger. “You lied.”

“I speculated,” Captain Jack replied. “I got him to do the right thing, didn’t I?”

“Collin, our purpose is to defend freedom—not to decide how it should be used.”

“Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done,” Jack said stubbornly. “Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn’t be working here in the first place. Now, would I?”

And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.

I couldn’t help it. I let out a rolling belly laugh. “I just got suckered into doing this by . . . Stars and stones, you didn’t even know that he . . . Big bad angel boy, and you get the wool pulled over your eyes by . . .” I stopped trying to talk and just laughed.

Uriel eyed the phone, then me, and then tucked the little device away again, clearly nonplussed. “It doesn’t matter how well I believe I know your kind, Harry. They always manage to find some way to try my patience.”

It took me a moment to get the laughter under control, but I did. “Look, Uri, I don’t want to say . . .”

The archangel gave me a look so cold that my words froze in my throat.

“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden,” he said quietly—and he said it exactly right, speaking my Name in a voice of that same absolute power that had so unnerved me before. “Do not attempt to familiarize my name. The part you left off happens to be rather important to who and what I am. Do you understand?”

I didn’t. But as he spoke, I knew—not just suspected, but knew—that this guy could obliterate me, along with the planet I was standing on, with a simple thought. In fact, if what I’d read about archangels was right, Uriel could probably take apart all the planets. Like, all of them. Everywhere.

And I also knew that what I had just done had insulted him.

And . . . and frightened him.

I swallowed. It took me two tries, but I managed to whisper, “Aren’t we just Mr. Sunshine today.”

Uriel blinked. He looked less than certain for a moment. Then he said, “Mr. Sunshine . . . is perfectly acceptable. I suppose.”

I nodded. “Sorry,” I said. “About your name. I didn’t realize it was so, um . . .”

“Intimate,” he said quietly. “Sensitive. Names have tremendous power, Dresden. Yet mortals toss them left and right as though they were toys. It’s like watching infants play with hand grenades sometimes.” The ghost of a smile touched his face as he glanced at me. “Some more so than others. And I forgive you, of course.”

I nodded at him. Then, after a quiet moment, I asked, “What happens now?”

“That’s up to you,” Uriel said. “You can always work for me. I believe you would find it challenging to do so—and I would have considerable use for someone of your talents.”

“For how long?” I asked. “I mean . . . for guys like Captain Jack? Is it forever?”

Uriel smiled. “Collin, like the others, is with me because he is not yet prepared to face what comes next. When he is, he’ll take that step. For now, he is not.”

“When you say what comes next, what do you mean, exactly?”

“The part involving words like forever, eternity, and judgment.”

“Oh,” I said. “What Comes Next.”

“Exactly.”

“So I can stay Between,” I said quietly. “Or I can go get on that train.”

“If you do,” Uriel said, his eyes intent and serious, “then you accept the consequences for all that you have done while alive. When judged, what you have done will be taken into account. Your fate, ultimately, will be determined by your actions in life.”

“You’re saying that if I don’t work for you, I’ll just have to accept what comes?”

“I am saying that you cannot escape the consequences of your choices,” he said.

I frowned at him for a minute. Then I said, “If I get on the train, it might just carry me straight to Hell.”

“I can’t talk to you about that,” he said. “What comes next is about faith, Harry. Not knowledge.”

I folded my arms. “What if I dig the ghost routine?”

“You don’t,” Uriel replied. “But even if you did, I would point out to you that your spiritual essence has been all but disintegrated. You would not last long as a shade, nor would you have the strength to aid and protect your loved ones. Should you lose your sanity, you might even become a danger to them—but if that is your desire, I can facilitate it.”

I shook my head, trying to think. Then I said, “It . . . depends.”

“Upon?”

“My friends,” I said quietly. “My family. I have to know that they’re all right.”

Uriel watched me for a moment and then opened his mouth to speak, shaking his head a little as he did.

“Stop,” I said, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t you dare tell me to make this choice in the dark. Captain Jack gave me a half-truth that sent me running around Chicago again. Another angel told me a lie that got me killed. If you really care so much about my free will, you’ll be willing to help me make a free, informed choice, just as if I was a grown-up. So either admit that you’re trying to push me in your own direction or else put your principles where your mouth is and make like the Ghost of Christmas Present.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his brow furrowed. “From your perspective . . . yes, I suppose it does look that way.” Then he nodded firmly and extended his arm toward me. “Take my hand.”

I did.

The white expanse gave way to reality once more. Suddenly, I stood with Uriel inside the Corpsetaker’s hideout, on the stairs where that final confrontation had come. Molly was at the top of the stairs, leaning back against the wall. Her body was twisting and straining, her chest heaving with desperate breaths. Blood ran from both nostrils and had filled the sclera of her eyes, turning them into inhuman-looking blue-and-red stones. She let out little gasps and choked screams, along with whispered snatches of words that didn’t make any sense.

Uriel did that thing with his hand again, and suddenly I could see Molly even more clearly—and saw that some kind of hideous mass was wound around her, like a python constricting its prey. It consisted of strands of some kind of slimy jelly, purple and black and covered with pulsing pustules that reeked of corruption and decay.

Corpsetaker.

Molly’s duel with the Corpsetaker was still under way.

Butters’s body lay at Molly’s feet, empty of life and movement. And his shade—now I could see that it was bound into near immobility by threads of the Corpsetaker’s dark magic—stood exactly as he had when I last saw him, staring down at his own body in horror. Down here in the electrical-junction room, Murphy and the wolves were bound with threads of the same dark magic as Butters—a sleeping spell that had compelled them all into insensibility.

Molly whimpered, drawing my gaze back to the top of the stairs as her legs gave way. She slid slowly down the wall, her eyes rolling wildly. Her mouth started moving more surely, her voice becoming stronger. And darker. For about two seconds, one of the Corpsetaker’s hate-filled laughs rolled from Molly’s lips. That hideous, slimy mass began to simply ooze into the young woman’s skin.

“Do something,” I said to Uriel.

He shook his head. “I cannot interfere. This battle was Molly’s choice. She knew the risks and chose to hazard them.”

“She isn’t strong enough,” I snapped. “She can’t take on that thing.”

Uriel arched an eyebrow. “Were you under the impression that she did not know that from the beginning, Harry? Yet she did it.”

“Because she feels guilty,” I said. “Because she blames herself for my death. She’s in the same boat I was.”

“No,” Uriel said. “None of the Fallen twisted her path.”

“No, that was me,” I said, “but only because one of them got to me.”

“Nonetheless,” Uriel said, “that choice was yours—and hers.”

“You’re just going to stand there?” I asked.

Uriel folded his arms and tapped his chin with one fingertip. “Mmmm. It does seem that perhaps she deserves some form of aid. Perhaps if I’d had the presence of mind to see to it that some sort of agent had been sent to balance the scales, to give her that one tiny bit of encouragement, that one flicker of inspiration that turned the tide . . .” He shook his head sadly. “Things might be different now.”

And, as if on cue, Mortimer Lindquist, ectomancer, limped out of the lower hallway and into the electrical-junction room, with Sir Stuart’s shade at his right hand.

Mort took a look around, his dark eyes intent, and then his gaze locked onto Molly.

“Hey,” he croaked. “You. Arrogant bitch ghost.”

Molly’s eyes snapped fully open and flicked to Mort. They were filled with more bitter, venomous hate than my apprentice could ever have put into them.

“I’m not really into this whole hero thing,” Mort said. “Don’t have the temperament for it. Don’t know a lot about the villain side of the equation, either.” He planted his feet, facing the Corpsetaker squarely, his hands clenched into fists at his side. “But it seems to me, you half-wit, that you probably shouldn’t have left a freaking ectomancer a pit full of wraiths to play with.”

And with a howl, more than a thousand wraiths came boiling around the corner in a cloud of clawing hands, gnashing teeth, and screaming hunger. They rode on a wave of Mort’s power and no longer drifted with lazy, disconnected grace. Now they came forth like rushing storm clouds, like racing wolves, like hungry sharks, a tide of mindless destruction.

I saw Molly’s eyes widen and the pulsing spiritual mass that was the Corpsetaker began to pull away from the young woman.

My apprentice didn’t let her.

Molly let out a wheezing cackle and both hands formed into claws that clutched at the air. I saw the energy of her own magic surround her fingers so that she grasped onto the Corpsetaker’s essence as if it had been a nearly physical thing. The necromancer’s spirit began to ooze through Molly’s grip. The exhausted girl could only slow the Corpsetaker down.

But it was enough.

The tide of wraiths slammed into the Corpsetaker like a freight train, their wails blending into a sound that I had heard before, in the train tunnel where Carmichael saved me. The Corpsetaker had begun to resume her usual form the instant she disengaged from Molly, and I could see the sudden shock and horror in her beautiful eyes as that spiritual tide overwhelmed her. I saw her struggle uselessly as the wraith train carried her up the stairs and out into the night. The train swept her straight up into the air—and then reversed itself and slammed her down, into the earth.

I saw her try to scream.

But all I heard was the blaring howl of the horn of a southbound train.

And then she was gone.

“You’re right,” Uriel said, his tone filled with a chill satisfaction. “Someone needed to do something.” He glanced aside at me, gave me a slight bow of his head, and said, “Well-done.”

Mort limped up the stairs to check on Molly. “You’re the one who called to me, eh?”

Molly looked up at him, obviously too exhausted to move more than her head. “Harry . . . Well, it’s sort of complicated to explain what was going on. But he told me you could help.”

“Guess he was right,” Mort said.

“Where is he?” Molly asked. “I mean . . . his ghost.”

Mort glanced around and looked right at me—right through me. He shook his head. “Not here.”

Molly closed her eyes and began to cry quietly.

“I got her, boss,” Molly said quietly. “We got her. And I’m still here. Still me. Thank you.”

“She’s thanking me,” I said quietly. “For that.”

“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 barefoot. 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,” Uriel 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.

“Missed you, too, boy,” I said. “Just . . . kind of stopping by to say good-bye.”

Mouse’s tail stopped wagging. His big, doggy eyes regarded me very seriously, and then glanced at Uriel.

“What has begun must finish, little brother,” Uriel said. “Your task here is not yet over.”

Mouse regarded the archangel for a moment and then huffed out a breath in a huge sigh and leaned against me.

I scratched him some more and hugged him—and looked past him, to where my daughter slept.

Maggie Dresden was a dark-haired, dark-eyed child, which had been all but inevitable given her parents’ coloring. Her skin tone was a bit darker than mine, which I thought looked healthier than my skin ever had. I got kind of pasty, what with all the time in my lab and reading and running around after dark. Her features were . . . well, perfect. Beautiful. The first time I’d seen her in the flesh, despite everything else that was going on at the time, somewhere under the surface I had been shocked by how gorgeous she was. She was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen, like, in the movies or anywhere.

But I guess maybe all parents see that when they look at their kids. It isn’t rational. That doesn’t make it any less true.

She slept with the boneless relaxation of the very young, her arms carelessly thrown over her head. She wore one of Molly’s old T-shirts as pajamas. It had an old, worn, iron-on decal of R2-D2 on it, with the caption BEEP BEEP DE DEEP KERWOOO under it.

I knelt down by her, stroking Mouse’s fur, but when I tried to touch her hand, mine passed through hers, immaterial. I leaned my head against Mouse’s big, solid skull, and sighed.

“She’ll have a good life here,” I said quietly. “People who care about her. Who love kids.”

“Yes,” Uriel said.

Mouse’s tail thumped several more times.

“Yeah, buddy. And she’ll have you.” I glanced up at Uriel. “For how long? I mean, most dogs . . .”

“Temple dogs have been known to live for centuries,” he replied. “Your friend is more than capable of protecting her for a lifetime—even a wizard’s lifetime, if need be.”

That made me feel a little better. I knew what it was like to grow up without my birth parents around, and what a terrible loss it was not to have that sense of secure continuation most of the other kids around me had. Maggie had lost her foster parents, and then her birth mother, and then her biological father. She had another foster home now—but she would always have Mouse.

“Hell,” I said to Mouse, “for all I know, you’ll be smarter than I would have been about dealing with her, anyway.”

Mouse snorted, grinning a doggy grin. He couldn’t speak, but I could effortlessly imagine his response—of course he’d be smarter than I was. That particular bar hadn’t been set very high.

“Take care of her, buddy,” I said to Mouse, and gave his shoulders a couple of firm pats with my fists. “I know you’ll take good care of her.”

Mouse sat up away from me, his expression attentive and serious, and then, very deliberately, offered me his paw.

I shook hands with him gravely, and then rose to face the archangel.

“All right,” I said quietly. “I’m ready.”