Ghost Story

“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.”