Ghost Story

“Go,” Stuart said. “Warn Mortimer. Help him!”

I blinked. Mortimer had made it clear that he didn’t want to get involved with me—and some childish part of my nature wanted to snap that turnabout was fair play. But a wiser, more rational part of me reminded my inner child that without Mort, I might never be able to get in touch with anyone else in town. I might never find my own killer. I might never be able to protect my friends.

And besides. You don’t just let people kick down other people’s doors and murder them in their own home. You just don’t.

I clapped Stuart on the shoulder and sprinted back toward the little house and its little owner.

Chapter Six

The gunman had a big lead on me, but I had an advantage he didn’t. I’d already been inside the house. I knew the layout, and I knew where Mort was holed up.

Oh. Plus I could run through freaking walls.

Granted, I think it would have been more fun to be Colossus than Shadowcat. But you take what you can get, and any day you’ve merely got the powers of an X-Man can’t be all that bad. Right?

I gritted my teeth and plunged through the wall into Mort’s kitchen and ran for the study, several steps ahead of the gunman.

“Mort!” I shouted. “Mort, they brought a hitter with them this time! There’s a gunman running around your house!”

“What?” demanded Mort’s voice from the far side of the ghost-dusted door. “Where’s Stuart?”

“Dammit, Mort, he’s hurt!” I called.

There was a brief pause, and then Mort said, as if baffled, “How did that happen?”

I was getting impatient. “Focus, Mort! Did you hear me? There’s a frigging gunman loose in your house!”

Real alarm entered his voice for the first time. “A what?”

The gunman had heard Mort shouting at me. He came toward the door to the study, moving lightly for a big man. I got a better look at him, and noted that his clothing was ragged and unwashed, and so was he. He stank, enough that it carried through to me even given my condition, and his eyes were wide and wild, rolling around like those of a junkie who is hopped up on something that makes him pay too much attention to his surroundings. That didn’t seem to have affected his gun hand, though. The semiautomatic he clutched in one big fist seemed steady enough to get the job done.

“Mort!” I called. “He’s coming toward your study door right now! Look, just get your weapon and aim at the door and I’ll tell you when to shoot!”

“I don’t have one!” Mort screamed.

I blinked. “You don’t what?”

“I am an ectomancer, not an action hero!” I heard him moving around in the office for a moment, and then he said, “Um. They cut the phone.”

The gunman let out a low, rumbling chuckle. “You are wanted, little man.” His voice sounded rotted, clotted, like something that hadn’t been alive in a long time. “It is commanded. You can come with me and it won’t hurt. Or you can stay in there and it will.”

“Dresden!” Mort called. “What do I do?”

“Oh, now you want to talk to me!” I said.

“You’re the one who knows about this mayhem bullshit!” Mort shrieked.

“Gonna count, little man,” said the gunman. “Five.”

“Surviving mayhem is about being prepared!” I shouted back. “Little things like having a gun!”

“I’ll get one in the morning!”

“Four!”

“Mort, there’s gotta be something you can do,” I said. “Hell’s bells, every time I’ve run into a ghost it’s tried to rip my lungs out! You’re telling me none of your spooks can do something?”

“They’re sane,” Mort shouted back. “It’s crazy for a ghost to interact with the physical world. Sane ghosts don’t go around acting crazy!”

“Three!” chanted the gunman.

“Go away,” Mort shouted at him.

“There’s gotta be something I can do!” I yelled.

“I don’t make the rules, okay?” Mort said. “The only way a ghost can manifest is if it’s insane!”

“Two!” the gunman screamed, his voice rising to an excited pitch.

I jumped in front of the lunatic and shrieked, “Boo!” I flapped my hands in his face, as if trying to slap him left and right on the cheeks.

Nothing happened.

“Guess that was too much to hope for, huh?” Mort called lamely.

“One,” the gunman purred. Then he leaned back and drove a heavy boot at the door. It took him three kicks to crack the frame and send the door flying inward.

Mort was waiting on the other side of the door, a golf club in hand. He swung it at the gunman’s head without any preamble, a grimly practical motion. The gunman put an arm up, but the wooden head of the club got at least partly around it, and he reeled back a pace.

“This is your fault, Dresden,” Mort snarled, swinging the club again as he spoke.

He hit the gunman full-on in the chest, and then again in one big arm. The gunman caught the next blow on his forearm, and swung wildly at Mort. He connected, and Mort got knocked on his can.

The gunman pressed one hand to a bleeding wound on his head and screamed, a howl of agony that was somehow completely out of proportion with the actual injury. His wild eyes rolled again and he lifted the gun to aim at the little man.

I moved on instinct, throwing myself uselessly between the weapon and the ectomancer. I tripped on a fragment of the ghost-dust-painted door and wound up falling in a heap on top of Mort and . . .

. . . sunk into him.

The world suddenly hit me in full Technicolor. It was so dark in here, the gunman an enormous, threatening shadow standing over me. His voice was hideous and so loud that my ears ached. The stench—unwashed body and worse things—was enough to turn my stomach, filling my nose like hideous packing peanuts. I saw the gunman’s hand tighten on the trigger and I threw my arm up. . . .

My black-clad, thick, rather short arm.

“Defendarius!” I barked, faux Latin, the old defense spell I’d first learned from Justin DuMorne, my first teacher. I felt the magic surge into me, down through my arm, out into the air, just as the gun went off, over and over, as some kind of restraint in the gunman’s head snapped.

Sparks flew up from a shimmering blue plane that formed in front of my outspread fingers, bullets and fragments of bullets shattering and bouncing around the room. One of them stayed more or less in one piece and smacked into the gunman’s calf, and he pitched abruptly to one side, still jerking the trigger until the weapon was clicking on empty.

I felt my mouth move as Mort’s voice—a voice that rang with a resonance and authority I had seldom encountered before, said, “Get off of me!”

If I’d been hurtled from a catapult, I don’t think I’d have been thrown away any faster. I flew off at an upward angle—and slammed painfully into the ghost-dust-painted ceiling of the study. I bounced off it and fell to the equally hard floor. I lay there, stunned, for a second.

The gunman got to his feet, breathing hard and fast, slobber shooting out from slack lips as he did. He picked up the golf club that had fallen from Mort’s fingers and took a step toward him.

Mort fixed hard eyes on the intruder and spoke, his voice ringing with that same unalterable authority. “To