Ghost Story

me!”

I felt the tug of some sudden force, as subtle and inarguable as gravity, and I had to lean against it to stop myself from sliding across the floor toward him.

Other spirits appeared, drawn in through the shattered door as if sucked into a tornado. Half a dozen Native American shades flew into Mort, and as the gunman swung the golf club, he let out a little yipping shout, ducked the swing more nimbly than any man his age and condition should have been able to, caught the gunman’s wrist, and rolled backward, dragging the man with him. He planted his heels in the gunman’s midsection and heaved, a classic fighting technique of the American tribes, and sent the man crashing into a wall.

The gunman rose, seething, eyes entirely wild, but not before Mort had crossed the room and taken an ancient, worn-looking ax down from a rack attached to one wall. It took my stunned brain a second to register that the weapon looked exactly like the one Sir Stuart had wielded, give or take a couple of centuries.

“Stuart,” Mort called, and his voice rang in my chest as if it had come from a bass-amplified megaphone. There was a flicker of motion, and then Sir Stuart’s form flew in through the doorway as if propelled by a vast wind, overlaying itself briefly onto Mort’s far smaller body.

The gunman swung the club, but Mort caught it with a deft, twisting move of the ax’s haft. The gunman leaned into it, using his far greater weight and strength in an attempt to simply overbear the smaller man and push him to the floor.

But he couldn’t.

Mort held him off as if he’d had the strength of a much larger, much younger, much healthier man. Or maybe men. He held the startled intruder stone-still for the space of five or six seconds, then heaved, twisting with the full power of his shoulders, hips, and legs, and used the ax’s head to rip the club from the intruder’s paws. The gunman threw an enraged punch at his face, but Mort blocked it with the flat of the ax’s head, and then snapped the blunt upper edge of the ax into the gunman’s face with an almost contemptuous precision.

The intruder reeled back, stunned, and Mort followed up with the instincts and will of a dangerous, trained fighting man. He struck the intruder’s knee with the weapon’s haft, sending a sharp, crackling pop into the air, and swung the flat of the blade into the intruder’s jaw as the bigger man began to fall. The blow struck home with a meaty thunk and another crackling noise of impact, and the gunman dropped like a proverbial stone.

Mortimer Lindquist, ectomancer, stood over the fallen madman in a wary crouch, his eyes focusing on nothing as he turned his head left and right, scanning the room around him.

Then he sighed and exhaled. The steel head of the weapon came down to thump gently against the floor. Shapes departed him, the guardian spirits easing free of him, most of them fading from view. Within a few seconds, the only shades present were me and an exhausted-looking Sir Stuart.

Mort sat down on the floor heavily, his head bowed, his chest heaving for breath. The veins on his bald pate stuck out.

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed.

He looked up at me, his expression weary, and gave me an exhausted shrug. “Don’t have a gun,” he panted. “Never really felt like I needed one.”

“Been a while since you did that, Mortimer,” Sir Stuart said from where he sat beside the wall, his body supported by the ghost-dusted paint. “Thought you’d forgotten how.”

Mort gave the wounded spirit a faint smile. “I thought I had, too.”

I frowned and shook my head. “Was that . . . was that a possession, just now? When the ghosts took over?”

Sir Stuart snorted. “Nay, lad. If anything, the opposite.”

“Give me at least a little credit, Dresden,” Mort said, his tone sour. “I’m an ectomancer. Sometimes I need to borrow from what a spirit knows or what it can do. But I control spirits—they don’t control me.”

“How’d you handle the gun?” Stuart asked, a certain, craftsmanlike professionalism entering his tone.

“I . . .” Mort shook his head and looked at me.

“Magic,” I said quietly. My bell was still ringing a little, but I was able to form complete sentences. “I . . . sort of bumped into him and called up a shield.”

Sir Stuart lifted his eyebrows and said, “Huh.”

“I needed to borrow your skills for a moment,” Mort said, somewhat stiffly. “Appreciate it.”

“Think nothing of it,” I said. “Just give me a few hours of your time. We’ll be square.”

Mort stared at me for a while. Then he said, “You’re here twenty minutes and I nearly get killed, Dresden. Jesus, don’t you get it?” He leaned forward. “I am not a crusader. I am not the sheriff of Chicago. I am not a goddamned death wish–embracing Don Quixote.” He shook his head. “I’m a coward. And I’m very comfortable with that. It’s served me well.”

“I just saved your life, man,” I said.

He sighed. “Yeah. But . . . like I said. Coward. I can’t help you. Go find someone else to be your Panza.”

I sat there for a moment, feeling very, very tired.

When I looked up, Sir Stuart was staring intently at me. Then he cleared his throat and said, in a diffident tone, “Far be it from me to bring up the past, but I can’t help but note that your lot in life has improved significantly since Dresden first came to you.”

Mort’s bald head started turning red. “What?”

Sir Stuart spread his hands, his expression mild. “I only mean to say that you have grown in strength and character in that time. When you first interacted with Dresden, you were bilking people out of their money with— poorly—falsified séances, and you had lost your power to contact any spirit other than me.”

Mort glowered ferociously at Sir Stuart. “Hey, Gramps. When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”

Sir Stuart’s smile widened. “Of course.”

“I help spirits find peace,” Mort said. “I don’t do things that are going to get me taken to pieces. I’m a ghost whisperer. And that’s all.”

“Look, Mort,” I said. “If you want to get technical, I’m not actually a ghost, per se. . . .”

He rolled his eyes again. “Oh, God. If I had a nickel for every ghost who had ever come to me, explaining to me how he wasn’t really a ghost. How his case was special . . .”

“Well, sure,” I said. “But—”

He rolled his eyes. “But if you aren’t just a ghost, how come I could channel you like that? How come I could force you out of me? Huh?”

That hit me. My stomach may have been insubstantial, but it could still writhe uneasily.

Ghosts were not the people they resembled, any more than a footprint left in the ground was the being that made it. They had similar features, but ultimately a ghost was simply a remainder, a reminder, an impression of the person who died. They might share similar personalities, emotions, memories, but they weren’t the same being. When a person died and left a ghost behind, it was as if some portion of his dying life energy was spun out, creating a new being entirely—though in the creator’s exact mental and often physical image.

Of course, that also meant that they were subject to many of the same frailties as mortals. Obsession. Hatred. Madness. If what Mort said about ghosts interacting with the material world was true, then it was when some poor spirit snapped, or was simply created insane, that you got your really good ghost stories. By a vast majority, most ghosts were simply insubstantial and a bit sad, never really interacting with the material world.

But I couldn’t be one of those self-deluded shades.

Could I?

I glanced at Sir Stuart.

He shrugged. “Most shades aren’t willing to admit that they aren’t actually the same being whose memories they possess,” he said gently. “And that’s assuming they can face the fact that they are ghosts at all. Self-deluded shades are, by an order of magnitude, more common than those that are not.”

“So what you’re saying is . . .” I pushed my fingers back through my hair. “You’re saying that I only think I did the whole tunnel-of-light, sent-back-on-a-mission thing? That I’m in denial about being a ghost?”

The ghost marine waggled one hand in an ambivalent gesture, and his British accent rolled out mellow