Ghost Story

headaches. She babbles.”

“Sounds like me,” I said, at approximately the same time Will said, “Sounds like Harry.”

“This is different,” Murphy said to Will, “and you know it. Dresden was in control of it. He used the weirdness to make him stronger. Were you ever afraid of him?” Murphy asked. “Outright afraid?”

Will frowned and looked down at his hands. “He could be scary. But no. I never thought he’d hurt me. By accident or otherwise.”

“How do you feel about Molly coming over?” Murphy asked.

“I would like to leave,” Will replied frankly. “The girl ain’t right.”

“Apparently,” Murphy continued, turning back to me, “the presence of a wizard in a city, any city, all around the world, is an enormous deterrent. Weird things are afraid of the Council. They know that the White Council can come get you fast, out of nowhere, with overwhelming force. Most of the scary-bad things around, the ones with any brains, at least, avoid White Council territory.

“Only with you gone and the White Council having its hands full . . .” Murphy shook her head. “God. Even the vanilla news is starting to notice the weirdness in town. So. Molly wouldn’t stay with anyone. She’s always moving. But she got it into her head that Chicago didn’t need an actual White Council wizard to help calm things down—the bad guys just had to think one was here. So she started posting messages whenever she dealt with some wandering predator, and called herself the Ragged Lady, declaring Chicago protected territory.”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“What part of she isn’t right didn’t you understand?” Murphy replied to Morty, her voice sharp. She took a breath and calmed herself again. “The craziest part is that it worked. At least partly. A lot of bad things have decided to play elsewhere. College towns out in the country are the worst. But . . . things have happened here.” She shivered. “Violent things. Mostly to the bad guys. But sometimes to humans. Gangers, mostly. The Ragged Lady’s calling card is a piece of cloth she tears off and leaves on her enemies. And there are lots and lots of pieces of cloth being found these days. A lot of them on corpses.”

I swallowed. “You think it’s Molly?”

“We don’t know,” Murphy replied in her professionally neutral voice. “Molly says she isn’t going after anything but the supernatural threats, and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve her. But . . .” Murphy showed her hands.

“So when you said Raggedy Ann,” I said, “you meant Molly.”

“She’s like this . . . battered, stained, torn-up doll,” Murphy said. “Believe me. It fits.”

“Battered, torn-up, scary doll,” Will said quietly.

“And . . . you just let her be that way?” I demanded.

Murphy ground her teeth. “No. I talked to her half a dozen times. We tried an intervention to get her off the street.”

“We shouldn’t have,” Will said.

“What happened?” Mort asked.

Will apparently assumed it had been my question. “She hammered us like a row of nails on balsa wood is what happened,” he said. “Lights, sound, images. Jesus, I’ve got a picture in my head of being dragged off into the Nevernever by monsters that I still can’t get rid of. When she gave it to me, all I could do was curl up into a ball and scream.”

Will’s description made me feel sick to my stomach. Which was ridiculous, because it wasn’t like I ate food anymore—but my innards hadn’t gotten the memo. I looked away, grimacing, tasting bitter bile in my mouth.

“Memories are weapons,” Sir Stuart said quietly. “Sharp as knives.”

Murphy held up her hand to cut Will off. “Whether or not she’s going too far, she’s the only one we have with a major-league talent. Not that the Ordo hasn’t done well by us, Abby,” she added, nodding toward the blond woman.

“Not at all,” Abby replied, undisturbed. “We aren’t all made the same size and shape, are we?” Abby looked at me, more or less, and said, “We built the wards around Karrin’s house. Three hundred people from the Paranet, all working together.” She put a hand on an exterior wall, where the power of the patchwork ward hummed steadily. “Took us less than a day.”

“And two hundred pizzas,” Murphy muttered. “And a citation.”

“And well worth it,” Abby said, arching an eyebrow that dared Murphy to disagree.

Murphy shook her head, but I could see her holding off a smile. “The point is, we’re waiting for Molly to confirm your bona fides, Harry.”

“Um,” Morty said. “Is . . . is that safe, Ms. Murphy? If the girl was his apprentice, won’t her reaction to his shade likely be . . . somewhat emotional?”

Will snorted. “The way nitroglycerin is somewhat volatile.” He took a breath and then said, “Karrin, you sure about this?”

Murphy looked around the room slowly. Abby’s eyes were on the floor, but her usally rosy cheeks were pale, and Toto’s ears drooped unhappily. Will’s expression was steady, but his body language was that of a man who thinks he might need to dive through a closed window at any second. Forthill was watching the room at large, exuding calm confidence, but his brow was furrowed, and the set of his mouth was slightly tense.

With the exception of Forthill, I’d seen them all react to direct danger.

They were all scared of Molly.

Murphy faced them. She was the smallest person in the room. Her expression was as smooth and expressive as a sheet of ice, her body posture steady. She looked as though she felt she was ready for just about anything.

But I’ve been in more than one fur ball with Murph, and I saw through her outer shell to the fear that was driving her. She didn’t know if I was real. For all she knew, I might be some kind of boogeyman from the nightmare side of the street, and that was unacceptable. She had to know.

The problem was that no matter what answer she got, it was going to hurt. If Molly pegged me as a bad guy, the knowledge that the real Harry Dresden was still missing and presumed dead, after the flash of contact Mort had provided, would be like a frozen blade in the guts. And if she learned that it really was my shade . . . it would be even worse.

“Molly will be fine,” Murphy said. “We need her. She’ll come through.” She passed her hand over her brush of hair. Her voice turned into something much smaller, weighed down by pain. “No offense to Mr. Lindquist. No offense to Mister. But I . . . We have to know.”

Paranoid? Probably.

But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t a wizard’s ghost standing beside you with tears in his eyes.

Chapter Eleven

Not long after, something scratched at the front door, and Will opened it to admit a grey-brown-furred wolf. The wolf trotted over to where Marci’s dress lay folded on the sofa, took it in her teeth, and vanished into the kitchen. Marci appeared a few seconds later, settling the dress around her slender form, and said, “She’ll be here any moment. I already told Andi and Eyes.”

“Thank you, Marci.” Murph looked at everyone and said, “Settle down, people. You look like you’re expecting Hannibal Lecter to come through the door.”

“I could handle Hannibal,” Will said. “This is different.”

Murphy put a fist on her hip and said, “Will. Molly is one of us. And you aren’t going to help her by looking nervous. If you can’t settle down and relax, get out of here. I don’t want you upsetting her.”

Will grimaced. Then he went into the kitchen, and a moment later a large wolf with fur the same color as Will’s hair padded back into the room. He went to a corner, turned around three times, and settled down on the floor. Toto let out a sharp little bark of greeting and hopped down to hurry over to Will. The little dog sniffed Will, then turned around three times and settled down next to him, their backs touching. The big wolf took a deep breath and exhaled it into a very human-sounding sigh of resignation.