Hadn’t I? I blinked up at the sky several times and pushed myself slowly to my feet. I felt heavy, and it was harder to rise than it should have been, as if I’d been covered in wet, heavy blankets or one of those lead-lined aprons they use around X-ray machines.
“I always like seeing new things being born,” said the voice—a child’s voice. “You can guess what they’re going to become, and then watch and see if it happens.”
My grave was about six feet deep. I’m considerably over six feet tall. As I stood, my eyes were a few inches above the top of half a foot of snow that covered the ground at that spot. So it wasn’t hard to see the little girl.
She might have been six years old and looked small, even for her age. She wore a nineteenth-century outfit, an almost ridiculously frilly, ornate dress for a child who would probably have it splattered with dirt or food within the hour. Her shoes looked handmade and had little buckles on them. Over one shoulder she was carrying a tiny, lacy parasol that matched her dress. She was pretty—like most children—and had blond hair and bright green eyes.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, with a little Shirley Temple curtsy. “It is a pleasure to meet you, the late Mr. Harry Dresden.”
I decided to be careful. What were the odds she was really a little girl, as she appeared? “How did you know my name?”
She folded the little parasol closed and tapped it against the headstone. It was made of white marble. Letters had been inscribed upon it in gold, or at least something goldlike, and it still gleamed despite about a decade of exposure. It had a pentacle inscribed beneath its simple legend: HERE LIES HARRY DRESDEN. Beneath the pentacle, it continued: HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING.
For a moment, there was a strange, sweet taste in my mouth, and the scent of pine needles and fresh greenery filled my nose. A frisson rippled up and down my spine, and I shivered. Then the taste and scent were both gone.
“Do you know me?” she asked. “I’m famous.”
I squinted at her for a moment. Then I made an effort of will and vanished from the bottom of the grave, reappearing beside the child. I was facing the wrong direction again, and I sighed as I turned to face her and then glanced around me. In Graceland there’s a statue of a small girl, a child known as Inez. It’s been there for going on two centuries, and every few years stories circulate about how the statue will go missing—and how visitors to the graveyard have reported encounters with a little girl in a period dress.
The statue was gone from its case.
“You’re Inez,” I said. “Famous ghost of Graceland.”
The little girl laughed and clapped her hands. “I have been called so.”
“I heard they debunked you a couple of years ago. That the statue was just there as advertising for some sculptor or something.”
She opened the parasol again and put it over a shoulder, spinning it idly. “Goodness. People confused about things that happened hundreds of years before they were born. Who would have imagined.” She looked me up and down and said, “I like your coat.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I like your parasol.”
She beamed. “You’re so courteous. Sometimes I think I shall never again meet anyone who is properly polite.” She looked at me intently and then said, “I think . . . you shall be”—she pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and nodded slowly—“a monster.”
I frowned. “What?”
“All newborn things become something,” said Inez.
“I’m not a newborn.”
“But you are,” she said. She nodded down at my grave. “You have entered a new world. Your old life is no more. You cannot be a part of it any longer. The wide universe stretches before you.” She looked around the cemetery calmly. “I have seen many, many newborns, Mr. Dresden. And I can see what they are going to become. You, young shade, are quite simply a monster.”
“Am not,” I said.
“Not at the moment, perhaps,” she said. “But . . . as time goes by, as those you care about grow old and pass on, as you stand helpless while greater events unfold . . . you will be. Patience.”
“You’re wrong.”
Her dimples deepened. “Why are you so upset, young shade? I really don’t see anything wrong with being a monster.”
“I do,” I said. “The monster part?”
“Oh,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Don’t be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. Do you know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways.” Her eyes became distant. “There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.”
“Monsters hurt people. I don’t.”
Inez burst out in girlish giggles. She turned in a circle, parasol whirling, and in a singsong voice said, “Harry Dresden, hung upon a tree. Afraid to embrace his des-tin-y.” She looked me up and down again, her eyes dancing, and nodded firmly. “Monster. They’ll write books about you.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t know what to say.
“This little world is so small,” she continued. “So dull. So dreary.” She gave me a warm smile. “You aren’t shackled here, Mr. Dresden. Why remain?”
I shivered. A cold feeling swelled up in the pit of my stomach. It began to spread. I said nothing.
“Ahh,” Inez murmured—a sound of satisfaction. Her eyes went to my gravestone and she tilted her head to one side. “Did you?” she asked brightly.
I shook my head. “Did I what?”
“Did you die doing the right thing?”
I thought about it for a moment. And for a moment more. Then I said, quietly, “I . . . No. I didn’t.”
She tilted her head the other way. “Oh?”
“They had . . . a little girl,” I said quietly. It took me a moment to realize that I was speaking the words out loud and not just hearing them in my head. “They were going to hurt her. And I pulled out all the stops. To get her back. I . . .”
I suddenly felt sick again. My mind flashed back to the image of Susan’s death as her body fought to change into a monstrous form, locking her away forever as a prisoner of her own blood thirst. I felt her fever-hot skin beneath my lips where I had kissed her forehead. And I felt her blood spray as I cut her throat, triggering the spell that wiped out every murdering Red Court son of a bitch on the same planet with my little girl.
It had been the only way. I had no choice.
Didn’t I?
Maybe not at that point. But it was the choices I’d made up until that moment that had shaped the event. I could have done things differently. It might have changed everything. It might have saved Susan’s life.
I shuddered as another memory struck me. Complete, lifeless numbness in my legs. Aching pains of the body. The helpless fury I’d felt when I realized that a fall from a ladder had broken my spine—that I was paralyzed and helpless to do anything for my daughter. I remembered realizing that I was going to have to do something I would never have considered before that point.
“I crossed a line,” I said quietly. “Lines, plural. I did things I shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t right. And I knew it. But . . . I wanted to help the little girl. And I . . .”
“Sinned?” she suggested, her large eyes eerily serene. “Chose the left-hand path? Fell from grace? Cast the world into madness?”
“Whatever,” I said.
“And you think you aren’t a monster.” Calmly, she folded the parasol again and trailed its tip in the snow, humming a quiet little song.
