Ghost Story

who killed you.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re kidding.”

He stared at me, his expression as jovial as a mountain crag.

I rolled my eyes. “You want me to solve my own murder?”

He shrugged. “You want a job here instead, I can set you up.”

“Augh,” I said, shuddering again. “No.”

“Okay,” he said. “Any questions?”

“Uh,” I said. “What do you mean when you say you’re sending me back? I mean . . . back to my body or . . . ?”

“Nah,” he said. “Isn’t available. Isn’t how it works. You go back as you are.”

I frowned at him and then down at myself. “As a spirit,” I said.

He spread his hands, as if I had just comprehended some vast and weighty truth. “Don’t hang around for sunrise. Watch out for thresholds. You know the drill.”

“Yeah,” I said, disturbed. “But without my body . . .”

“Won’t have much magic. Most people can’t see you, hear you. Won’t be able to touch things.”

I stared at him. “How am I supposed to find anything out like that?” I asked.

Jack lifted both hands. “Kid, I don’t make the law. I make sure it gets observed.” He squinted at me. “Besides. I thought you were a detective.”

I clenched my jaw and glared at him. My glare isn’t bad, but he wasn’t impressed. I exhaled slowly and then said, “Solve my own murder.”

He nodded.

Anger rose from my chest and entered my voice. “I guess it isn’t enough that I spent my adult life trying to help and protect people. There’s something else I have to do before going off to meet Saint Peter.”

Jack shrugged. “Don’t be so certain about that. With your record, son, you might just as easily find yourself on a southbound train.”

“Hell,” I spat. “You know what Hell is, Captain Sparrow? Hell is staring at your daughter and knowing that you’ll never get to touch her again. Never get to speak to her. Never get to help her or protect her. Bring on the lake of fire. It wouldn’t come close.”

“In point of fact,” Jack said calmly, “I do know what Hell is. You aren’t the only dead guy with a daughter, Dresden.”

I sank back into my chair, frowning at him, and then turned my head to stare past him to a simple landscape painting on the wall.

“If it makes any difference,” Jack said, “three of the people you love will come to great harm unless you find your murderer.”

“What do you mean, harm?” I asked.

“Maimed. Changed. Broken.”

“Which three people?” I asked.

“Can’t tell you that,” he said.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I bet you can’t.”

I thought about it. Maybe I was dead, but I was sure as hell not ready to go. I had to make sure the people who’d helped me take on the Red King were taken care of. My apprentice, Molly, had been badly wounded in the battle, but that wasn’t her biggest problem. Now that I was dead, there was nothing standing between her and a summary beheading at the hands of the White Council of Wizards.

And my daughter, little Maggie, was still back there. I’d deprived her of a mother, just as someone else had deprived her of a father. I had to make sure she was taken care of. I needed to tell my grandfather good-bye . . . and Karrin.

God. What had Karrin found when she came back to the boat to pick me up? A giant splatter of blood? My corpse? She was misguided and stubborn enough that I was sure she would blame herself for whatever had happened. She’d tear herself apart. I had to reach her somehow, and I couldn’t do that from this spiritual Siberia.

Could they be the ones the captain was talking about? Or was it someone else?

Dammit.

My self might have felt full of energy and life, but my mind was weary almost beyond measure. Hadn’t I done enough? Hadn’t I helped enough people, rescued enough prisoners, defeated enough monsters? I’d made enemies of some of the deadliest and most evil things on the planet, and fought them time and again. And one of them had killed me for it.

Rest in peace, it says on all those tombstones. I’d fought against the rising tide until it had literally killed me. So where the hell was my rest? My peace?

Three of the people you love will come to great harm unless you find your murderer.

My imagination conjured scenes filled with the anguish of the people I cared most about. Which pretty much settled things. I couldn’t allow something like that to happen.

Besides, there was one more thing that made me certain that I wanted to go back. At the end of the day . . . some son of a bitch had freaking killed me.

That’s not the kind of thing you can just let stand.

And if it would let me get out of this place and let me move on to wherever it was I was supposed to go, that was a nice bonus.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “How does it work?”

He slid a pad and a piece of paper across the desk at me, along with a pencil. “You get to go to an address in Chicago,” he said. “You write it there. Driver will drop you off.”

I took the pad and paper and frowned at it, trying to work out where to go. I mean, it wasn’t like I could show up just anywhere. If I was going in as a pure spirit, it would be futile to contact any of my usual allies. It takes some serious talent to see a spirit that hasn’t manifested itself, the way a ghost can occasionally appear to the physical eye. My friends wouldn’t even know I was there.

“Out of curiosity,” I said, “what happens if I don’t catch the killer?”

His expression turned sober and his voice became quieter. “You’ll be trapped there. Maybe forever. Unable to touch. Unable to speak. Watching things happen in the world, with no ability whatsoever to affect them.”

“Hell,” I said quietly.

“Hell.”

“That’s cheerful.”

“You’re dead, son,” Jack said. “Cheer is contraindicated.”

I nodded.

I was looking at one hell—ba-dump-bump-ching—of a risk. I mean, fitting in here in Chicago-tory might not be fun, but it probably wouldn’t be torture, either. Judging from what Carmichael and Jack had said and from the way they went about their business, they were able to act in some fashion, maybe even do some good. They didn’t look particularly thrilled to be doing what they were doing, but they carried that sense of professional purpose with them.

A ghost trapped on the mortal coil? That would be far worse. Always present, always watching, and always impotent.

I never really developed my Don’t-Get-Involved skills. I’d go crazy in a year, and wind up one more pathetic, insane, trapped spirit haunting the town I’d spent my adult life protecting.

“Screw it,” I said, and started writing on the paper. “If my friends need me, I have to try.”

Jack took the pad back with a nod of what might have been approval. Then he stood up and pulled on his suit coat. Car keys rattled in his hand. He was only medium height, but he moved with a confidence and a tightly leashed energy that once more made him seem familiar, somehow. “Let’s go.”

Several of the cops—because I was sure they were cops, or at least were doing something so similar that the word fit—nodded to Jack as he went by.

“Hey,” called someone from behind us. “Murphy.”

Jack stopped and turned around.