Ghost Story

And besides . . . he was my oldest friend.

He listened, his gold brown eyes intent, completely focused on me.

“Wow,” he said when I’d finished. “You are so completely fucked.”

I arched an eyebrow at him and said, “How do you figure?”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, where do I start? How about with the obvious? Uriel.”

“Uriel,” I said. “What?”

“A wizard tied in with a bunch of really elemental sources of power dies, right after signing off on some deals that guarantee he’s about to become a whole Hell of a lot darker—capital letter intended—and there’s this sudden”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“ ‘irregularity’ about his death. He gets sent back to the mortal coil to get involved again. And you think an angel isn’t involved somewhere? Remember. Uriel is the black-ops guy of the archangels. He’s conned the Father of Lies, for crying out loud. You think he wouldn’t scam you?”

“Uh,” I said.

I felt a little thick.

“See?” Bob said. “Your first tiny piece of flesh-free existence, and already you’re lost without me.”

I shook my head. “Look, man, I’m just . . . just a spirit now. This is just, like, paperwork I’m getting filled out before I catch the train to Wherever.”

Bob rolled his eyes again and snorted. “Oh, sure it is. You get sent back here just as the freaking Corpsetaker is setting herself up as Queen of Chicago, getting ready to wipe out the defenders of humanity—such as they are— here in town, and it’s just a coincidence, business as usual.” He sniffed. “They’re totally playing you.”

“They?” I said.

“Think about it,” Bob said. “I mean, stop for a minute and actually think. I know it’s been a while.”

“Winter,” I said. “Snow a foot deep at the end of spring. Queen Mab.”

“Obviously,” Bob said. “She’s here. In Chicago. Somewhere. And because, duh, she’s the Winter Queen, she brought winter with her.” He pursed his lips. “For a few more days anyway.”

Bob was right. Mab might flaunt her power in the face of the oncoming season, but if she didn’t back down, her opposite number, Titania, would come for her—at the height of summer’s power, the solstice, if previous patterns held true.

“Harry, I don’t want to comment about your new girlfriend, but she’s still here six months after you got shot? Seems kind of clingy.”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re saying that Mab and Uriel are in on something. Together. The Queen of Air and Darkness, and a flipping archangel.”

“We live in strange times,” Bob said philosophically. “They’re peers, of a sort, Harry. Hey, word is that even the Almighty and Lucifer worked a deal on Job. Spider-Man has teamed up with the Sandman before. Luke and Vader did the Emperor. It happens.”

“Spider-Man is pretend and doesn’t count,” I said.

“You start drawing distinctions like this now?” Bob asked. “Besides, he’s real. Like, somewhere.”

I blinked. “Um. What?”

“You think your universe is the only universe? Harry, come on. Creation, totally freaking huge. Room enough for you and Spider-Man both.” He spread his hands. “Look, I’m not a faith guy. I don’t know what happens on the other side, or if you wind up going to a Heaven or Hell or something reasonably close to them. That isn’t my bag. But I know a shell game when I see one.”

I swallowed and pushed a hand back through my hair. “The Fomor’s servitors. Corpsetaker and her gang. Even Aristedes and his little crew. They’re pieces on the board.”

“Just like you,” Bob agreed cheerfully. “Notice anyone else who pushed you a space or two recently? By which I mean that you only recently noticed.”

I scowled. “Other than everyone around me?”

“I was sort of thinking about the one behind you,” Bob said. His expression grew suddenly serious. “The Walker.”

I took a slow breath. He Who Walks Behind.

It was only now, looking back at my crystalline memories and applying what I’d learned during my adult lifetime since they happened, that I could really appreciate what had gone on that night.

The Walker had never been trying to kill me. If it had wanted to do that, it didn’t need to play with me. It could simply have appeared and executed me, the way it had poor Stan at the gas station. It had been trying to push me, to shape me into something dangerous—like maybe a weapon.

Like maybe the same way Justin had.

I had always assumed that Justin had controlled He Who Walks Behind, that my old master had sent him after me when I fled. But what if I’d been a flipping idiot? What if their relationship had worked the other way around? What if Justin, who had betrayed me, had similarly been backstabbed by his own inhuman mentor, when the creature had, in essence, prepared me to destroy Justin?

“Lotta really scary symmetry there,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Bob said, still serious. “You are in a scary place, Harry.” He took a deep breath. “And . . . it gets worse.”

“Worse? How?”

“It’s just a theory,” he said, “because this isn’t my bag. But look. There’s flesh and there’s spirit, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Mortals have both, right there together, along with the soul.”

“I thought it was the same thing. Soul, spirit.”

“Um,” Bob said. “Complicated. Think of your spirit-self as a seed. Your soul is the earth it grows in. You need both when you die. The way I’ve heard it . . . they sort of blend together to become something new. It’s a caterpillar-butterfly thing.”

“Okay,” I said. “How does that make it worse?”

“You, here, now, aren’t a spirit,” Bob said. “You aren’t a real ghost. You . . . You’re just running around in your freaking soul, man. I mean, for practical purposes, it’s the same thing, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But if something happens to you here, now . . . it’s for keeps. I mean . . . forever. You could capital-E End, man. Spin right off the wheel altogether. Or worse.”

I swallowed. I mean, I realized that I’d been in a serious situation all the way down the line, but not one that could potentially be described using words like eternal. Joy.

Bob shook his head. “I didn’t think it was possible for them to do that to you. According to what I’ve heard, your soul’s your own. I’d have thought you would have to walk into something like this willingly, but . . .”

I held up the heel of my hand and butted my forehead against it in steady rhythm.

“Oh, Harry,” Bob said, his voice profoundly disappointed. “You didn’t.”

“They didn’t explain it exactly the way you did,” I said. “Not in so many words.”

“But they gave you a choice?”

Captain Murphy had done exactly that. It had been phrased in such a way that I hadn’t really had much of a choice, but I’d had a choice. “Yeah.”

“And you chose to hazard your eternal soul? Even though you get all worked up about that sort of thing.”

“It . . . wasn’t phrased quite like that . . .” I began. Only it really had been. Jack had warned me that I might be trapped forever, hadn’t he? “Or . . . well. Um. Yeah. I guess technically I did.”

“Well,” Bob said. He cleared his throat. “You idiot.”

“Argh,” I said. “My head hurts.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Bob said scornfully. “You just think it should.”

I paused and reflected and saw that Bob was right. And I decided that my head hurt anyway, dammit. Just because I was a spirit or a naked soul or whatever didn’t mean I needed to start ignoring who I had been.

“Bob,” I said, lifting my head suddenly. “What does this mean? I mean, why not just let me die and move along like normal?”