Ghost Story

surrounded me. “Our friend Mortimer is in trouble. And we don’t have much time. . . .”

Chapter Forty-one

The Corpsetaker’s stronghold hadn’t changed.

But it had awakened.

I felt the difference as soon as I approached, and a quick effort to invoke the memory of my Sight brought the changes into sharp, clear view. A column of lurid light, all shades of purple and scarlet, rose into the night sky over the entrance to the stronghold. I could see the magical energy involved, my gaze piercing the ground as if it had been slightly cloudy water. There, beneath the ground, where I had seen them on the stairs and in the tunnels, were formulas of deadly power, full of terrible energy, now awakened and burning bright.

All of that shoddy, nonsensical, quasimagical script hadn’t been anything of the sort. Or, rather, it had been only apparent nonsense. The true formulas, strongly burning wards built on almost the same theory and system I had once used to protect my own home, had been concealed within the overt insanity.

“Right in front of me and I missed it,” I breathed.

I should have known better. The Corpsetaker had once been part of the White Council, sometime back before the French and Indian War. We’d gone to the same school, even if we’d graduated in very different years. Not only that, but she was getting assistance from a being that had been created from part of my own personal arcane assistant. Evil Bob had probably given her similar advice on constructing wards.

Wards weren’t like a lot of other magic. They were based on a threshold, the envelope of energy around a home. Granted, the loonies currently inhabiting the tunnels were hair-on-fire bonkers, but they were still human, and they still had the same need for a home that everyone else did. Thresholds don’t care about sunrise, not when a living, breathing mortal fuels them every moment, just by living within them. Build a spell onto a threshold and it doesn’t easily diminish. As a result, you can slowly, over time, pump more and more and more energy into spells based upon it.

The Corpsetaker hadn’t needed access to a wizard-level talented body to create the wards. She’d just used tiny talents regularly over months and months, and built up the wards to major-league defenses a little at a time, preparing for the night when she would need them.

Obviously, she’d decided that since she was torturing a world-class ectomancer in order to make her big comeback from beyond the grave, tonight was a great night not to be interrupted.

“I hate fighting competent people,” I growled. “I just hate it.”

“Formidable defenses,” said a quiet voice behind me.

I looked over my right shoulder. Sir Stuart studied the wards as well. He’d become a tiny bit more solid- looking, and there was distant, distracted interest in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “Got any ideas?”

“Mortal magic,” he replied. “Beyond our reach.”

“I know that,” I replied grumpily. “But we’ve got to get in.” I looked around at the crew of lunatic ghosts I’d mentally dubbed the Lecter Specters. “What about those guys? Breaking the rules is kind of what they do. Are they crazy enough to get in?”

“Threshold. Inviolable.”

Which again made sense. I’d gotten into the fortress the night before because the door had been open and the ghost-summoning spell had essentially been a big old welcome mat, a standing invitation. Clearly, tonight was different. “Well,” I muttered, “nothing worth doing is easy, is it?”

There was no response.

I turned to find that Sir Stuart’s shade had faded out again and his eyes were lost in the middle distance.

“Stu? Hey, Stu.”

He didn’t respond except to face forward again, his expression patient, ready to follow orders.

“Dammit,” I sighed. “Okay, Harry. You’re the big-time wizard. Figure it out by yourself.”

I vanished and reappeared at the doorway. Then I leaned on my staff and studied the active wards. That did me limited good. I knew them. I’d used constructions much like them on my own home. You’d need to throw several tons of bodies at them, literally, to bring them down—which was what had happened to my first-generation wards. Wave after wave of zombies had eventually gotten through.

I mean, go figure. You prepare your home for an assault and you don’t take zombies into consideration. I’d fallen victim to one of the other classic blunders, along with not getting involved in a land war in Asia and never going in against a Sicilian when death was on the line.

My second generation of wards had planned for zombies. So had these. So even if I had zombies, which I didn’t, I wasn’t going to be able to go through them.

“So,” I said. “Don’t go through them. Go around them.”

Yeah, smart guy? How?

“There’s an open Way between the heart of the fortress and the Nevernever,” I said. “That’s like a permanently open door with an all-day invitation, or they wouldn’t need fortifications on the other side. All you have to do is get to it, assault Evil Bob’s defenses and Evil Bob and whatever the Corpsetaker recruited from God only knows what kind of dark hellhole, smash them up, and blast through from the spirit world.”

Well. That plan did have a lot of words like assault and smash and blast in it, which I had to admit was way more my style. One problem, though: I couldn’t open a Way to the Nevernever. Once I was through, I could probably find Evil Bob’s fortress—it would perforce have to be nearby. But, like the mortal-world lair, I couldn’t open the door.

“Other than that, though, it’s genius,” I assured myself.

A direct assault against a fortress that had undoubtedly been designed to defeat direct assaults? Brilliant. Uncomplicated, do-or-die suicidal, and there’s the minor issue that you aren’t capable of actually implementing it. But genius—absolutely.

Gandalf never had this kind of problem.

He had exactly this problem, actually, standing in front of the hidden Dwarf door to Moria. Remember when . . .

I sighed. Sometimes my inner monologue annoys even me.

“Edro, edro,” I muttered. “Open.” I rubbed at the bridge of my nose and ventured, “Mellon.”

Nothing happened. The wards stayed. I guessed the Corpsetaker had never read Tolkien. Tasteless bitch.

“I hate this depending-on-others crap,” I muttered. Then I vanished and reappeared at the head of my horde. “Okay, everybody,” I said. “Huddle up.”

I got a lot of blank looks. Which was probably only reasonable. Most of those spirits predated football.

“Okay,” I said. “Everyone get to where you can see and hear me clearly. Gather in.”

The ghosts understood that. They huddled—in three dimensions. Some crowded around me in a circle on the ground. The rest took to the air and arranged themselves overhead.

“Christ,” I muttered. “It’s like Thunderdome.” I held out my hand, palm up, and closed my eyes for a moment. I called up my most recent memories of Molly, both of her physical appearance and of her evident state of mind. Then I focused on projecting those memories, following my newly developing instincts with the whole ghost routine. When I opened my eyes, a small, three-dimensional image of Molly hovered above the surface of my palm, rotating slowly.

“This young woman is somewhere in Chicago,” I said. “Maybe nearby. We need her help to get to Mort. So, um. Soldier boys, stay here with me. The rest of you guys, go locate her. Appear to her. Tell her that Harry Dresden sent you, and lead her back here. Do not reveal yourselves to anyone else. Harm no one.” I looked around at them. “Okay?”

Before I’d finished the last word, half of the crowd—the crazy half—was gone.

I just hoped that they would listen to me, that my beckoning spell and the mantle of authority Sir Stuart had