Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

wraiths, once they sensed my presence, would be all over me.

Then I’d get what Morty was getting. Except that as a ghost myself, they’d be tearing me into tiny, ectoplasm-soaked shreds. And eating them.

What fun, I thought.

I tried to move steadily, to keep myself calm. I didn’t have any adrenaline anymore to make my hands shake, but they shook anyway. Dammit. I guess even a ghost is still, on some level, fundamentally human. Nothing for it but to keep moving.

Thirty feet.

I passed within a few yards of a lemur who was apparently staring into nothingness—though his eyes were lined up directly with me. Perhaps he was lost in a ghostly memory. He never blinked as I went by.

Twenty-five.

The wraiths wheezed out their starving, strangled howls in the pit a few feet ahead of me.

Twenty.

Why do I keep winding up in these situations? Even after I’m dead?

For the fun, I thought to myself. For the fun, fun, fun-fun, fun.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Then the floor near the Grey Ghost’s feet rippled, and a human skull floated up out of it, its eye sockets burning with a cold blue flame.

The Grey Ghost turned to look at the skull, and something about her body language soured. “What?”

“A Fomor messenger is at the outer perimeter,” the skull said. It sounded creepily like Bob, but there was a complete absence of anything but a vague contempt in its voice. “He bears word from his lord.”

I got the impression that the Grey Ghost tilted her head beneath its hood. “A servitor? Arriving from the Nevernever?”

“The outer perimeter is the Nevernever side, of which I am custodian,” the skull replied. “The inner perimeter is the mortal world. You established that more than a year ago.”

The Grey Ghost made a disgusted sound. “Have a care, spirit. You are not indispensible.” She looked at the suspended Morty and sighed. “Of course the Fomor disturb me with sunrise near. Why must my most important work continually be interrupted?”

The skull inclined itself in a nod of acknowledgment. “Shall I kill him and send back the body, along with a note suggesting that next time they call ahead?”

“No,” snapped the Grey Ghost. “Of course not. Curb your tongue, spirit, lest I tear it out for you.”

“If it pleases you to do so. I am but a servant,” the skull said with another nod. The contempt in its tone held steady, though. “Shall I allow him to pass?”

“And be quick about it,” the Grey Ghost snarled.

“As it pleases you,” the skull replied, speaking noticeably more slowly than a moment before. It vanished into the floor.

I held very, very still. Motion was the hardest thing for a veil to hide, and I suddenly realized that the one-shot, one-kill plan had a serious flaw in it: I had forgotten to account for Evil Bob. The spirit was powerful, intelligent, dangerous—and apparently incapable of anything resembling fear or respect. I suppose that after a few decades of working with Kemmler, the most dangerous necromancer since the fall of the Roman Empire, it was difficult to take a lesser talent seriously.

Not that regular Bob was exactly overflowing with respect and courtesy. Heh. Take that, bad guy.

In any case, I had a chance to find out more about the enemy. You can’t ever get too much dirt on these cloaked lunatics. Frequently, learning more about them exposes some kind of gaping hole in their armor, metaphorical or otherwise. I’ve never had cause to regret knowing more about an enemy before commencing a fight.

Besides. If the Grey Ghost was a part of some kind of partnership, instead of operating alone, I had to know about it. Bad-guy alliances were never good news.

The Grey Ghost stepped away from the pit. In fewer than thirty seconds, the ground rippled again and a man appeared, arising from the ground a bit at a time, as if he were walking up a stairway. The skull came with him, floating along behind, just above the level of his head.

I recognized him at once: the leader of the Fomor servitors who had come after Molly. He was still dressed in the black turtleneck, but had added a weapons belt with a holstered pistol beneath his left hand and a short sword at his right. It was one of those Japanese blades, but shorter than the full katana. Wakazashi, then, or maybe it was a ninja-to. If it was, minus points for carrying it around out in the open like that.

Oh, there was something else odd about him: His