Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

experience and the memory of his strength, but the ectomancer was still tied up. And besides, Sir Stuart was in the same condition I was, only worse.

All of us were helpless to act on the physical world.

If I’d still had the Lecters, I could have ordered one of them to manifest and free Morty, which I maybe should have chanced a few minutes ago. Hindsight was blinding in its clarity. It was too late for that now—Corpsetaker had taken the Lecters out of the picture, and without the mad spirits’ ability to manifest in the physical world . . .

My thoughts sped to quicksilver flickering. Frantic memory hit me like a hammer.

“Hell’s bells. Every time I’ve run into a ghost, it’s tried to rip my lungs out! You’re telling me none of your spooks can do something?”

“They’re sane,” Mort shouted back. “It’s crazy for a ghost to interact with the physical world. Sane ghosts don’t go around acting crazy!”

For a ghost, manifesting in the material world was an act of madness—a memory trying to enforce its will on the living, the past struggling to steer the course of the present. It was, according to everything I had learned about magic and life, an inversion of the laws of nature, a defiance of the natural order.

Ghosts who weren’t supermighty manifested all the time. It wasn’t a question of raw power, and it never had been—it was a matter of desire. You just had to be crazy enough to make it happen. That was what the Corpsetaker had gotten from devouring the Lecters. Not sufficient power, but sufficient insanity. She just had to be crazy enough to make it happen.

For a wizard running around as a lost soul, expending his very essence in an attempt to rescue a guy who hadn’t even really been his friend was definitely of questionable rationality. Grabbing the leashes of several dozen maniac ghosts and leading them on a banzai charge against a far stronger foe was probably less than stable, too. Hell, even the last few major choices of my life—murdering Susan in order to save our child, giving myself to Mab so that I could save little Maggie—were not the acts of a stable, sane man. Neither had been my entire career, really, given the options that had been available to me. I mean, I don’t mean to brag, but I could have used my abilities to make money if I’d wanted to. A lot of money.

Instead? A little basement apartment. A job catering to clientele who hadn’t merely needed help—they’d needed a miracle. Money? Not much. The occasional good deed, sure, but you can’t eat sincere thanks. Girls don’t flock to the guy who drives the old car, reads a lot of books, and kicks down the doors of living nightmares. My own people in the White Council had persecuted me my whole life, mostly for trying to do the right thing. And I’d kept on doing it anyway.

Hell. I was pretty much crazy already.

That being the case . . . how hard could it be?

It would take a certain amount of energy, I was sure. Maybe everything I had left. It wouldn’t get me any closer to the answers I wanted. It wouldn’t let me find out who had murdered me. It might destroy me altogether. Heck, for that matter, if it took too much power to pull off, it could snuff me here and now.

But the alternative? Watching Morty die?

Not going to happen. I’d face oblivion first.

I gripped the wooden grain of my staff, recalling the feelings that had surged through me when I had summoned and bound the Lecters. I called on my memories one more time. I called up the ache of sore muscles after a hard workout, and the sheer physical joy of my body in motion during a run, walking down the street, sinking into a hot bath, swimming through cool water, stroking over the softness of another body beside mine. I thought of my favorite old T-shirt, a plain, black cotton one with 98% CHIMPANZEE written on the chest in white typeset letters. I thought of the creak of my old leather cowboy boots, the comfort of a good pair of jeans. The scent of a wood-smoked grill drifting into my nose when I was hungry, the way my mouth would water and my stomach would growl. I thought of my old Mickey Mouse alarm clock going off too early in the morning, and groaning out of