Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

that I would be in time to stop Kemmler’s protégé from taking one of my friends—for keeps.

Chapter Forty-eight

I pounded up the stairs and found that it was getting dark. Dammit. I’d gotten way too used to the upside of ghostliness. I reached up to my neck to find my mother’s pentacle amulet and . . .

. . . and it wasn’t there. Which it should have been. I mean, my actual duster had been destroyed, but the one I was wearing was an exact duplicate. There was no reason my mother’s amulet shouldn’t have been there, but it wasn’t. That was possibly something significant.

But I didn’t have time to worry about it at the moment. Instead, I sent a whisper of will into my staff, and the runes carved in it began to glow with blue-white wizard light, casting their shapes in pure light on the moldy stone walls and floor of the hallway, showing me the way. I didn’t have much magic left in me, but a simple light spell was much, much easier than any kind of violent spell, requiring far less energy.

I ran down the hall, past the filthy sleeping rooms with curtains for doors, and through the break in the wall, to the old electrical-junction room.

A flashlight lay on the floor, spilling light onto a patch of wolf fur from a couple of inches away and otherwise doing nothing to illuminate the scene. I had to brighten the light from my staff to see that Murphy and the wolves were lying in a heap on the floor, next to the unconscious Big Hoods.

The Corpsetaker was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Molly.

I turned in a slow circle, looking for any sign of what had happened, and found nothing.

Feet scraped on rock and I turned swiftly, bringing up my staff, ready to unleash whatever power I had left in me—and found Butters standing halfway down the stairs, looking like a rabbit about to bolt. His face was pale as a sheet behind his glasses, and his dark hair was a wild mess.

“My God,” he breathed. “Dresden?”

“Back for a limited engagement,” I breathed, lowering the staff. “Butters, what happened?”

“I . . . I don’t know. They started shouting something and then they just . . . just collapsed.”

“And you didn’t?” I asked.

“I was out there,” he said, pointing behind him. “You know. Looking out for the police or whatever.”

“Being Eyes, huh?” I said. I turned back to Murphy and the wolves.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. He moved quietly down the stairs. “Are they all right?”

I crouched down over Murphy and felt her neck. Her pulse was strong and steady. Ditto for the nearest of the wolves. “Yeah,” I said, my heart slowing down a little. “I think s—”

Something cold and hard pressed against the back of my head. I looked down.

Murphy’s SIG was missing from its holster.

“Everyone trusts a doctor,” purred Butters, in a tone of voice that Butters would never have used. “Even wizards, Dresden.”

I felt myself tensing. “Corpsetaker.”

“You were able to manifest after all? Intriguing. You’ve a natural gift for darker magic, I think. My master would have snapped you up in an instant.”

I’d spent an afternoon with Murphy working on gun disarms, at Dough Joe’s Hurricane Gym. I tried to remember which way I had to spin to attempt to take the gun away. It depended on how it was being held—and I had no idea how Corpsetaker was holding the weapon on me. I was pretty sure Butters was a lefty, but I didn’t think that would matter to the Corpsetaker once she set up shop. “Oh, boy. I could have hung out with people like you? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have worked out.”

“Possibly not,” Corpsetaker said. “I accorded you far more respect than you merited, as an opponent. How much of you is left behind that body you’ve cobbled together? Scarcely more than one of those pathetic wraiths, I think. You could have made a viable move in time, but clearly you’ve no patience, no head for strategy.”

“Yeah. I guess I’ve still got a soul and a conscience where you installed that stuff.”

“Soul? Conscience?” Corpsetaker said, almost laughing. “Those are nothing but words. They aren’t even true limits—just the figments of them. Useless.”

“Just because something isn’t solid doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” I said. “If you had a brain in your head, you’d know that.”

“You’re obsessed with the fantasies of the young,” she replied with my friend’s breath. “Though I must admit that