Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

if I’d been a big sack of doggy chow.

Molly had gone ahead of him, worried, speaking rapidly to someone. I wasn’t sure who—one of the priests, I guessed. I hurt everywhere I could feel. And in the places I couldn’t feel, I only wished I could hurt.

My body, from the waist down, had stopped talking to me altogether.

I’d fallen off a ladder while trying to get some of my elderly neighbors out of the burning building and landed on a stone planter. Landed bad, and on my back. I’ve gotten lucky occasionally. This time I hadn’t. I knew what the fall, the point of impact, and the lack of sensation in my lower body meant.

I’d broken my back.

The Red King had my daughter. I was the only one who was going to do anything about it. And I’d fallen and broken my back.

Sanya carried me into the utility room that was mostly used for storage—particularly for storing a battered wizard and his friends when they needed the refuge the church offered. There were a number of folding cots in the room, stored for use. Sanya set me down, rolled out a cot, put some sheets on it, and then placed me on the cot, backboard and all.

“Might as well leave me on the floor,” I told him. “I’m lying on a board either way.”

“Pffft,” Sanya said, his dark, handsome face lighting up with a white grin. “I do not care to clean the floor after you leave. Someone else can do the sheets.”

“Says you,” I said. “You smell like burning hair.”

“Some of it was on fire,” he said cheerfully. His eyes, though, were less jovial. He put a hand on my chest and said, “You are badly hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“You want a drink?” he asked. One hand hovered near his jacket’s breast pocket, where I knew he kept his flask.

“Pass. Maybe I’ll just cope instead.”

He made another disgusted noise and produced said flask, took a swig from it, and winked at me. “I was never clear on the difference. Da?”

Molly appeared in the doorway, and Sanya looked at her.

“He’s on the way,” Molly said. Her voice was strained. Her day hadn’t been as bad as mine, but she still looked shaken.

Sanya offered Molly a pull from the flask. She shook her head. “Very good,” the big Russian said. “I will talk to Forthill, tell him what is happening.”

“Sanya,” Molly said, putting a hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

He gave her a wide grin. “Perhaps it was just a coincidence I arrived when I did.”

Molly rolled her eyes and gave him a faint shove toward the door. It didn’t move the big man, but he went, and Molly flicked on a little lamp and shut the door behind him. She walked over to me and took a couple of KFC wet wipes from her bag. She knelt down next to the cot, opened them, and started cleaning my face.

I closed my eyes and said nothing.

My little girl was going to die.

My little girl was going to die.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

Oh, I’d been defeated before. People had even died because I failed. But those people had never been my own flesh and blood. They hadn’t been my child. I’d lost. I was beaten.

This was all over.

And it was all your fault, Harry.

If I’d been faster. If I’d been smarter. If I’d been strong enough of mind to make the hard choices, to focus on saving Maggie first and everyone else second . . .

But I hadn’t been. I’d been insufficient to the challenge, and she was going to die because of it.

I broke, right there. I just broke. The task given to me had been more than I could bear. And what followed would be nothing but torturous regret. I’d failed my own child.

My chest convulsed, I made a sound, and my eyes filled until I couldn’t see.

Molly sat beside me, patiently cleaning my face and neck with her wipes. I must have had soot on my face. When I could see again, there were large patches of grey and black on the wipes and my face felt cold and tingled slightly.

“I’ve got to help her,” I said quietly.

“Harry, don’t . . . don’t twist the knife in your own wound,” Molly replied. “Right now you need to stay calm and quiet, until Butters can look at you.”

“I wish you hadn’t gotten him involved,” I said.

“I didn’t even ask him,” she said. “I got halfway through the first sentence