Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

fundamental it made me want to run away screaming filled the room.

And besides. Elaine only sat like that when she was making a statement—generally, a sarcastic one.

I still remembered it, plain as day.

Justin appeared in the kitchen doorway, on the other side of Elaine, and stood there for a moment, looking at me, his expression calm.

“You skipped class again.” He sighed. “I probably should have seen that coming.”

“What’s going on here?” I demanded, my voice high and squeaky with fear. “What have you done?”

Justin walked to the couch to stand over Elaine. Both of them stared at me for a long moment. I couldn’t read their expressions at all. “I’m making plans, Harry,” he said in a steady, quiet voice. “I need people I can trust.”

“Trust?” I asked. His words didn’t make sense. I couldn’t see how they applied to the current situation. I couldn’t see how they would make sense at all. I looked from Elaine back to Justin again, searching for some kind of explanation. Their expressions gave me nothing. That was when my eyes fell to the coffee table and to the object lying quietly next to my well-mauled paperback copy of The Hobbit.

A straitjacket.

There was something quietly, calmly sinister in the congruence. I just stared for a moment, and the bottom fell out of my stomach as I finally realized, for the first, awful time, what my instinct had been screaming at me: I was in danger. That my rescuer, teacher, my guardian meant to do me harm.

Tears blurred my vision as I asked him, in a very quiet, very confused voice, “Why?”

Justin remained calm. “You don’t have the knowledge you need to understand, boy. Not yet. But you will in time.”

“Y-you can’t do this,” I whispered. “N-not you. You saved me. You saved us.”

“And I still am,” Justin said. “Sit down next to Elaine, Harry.”

From the couch, Elaine said in a quiet, dreamy monotone, “Sit down next to me, Harry.”

I stared at her in shock and took a step back. “Elaine . . .”

Justin threw kinetomancy at me when I looked away.

Some instinct warned me in the last fraction of a second, but instead of trying to block the strike, I moved with it, toward the front picture window, weaving my own spell as I went. Instead of interposing my shield, I spread it wide in front of me like a sail, catching the force of Justin’s blast and harnessing it.

Me, my shield, Justin’s energy, and that picture window exploded onto the front lawn. I remembered the enormous sound of the shattering glass and wood, and the hot sting of a dozen tiny cuts from bits of flying glass and wood. I remember being furious and terrified.

I went through the open space where the window had been, fell onto the lawn, took it in a roll, and came up sprinting.

“Boy!” Justin said, projecting his voice loudly. I looked over my shoulder at him as I ran. His eyes were more coldly furious than I had ever seen them. “You are here with me—with Elaine. Or you are nowhere. If you don’t come back right now, you are dead to me.”

I lopped the last two words off the sentence to get his real meaning and poured on more speed. If I stayed, he meant to render me helpless, and from that beginning there could be no good endings. If I went back angry, I could fight him, but I couldn’t win—not against the man who taught me everything I knew. I couldn’t call the cops and tell them Justin was a mad wizard—they’d write me off as a nutcase or prankster without thinking twice. It wasn’t like I could run to Oz and ask a more powerful wizard for help.

He’d never told me about the White Council or the rest of the supernatural world. Abusers like to isolate their victims. People who feel that they are completely alone tend not to fight back.

“Boy!” Justin’s voice roared, now openly filled with rage. “Boy!”

He didn’t need to say anything more. That rage said it all. The man who had given me a home was going to kill me.

It hurt so much, I wondered if he already had.

I put my head down and ran faster, my tears making the world a blur, with only one thought burning in my head:

This wasn’t over. I knew that Justin could find me, no matter where I ran, no matter how well I hid. I hadn’t escaped that straitjacket. I had only delayed