Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

bless his angelic heart, closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep, calming breath. “Collin . . .” he said, in a reproving, parental tone.

“I might have mentioned something about it,” Jack said. “Sure. Guy’s got a lot of friends. Friends are running around fighting monsters. I figure at least three of them are going to get hurt if he isn’t there to back them up. Seemed reasonable.”

“Collin,” Uriel said, his voice touched with an ocean of disappointment and a teaspoon of anger. “You lied.”

“I speculated,” Captain Jack replied. “I got him to do the right thing, didn’t I?”

“Collin, our purpose is to defend freedom—not to decide how it should be used.”

“Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done,” Jack said stubbornly. “Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn’t be working here in the first place. Now, would I?”

And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.

I couldn’t help it. I let out a rolling belly laugh. “I just got suckered into doing this by . . . Stars and stones, you didn’t even know that he . . . Big bad angel boy, and you get the wool pulled over your eyes by . . .” I stopped trying to talk and just laughed.

Uriel eyed the phone, then me, and then tucked the little device away again, clearly nonplussed. “It doesn’t matter how well I believe I know your kind, Harry. They always manage to find some way to try my patience.”

It took me a moment to get the laughter under control, but I did. “Look, Uri, I don’t want to say . . .”

The archangel gave me a look so cold that my words froze in my throat.

“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden,” he said quietly—and he said it exactly right, speaking my Name in a voice of that same absolute power that had so unnerved me before. “Do not attempt to familiarize my name. The part you left off happens to be rather important to who and what I am. Do you understand?”

I didn’t. But as he spoke, I knew—not just suspected, but knew—that this guy could obliterate me, along with the planet I was standing on, with a simple thought. In fact, if what I’d read about archangels was right, Uriel could probably take apart all the planets. Like, all of them. Everywhere.

And I also knew that what I had just done had insulted him.

And . . . and frightened him.

I swallowed. It took me two tries, but I managed to whisper, “Aren’t we just Mr. Sunshine today.”

Uriel blinked. He looked less than certain for a moment. Then he said, “Mr. Sunshine . . . is perfectly acceptable. I suppose.”

I nodded. “Sorry,” I said. “About your name. I didn’t realize it was so, um . . .”

“Intimate,” he said quietly. “Sensitive. Names have tremendous power, Dresden. Yet mortals toss them left and right as though they were toys. It’s like watching infants play with hand grenades sometimes.” The ghost of a smile touched his face as he glanced at me. “Some more so than others. And I forgive you, of course.”

I nodded at him. Then, after a quiet moment, I asked, “What happens now?”

“That’s up to you,” Uriel said. “You can always work for me. I believe you would find it challenging to do so—and I would have considerable use for someone of your talents.”

“For how long?” I asked. “I mean . . . for guys like Captain Jack? Is it forever?”

Uriel smiled. “Collin, like the others, is with me because he is not yet prepared to face what comes next. When he is, he’ll take that step. For now, he is not.”

“When you say what comes next, what do you mean, exactly?”

“The part involving words like forever, eternity, and judgment.”

“Oh,” I said. “What Comes Next.”

“Exactly.”

“So I can stay Between,” I said quietly. “Or I can go get on that train.”

“If you do,” Uriel said, his eyes intent and serious, “then you accept the consequences for all that you have done while alive. When judged, what you have done will be taken into account. Your fate, ultimately, will be determined by your actions in life.”

“You’re saying that if I don’t work for you, I’ll just have to accept what comes?”

“I am saying that you cannot escape the consequences of your choices,” he said.

I frowned at him for a minute. Then I said, “If I get on the train, it might just carry me straight to