Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

call to him got another reaction. He licked his lips, turned away quickly, and said, “Thought I heard something, that’s all. It’s nothing. Come on.”

Interestinger and interestinger. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my duster and paced along beside Fitz, studying him.

He was maybe an inch under six feet tall, but taller than all the others with him. He couldn’t have been seventeen, but his eyes were decades older. He must have been surviving on his own for a while to have had so much composure at his age. And he’d known at least a little about the way a practitioner could use blood to send all kinds of mischief and mayhem at his enemies.

He had scars at the corner of his left eye, like a boxer—except boxers collected them on both eyes, and they were spread out, scattered around. These were all in a relatively tiny space. Someone right-handed had punched him in the same spot irregularly, repeatedly. I’d seen Fitz’s speed. He hadn’t tried to get out of the way.

Hell’s bells. We’d just been hit by Oliver Twist.

It took Fitz and the gang about five minutes to make it to what had once been a shop floor. It was open to the thirty-foot ceiling. There were skylights—translucent panels on the roof, really—and the place looked like something out of an apocalypse movie.

Equipment sat neglected everywhere. The motorized assembly line was still. Cobwebs stretched out, covering everything, coated in dust. Empty racks and shelves gave no clue as to what was made there, but several steel half barrels were scattered around an open area halfway down the shop floor. They had been filled with flammable scraps, mostly doors, trim, and shelves that must have been scavenged from other parts of the building. Ragged old sleeping bags were scattered among the fire sources, along with trash sacks of what I guessed were meager personal belongings.

One of the low barrels had a metal grate over it—a makeshift grill. There was a man crouched over it. He was thin, practically skeletal, and wore only a pair of close-fitting jeans. His skin was pasty and white. His smooth head was covered with crude-looking tattoos—symbols of protection and concealment from multiple traditions of magical practice, completely encircling his skull. He needed to shave. His patchy beard was growing out in uneven lumps of brown and black and grey.

There were several cans of beans and chili sitting on the grill, presumably being prepared for Fitz’s gang, who looked painfully interested in them. The bald man didn’t give any indication that he knew Fitz had arrived until the group had been standing silently for a full five minutes. Then he asked, “Is it done?”

“No,” Fitz said.

“And where are the guns?”

“We had to ditch them.”

The bald man’s shoulders clenched, suddenly stiff. “Excuse me?”

Fitz lifted a hand to touch his fingertips to his left eye, a gesture that struck me as unconscious, instinctive. He lowered it again quickly.

“There was an accident. The police were coming. We had to walk out and we couldn’t carry the guns with us.”

The bald man stood up and turned to face Fitz. His eyes were dark, deep-set, and burning. “You lost. The guns. The guns I paid so much for.”

“The guns were already lost,” Fitz said, his eyes on the floor. “There wasn’t any sense in all of us going to jail, too.”

The bald man’s eyes blazed and a scream exploded from his chest. There was a horrible, rushing, bass-thrumming sound in the air, and an invisible force struck Fitz full in the chest, knocking him back ten feet before he hit the concrete floor and tumbled another ten.

“Sense?!” the bald man screamed. “Sense? You don’t have any sense! Do you know what the consequences of your idiocy could be? Do you know how many groups precisely like this one have been wiped out by the Fomor? By the Rag Lady? Idiot!”

Fitz lay on the floor, body curled defensively, and didn’t even try to lift his head. He was staying down, hoping not to provoke Baldy any further, his expression resigned to the fact that he was probably going to suffer more pain in short order—and that there was nothing he could do about it.

“It was simple!” Baldy continued, stalking toward the young man. “I gave you a task that men with their veins and noses full of drugs execute routinely. And it proved too great a challenge? Is that what you are telling me?”

Fitz’s voice was too steady to be