Authors: Jim Butcher

Ghost Story (62 page)

BOOK: Ghost Story

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“Hit her with everything!” Captain Molly snapped.

“Finally,”
growled Tactical Molly, who sat next to Ensign Molly, wearing a gold uniform almost identical to Captain Molly's. She'd been sitting there doing absolutely nothing and looking bored the entire time I'd been there. Now she turned and started jabbing buttons, and cheesy sound effects filled the bridge.

“Minimal damage,” reported Science Molly.

The bridge rocked again and we staggered. One of the panels exploded in a shower of sparks. Some Molly in a red uniform who hadn't spoken crashed limply to the deck.

“Not real,” Ensign Molly said. “Sorry; my bad. Some things you just can't get rid of.”

Damage alarms started wailing. They sounded like a badly distorted version of a young woman screaming.

“Shields have failed, Captain!” Science Molly reported.

And she reached for the Omega Bomb.

“No!” I snapped. “Stop her!”

Captain Molly took one look at me and then leapt at Science Molly. She seized the Omega Bomb. “Stop!” she ordered.

“There is no room for emotion here,” snapped Science Molly. “It's over. This is all you can do to protect them.”

“I gave you an order!” snapped Captain Molly.

“You're letting your fear control you,” replied Science Molly coldly. “This is the only logical way.”

Captain Molly screamed in incoherent rage and slugged Science Molly in the face.

Science Molly screamed back, and swung a fist into Captain Molly's stomach.

Music started playing. Loud. High-pitched. Strident. Most would recognize it.

“Sorry!” Ensign Molly called, cringing.

I hurried forward to grab at the struggling Mollysâand my hands went right through them. Right. I was an observer here. Welcome, sure, but if I wanted to control what was going on, I had to do it the hard way, like Corpsetaker was doing.

I turned to Ensign Molly and said, “Dammit, do something!”

“There's nothing I can do,” she said, her eyes uncertain and full of sadness. “They've been like that ever since they killed you.”

I stared at Molly and felt my mouth fall open.

Time stopped.

The door. The old wooden door.

The cabinet where Molly had kept her suicide device.

I turned toward them.

My godmother's voice echoed in my head.

You are currently freed of the shackles of mortality. Your limited brain no longer impedes access to that record. The only blocks to your memory are those you allow to be.

I remembered the door. The cabinet.

I
remembered
the past.

Sanya had insisted that they keep me on the backboard when they carried me into St. Mary of the Angels, after my apartment burned down. The dark-skinned Knight of the Cross carried me from his minivan and into the church alone, toting the board and my couple of hundred pounds and change on one shoulder, as 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 whoâone 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 storageâparticularly 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 and he asked where you were. Then said he'd come see you.”

I shook my head. “No, I mean . . .” I drew a deep breath. “Kid. I've got to cross a line.”

Molly froze, one hand still extended.

“I'm not getting up off this bed alone,” I said quietly. “It's my only option.”

You run in the circles I do, you get more than a few offers of power. It always comes with a price, usually a hidden one, but you get the offers. I'd had more than a few chances to advance myself, provided I was willing to set aside anything like integrity to do so. I hadn't been.

Not until today.

“Who?” Molly asked simply.

My mouth twitched at one corner. “One is a lot like another,” I said.

She shook her head. “But . . . but if you go over to one of them . . .”

“They'll make me into a monster,” I said quietly. “Sooner or later.”

She wouldn't look at me.

“I can't let that happen,” I said. “For all I know, I could turn into something that would hurt Maggie myself. But maybe I can use them to get her out of danger.”

She inhaled sharply and looked up at me.

“It's got to be Mab,” I said. “She's wicked smart, but she isn't omniscient or infallible. I've swindled faeries before. I can do it again.”

She inhaled sharply. “You're going to be the Winter Knight?” She shook her head. “What if she doesn't? I mean, what if she won't?”

I let out a low chuckle. “Oh, she'll do it. If I go to her, she'll do it. She's been after me long enough.”

“I don't understand,” Molly said. “She'll . . . she'll twist you. Change you. It's what they do.”

I fumbled and put one of my hands on hers. “Molls . . . Whatever happens . . . I'm not going to make it out of this one.”

She stared at me for a minute. Then she shook her head. She shook her head and silent tears fell from her eyes.

“Molly,” I said again, patting her hand. “Kid . . . For everything there is a season.”

“Don't,” she said. “Don't you dare quote the Bible at me. Not to justify this.”

“Bible?” I said. “I was quoting the Byrds.”

She burst out in a huffing sound that was both a laugh and sob.

“Look, Molls. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing. And if I've got to choose between myself and my daughter? That's not even a choice. You know that.”

She bowed her head and wept harder. But I saw her nod. Just a little.

“I need your help,” I said.

She looked up at me, bloodshot eyes a mess.

“I'm going to arrange things. But Mab's going to be wary of me. She knows my history, and if I know what's going on, she'll be able to tell I'm lying to her. I don't have enough of a poker face for that.”

“No,” Molly said, sniffing and briskly swiping at her eyes. “You don't. You still suck at lying, boss.”

“To the people who know me, maybe,” I said, smiling. “Do you understand what I'm asking you to do?”

She bit her lip and said, “Do you? Have you thought what it's going to mean for me once . . . once you're . . .”

“Dead,” I said quietly. “I think Ebenezar or Injun Joe will take over for me, continue your training. They both know how strongly I felt about sheltering you from the Council's judgment.”

She looked suddenly exhausted. She shook her head slightly. “That's not what I meant.”

“Oh,” I said.

Molly had crushed on me since she was a teenager. I hadn't really thought anything of it. I mean, it had been going on for years and . . .

. . . and crushes probably didn't last for years. Did they? They faded. Molly's feelings hadn't, but I didn't reciprocate them. I loved her to pieces, but I was never going to be in love with her.

Especially not if I was dead, I guess.

If our positions had been reversed, that might have been kind of hard for me to accept, too.

I patted her hand again awkwardly and said, “I'm sorry. That I wasn't here longer. That it couldn't be more than it was.”

“You never did anything wrong by me, Harry,” she said. She lifted her chin and met my eyes again. “This isn't about me, though, is it? It's about Maggie.” She nodded, and I saw steel enter her spine. “So of course I'll help you.”

I lifted her fingers to my mouth and put a gentle kiss on them. “You're one hell of a woman, Molly,” I said. “Thank you.”

She shivered. Then she said, “How do you want to do it?”

“Bring me a phone,” I said. “Need to make a call. You stay out of it. It'll be better if you don't know.”

“Okay,” she said. “Then?”

“Then you come back in here. You put me to sleep. You take the memory of this conversation and the phone call out of my head.”

“How?” she asked. “If I leave any obvious holes, it could hurt youâand it might be visible to something as powerful as Mab.”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “I nodded off in the van on the way here. Set it up so that I was never awake once I was here, until I wake up after.”

She thought about it and said, “It could work. If I do it slowly enough, it might not leave a ripple.”

“Do it like that, then.”

She stood up. She walked over to a battered old wooden cabinet on the wall and opened it. Among other things, there was an old, freestanding rotary phone inside it, attached to a long extension cord, a makeshift line that Forthill had run through the drywall from the next room. She brought the phone to me and set it carefully on my chest. Then she walked to the similarly battered old wooden door.

“You realize,” she said, “that I could change this, Harry. Could find out who you were using to kill yourself. I could take it right out of your head and call them off. You'd never know.”

“You could do that,” I said, quietly. “And I feel like an utter bastard for asking this of you, grasshopper. But I don't have anyone else to ask.”

“You should call Thomas,” she said. “He deserves the truth.”

Thomas. My brother. My family. He'd be one of little Maggie's only blood relations once I was gone. And Molly was right. He did deserve the truth.

BOOK: Ghost Story

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