Eternal Silence only stared at me. There was an amused quality to its silence.
"I have to go," I said. "Is that all you had for me? Understand my path?"
Silence. It lifted a green-shrouded limb in a gesture of farewell.
The first wraith finished with what was evidently its nightly routine of slogging out of the earth and moaning. Its empty eyes turned toward me and it began to drift my way, immaterial toes dangling down through the snow.
"Screw this," I said, and vanished. One, two, three hops, and I was to the nearest brick wall of the cemetery. I gritted my teeth and plunged into it.
And slammed my face into cold stone.
Pain lanced through my nose, and I snarled at my own stupidity. Dammit, Harry. Dammit, Harry. Walls are built to keep things out-but walls around graveyards are built to keep things Walls are built to keep things out-but walls around graveyards are built to keep things in in. I'd known that since I was a freaking kid.
I checked behind me. The wraiths were drifting after me in a slow, graceful horde, adding members as they went. They weren't fast, but there were dozens and dozens of them. Again I was reminded of documentaries I'd seen showing giant clouds of jellyfish.
I gritted my teeth and thought fast. When walls are built, they are intended as physical barriers. As a result of that intention, invested by dozens or scores of builders, they took on a similar solidity when it came to the spiritual, as well. It's why they held most ghosts inside graveyards-and it probably had something to do with the way a threshold formed around a home, too.
But where human intention had created a barrier, that same intention had also created an access point.
I turned and began vanishing in a line, straight for the gates of the boneyard.
I don't know what I would have done if they had been closed. Shut gates and shut doors carry their own investment of intention, just as the walls do. But open open gates are another matter entirely, and the gates of Graceland stood wide-open. As I went through them, I looked back at what seemed like a modest-sized army of wraiths heading for the opening. gates are another matter entirely, and the gates of Graceland stood wide-open. As I went through them, I looked back at what seemed like a modest-sized army of wraiths heading for the opening.
I had a lightbulb moment.
The gates of the cemetery were being left open.
And hordes of wraiths haunted the streets of Chicago by night lately.
"Aha, Morty," I said. "And now we know where they're coming from."
Someone, someone alive alive, was opening those gates at night. That meant that we had a place to begin, a trail we could attempt to follow to find out who was stirring up the city's spooks to use against Morty-and why.
I had information. I had something to trade Mort for his ongoing help.
I suddenly felt like an investigator again.
"Hot diggity dog," I said, grinning. "The game's a-freaking-foot!"
Chapter Fifteen
I revved up the memory and started jumping. It was a quick way to travel in the city-the ability to go over buildings and ignore traffic signals, one-way streets, and cars was a real plus. It didn't take me long to get to Mortimer's house. revved up the memory and started jumping. It was a quick way to travel in the city-the ability to go over buildings and ignore traffic signals, one-way streets, and cars was a real plus. It didn't take me long to get to Mortimer's house.
It was on fire.
There were fire trucks there, lights blazing. The firemen were moving quickly, professionally, but though the house was well ablaze, they had only one hose up and running. As I stood there, staring, two more started up, but I knew it was a lost cause. Morty's place was burning even more swiftly and brightly than mine had. Or maybe the dark was just making it look that way.
A cop or two showed up as the firemen kept the blaze from spreading to the houses around it-not hard, given the snow on the ground. Blue lights from the bubbles on the cop cars joined the red and yellow of the CFD. People stood around watching the fire-in my experience, they often do.
Of course ... they didn't usually do it out in the cold. And they didn't usually do it in six inches of snow. And they tended to wander off when the fire began to subside. And talk. And blink. And their clothing is generally from the current century.
The crowd of onlooking Chicago civilians were ghosts.
I walked among them, looking at faces. They were much like any other group of folks, apart from the period outfits. I recognized a few from Sir Stuart's home-defense brigade-but only a few, and they were the more recent shades. The rest were just ... people. Men, women, and children.
A boy maybe ten years old was the only shade who seemed to notice me. Beside him stood a girl, who must have been about seven when she died. They were holding hands. He looked up at me as I passed by, and I stopped to stare down at him.
"Where do we go now?" he asked. "I don't know another place to go."
"Um," I said. "I don't know, either. Hey, did you see what happened?"
"It came back again tonight. Then men came with fire. They burned the house. They took the little man away."
I stiffened. "The Grey Ghost took Mort?"
"No, men took him," the boy said.
The girl said, in a soft little voice, "We used to play with other children by the river. But he brought us here. He was always nice to us." Her facial expression never changed. It was flat, empty.
The boy sighed, touched the little girl's shoulder, and turned back to stare at the dwindling flames. I stood there watching them for a moment, and could see them growing more visibly transparent. I checked the other shades. It was happening to them, too, to a greater or lesser degree.
"Hey," I said, to the boy. "Do you know Sir Stuart?"
"The big man. The soldier," the boy said, nodding. "He's in the garden. Behind the house."
"Thank you," I said, and went to look, vanishing to the side of Mort's house and then jumping again, to the garden.
Mort's backyard was like his front-sculpted, carefully maintained, decorated with Japanese sensibilities, spare and elegant. There was what looked like a koi pond, now filled with snow. There were trees, and more of the little bonsai pieces, delicate and somehow vulnerable. The fire had been close enough and hot enough to melt any coating of snow from their little branches.
What was left of Sir Stuart lay in a circle in the snow.
They'd used fire.
A perfect circle was melted in the show, out toward the back of the yard. They'd used gasoline, it looked like-the snow was melted down all the way to the scorched grass. Alcohol burns about three times as hot as gas, and faster, and it melts the snow fast enough for water to drown the flame. Someone had used the fire as part of a circle trap-pretty standard for dealing with spirits and other heavily supernatural entities. Once trapped in a circle, a spirit was effectively helpless; unable to leave, and unable to exercise power through its barrier.
The devilish part of the trap was the fire. Fire's real, even to spirits, and brings pain to the immaterial as fast as it does to flesh-and-blood creatures. That's one huge reason I always used fire in my mortal career. Fire burns, period. Even practically invulnerable things don't like dealing with fire.
There was maybe half of Sir Stuart left. Most of his upper body was there and part of his right arm. His legs were mostly gone. There wasn't any blood. What was left of him looked like a roll of papers rescued from a fire. The edges were blackened and crumbling slowly away.
The horrible part was that I knew he was still alive, or what passed for being alive among ghosts. Otherwise, he would simply be gone.
Did he feel pain? I knew that if I were in his condition, I would. Sure, maybe I knew that there was no spoon, but when it came down to it, I wasn't sure I could deny that much apparent reality. Or maybe the memory of pain wasn't an issue. Maybe the weird form of pain Eternal Silence had showed me had some sort of spiritual analogue. Or maybe, fire being fire, he was just in very real, very familiar agony.
I shuddered. Not that I could do anything about it. The circle that trapped him would keep me out as easily as it kept him in. In theory, I could take it down, but only if I could physically move something across it to break its continuity. I looked around quickly and spotted a twig standing out of the snow a few feet away. All I would need to do was move it about three feet.
It was like trying to eat broth with a fork. I just couldn't get hold of the stick. My hand went through it time and time again, no matter what I tried. I couldn't even get the damned thing to wiggle.
I wasn't ghost enough to help Sir Stuart. Not like that, anyway.
"Sir Stuart?" I asked quietly.
I could see only one of his eyes. It half opened. "Hmmmm?"
I squatted down on my heels next to the circle. "It's Harry Dresden."
"Dresden," he slurred, and his mouth turned up in a faint smile. "Pardon me if I don't rise. Perhaps it was something I ate."
"Of course," I said. "What happened?"
"I was a fool," he said. "Our attacker came at the same time every night. I made the mistake of assuming that was true because it was as soon as the attacker could assemble his forces."
"The Grey Ghost," I said.
Sir Stuart grunted. "Arrived at dusk, sooner than I would have dared the open air. No mob of spirits this time. It came with half a dozen mortals and they set the house on fire. I was able to get Mortimer out of the house in time, but they'd set a trap for me in the backyard." One hand gestured at the circle within which he lay. "He was taken at the command of the Grey Ghost."
I frowned. "These mortals. They could hear the Grey Ghost?"
"Aye," Sir Stuart said.
"Stars and stones," I growled. "I could barely get two people in Chicago to hear me. This joker has half a dozen? How?"
Sir Stuart shook his head faintly. "Would that I knew."
"We'll find Morty," I said. "Let me figure out how to get you out of there, and then we'll go find him."
He opened his eyes fully and focused on me for the first time. "No," he said in a gentle voice. "I won't."
"Come on," I said. "Don't talk like that. We'll get you patched up."
Sir Stuart let out a small laugh. "Nay, wizard. Too much of me has been lost. I've only held together this long so that I could speak to you."
"What happened to our world being mutable in time with our expectations? Isn't that still true?"
"To a degree," Sir Stuart said affably, weakly. "I've been injured before. Small hurts are restored simply enough." He gestured at his broken body. "But this? I'll be like the others when I restore myself."
"The others?"
"The warriors who defended Mortimer's home," he said. "They faded over time. Forgetting, little by little, about their mortal lives."
I thought about the soldiers I'd seen battling the enemy shades and wraiths-silent, severe, seemingly disconnected from the world around them. They'd fought loyally and ably enough. But I was willing to bet that they couldn't remember why they did so or who they were fighting.
I imagined Sir Stuart like the rest of them-a translucent outline, his empty eyes focused on something else entirely. Always faithful. Always silent.
I shivered.
It could happen to me, too.
"Listen to me, boy," Sir Stuart said. "We didn't trust you. We assumed you were mixed up in whatever it is the Grey Ghost wanted."
"Like hell," I said.
"You don't know that," Sir Stuart said flatly. "For all we knew, you could have been directed by that creature without your own knowledge. For that matter, you don't have the feel of a normal ghost. It could have created you whole from the spirit world."
I scowled and began to argue-and couldn't. I've been faced with the odd and unusual and had drawn incorrect conclusions too many times. When people are scared, they don't think straight. Mort had been terrified.
"Do you still think that?" I asked.
"No reason for you to be here if you were," Sir Stuart said. "The worst has happened. Were you a plant, you would not have come. Though I suppose you might still be a dupe."
"Thanks," I said wryly.
He softened the words with another smile. "But dupe or not, it may be that ye can help Mortimer. And it is critical that you do so. Without his influence, this city will be in terrible danger."
"Yeah, you aren't exactly increasing the tension by telling me that," I said. "We're already sort of playing for maximum stakes."
"I know not what you mean," Sir Stuart replied. "But I tell you this: Those shades standing around the house, one and all, are murderers."
I blinked and looked back at the still-smoldering house and at the enormous circle of spirits around it.
"Each and every one of them," Sir Stuart said. "Mortimer gave them something they needed to turn aside from their madness: a home. If you do not restore him to freedom so that he may care for these poor souls, they will kill again. As sure as the sun rises, they won't be able to help themselves." He exhaled wearily and closed his eyes. "Fifty years of maddened shades unleashed upon the city all at once. Preying on mortals. Blood will run in buckets."
I stared at him for a moment. Then I said, "How am I supposed to do that?"
"I've not the foggiest," Sir Stuart replied. He fumbled at his belt and drew that monster pistol. He paused for a moment, grimacing. Then he tossed it weakly at my feet. It tumbled through the circle with a flicker of energies and landed atop the snow without sinking into it-the apparition of a weapon.
I stared for a second. A spirit couldn't project its power across a circle-and I was sure that power was exactly what the gun represented. So if it had crossed the circle's barrier, it meant that it was power that no longer belonged to Sir Stuart. On several levels, what he had just done was a violent act of self-mutilation-like chopping off your own hand.
He gestured weakly toward the gun, and said, "Take it."
I picked it up gingerly. It weighed a ton. "What am I going to do with this?"
"Help Mortimer," he replied. His shape began to flicker and fade at the edges. "I'm sorry. That I couldn't do more. Couldn't teach you more." He opened his eyes again and leaned toward me, his expression intent. "Memories, Dresden. They're power. They're weapons. Make from your memory a weapon against them." His voice lost its strength and his eyes sagged closed. "Three centuries of playing guardian ... but I've failed my trust. Redeem my promise. Please. Help Mortimer."
"Yes," I said quietly. "I will."
That faint smile appeared again, and Sir Stuart nodded once. Then he let out his breath in a sigh. He faded even more, and as I watched, his limbs simply renewed themselves, appearing as his shape became more translucent. The damage reversed itself before my eyes.
A moment later, he sat up. He looked around, his gaze passing right through me. Then he paused and stared at the ruined house, his brow furrowed in puzzled concentration-an expression mirrored on the faces of most of the spirits present.
Sir Stuart was nowhere to be seen in the shade's hollow eyes.