Ghost Story by Jim Butcher Read Free Book Online

rain.
    There was no specific theme to the spirits defending Mort’s house. The appearance of each was eclectic, to such an extent that they looked like the assembled costumed staff from some kind of museum of American history.
    Soldiers in the multicolored uniforms of regulars from the Revolutionary War walked beside buckskin-clad woodsmen, trappers, and Native Americans from the wars preceding the revolution. Farmers from the Civil War era stood with shopkeepers from the turn of the twentieth century. Men in suits, some armed with shotguns, others with tommy guns, moved toward the attack, the bitter divisions of the era of Prohibition apparently forgotten. Doughboys marched with a squad of buffalo soldiers, followed by half a dozen genuine, six-gun-toting cowboys in long canvas coats, and a group of grunts whose uniforms placed them as Vietnam-era U.S. Army infantry.
    â€œHuh,” I said. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day.”
    Sir Stuart drew his gun from his belt as he strode forward, checking the old weapon. “I’ve seen a great many years in this city. Many, many nights. Until recently, I would have agreed with you.”
    I looked back at Sir Stuart’s little army as we reached the front door and passed through it.
    â€œI—glah, dammit, that feels strange—guess that means you’re seeing a pattern.”
    â€œThis is the fifth night running that they’ve come at us,” Sir Stuart replied, as we went out onto the porch. “Stay behind me, Dresden. And well clear of my ax arm.”
    He came to a halt a step later, and I stood behind him a bit and on his left side. Sir Stuart, who had been a giant for his day, was only a couple of inches shorter than me. I had to strain to see over him.
    The street was crowded with silent figures.
    I just stared out at them for a moment, struggling to understand what I was looking at. Out on the road were scores, maybe even a couple of hundred wraiths like the one Sir Stuart had dispatched earlier. They were flabby, somehow hollow and squishy-looking, like balloons that hadn’t been filled with enough gas—sad, frightening humanoid figures, their eyes and mouths gaping too large, too dark, and too empty to seem real. But instead of advancing toward us, they simply stood there in even ranks, leaning forward slightly, their arms held vaguely upward as if yearning toward the house, though their hands seemed limp and devoid of strength, their fingers trailing into shapeless shreds. The horrible sound of hundreds of nearly silent moans of pain emanated from the block of wraiths, along with a slowly building edge of tension.
    â€œTell me, wizard,” Sir Stuart said. “What do you see?”
    â€œA crap-ton of wraiths,” I breathed quietly. “Which I do not know how to fight.” None of them had the deadly, focused look of Sir Stuart and his crew, but there were a lot of them out there. “Something is getting them worked up.”
    â€œAh,” he said. He glanced back over his shoulder at me, his eyes narrowed. “I thought your folk had clear sight.”
    I frowned at him and then out at the small sea of wraiths. I stared and stared, bringing the focus of concentration I’d learned over endless hours of practice in my studies—and suddenly saw them. Dark, slithering shapes, moving up and down the ranks of wraiths at the backs of their lines. They looked vaguely like folk covered in dark, enveloping cloaks and robes, but they glided through the air with a silent, effortless grace that made me think of sharks who had scented blood in the water and were closing in to feed.
    â€œFour . . . five, six of them,” I said. “In the back ranks.”
    â€œGood,” said Sir Stuart, nodding his approval. “That’s the real foe, lad. These poor wraiths are just their dogs.”
    It had been a long, long time since I’d felt quite this lost. “Uh. What