Ghost Story by Jim Butcher Page B

wounded flank. I could tell it hurt him, but he still wore the smile the laugh had brought on. “It usually takes them longer to recognize that fact,” he said. “You’re right, of course. And there will be times when you feel like you have no control whatsoever over such things.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked, feeling somewhat exasperated.
    Sir Stuart wasn’t rattled by my tone. “It’s something every new shade goes through. It will pass.”
    â€œHuh,” I said. I thought about it for a minute and said, “Well. It beats the hell out of acne.”
    From the front seat, Mort let out an explosive little snicker.
    Stars and stones, I hate being the new guy.

Chapter Eight
    M urphy inherited her house from her grandmother, and it was at least a century old. Grandma Murphy had been a notorious rose gardener. Murphy didn’t have a green thumb herself. She hired a service to take care of her grandmother’s legacy. The flower garden in front would have fit a house four times as large, but it was a withered, dreary little place when covered in heavy snow. Bare, thorny branches, trimmed the previous fall, stood up from the blanket of white in skeletal silence.
    The house itself was a compact colonial, single story, square, solid, and neat-looking. It had been built in a day when a ten-by-ten bedroom was considered a master suite, and when beds were routinely used by several children at a time. Murphy had upgraded it with vinyl siding, new windows, and a layer of modern insulation when she moved in, and the little house looked as if it could last another hundred years, no problem.
    There was a sleek, expensive, black town car parked on the street outside Murphy’s home, its tires on the curbside resting in several inches of snow. It couldn’t have looked more out of place in the middle-class neighborhood if it had been a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade float, complete with prancing leprechauns.
    Sir Stuart looked at me and then out at our surroundings, frowning. “What is it, Dresden?”
    â€œThat car shouldn’t be there,” I said.
    Mort glanced at me and I pointed out the black town car. He studied it for a moment before he said, “Yeah. Kind of odd on a block like this.”
    â€œWhy?” asked Sir Stuart. “It is an automatic coach, is it not?”
    â€œAn expensive one,” I said. “You don’t park those on the street in weather like this. The salt-and-plow truck comes by, and you’re looking at damage to the finish and paint. Keep going by, Morty. Circle the block.”
    â€œYeah, yeah,” Mort said, his tone annoyed. “I’m not an idiot.”
    â€œStay with him,” I told Sir Stuart.
    Then I took a deep breath, remembered that I was an incorporeal spirit, and put my feet down through the floorboards of the car. I dug in my heels on the snowy street as the solid matter of the vehicle passed through me in a cloud of uncomfortable tingles. I’d meant to simply remain behind, standing, when the car had passed completely through me. I hadn’t thought about things like momentum and velocity, and instead I went into a tumble that ended with me making a whump sound as I hit a soft snowbank beside the home next to Murphy’s. It hurt, and I pushed myself out of the snowbank, my teeth chattering, my body blanketed in cold.
    â€œN-n-no, H-Harry,” I told myself firmly, squeezing my eyes shut. “Th-that’s an illusion. Your mind created it to match what it knows. But you didn’t hit the snowbank. You can’t. And you can’t be covered in snow. And therefore you can’t be wet and cold.”
    I focused on the words, putting my will behind them, in the same way I would have to attract the attention of a ghost or spirit. I opened my eyes.
    The snow clinging to my body and clothes was gone. I was standing, dry and wrapped in my leather duster, beside the snowbank.
    â€œOkay,”