But a monitoring spell wouldn’t be the kind of thing that could lie dormant. It had to actually be “looking” around all the time. That meant a constant, modest expenditure of energy, which would in turn be exposed and vulnerable to sunrise. Land mine–type spells were a lot easier, like my protective spells, only with more kaboom in them. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t find any of those outside the hideout. Few people would host a picnic underneath the overpass, but it was Chicago, and all sorts of folks would be through this area during the day. Random people being horribly incinerated would certainly draw the attention of the local authorities, and possibly that of the White Council. The Grey Ghost didn’t seem to be an idiot. No death traps were left lying around where some schoolkid or bum might stumble into them.
I wouldn’t have set up like that, either. It made far more sense for such sentry spells to be laid down underground, deep enough for the steady presence of the earth to shield the spell energy from disruption.
The Grey Ghost was smart. Things would get interesting about fifteen or twenty feet down.
I finished my last circuit of the site and moved to the door. I reached out a hand and stopped with my palm about an inch away from the metal. I sensed something subtle but there, like the attractive field around an old, weak magnet. I frowned and focused on it, finding a spell of a composition unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
It was something subliminal, sending out a kind of beckoning energy that I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been specifically looking for something like it. It would otherwise have been buried in the background energy of the city and its inhabitants. I stretched out a hand to touch the stream of energy flowing steadily outward. It oozed over the surface of my skin, a crawling sensation that made me shudder.
It’s smarter not to play around with unfamiliar magic. Besides, I had other things to do. I lowered my hand and stepped toward the source of the music I’d begun hearing in my head at some point. There was little sense wasting more time up on the surface. And I hadn’t heard that song in forever, but I could still sing along. I started humming and—
—and stopped myself with my nose about half an inch from the steel door.
I broke out into a cold sweat.
Hell’s bells. That magic hadn’t been heavy-duty, but it had been puissant. A few seconds after touching it, I had almost walked blindly and mindlessly through the door and into whatever reception was prepared for intruders on the other side. I couldn’t know exactly what was over there without getting a look, but it sure as hell wasn’t a gift basket and a bottle of wine.
I stepped back from the door and the siren spell with what I felt was a properly Darwinian appreciation of the danger it represented. Oh, it might not blow you up like the defensive wards I’d had on my apartment, but a scalpel can open up your arteries just as readily as a sword. In some cases, more so. I shivered and clutched my arms to my belly.
That spell wasn’t the work of a novice or marauding sorcerer experimenting with magic he’d found in the metaphysical section of a bookstore. Whoever had put that thing together had been a true professional, one with centuries of experience.
One who was probably more capable than I when it came to magic.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m hoss. When the spells start flying, mine are some of the flashiest, most violent on the planet. I’m like the Andre the Giant of the supernatural world. I’ve got a lot of power and mass to throw around.
Andre would be a great person to have on your side in a brawl against a rowdy tavern crowd. But in a more focused situation, he would be at the mercy of professionals who, while lacking his raw power, could nonetheless apply their own strength more efficiently and effectively. Murphy was an excellent example of that kind of fighter. She wasn’t much bigger than a bread box, but I’d seen her toss around guys weighing most of three hundred pounds like they were unruly puppies.
If the Grey Ghost was responsible for that spell, then I was lucky to have survived our first meeting. The smart move would be to scamper. If it came to a fair fight, I might find myself completely outclassed.
I felt a shivering, cold presence on the back of my neck, and turned to find wraiths nearby. They drifted toward the hideout from all directions, coming in a slow, steady procession and moving in perfectly straight lines. The siren spell made sense to me now. It wasn’t a guard spell, though it could certainly have that purpose. It was also a beacon, a dinner bell being rung to signal the mindless horde now approaching.
They never sped up, never slowed. They just kept floating forward until they began to pass through the closed steel door in groups of two and three as they converged upon it.
I pursed my lips, thinking. The Grey Ghost wasn’t killing wraiths. It was using them. For the moment, at least, there wouldn’t be any kind of guard spell on the other side of the door. There couldn’t be, or the Grey Ghost would be slaughtering its own troops and wasting its own investment of time and energy to boot.
I might have an opportunity here. The inbound wraiths would almost certainly be routed by what amounted to a cattle chute. That route would most likely be clear of supernatural booby traps. It might be possible to gain entry, find a vulnerable point along the chute, and then duck out of it to run a quick reconnaissance of the Grey Ghost’s headquarters and find Mort.
It took half an hour for the procession to be complete, and the flow of wraith traffic never let up. I stopped counting them at 450 and swallowed. That wasn’t a herd of wraiths. That was a bloody horde. If one of the wraiths decided it wanted to eat me, it would have to perform a miracle to divide me into enough pieces to feed all of its dinner company.
My veil seemed to have prevented me from being noticed as they approached, but that could just as easily be the effect of the beacon spell. For all I knew, once the beacon shut off, they’d all turn around and come at me like greyhounds leaving the gate. It would require a singularly stupid man to go hang around in narrow tunnels and cramped spaces alongside a threat like that.
“And I, Harry Dresden, am that man,” I stated.
I waited for the last wraith to go in and counted to twenty. My mouth felt dry. Fear boiled in my belly and made my knees feel unsteady. My fingers trembled.
I told them all that they were just preconceived residual memories anyway and that I would tolerate no guff from them.
Then I ground my teeth and followed the horde.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I slipped through the steel door and into the blackness on the other side. I ignored the darkness until it went away, and then began to move stealthily forward.
I stopped with the Scooby-Doo action a couple of feet later and just started walking. I mean, honestly, sneaking. It wasn’t as though I could step on a twig or accidentally kick an old can and make a sound, right? Being a ghost, the problem wasn’t being sneaky—it was getting noticed in the first place.
Besides. Nobody who was concerned about detecting my presence would be using their ears to sense me coming.
I began extending my wizard’s senses out in front of me.
When I say wizard senses, I mean it in a similar fashion to spider sense. Spidey’s enhanced senses detect when he’s in danger and warn him that he’s got incoming. A wizard’s senses don’t do that (though I suppose with enough work, someone could come close). What they do sense is the presence of magic, in both its natural state and its worked forms. You don’t have to be concentrating to make it happen—it’s natural in every practitioner.