"If he's so inept, why speak to him at all?"
"He's probably closer to the spirit world than anyone else in town. Other than me, I mean. I'll send out Bob, too, and see what kind of information he can run down. We're bound to have different contacts."
Michael frowned at me. "I don't trust this business of communing with spirits, Harry. If Father Forthill and the others knew about this familiar of yours—"
"Bob isn't a familiar," I shot back.
"He performs the same function, doesn't he?"
I snorted. "Familiars work for free. I've got to pay Bob."
"Pay him?" he asked, his tone suspicious. "Pay what?"
"Mostly romance novels. Sometimes I splurge on a—"
Michael looked pained. "Harry, I really don't want to know. Isn't there some way that you could work some kind of spell here, instead of relying upon these unholy beings?"
I sighed, and shook my head. "Sorry, Michael. If it was a demon, it would have left footprints, and maybe some kind of psychic trail I could follow. But I'm pretty sure this was pure spirit. And a goddamned strong one."
"Harry," Michael said, voice stern.
"Sorry, I forgot. Ghosts don't usually inhabit a construct—a magical body. They're just energy. They don't leave any physical traces behind—at least none that last for hours at a time. If it was here, I could tell you all kinds of things about it, probably, and work magic on it directly. But it's not here, so—"
Michael sighed. "Very well. I will put out the word to those I know to be on the lookout for the girl. Lydia, you said her name was?"
"Yeah." I described her to Michael. "And she had a charm on her wrist. The one I'd been wearing the past few nights."
"Would it protect her?" Michael asked.
I shrugged. "From something as mean as this thing sounded … I don't know. We've got to find out who this ghost was when it was alive and shut it down."
"Which still will not tell us who or what is stirring up the spirits of the city." Michael unlocked his truck, and we got inside.
"That's what I like about you, Michael. You're always thinking so positively."
He grinned at me. "Faith, Harry. God has a way of seeing to it that things fall into place."
He started driving, and I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. First off to see the psychic. Then to send Bob out to find out more about what looked to be the most dangerous ghost I'd seen in a long time. And then to keep on looking for whoever it was behind all the spooky goings-on and to rap them politely on the head until they stopped. Easy as one, two, three. Sure.
I whimpered, sunk down in my seat a little more, and wished that I had kept my aching, sore self in bed.
Chapter Ten
Mortimer Lindquist had tried to give his house that gothic feel. Greyish gargoyles stood at the corners of his roof. Black iron gates glowered at the front of his house and statuary lined the walk to his front door. Long grass had overgrown his yard. If his house hadn't been a red-roofed, white-walled stucco transplant from somewhere in southern California, it might have worked.
The results looked more like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland than an ominous abode of a speaker to the dead. The black iron gates stood surrounded by plain chain-link fence. The gargoyles, on closer inspection, proved to be plastic reproductions. The statuary, too, had the rough outlines of plaster, rather than the clean, sweeping profile of marble. You could have plopped a pink flamingo down right in the middle of the unmowed weeds, and it would have somehow matched the decor. But, I supposed, at night, with the right lighting and the right attitude, some people might have believed it.
I shook my head and lifted my hand to rap on the door.
It opened before my knuckles touched it, and a well-rounded set of shoulders below a shining, balding head backed through the doorway, grunting. I stepped to one side. The little man tugged an enormous suitcase out onto the porch, never taking notice of me, his florid face streaked with perspiration.
I sidled into the doorway as he turned to lug the bag out to the gate, muttering to himself under his breath. I shook my head and went on into the house. The door was a business entrance—there was no tingling sensation of crossing the threshold of a dwelling uninvited. The front room reminded me of the house's exterior. Lots of black curtains draped down over the walls and doorways. Red and black candles squatted all over the place. A grinning human skull leered from a bookshelf straining to contain copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica with the lettering scraped off their spines. The skull was plastic, too.
Morty had a table set up in the room, several chairs around it with a high-backed chair at the rear, wood that had actually been carved with a number of monstrous beings. I took a seat in the chair, folded my hands on the table in front of me, and waited.
The little man came back in, wiping at his face with a bandana handkerchief, sweating and panting.
"Shut the door," I said. "We need to talk, Morty."
He squealed and whirled around.
"Y-you," he stammered. "Dresden. What are you doing here?"
I stared at him. "Come in, Morty."
He came closer, but left the door open. In spite of his pudginess, he moved with the nervous energy of a spooked cat. His white business shirt showed stains beneath his arms reaching halfway to his belt. "Look, Dresden. I told you guys before—I get the rules, right? I haven been doing anything you guys talked about."
Aha. The White Council had sent someone to see him. Morty was a professional con. I hadn't planned on getting any honest answers out of him without a lot of effort. Maybe I could play this angle and save myself a lot of work.
"Let me tell you something, Morty. When I come into a place and don't say a thing except, 'Let's talk, and the first thing I hear is 'I didn't do it, it makes me think that the person I'm talking to must have done something. You know what I'm saying?"
His florid face lost several shades of red. "No way, man. Look, I've got nothing to do with what's been going on. Not my fault, none of my business, man."
"With what's been going on," I said. I looked down at my folded hands for a moment, and then back up at him. "What's the suitcase for, Morty? You do something that means you need to leave town for a while?"
He swallowed, thick neck working. "Look, Dresden. Mister Dresden. My sister got sick, see. I'm just going to help her out."
"Sure you are," I said. "That's what you're doing. Going out of town to help your sick sister."
"I swear to God," Morty said, lifting a hand, his face earnest.
I pointed at the chair across from me. "Sit down, Morty."
"I'd like to, but I got a cab coming." He turned toward the door.
"Ventas servitas," I hissed, nice and dramatic, and threw some will at the door. Sudden wind slammed it shut right in front of his eyes. He squeaked, and backed up several paces, staring at the door, then whirling to face me.
I used the remnants of the same spell to push out a chair opposite me. "Sit down, Morty. I've got a few questions. Now, if you cut the crap, you'll make your cab. And, if not …" I left the words hanging. One thing about intimidation is that people can always think up something worse that you could do to them than you can, if you leave their imagination some room to play.
He stared at me, and swallowed again, his jowls jiggling. Then he moved to the chair as though he expected chains to fly out of it and tie him down the moment he sat. He balanced his weight on the very edge of the chair, licked his lips, and watched me, probably trying to figure out the best lies for the questions he expected.