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wanted, little man.” His voice sounded rotted, clotted, like something that hadn’t been alive in a long time. “It is commanded. You can come with me and it won’t hurt. Or you can stay in there and it will.”
    â€œDresden!” Mort called. “What do I do?”
    â€œOh, now you want to talk to me!” I said.
    â€œYou’re the one who knows about this mayhem bullshit!” Mort shrieked.
    â€œGonna count, little man,” said the gunman. “Five.”
    â€œSurviving mayhem is about being prepared!” I shouted back. “Little things like having a gun !”
    â€œI’ll get one in the morning!”
    â€œFour!”
    â€œMort, there’s gotta be something you can do,” I said. “Hell’s bells, every time I’ve run into a ghost it’s tried to rip my lungs out! You’re telling me none of your spooks can do something?”
    â€œThey’re sane ,” Mort shouted back. “It’s crazy for a ghost to interact with the physical world. Sane ghosts don’t go around acting crazy !”
    â€œThree!” chanted the gunman.
    â€œGo away ,” Mort shouted at him.
    â€œThere’s gotta be something I can do!” I yelled.
    â€œI don’t make the rules, okay?” Mort said. “The only way a ghost can manifest is if it’s insane!”
    â€œTwo!” the gunman screamed, his voice rising to an excited pitch.
    I jumped in front of the lunatic and shrieked, “Boo!” I flapped my hands in his face, as if trying to slap him left and right on the cheeks.
    Nothing happened.
    â€œGuess that was too much to hope for, huh?” Mort called lamely.
    â€œOne,” the gunman purred. Then he leaned back and drove a heavy boot at the door. It took him three kicks to crack the frame and send the door flying inward.
    Mort was waiting on the other side of the door, a golf club in hand. He swung it at the gunman’s head without any preamble, a grimly practical motion. The gunman put an arm up, but the wooden head of the club got at least partly around it, and he reeled back a pace.
    â€œThis is your fault , Dresden,” Mort snarled, swinging the club again as he spoke.
    He hit the gunman full-on in the chest, and then again in one big arm. The gunman caught the next blow on his forearm, and swung wildly at Mort. He connected, and Mort got knocked on his can.
    The gunman pressed one hand to a bleeding wound on his head and screamed, a howl of agony that was somehow completely out of proportion with the actual injury. His wild eyes rolled again and he lifted the gun to aim at the little man.
    I moved on instinct, throwing myself uselessly between the weapon and the ectomancer. I tripped on a fragment of the ghost-dust-painted door and wound up falling in a heap on top of Mort and . . .
    . . . sunk into him.
    The world suddenly hit me in full Technicolor. It was so dark in here, the gunman an enormous, threatening shadow standing over me. His voice was hideous and so loud that my ears ached. The stench—unwashed body and worse things—was enough to turn my stomach, filling my nose like hideous packing peanuts. I saw the gunman’s hand tighten on the trigger and I threw my arm up. . . .
    My black-clad, thick, rather short arm.
    â€œDefendarius!” I barked, faux Latin, the old defense spell I’d first learned from Justin DuMorne, my first teacher. I felt the magic surge into me, down through my arm, out into the air, just as the gun went off, over and over, as some kind of restraint in the gunman’s head snapped.
    Sparks flew up from a shimmering blue plane that formed in front of my outspread fingers, bullets and fragments of bullets shattering and bouncing around the room. One of them stayed more or less in one piece and smacked into the gunman’s calf, and he pitched abruptly to one side, still jerking the trigger until the weapon was clicking on empty.
    I felt my