Grave Peril (The Dresden Files #3) - Jim Butcher Page 0,13

"How did you get here?"

His honest face split into a wide smile. "When there is a need, He sees to it that I am there."

"Wow," I said. "You're kidding."

"No," he said, his voice earnest. Then he paused. "Of course, you've gotten in touch with me every night for the past two weeks. Tonight, I just thought I'd save Him the trouble of arranging coincidence, so I came on over as soon as I got off work." He fell into step beside me and we both got into the Blue Beetle he got in the red door. I got in the white one, and we peered out over the grey hood as I pulled the old VW into traffic.

And that was how we ended up doing battle in the nursery at Cook County.

Anyway, you see what I mean about a day being fairly normal before it falls all to pieces. Oh, well. Maybe it hadn't been all that normal. As we took off into traffic and I gave the Beetle all the gas it could take, I got that sinking feeling that my life was about to get hectic again.

Chapter Five

Michael and I plunged through the hole I'd torn in reality and into the Nevernever. It felt like moving from a sauna into an air-conditioned office, except that I didn't feel the change on my skin. I felt it in my thoughts and my feelings, and in the primitive, skin-crawling part of me at the base of my brain. I stood in a different world than our own.

The little leather sack of ghost dust in my duster pocket abruptly increased its weight, dragging me off balance and to the ground. I let out a curse. The whole point of the ghost dust was that it was something extra-real, that it was heavy and inert and locked spiritual matter into place when it touched it. Even inside its bag, it had become a sudden stress on the Nevernever. If I opened the bag here, in the world of spirit, it might tear a hole in the floor. I'd have to be careful. I grunted with effort and pulled the little pouch out of my pocket. It felt like it weighed thirty or forty pounds.

Michael frowned down at my hands. "You know, I never really thought to ask beforebut what is that dust made of?"

"Depleted uranium," I told him. "At least, that's the base ingredient. I had to add in a lot of other things. Cold iron, basil, dung from a"

"Never mind," he said. "I don't want to know." He turned away from me, his arms steadily holding the massive sword before him. I recovered staff and rod, and stood beside him, studying the lay of the as-it-were land.

This part of the Nevernever looked like Chicago, at the end of the nineteenth centuryno, strike that. This was the ghost's demesne. It looked like a mishmash of Agatha Hagglethorn's memories of Chicago at the end of her life. Edison's bulbs were mounted in some of the streetlights, while others burned with flickering gas flames. All of them cast hazy spheres of light, doing little to actually illuminate their surroundings. The buildings stood at slightly odd angles to one another, with parts of them seamlessly missing. Everythingstreets, sidewalks, buildingswas made of wood.

"Hell's bell," I muttered. "No wonder the real Chicago kept burning down. This place is a tinderbox."

Rats moved in the shadows, but the street was otherwise empty and still. The rift that led back to our world wavered and shifted, fluorescent light and sterile hospital air pouring onto the old Chicago streets. Around us pulsed maybe a dozen shimmering disturbances in the airthe rich life forces of the infants back in the infirmary, showing through into the Nevernever.

"Where is she?" Michael asked, his voice quiet. "Where's the ghost?"

I turned in a slow circle, peering at the shadows, and shook my head. "I don't know. But we'd better find her, fast. And we need to get a look at this one if we can."

"To try to find out what's gotten it stirred up," Michael said.

"Exactly. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of chasing all over town every night."

"Didn't you already get a look at her?"

"Not the right kind of look," I said with a grimace. "There could be spells laid on her, some kind of magic around her to clue me in on what's going on. I need to be not in mortal peril for a couple of minutes to