Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 14

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Back at his apartment, Harry fills Michael in on the events of the day so far: the meeting with Mort and the detour to help Malone, and that as a result, he hasn't had much chance to look for Lydia, although at least Murphy got his car out of impound. When describing the barbed wire spell, Harry says it was wrong, but hesitates to call it evil, although Michael has no similar reservations, and makes a point of reminding Harry that evil exists, as does good. Now, evil isn't a work that Harry throws around all that often. He describes Victor Sells as an "evil sorcerer" once, but that's to some extent just colloquial usage, and in any case, describing a person, who has free will, and has chosen to use it to cause harm, is rather a different proposition from calling a spell evil. The only other appearance of the word "evil" in Storm Front is when Harry observes that the fae, who notably lack free will, aren't evil. However, in Fool Moon, he characterizes the enchantment on the wolf belts as "evil, in the most effective sense of the word." I wonder if he ever talked to Michael about that, ever told him about the wolf belts. Given that it took Harry like two years to fill Michael in on the ongoing situation with Lasciel's coin, I'm guessing he hasn't. That he doesn't want Michael to be disappointed in him. I don't know that Michael would be disappointed - I don't think Harry would have made it through the fight without putting on the belt, and in the end he did take it off, and burned it. 

We know Michael and Harry don't see each other all that often, and there's reason to believe that they've known each other since Harry, at least, was much younger and less thoughtful than he is now, and sometimes I think they have trouble giving each other enough credit. Harry has trouble seeing Michael's capacity for nuance or flexibility, and Michael often responds as though Harry were still as driven by youthful passion and edgy cynicism as he was in the immediate aftermath of Justin's death. I'm sure seventeen year old Harry was fully convinced that there was no such thing as good and evil, and said so, much as Fitz asserted that "there's no such thing as good guys or bad guys, there's just guys". But he's matured since then, and so, I suspect, has Michael - note that he never actually gives the "set aside your evil powers before they corrupt you" speech in the book - but they're not always working with the most up-to-date models of each other. And doesn't Harry give Murphy the "evil does exist" speech like, a few books from now? 

Michael is mildly disapproving of Harry's getting Murphy to break the law to get his car back (although I'm not actually sure there was any lawbreaking involved, it may just have been...favoritism in her use of authority. Harry points out that God doesn't arrange his transport, and Michael says there isn't time to debate it. But then he's all "Isn't that a very positive coincidence?" about Murphy asking the CPD to keep an eye out for Lydia, which is a more substantial, more probably illegal, misapplication of her authority and also a result of Harry's "detour" to help Malone, and I think that might be his way of conceding the point. Not to say that it's okay, at baseline, for Murphy to bend the law to help Harry, but that perhaps Harry getting his car back was God working through her, which of course would be okay. Harry, naturally, doesn't get this at all, and ends the call with a "yadda yadda" and a request that Michael stay in touch. 

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He's getting ready to go down to the lab when Susan calls. She takes his irritable answer in stride, and says
that she doesn't want to add to an already difficult day, but she's hoping he remembers the name of the "ritual killer" Harry and SI took down a few months ago. 

It takes Harry a minute to remember, but at long fucking last, Leonid Kravos's name is brought into the story. Also that Harry's most direct contact was with the demon, not the sorcerer himself. That puts some context on Harry's later assumption that the ghost of said demon is what's come back to cause problems for him. Susan won't tell Harry what she's working on until she's got something more solid than rumors, and Harry doesn't press the issue. Susan asks if she can help Harry with what he's working on, Harry asks if she slept okay, there's some flirting, and they get off the phone. 

Harry is finally able to head down to the lab, and we get our last reintroduction to Dresden's lab before the Great Grave Peril-Summer Knight reorganization. Everything is still messy (except the summoning circle) and still on mixed shelves and counters. I wouldn't swear to it, but I think this might also be the last book in which the little kerosene heater is mentioned. Also, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, he lights the candles from a lantern, rather than using magic. 

Bob is more than usually reluctant to wake up and work, pleading exhaustion. He's been helping Harry every night throughout this ghost situation, and now he's been woken up before sundown. He offers to work in exchange for doing a ridealong the next time Susan comes over. This is an obvious non-starter, and Harry points out that if Bob would rather not work for him, he could always go back to the Nevernever. This is the first reference in the series to Bob's difficulty with Mab, although she's referred to here only as "the Winter Queen". Technically, Harry says Bob could always go back to the "homeland", but of course we know that spirits of intellect are the result of spirits having sex with mortals, and all available evidence points to the mortal parent always being the one to carry the developing spirit until it's ready to emerge. So Bob was born to a mortal, and I'd say odds are considerably better than even that he was born here, in the mortal world. So I wouldn't say confidently that the Nevernever is Bob's homeland. He's a proper dual citizen, and which reality, if either, he considers "home" is really up to him. 

I do wonder, also, about this notion of Bob being "tired", like, I don't doubt it, but is that due to his own expenditure of energy, or is it a reflection of of Harry being tired and overwhelmed and seriously over this ghost business, and just wanting to relax for a while and spend time with his girlfriend. 

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Anyway, Harry's taunting about Bob going back (back?) to the Nevernever (and seriously, Harry, you just did the fantasy racism equivalent of telling a biracial person born in the US to 'go back where they came from' - don't do that) has Bob agitated enough to be fully awake, so Harry runs him through the new information, everything he's discovered of encountered over the past day and a half. Bob leaves Lydia alone for the time being, focusing on the Nightmare and making the reasonable assumption that the entity that did the torture spells also tore up the bushes outside St. Mary's. So far as I can recall, we don't at this stage have any evidence to support this other than that the odds of two ghosts or spirits of this power level running around at the same time are lower than the odds of just one. Bob is also terrified. He urges Harry to sit this one out, and suggests going on vacation somewhere very far away, and when Harry says they're not doing that, refuses to help. We see him react this way to the Denarian symbol in Death Masks, and I think to the mention of Kemmler in Dead Beat, and that's...interesting. Both of those are based on preexisting knowledge of what they're dealing with that Harry doesn't have. That's not the case here, as far as I know. Kravos is such a one-off problem, give or take his connection to Nemesis and the black council, in exactly the way that the Denarians and the heirs of Kemmler aren't. This suggests three possibilities. First, that Bob is frightened precisely because he, with his alarmingly extensive knowledge of necromancy and spirit work, has never encountered anything like this before. Second, that there is something identifiably Kemmlerite going on, and it's just never mentioned explicitly. Third, that Bob is mirroring Harry's fear and sense that he's in over his head. While the second possibility is the most interesting, it also has the least support. 

Since Bob isn't talking, Harry starts verbally reviewing everything he knows about ghosts. Ghosts aren't real people, they're impressions left when a person dies, unable to change or grow. They're usually invisible and intangible, but stronger ones may be able to physically manifest in an ectoplasmic body and move things around. Sometimes they can do other things, like cause earthquakes, but it's always connected in some way to their deaths or their feelings about them. Theoretically, a strong enough emotional imprint could produce a ghost as powerful as the Nightmare. 

When Harry says that the Nightmare's activity has been stirring up the boundary between worlds, and thereby creating the recent spike in ghost activity, Bob can no longer contain his didactic urges. He points out that someone has been stirring up the spirits deliberately (those torture spells weren't natural consequences of the increased ghostage) deliberately disrupting the barrier. He pointedly refuses to guess why anyone would do that, but Harry figures it's to prepare the way for something really big to come across. 

To Bob's immense irritation, this realization does not immediately prompt Harry to give up and take a nice long trip to Florida. He finally agrees to help. Apparently, if Harry doesn't know what he's walking into, he might not live to see the sun rise.