Had the pain of participating in the battle done something to my apprentice? Had it left her with permanent mental damage, just as the gunshot wound she’d received must have left her a permanent scar? Hell, it didn’t require any supernatural elements at all for war—and that was what Chichén Itzá was, make no mistake—to screw up young soldiers who found themselves struggling to stay alive. Throw in all the mystic menace on top of it, and it started to seem a little bit miraculous that I’d gotten as far as I had while remaining mostly sane.

I didn’t want to admit it or think about it, but I couldn’t deny that it was possible that my apprentice hadn’t been as lucky as I had.

“Hey,” Butters said quietly. “Harry? You all right?”

“That’s… kinda subjective, all things considered,” I answered.

He nodded. “No one wanted to be the one to tell you the details. But Murphy’s pretty sure. She says that if she was still working as a cop, she’d be convinced and digging as hard as she could to turn up enough evidence to let her put the perp away.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I get what she means by that.” I swallowed. “Why hasn’t she?”

“We need Molly,” Butters said. “She’s made the difference between happily ever after and everyone dying in two raids against the Fomor.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Okay. It’s… something I’ll start processing. But I’m not saying that I believe it. Not until I talk to her about it. See her reaction with my own eyes.”

“Right,” Butters said, his voice gentle.

I eyed him. “Murphy wouldn’t want you telling me this.”

He shrugged. “Murphy’s not full all the way to the brim herself some days. What she’s been doing… It’s been hard on her. She’s gotten more and more guarded.”

“I can imagine.”

Butters nodded. “But… I’ve always been kind of a trust-my-instincts guy. And I think you need to know this stuff.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ve got some other problems, too.”

His tired, worried face lifted into a sudden grin. “Of course we do. Harry Dresden is in town. What’s that?”

I put Sir Stuart’s pistol into the voluminous pocket of my duster and said, “A cannon. Someone gave it to me.”

“Huh.” His voice turned casual. “Could something like that hurt me?”

I grinned and shook my head. “Nah. Ghost-on-ghost action only. Assuming I’m able to make it work in the first place.”

The snow had stopped falling, and Butters turned off his windshield wipers. “What’s it like?”

“What is what like?”

“Being… you know.”

“Dead?”

He shrugged a shoulder, betraying his discomfort. “A ghost.”

I thought about my answer for a moment. “Everything in my body that used to hurt all the time got better. I don’t feel hungry or thirsty. Other than that, it feels a lot like being alive, except… my magic is gone. And, you know, hardly anyone can see me or hear me.”

“So… so the world is the same?” he asked.