It was an excellent question, the thing about ghosts and holy ground. When Leonid Kravos, aka the Nightmare, had come to kill one of my clients I’d stashed at the church, he hadn’t been able to get in. He’d torn up several thousand dollars’ worth of landscaping and flower beds in sheer frustration.

The Nightmare had been a more powerful shade than I was at the moment. So why could I make myself at home, when he’d been stopped as cold as the Big Bad Wolf at the third Little Pig’s house?

“Note to self,” I said. “Look into apparent mystic anomaly later. Help your friends now.”

I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.

It was time to pay a visit to the Grey Ghost and the Big Hoods.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I headed for the Big Hoods’ hideout with several important facts in mind.

Fact one: The Big Hoods themselves could not do me harm.

Fact two: There wasn’t diddly I could do to the Big Hoods.

Fact three: The Big Hoods were apparently led by this Grey Ghost, a spirit that had been tossing lightning around with impunity during the attack on Morty’s house. That meant that the Grey Ghost was the shade of someone with at least a sorcerer’s level of talent, and while I felt sure I could defend myself against such an assault if I was ready for it, if I got blindsided, I might end up like Sir Stuart quicker than you could say ka-zot.

Fact four: The Grey Ghost had a bunch of lemurs hanging around. While my own spectral evocations might not be able to affect the living, they would sure as hell work on lemurs and the like. I could handle them easily one-on-one, but it seemed likely that they would come at me in waves, or maybe try to wear me down by throwing a horde of wraiths at me first.

Fact five: If the Grey Ghost was giving the orders to mortal cultists, they might have taken measures of their own to deal with ghosts. There might be circle traps prepared. There might be wards or other magical barriers. There might be dangerous substances like ghost dust. If I went in all fat and happy and confident, I could wander right into serious trouble.

Fact six: There were all kinds of spiritual beings in the wide universe, and ghosts were only a tiny cross section of them. I had to be ready for anything. Another entity of some sort might well wander in, drawn by the conflict. Or, hell, for all I knew, one might already be taking a hand.

“No closed minds, Dresden,” I ordered myself. “Don’t get suckered into thinking this is one limited, small-scale problem. There’s every chance it might be part of a much, much larger problem.”

If my afterlife went anything like my life had, that seemed a safe bet.

Fact seven: Sooner or later, dammit, I was going to start laying out a little chastisement where it was long overdue.