Sir Stuart’s hand went to his ax, and I suddenly understood what I was looking at.

It was an alarm system.

“What’s happening?” I asked him.

“Another assault,” he said. “We have less than thirty seconds. Come with me.”

Chapter Five

“To arms!” bellowed Sir Stuart. “They’re coming at us again, lads!”

The ringing of the alarm chimes doubled as figures immediately exploded from the very walls and floor of the ectomancer’s house, appearing as suddenly as… well, as ghosts. Duh.

One second, the only figures in sight were me and Sir Stuart. The next, we were striding at the head of a veritable armed mob. The figures didn’t have the same kind of sharp-edged reality that Sir Stuart did. They were wispier, foggier. Though I could see Sir Stuart with simple clarity, viewing the others was like watching someone walk by on the opposite side of the street during a particularly heavy rain.

There was no specific theme to the spirits defending Mort’s house. The appearance of each was eclectic, to such an extent that they looked like the assembled costumed staff from some kind of museum of American history.

Soldiers in the multicolored uniforms of regulars from the Revolutionary War walked beside buckskin-clad woodsmen, trappers, and Native Americans from the wars preceding the revolution. Farmers from the Civil War era stood with shopkeepers from the turn of the twentieth century. Men in suits, some armed with shotguns, others with tommy guns, moved toward the attack, the bitter divisions of the era of Prohibition apparently forgotten. Doughboys marched with a squad of buffalo soldiers, followed by half a dozen genuine, six-gun-toting cowboys in long canvas coats, and a group of grunts whose uniforms placed them as Vietnam-era U.S. Army infantry.

“Huh,” I said. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day.”

Sir Stuart drew his gun from his belt as he strode forward, checking the old weapon. “I’ve seen a great many years in this city. Many, many nights. Until recently, I would have agreed with you.”

I looked back at Sir Stuart’s little army as we reached the front door and passed through it.

“I—glah, dammit, that feels strange—guess that means you’re seeing a pattern.”

“This is the fifth night running that they’ve come at us,” Sir Stuart replied, as we went out onto the porch. “Stay behind me, Dresden. And well clear of my ax arm.”

He came to a halt a step later, and I stood behind him a bit and on his left side. Sir Stuart, who had been a giant for his day, was only a couple of inches shorter than me. I had to strain to see over him.

The street was crowded with silent figures.

I just stared out at them for a moment, struggling to understand what I was looking at. Out on the road were scores, maybe even a couple of hundred wraiths like the one Sir Stuart had dispatched earlier. They were flabby, somehow hollow and squishy-looking, like balloons that hadn’t been filled with enough gas—sad, frightening humanoid figures, their eyes and mouths gaping too large, too dark, and too empty to seem real. But instead of advancing toward us, they simply stood there in even ranks, leaning forward slightly, their arms held vaguely upward as if yearning toward the house, though their hands seemed limp and devoid of strength, their fingers trailing into shapeless shreds. The horrible sound of hundreds of nearly silent moans of pain emanated from the block of wraiths, along with a slowly building edge of tension.