As I spoke her name, she turned to me, her eyes slowly focusing on me, as though beholding me through a misty veil. Her expression turned, no pun intended, grave. She nodded to me in recognition.

"Hell's bells," I whispered. "No wonder Bianca got stuck on a vengeance kick. She literally was haunted by your death."

The spirit's face twisted in distress. She said something, but I could hear it only as a distant, muffled sound accompanying the movement of her lips.

"I can't understand you," I said. "Rachel, I can't hear you."

She almost wept, it seemed. She pressed her hand to her ghostly breast, and grimaced at me.

"You're hurt?" I guessed. "You hurt?"

She shook her head. Then touched her temple and drew her fingers slowly down over her eyes, closing them. "Ah," I said. "You're tired."

She nodded. She made a supplicating motion, holding out her hands as though asking for help.

"I don't know what I can do for you. I don't know if I can help you rest or not."

She shook her head again. Then she nodded, toward the door, and made a bottle-shaped curving gesture of her hands.

"Bianca?" I asked. When she nodded, I went on. "You think Bianca can lay you to rest." She shook her head. "She's keeping you here?"

Rachel nodded, her ghostly, pretty face agonized.

"Makes sense," I muttered. "Bianca fixates on you as you die tragically. Binds your ghost here. The ghost appears to her and drives her into a vengeance, and she blames it all on me."

Rachel's ghost nodded.

"I didn't kill you," I said. "You know that."

She nodded again.

"But I'm sorry. I'm sorry that me being in the wrong place at the wrong time set you up to die."

She gave me a gentle smile-which transformed into a sudden expression of horror. She looked past me, at Justine, and then her image began to fade, to withdraw into the wall.

"Hey!" I said. "Hey, wait a minute!"

The mist vanished, and Justine started to move. She rose, casually, and stretched. Then glanced down at herself and ran her hands appreciatively down over her breasts, her stomach. "Very nice," she said, voice subtly altered, different. "Rather like Lydia, in a lot of ways, isn't she, Mister Dresden."

I tensed up. "Kravos," I whispered.

Justine's eyes flooded with blood through the whites. "Oh yes," she said. "Yes indeed."

"Man, you need to get a life in the worst way. That was you, wasn't it. The telephone call the night Agatha Hagglethorn went nuts."

"My last call," Kravos said through Justine's Ups, nodding. "I wanted to savor what was about to happen. Like now. Bianca has ordered that you should receive no visitors, but I just couldn't resist the chance to take a look at you."

"You want to look at me?" I asked. I tapped my head. "Come on in. There's a few things in here I'd like to show you."