Literature / Ghost Story

Warning! All spoilers for previous books are unmarked on this page!

The one where Harry is a ghost.

Ghost Story is book #13 of The Dresden Files.

After Harry's sudden death at the end of the previous book, he finds himself in the afterlife. Or a sort of waiting room of the afterlife. There, he meets Captain Collin "Jack" Murphy, Karrin Murphy's father, who is working to clean up supernatural messes that affect the post-living when something screws with their deaths. One of those things Harry can help with, if he is willing to return to Earth as a ghost. It will be dangerous, though, and there will be no second chances.

Oh, and if he fails, three people close to him will die.

Not to be confused with the 1979 horror novel by Peter Straub, or its 1981 film adaptation.

---

Ghost Story provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abnormal Ammo: Sir Stuart uses a large gun to blast a wraith to oblivion. Harry finds out that, much like everything else a ghost can do, it is powered by memory. Stuart makes a great effort to recover that energy each time it is used. Harry finds out later that he can use magic again if it is powered by his memories of using magic. However, if Harry does not recover that energy (and there is no apparent way to do so, unlike Sir Stuart's bullets) he himself will eventually dissipate since, as a ghost, Harry is made of nothing ELSE but memory. Harry, being Harry, realizes this just a bit too late.
• Afterlife Express: Right at the start of the book, Harry narrowly misses the "southbound" train barrelling at him. When the Corpsetaker is destroyed by her own wraiths, her screams are drowned out by the sound of the same train.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Harry finally realizes that Molly's feelings for him go beyond a mere crush, just as Susan told him in the last book. He also feels sorry that, for his own reasons, he can't reciprocate them.
• Alone in a Crowd: Harry suffers this more than once as he cannot be heard or seen except by maybe a dozen people in all of Chicago at the moment. He walks down a busy street and cannot even strike up a conversation with a person passing by or flip the bird at a bad driver. He fears for what might become of his mind if he must endure this a year or even ten years.
• And the Adventure Continues: As payment for all his years serving as Mortimer's protector, Uriel recovers a damaged Sir Stuart and offers him a new job among his forces. Seeing how much his descendant has grown, Sir Stuart decides to take his leave and accepts the position of working for an Archangel.

• Army of The Ages: Harry leads an army of ghostly warriors through the Nevernever to fight a spirit enemy. One memorable scene shows the enemy having set up pillboxes and other defenses. An 18th century grenadier produces a number of black-powder grenades, then asks a 1920's mobster to use his Zippo to light it.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Averted. Fitz needs to dispose of several assault weapons, quickly. He decides to hide them in a huge snow mound — but he still takes some precious seconds to remove the magazines. Dresden realizes he does it so that if someone happens to find the guns, they won't get hurt by accident.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Kemmler gets a mention when Harry recalls it took the White Council seven times to make sure he stayed dead.
  • Corpsetaker seeks to do this and come back to the world of the living once more.
  • More or less happens to Butters, too, when Corpsetaker boots him out of his body and he's stuck in ghostly form until Mort restores him to life again.
  • Thanks to Mab, Demonreach, Uriel, and the efforts of a certain "parasite", Harry is brought back at the end.
• Badass Boast:
  • When Daniel is facing off against Aristedes, blade-to-blade, he sarcastically asks Aristedes where he got his knife from. After the other replies that he got it "from the last fool to try a blade against [him]," Daniel gets this line in:
    Daniel: Come here. I'll give you this one.
  • After Harry realizes the angel of death isn't there to cause the death, but guard the soul to its final resting place she tells Harry something:
    • "If this is [his] time, I will see him safely to the next world. The Prince of Darkness himself will not wrest him from me. Neither will you, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, noble though your intentions may be."
    • By using of all his names in the "right way," when talking to him, the angel is demonstrating she basically owns him.
• Badass Normal: Daniel Carpenter takes after both of his parents in the badass department, knife fighting with a supernaturally fast warlock.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Archangel Uriel reveals to Harry that he was unduly influenced by a Fallen saying a lie with seven words that led him to wanting to die after becoming the Winter Knight. To balance things out in the end, Uriel is able to give Harry seven corresponding words of Pure Truth to help him see through Mab's manipulations.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Harry cannot get on a path to What-Comes-Next without solving his murder first. He can, however, get run down and carried off by the Hell Express.
• Batman Gambit: Uriel and Captain Jack play a mean game. Harry is needed and they ensure he will end up in the right place at the right time to help save his friends all because Captain Jack lied to Harry, with or without Uriel's knowledge is not clear. It worked out as Karrin is able to move on emotionally from her current rut, Molly is finally grieving over her actions in helping Harry commit suicide, Morty has become a stronger and better man, Chicago is free from some of its worst malevolent shades, and Corpsetaker is on her way to hell. And while Harry is still the Winter Knight, Uriel's final act of Seven Words of Absolute Truth assures him he is not as screwed as he once thought.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Molly engages Corpsetaker in a mental battle in order to rescue Waldo Butters, whose body Corpsetaker has stolen. Then Corpsetaker tries to steal Molly's body in turn and is almost successful. The battle itself is represented as an actual battlefield, with Molly waging her end of things from a mental copy of the bridge of the Enterprise. Molly plays a scorched earth policy to delay Corpsetaker, and almost suicides to prevent Corpsetaker from winning — until Harry convinces her to call for help, at which point Mort hits Corpsetaker point-blank with a swarm of very pissed-off spirits.
• Beard of Sorrow: At the very end we find out that Thomas has one because of Harry's death in Changes.
• Bequeathed Power: Harry witnesses Sir Stuart throw his pistol over a binding ring of fire to him. The only way this could be allowed is if the power was no longer Stuart's, to which Harry equates him having to amputate part of himself. At first Harry thinks he just got a powerful gun with one shot to it, but later he comes to realize it is more than that. It is a symbol of power and authority over the protector spirits and the Lecter Specters. Once this happens, Stuart doesn't cross over, rather becoming a weakened shade with little initiative like the other protector spirits.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Harry once again notes Uriel is the quietest and least known of the Archangels. To Harry, this makes him the most dangerous of the lot.
• Big Bad: The Grey Ghost, aka Corpsetaker.
• Big Damn Heroes: Mortimer Lindquist and his wraiths are this for Molly.
• Bittersweet Ending: Things in the world are better than when the book started. Molly is still mentally damaged. Murphy is still hurting. Harry is alive but still Mab's Winter Knight. The Fomor are still out there and causing hell in the world. All that said, Molly, with her secret known to Harry, can start moving onto the long road of healing. Karrin can properly grieve what happened to Harry. Thomas will soon come out of his slump. Maggie is safe and in good care. And lastly, seven words from Uriel helps Harry know that Mab may be his Master but she doesn't own him. She cannot turn him into something against his will and Harry informs Mab of this right when he wakes up.
• Blank White Void: Once Harry figures out who killed him, he is taken out of the Battle in the Center of the Mind between Molly and Corpsetaker, and ends up in one of these while he talks to Archangel Uriel.
• Bothering by the Book: Harry threatens to do this to Queen Mab if he even suspects that she has messed with his mind in any way. He will follow the orders exactly, showing zero initiative, forcing the person to manage every detail of his missions.
  • Earlier, he demands Lea give Molly money for a meal, arguing that there is no point training someone if they're going to die from starvation, which would technically lead to Mab reneging on a debt, in a roundabout way. Lea is both amused and annoyed that he is "invoking protocol".
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Aristedes used subtle mind magic to convince his crew of children to do crazy things, like firing into the house of Karrin Murphy.
• Break the Cutie: Molly. Her overt madness is a Batman Gambit to scare away some of the nastier critters lurking around Chicago, but helping Harry arrange his own murder after already being as sensitive as she is and experiencing the battle of Chichen Itza — and close proximity to the spell that wiped out the Red Court — seriously hurt her, which is not being helped by Lea's "Neitzsche and Darwin were Sentimental Pansies" brand of magical training.
• Breather Episode: It's a bit ironic, considering that Harry's not actually breathing, and the book is just as dark as you'd expect, but when you look at the book before and the book after, this really is one...
• Brief Accent Imitation: Butters uses a British accent when pretending to be a Warden and dealing with Aristedes. Harry mentions it's the accent Butters was using when GMing some villains.
• Broken Bird: Molly. See Break the Cutie for details.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Ron Carmichael, last seen in Fool Moon, appears as a being working for Uriel helping fight the dark things Uriel fights.
  • Marci (one of the original Alphas not seen in the novels since Summer Knight) and Abby (a prescient practitioner who was part of the Ordo Lebes seen in White Night) are both members of the Chicago Alliance.
• Call-Back:
  • Upon recognizing the first person he met was Ron Carmichael, Harry briefly thinks back to when he last saw him dying to protect Murphy from a loup-garou ten years ago.
  • Harry has Fitz knock on the wall of Father Forthill's office, in the exact spot where he'd learned Forthill keeps documents of a secret priestly order he belongs to in the short story "The Warrior".
  • Also with Forthill, he recalls Harry's fight with The Nightmare/Leonid Kravos in Grave Peril when Harry stayed inside the church for sanctuary. Forthill then notes he had presumed any ghost should be prevented from entering the holy ground and wonders what makes Harry different.
  • Similarly, when Murphy and crew are trying to determine if Harry is really Harry, most of the plots of the previous books are mentioned.
  • When Molly uses a sleep spell on some mind-addled minions of the big bad, Harry notes to Murphy it's not too different from what he used on her in Grave Peril. Harry doesn't tell Murphy that the spell Harry used took ten minutes of hard concentration to not break anything in Murphy. Molly did it to multiple targets with more softness than Harry ever could in seconds.
• Call on Me: When fighting Corpsetaker in her mind, Molly is planning to destroy her own mind rather than it be taken over and used to harm her friends and loved ones. Before that can happen, Harry suggests this trope and has his ally send a message to Mort. He hears it and comes to the rescue, vanquishing Corpsetaker's shade with the very horde of wraiths she had used to torture him.
• Cast from Hit Points: It is revealed that just about every ability a ghost can have (other than simply existing and traveling) is fueled by memory. Ghosts are composed of the memories of the person they were before. Use up all the memories and it's bye-bye. Harry comes dangerously close to this without realizing it.
• Character Development: Mort has always been the sort to run from Dresden and his problems, but Sir Stuart notes that Dresden has always had a positive effect on him, getting him to turn around his talents from a charlatan who could only speak with Sir Stuart, to what he is now: a guardian of many fettered spirits and the insane and homicidal shades that haunt Chicago. He found the courage and strength to reach Molly in time to save her from a fate worse than death. He has grown so much, Sir Stuart believes he can finally move on to the next stage of his existence and help Uriel for a time.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Similar to Small Favor, this book conspicuously lacks any mention of Thomas Raith until the end, when Harry reasons he must have subconsciously blocked himself from thinking about his brother to avoid the shame he would feel thinking about how much pain he must have caused him with his suicide.
  • Harry's first question to Lea with their deal, "If shades are memories, are the memories truth?" and her response that they are the truth but his brain isn't the only place these memories are stored. As he is dead, he isn't limited by the three-pound flesh organ in his skull. The only thing that limits what Harry remembers is himself. This becomes key when Harry realizes who his murderer is and what exactly happened.
  • When Harry meets the Guardian Angel at the Chicago-between, he uses his Sight to see the gun turn into a silvery sword. Later, he sees an identical one on the Angel of Death, helping him recognize the being as an angel.
  • When Harry watches Sir Stuart dispatch some lemurs in their first battle, he observes Stuart carefully recollecting his memory power from the blast and is told memories are what make a shade up. His utter lack of doing this against the Corpsetaker wears him down to practically nothing.
  • Near the climax, Harry comes to realize his ghost body isn't wearing his mother's pendant, which is odd since he manifested his duster and clothes. He lampshades this.
    Harry: That was possibly something significant.
  • There is mention of some parasite inside Harry which kept his blood flowing as Demonreach and Mab tended to his other needs during his death-like situation.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Harry still moves to rescue those who are in need, from his closest friends to Fitz and the child-gang he leads/protects. Special mention goes to a flashback seen from Harry's youth when he saw He Who Walks Behind brutally kill a gas station attendant named Stan, who Harry "met" while trying to rob the gas station and this evil act galvanized him, setting him on this path.
  It.
  Wasn't.
  Right.
  No, it wasn't. But the world wasn't a fair place, was it? And I had more reason to know it than most people twice my age. The world wasn't nice, and it wasn't fair. People who didn't deserve it suffered and died every single day.
  So what? So somebody ought to do something about it.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
  • Ghosts operate on this. If they believe, even just on an instinctual level, they should be able to ride in a car, they won't fall through the seat, at least as long as they don't think about it. If they believe snow shouldn't affect them, five feet of snow is no longer cold. If they believe they should be able to walk through walls, they can, assuming wards and thresholds aren't blocking them.
  • Also, the nature of the wall comes into play as well. A wall of a house is meant to keep beings out of the domain. A wall around a cemetery is meant to keep things inside. This means Harry cannot just pass through on his way out of his grave. He needs the gates to be open to escape.
  • Most importantly of all for Harry, if he believes he's crazy enough to manifest, he can!
• Code of Honour: Lea mentions that the Fae have a very strong belief in this.
  • No fae can gain or lose freely. It must be traded for something of equal value. Lea, for instance, can only be second to Mab's power in her court because of the deep fealty Lea has to Mab.
  • As a result of Winter Knight Harry being tasked with educating and preparing Molly Carpenter to survive, after his sudden death Queen Mab considers this her task and sets Harry's Godmother Lea to train Molly, using very harsh and nearly sadistic methods, to ensure the girl's survival. Her mental health and state of her soul^note ironically, the latter is the main thing a normal godparent is supposed to be concerned with is not included. Harry later argues that debt won't mean anything if Molly dies from not having a warm meal and safe place to rest for a short time. Lea agrees, if begrudgingly, and gives Molly money for such a meal.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Corpsetaker does this to Mortimer Lindquist, suspending him over a writhing mass of wraiths and then dipping him in ever so slowly for an ever-increasing amount of time.
• Combat Pragmatist: Harry as usual, taking the Grey Ghost's repeated attempts to gloat as opportunities to blast her. It turns out the she, having met Harry before and knowing he's the type to always take a cheap shot when one is available, is doing this on purpose. She can tank his attacks, but he doesn't have the memories to keep throwing them.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Harry first shows up to the Chicago Justice League, they ask him lots of "Only Harry would know" type questions. We don't see most of them, but we do see Harry's responses to a handful, all of which are references to previous books.
  • The book has several call backs to the short stories:
    • Bob offers to replay for Harry "That time Molly sprayed herself with acid and had to remove all her clothes in the lab". That event happens during the short story "Day Off".
    • Several references to "A Restoration of Faith". Nick Christian makes his first appearance since that short story, and Harry recounts his involvement with it.
    • Harry notes the presence one of the Alphas he's not seen in a while, struggling to remember her name (Marcy). Marcy's return to Chicago after several years away and reconnecting with the Alphas is mentioned in "Aftermath". Similarly the Fomor servitor's title of "Turtlenecks" also originates from "Aftermath", the term coined by Murphy.
• Contrived Coincidence: Wouldn't you know it? The moment Harry's ghost comes back to Chicago The ghost of Corpsetaker is about to finally break down Mort's defenses and capture him and use him to come back to life. And then lead an attack on the Chicago Alliance and kill Molly with her new Fomor allies. Oh and was it mentioned like Harry, Captain Jack Murphy works for Archangel Uriel and spring is freaking late this year with snow in May measuring in the feet? Surely Mab couldn't be in town on some business. Nope. It is all perfectly normal stuff for your everyday ghost of a Wizard.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Literally. At the climax of the story, Mort explains to Harry that only insane ghosts can manifest in the physical world. Harry thinks back over all the things he's done over the past thirteen books, decides that he's more than crazy enough, and promptly manifests.
• Creepy Child
  • Inez, the spirit of a little girl who Harry meets in the Graceland cemetery. She is generally friendlier and more polite than most versions of creepy kids, but she is still unsettling, not the least because she died a couple of centuries ago and has an extensive amount of knowledge about spirits and shades, and is convinced by long experience that Harry will become "a monster." It is implied that Inez is a proxy for Mab, talking through a conduit because she couldn't come in person, what with being occupied as part of Harry's life support on Demonreach.
  • Also the insane ghost children who love to "play" with living children down by the river.
• Cryptic Conversation:
  • Every spirit pretty much can only communicate this way. At one point Harry runs into an entity named Eternal Silence, who attempts to explain things to Harry in a straightforward manner. Doing so results in a paragraph of booming disconnected sentences, and the effect makes Harry's incorporeal body explode into a "Dresden-colored mist," so there is some pretty good reasons for this. As with Inez, it's implied that the Eternal Silence is actually Demonreach's proxy.
  • When Harry speaks with Archangel Uriel about this matter, Harry asks him if there was some rule forbidding straight and simple answers. The respondent states there are, in fact, several rules keeping him from giving answers.
• Dare to Be Badass: Harry tells Fitz he can either be a man who will always be on the run, or turn back and save his friends, Father Forthill, Butters, and Daniel from Aristedes.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Eternal Silence is a spirit covered in black cloth. It is, however, not evil and tries to help Harry understand the ramifications of his being back and exactly what is at risk should he fail.
  • Harry meets an Angel of Death and described her as wearing black shoes, black pants, black shirts, black tie, dark hair, and skin that looked like it was dyed in an ink well. Even the sclera, the whites of her eyes, are black. All that said, she is one of the good guys who will guard the soul the dead to its final place. Not even the Prince of Darkness would wrest the soul from her protection.
• Deader than Dead:
  • Big Bad Corpsetaker after Harry watches her personal supply of wraiths to assault and consume her. Harry reports that the last sound he hears of the person is replaced by the sound of a southbound train.
  • Upon realizing Harry is not a ghost but his pure soul wandering around, he is told that if he "dies" this will be his fate.
• Dead Person Conversation: Any living person who speaks with Harry.
• Dead to Begin With: The whole premise. Ultimately inverted, as Harry was actually Alive To Begin With but spent the whole book thinking he was dead.
• Deconstruction: This book deconstructs Harry's genocide of the Red Court in the previous book. They were a major political and financial power, and now that they've suddenly disappeared, there is a vacuum ready to be filled by new enemies. Molly confirms this when talking to Harry's spirit. It turns out that there were numerous threats which had previously given Chicago a wide berth, based purely on the reputation of its resident wizard. Now that he's gone, the city's pretty much going to hell. Molly has been attempting to deliberately set herself up as The Dreaded through the persona of the Rag Lady, but it's a long, slow process, and the emotional toll it's taking on her is intense.
• Defiant Captive: Mort, while subjected to cold, methodical torture by the Grey Ghost, does not bend. He may scream in pain as the wraiths rip at his spiritual energies, but when he is out of it, screams things like "Go f- yourself" and "Watch a sunrise" and the like, being very clear he will not let her into his body.
• Determinator: Ghosts who manifest in the real world must be an insane version of this. They must be so insane and strong willed that the natural order of things doesn't apply to them and they come back.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Murphy notes to Molly that not picking a superhero name and letting people and the papers name her the "Ragged Lady" for her ragged clothing and habit of leaving bloodied rags of clothing around her victims has led to an increase in PMS jokes. Molly is somewhat apologetic about the matter, but it is pointed out that to some, that association makes her more scary.
  • Harry rushed out of the Big Hoods' home and across the Threshold to talk to Murph and her people only to realize he cannot reenter uninvited. Murphy is amused by this, commenting maybe it really is Harry.
  • Harry didn't consider Mort was protecting the crazy ghosts from the Corpsetaker, to prevent her from consuming them, and Harry attacking with them only wound up bringing them within range for her to absorb their power.
• Dirty Cop: Good and bad variants.
  • Molly tells Harry she saw a Fomor servant paying off a cop to look the other way when he was carrying a duffel bag filled with at least one child.
  • Murphy (who really still thinks of herself as a cop) has been working with gangster Marcone and taking money and other aide from him, but it's for the greater good.
• Disney Death: Harry, apparently.
• Double Entendre: Molly mentions she finally got Harry inside of her, after he partially possessed her body to fight some mooks. Harry is uneasy with the statement.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Dresden meets an Angel of Death standing over Father Forthill. She's pleasant enough and is there to act as a soul's bodyguard on its final journey. She's even nice enough to ignore Dresden's various threats since, Dresden being Dresden and all, he doesn't realize until halfway through the conversation that she could utterly destroy him with a passing thought if he continues getting in the way of her duties.
• Driven to Suicide: Despite being dead already, Harry pulls this trope when he considers letting the running water of the river destroy his ghost. Also, it turns out that he arranged his own murder at the end of Changes.
• Dumbass Has a Point: From Evil Bob's perspective Harry is an infant wizard with potential but clouded by stupid things like morality. However, when Harry claims that killing him isn't in the being's self-interest, the being replies that it lacks "self-interest." Harry rationally points out that Evil Bob hesitating in killing Harry for even a second has no apparent rational basis, as Bob is stronger and in the superior position, serving the Corpsetaker would be best done by killing Harry, and Evil Bob isn't stopping to talk for Harry's sake, therefore the hesitation is caused by Evil Bob believing Harry being alive might be better off for it than a dead Harry, ergo the being has some level of "self-interest." The being realizes there might be some validity to this and will think on it later, but now must kill Harry.
• Dumb Muscle:
  • While certainly badass during his fight with Aristedes the sorcerer, Daniel Carpenter displays shades of this during his first appearance, blurting out in his over-enthusiastic and dour-but-righteous zeal that Murphy has two of the Swords of the Cross and that they should be used. The problem with this is that there is a member of the White Court in the room, who had no idea that Murphy had the Swords in the first place. The vamp attempts to use this information to blackmail Murphy into being her next meal, leading to a swift and brutal rebuttal.
  • Also Corpsetaker's thugs, who are uniformly and deliberately kept large and dumb.
• Eldritch Abomination: Readers finally get the scoop on He Who Walks Behind. Lovecraft would have been impressed.
• Enemy Mine:
  • The Chicago Alliance is a union of Baron John Marcone, the White Court, The Church, Paranet, the Alphas, Molly Carpenter, and Karrin Murphy working against the supernatural forces seeking to rise in these chaotic times.
  • Lea refers to herself as one of Mab's enemies but they have an understanding and in exchange for Mab allowing Lea power to be her second, Lea has sworn loyalty to Mab.
  • Because of the above example, Harry makes Mab the same offer because if she tried differently, by forcing him to do her will, he will have the motivation of "a garden statue."
• Enemy Without: Evil Bob is a separate force from Good Bob, containing more destructive and powerful magic. He came from Bob literally cutting out all the knowledge from his time with Kemmler because Harry told him to forget it permanently. As a future owner could order him to remember, the only way to fully forget was to remove it entirely.
• Evil Power Vacuum: With the events of Changes and the destruction of the whole or nearly the whole Red Court, an ancient evil organization that remained in power for over two thousand years, every small time group, beaten back ages ago by various evil and good forces, are on the rise. Old grudges are dusted off and opportunities await those who can carve out the biggest chunk at the table.
• Evil Teacher: The Leanansidhe. To most mortal views, she is Evil for her forcing Molly to endure blistering cold temperatures in ragged clothes, and throwing ice chunks at her to make her work on her shields. Lea, however, sees herself as a Stern one because she does not view education with the same wishy-washy coddling mortals do, but simply the act of empowering and fortifying students to survive the harshness of the world. If pain and cold are needed, so be it. So, it is simply a "pop quiz" for Molly when Lea summoned some agents of the Fomor to combat to make her realize she cannot handle things alone. And in true fashion of both types of teachers who believes in never failing to make sure a student can learn a lesson when able, her refusal to help Molly when things were going bad was to push Harry and make him learn to be a stronger ghost to be able to help Molly in this moment. Two lessons at once. Quite a bargain.
• Exact Words:
  • Carmichael yells at Harry, in the beginning, to get off the tracks to avoid the "damned train." As he reveals shortly thereafter, it really is a damned train as it ferries people to Hell.
  • Captain Jack said Harry's body is unavailable. Neither destroyed nor decomposed.
  • When Fitz was going to meet Forthill, Harry described him as sober as a priest.
  • Harry is told plenty of time he is dead. As Lea hints, and Mab, later, notes "death" is not so much a single exact point. There is a vagueness and ambiguity about the matter.
  • At the end of the book, Uriel tells Harry that if he chooses to walk through the door to blackness, he will face the consequences of his actions. Having made his peace, Harry walks through... and rather than going to judgement and the afterlife, finds himself Back from the Dead with Mab eagerly waiting to collect on his debt.
• The Fagin: Aristedes is described in this exact way by Fitz.
• Family Eye Resemblance: Lea notes that while Harry has his mother's Sight, she has felt he favored his father Malcolm when it comes to the eyes.
• A Fate Worse Than Death:
  • Should Harry fail to find his murderer, he will be stuck on earth as a shade, unable to talk with people or be seen by many. Captain Jack simply calls it hell.
  • When Fitz, literally and figuratively, turns his back on Aristedes, the rest of his crew follows his example. Aristedes is so self-absorbed that he literally could not imagine a world where he didn't matter, and finding himself powerless and ignored is pretty much Hell on Earth for him. It hits him so hard that Harry almost feels sorry for the guy.
• Faux Flame: Molly has learned to summon this.
• The Fettered: Most shades degrade over a few years and become unstable and dangerous wraiths. Sir Stuart and others in Mort's protection guard have not. They are soldiers and fighters from various wars and eras, but men bound by honor and duty none the less. Their failures in life and strong sense of duty to now serve Mort have helped them to maintain their sanity.
• First-Name Basis: The Angel of Death whom Harry meets speaks of people using their first names, unless she's pushed, at which point it becomes a Full-Name Ultimatum with the exact tone and style the owner of the name uses.
• Flat "What": He Who Walks Behind's answer to Harry's mocking.
  He Who Walks Behind: Pathetic. Whimpering, mewling thing. Useless.
  Harry Dresden: (in a Peewee Herman impersonation) I know you are, but what am I?
  He Who Walks Behind: (slightly stunned) What?
• Foreshadowing:
  • An Einherjaren asks Butters when he's going to "get in the ring and train like a man". Butters replies "About five minutes after I get a functional lightsaber."
  • It's May and there's thick snow everywhere. Readers would realise this is usually an indication of Mab being active in the physical world (As it was in Small Favor when it was equally snowing, while in the early fall). But Mab isn't seen or really gets much mention from most of the book. Until the end, when it's apparent she's been helping keep Harry's body alive on Demonreach.
  • Harry can enter a church and cross holy ground. Something Father Forthill points out Ghosts are supposedly no able to do. One of the first indication that Harry is not a mere Ghost.
  • Much like Small Favor, the omission of a major item repeatedly mentioned in the other books is a clue till Harry himself realizes it's missing. Namely His pendant.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Angels adopt these. One guardian angel outside of Captain Murphy's HQ prevents Harry from seeing even just his gun with his Sight because it would hurt him. Considering angels are either equal to or greater than skinwalkers for power but on the opposite side, this isn't to be taken lightly.
• Friend to All Children: Nicholas Christian specializes in finding missing children. Over his several decades long career, tracking down many, many missing children, he has found and saved only seven children while they were still alive.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Harry learns that, part of being angels, includes knowing how to say his Name perfectly. Two different offended angels spoke it but without any power, showing Harry quite clearly they could destroy him but choose not to.
• Fun with Acronyms: Harry's friends have formed the Better Future Society, which could have been a coincidence, but Butters mentions that he wanted to name it the Better Future Group for the sake of the acronym.
• Genre Blindness:
  • Morty doesn't realize he has become part of a new adventure in which the fate of Chicago lies in the balance. He thinks he just signed up for an hour to help Dresden contact some old friends. He wonders what could happen in an hour.
  • Seeing Chicago through ghostly eyes, Dresden realizes that while he's always assumed Morty was on the sidelines of his city's various Urban Fantasy-style conflicts, the little ectomancer has been dealing with his own slate of macabre challenges and mysteries, all along. Ones that Harry, for all his experience with corporeal menaces, never even suspected were happening.
  • Played with in the climactic battle. Harry's ghost is fighting Corpsetaker's ghost, and she keeps trying to gloat at Harry, only for him to keep interrupting her with harder and harder spells. He mocks her for doing so, then he's reminded that as a ghost, his spells are Cast from Hit Points, and Corpsetaker has a lot more energy to spare than he does. In addition to her ego, she was simply expecting him to weaken himself attacking her.
• Ghostapo: Nazi-dressed Evil Bob commands a spirit realm shaped like the Nazi defenses on the beaches of D-Day, patrolled by wolf-headed Nazi soldiers Harry dubs wolfwaffen.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Justine invokes this in order to get Thomas to feed on her at the end. Being with a woman she does not love strips her of her protection, after which she can be with Thomas.
• God's Hands Are Tied: Harry meets several angels in his journey, including an Angel of Death. And while many note a desire to help mortals, they cannot because it would interfere with Free Will. As an Angel of Death notes, it wasn't just a singular choice that lead the injured man to his potentially fatal predicament, but a myriad of choices, some not of his own making but by other mortals, did make this situation. In her mind, it would be wrong to unmake all those choices.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Butters states Father Forthill may be a man of peace, but that doesn't mean he is stupid. When he went to face Aristedes, before Murphy and her group could get there, it was to give the man a chance to end things peacefully. However, he went knowing that, in the likely event Aristedes decided to get violent, there would be people coming along shortly to handle the matter the other way.
• Good is Not Nice:
  • Molly Carpenter has taken this line when it comes to protecting Chicago.
  • To make people understand how stupid it is to move around alone and unprotected, Karrin wants Will to scare people into line.
• Good Shepherd: Father Forthill continues to be one. He works with the Chicago Alliance, which includes the mob and vampires, to help protect Chicago and other places across the world. He does not fear Molly, reprimanding her when she has erred and trying to help her see she needs other people. He helps orphans and upon learning about Aristedes' actions regarding said orphans, goes there unarmed to confront the man.
• Grammar Nazi:
  • Harry still has a bit of this. It shows when he notes the battlefield he looked upon was devastated not decimated. The later technically refers to the destruction of just one in ten buildings (hence the "deci-" prefix).
  • Molly both follows and averts this trope, as she snarks to Dresden about there being four quadrants, "Hence the quad," but misuses Dresden's own pet peeve "decimated."
• Guardian Angel:
  • Harry sees a few in his trip. When he first spots one and tries to open his Sight on it, the angel warns him against such an action, going so far as shutting Harry's Sight off before it even comes on fully because "it would hurt him."
  • For Michael's service, he has earned them guarding his home from any spiritual attack.
• Guardian Entity: Sir Stuart and the Spirits of Protection act as this to Mort. Sir Stuart even more so as he is Mort's ancestor.
• Guilt Complex:
  • Harry spends the whole book feeling guilty about the mess he's made of the whole world, and particularly the lives of his friends and loved ones, by exterminating the Red Court (which he's not exactly wrong to feel guilty about). He feels particularly guilty about Molly, for not training her well enough to endure what befell at Chichen Itza, for setting a bad example by crossing the line when he became the Winter Knight, and especially for exposing her highly tuned psychic senses to the battle at Chichen Izta and the giant curse that ended it. He also feels like crap for making her help him kill himself, once he remembers. And then about Thomas, for not telling him about it.
  • Thomas feels in a deep rut as it was on his boat where Harry was shot. He feels it was his fault for not being there to save his little brother.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Deconstructed, as the main conflict of the book started after Harry wiped out the Red Court of vampires.
• Happily Adopted: Uriel reveals this is Maggie's current situation. She is loved and cared for by Michael and Charity Carpenter.
• Heel Realization: Midway through the novel, Harry comes to this realization when he considers the consequences of his actions in Changes and the extent which he went to in order to stop his enemies and save those he loved — and that in doing so, he became what he fought. But this is inverted later when he rejects Evil Bob's We Can Rule Together offer, realizing that one bad choice at the end of a lifetime of fighting evil does not make him evil.
• Heroic BSoD: In Ghost Story, it is obvious that this has happened to Murphy, Molly, and Thomas after Harry's death.
• Heroic Fatigue: Played with. Being dead makes all the pain and exhaustion go away. Then, later, Harry manifests and enjoys the sensation of pain as a sensation of being alive. However, Harry is using his own memories to fuel his limited magic and later manifestation, to the point that there is not enough of Harry left to even remain as a ghost by the time he is done. Uriel and Mab later set things right. Well, right-ish.
• Hero of Another Story: After seeing some of Mort's power, Harry muses that while he has saved the world from various threats, perhaps Mort has saved Chicago and the world from threats even Harry was ignorant about.
• Hesitation Equals Dishonesty: Butters's inability to swiftly answer Aristedes' question about the missing swords dooms the facade Butters and Daniel had going.
• He's Just Hiding: Murphy refuses to accept Harry's death, including after she meets his ghost, because she has never seen a body. When he shows up as a ghost, she refuses to believe it's really him, even after getting his identity confirmed by Mortimer the ectomancer and Molly's Sight, all because she doesn't want to admit that he's dead. invoked To be fair, in the end, Murphy's point about the body was valid, as it was snatched up and preserved by Mab and Demonreach. Thus, technically speaking, Harry was never exactly dead in the first place.
• Hidden Depths: Mort, who turns out to have both more grit and more magical talent than Harry ever suspected. Possibly more of the former than Mort ever suspected.
• Historical Domain Character: Two of the psycho ghosts guarded by Mort are Real Life figures from Chicago history.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Corpsetaker should have been more careful with those powerful wraiths. See Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
• Hope Bringer:
  • Molly spells it out to Harry that when he was alive, as much as he was The Dreaded to the dark forces, he was equally this to those too weak to fight because he inspired them to work together and always stood on their side.
  • Archangel Uriel, in turn, becomes this to Harry. When a Fallen speaking a lie to him at his lowest point pushes him into such despair that he chooses to commit suicide, Uriel has an opportunity to balance the lie with an equal truth. When Harry is at a similar low point, with Mab proclaiming her victory and outlining malevolent plans for Harry, Uriel gives Harry hope that he can remain who he is despite being the Winter Knight, and he proceeds to tell her off.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Harry realizes he was holding it during a specific event near the end of Changes: letting Molly, a mentally sensitive apprentice who's mostly untrained in combat, join him in retrieving Maggie. The mass of emotions from the battle came dangerously close to driving her insane, and as of Ghost Story, she's a lot more paranoid and broken than she used to be.
  • Karrin feels Sunbeam Monroe held it for not traveling with a partner and as a result being an easy target to kidnap.
  • Harry realizes he held it by not having one of the crazy Lecter Specters manifest and free Mort from his bindings.
  • Mort does not ask Karrin Murphy or her crew for protection when it became clear the ghosts attacking him were using mortal thugs.
• Ignored Expert: Morty feels like this when, despite him being known to the Chicago Alliance as an ectomancer, his testimony that Harry Dresden's spirit came to him and is with them in Murphy's home is not accepted completely. It takes Mister the cat reacting to Harry's shade with love and the word of a crazed Molly for them to believe it could be possible.
• Immediate Sequel: Zig-Zagged. Changes ends with Harry in the water, hearing a sound like a train. Ghost Story picks up with Carmichael's ghost pulling Harry off some tracks and narrowly avoiding said train. The story technically picks up right away... but because of time differences between the mortal and spirit world, by the time the plot proper begins, Harry finds out it's been six months since his death.
• I Have Your Wife: Or child. Or sibling. Or neighbor. Or pet. Another tactic of the Fomor to get at people. They will use anything they can.
• I Know Your True Name: Harry realizes when two different angels speak his True Name with perfect inflection at him, any attempt to fight them would be a moot one.
• Impostor-Exposing Test: Murphy has Mort cut himself before inviting him inside. A lot of supernatural beings that require an invitation to enter a building will bleed ectoplasmic goo rather than blood. Harry notes that this method is far from foolproof.
• Insult Backfire: Harry insults Lea's "teaching methods" with him as he notes how he turned out. She just smiled and points out that in just under forty years, her methods helped push him to kill the entire Red Court, a truly magnificent feat.
• The Internet Is for Porn: Bob now has access to the internet. He declares, almost giddy, "It's like ninety-percent porn!"
• Ironic Echo:
  • Archangel Uriel throws Harry's boast of “I will make Maggie safe. If the world burns because of that then so be it. Me and the kid will roast some marshmallows” back in his face. He noted that "the world" would include Murphy's deep depression and anger, Molly's slipping sanity, and all the other problems caused because of a few of Harry's choices, all a lot harder to accept as collateral damage than a vague concept of "the world."
  • One notable example, showing just how bad things have gotten. When we first see Harry trying to teach Molly about shielding spells, it's with her younger brothers and sisters throwing snowballs at her. Her shield fails, she's pelted with snow, and it's a hilarious and heartwarming moment. Cut to this book, and she's again practicing shields. Only this time, it's Leanansidhe throwing hunks of ice like a major league pitcher, and Molly's as far from her warm, safe, loving home as you can get.
• Ironic Name: Aristedes, the Fagin leader of street urchins and basic scum, shares his name with a 5th century BCE Athenian statesman known for his integrity and a 2nd century Catholic saint.
• It's All My Fault: Harry believed that all the trouble in Changes was directly his fault. It is then revealed a Fallen deceivced him into believing this, leading him to kill himself.
• Jewish Mother: Butters has one, and she's rubbed off on Bob since he took possession of the skull.
• The Kid with the Leash: Butters has been holding Bob's leash since Harry's death, learning a great deal about magic and creating several bits of magical technology despite not being able to perceive magic himself, and Bob is happy to serve as his combination magical tutor and genie-in-a-skull. It helps that Bob's personality is a reflection of whoever holds his skull, or however the holder views Bob (which is why Bob's personality is so unchanged in Butters' possession: Butters knew Bob when he was Harry's, so he thinks of Bob's personality the way Harry did). And Bob is more than happy to serve as Butters has the internet and The Internet Is for Porn.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • Harry says the reason he uses fire is because it is universally useful. Even intangibles like ghosts recoil from fire as they have a hard time separating their memory of fire and flame from their current existence. Harry also points out that even though something might be invulnerable to death from burning, they almost always still feel pain from it and can be stalled with it.
  Harry: Fire burns.
  • After seeing Molly's Faux Flame, the servitors of the Fomor assumed the blue flames that were cast by her were the same as before. They were wrong. The flames were done by Harry and quite real. One who tried it was killed nearly instantly.
• Kill It with Water: Running water naturally disrupts magical energies. As such, Harry contemplates jumping into a running river to commit suicide.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Corpsetaker tortures Mort with wraiths. Mort kills her for good with the same wraiths.
• Last-Name Basis: A mix between being the youngest present and the New Meat, Daniel Carpenter calls Will "Mr. Borden", Waldo "Mr. Butters", and Karrin "Ms. Murphy".
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It is impossible to discuss the plot of the this book without giving away the last few pages of Changes, given that Harry is the titular ghost and must solve is his own murder.
• Light Is Not Good: Sunrise is lethal to ghosts (good or evil) caught outside of a sanctum. Harry muses that while sunrise isn't exactly a cleansing force of Good and Right, it is one hell of a cleansing force.
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Corpsetaker knows Morty is a decent level practitioner and an expert on ectomancing. When Harry led the insane shades to her, which she ate and became more powerful, she leaves Morty alive, though tied up, in a room with a pit filled with wraiths. Wraiths are just seriously deranged and degraded shades. Even after seeing Harry manifested into the physical world, she doesn't think about Morty. Cue Big Damn Heroes.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Butters makes one with Bob that is twenty pages long so Bob can spend time in Butters during some dinners.
• Master of Illusion: Molly has become this by the story starts. She can make William think he has been kidnapped by the horrors of Nevernever, create Faux Flame, multiple copies of herself running around, and make dirty cops and agents of the Fomor kill each other.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Harry wants desperately for Uriel to help save Molly from Corpsetaker, to give her some help as she is losing a mental battle. Uriel claims his hands are tied by Free Will as Molly chose to take on Corpsetaker despite being over two centuries her younger. Uriel wants to and notes that perhaps if he had the presence of mind to send some agent to balance the scales and give Molly a tiny bit of encouragement and flicker of inspiration, perhaps that could have tipped the scales and help Molly win . . . then Mortimer appears controlling Corpsetaker's own army of wraiths and saves Molly's life.
• Meaningful Echo: Harry said in Changes the world could burn if it meant he would save his daughter. Uriel notes that his apprentice Molly and friend Karrin are both part of "the world" and because of his actions, they are suffering.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Harry ultimately realizes that, although he is the Winter Knight, Mab still doesn't have any ACTUAL power over him, allowing him to retain his free will and enabling him to determine HOW or even IF he follows Mab's orders. Which Harry really should have known, given what Lloyd Slate (Harry's predecessor as Winter Knight) was up to when Harry first found out that the fae courts had knights.
• The Mentor: Nicholas Christian, Harry's PI mentor, makes an appearance in the book and helps out when Harry sends someone his way.
• Must Be Invited: Harry repeatedly required a direct invitation from owners of homes, like Karrin, to enter their domicile. The fact the Big Hoods sleep and live in Corpsetaker's base gives it a significant threshold. It is potent enough that Murphy must gently coerce one of the mind-addled Big Hoods to invite Molly and Harry through.
• Must Have Caffeine: Ghost Captain Jack is a very grumpy person if he hasn't had his first cup of coffee. Unfortunately, since he is dead he has no need to drink and there is no coffee maker in his office.
• Must Make Amends:
  • Mort and Sir Stuart try their best to help spirits who come to them find what amends must be made to help them move on.
  • Harry Dresden to an extent when he realizes the effects of his actions. Easier said than done since he happens to be dead.
  • Molly feels this as she helped Harry plan his death, and now is making "amends" by becoming a terror against the Fomor and corruption in Chicago by killing people.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Much of the story consists Harry enduring this sort of realization regarding his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Changes.
  • Molly is suffering this for her part in Harry's suicide and seeks to atone by becoming Harry-like to scare away the dark things.
• Near-Villain Victory:
  • Molly is fighting Coprsetaker and is on the verge of defeat (which would leave Corpsetaker in possession of a powerful and dangerous body). Not even Uriel could help, but then Mort comes in unexpectedly (answering a call for help Harry suggested she make) and saves the day.
  • Harry is weakened, barely alive, and Mab is smiling down upon him claiming she would turn him into her own monster. Then Archangel Uriel whispers unto Harry, "Lies. Mab cannot change who you are." It invigorates Harry as he realized that his soul is truly immalleable to the powers of Mab unless he allows it. He can still be him and need not turn into a Monster that he feared he would become.
• Necromancer:
  • Mort is one of a very narrow field. He can control ghosts with his magic and his will, and does it carefully enough to help make sure those that can't move on don't end up going crazy and killing people.
  • Corpsetaker/Grey Ghost shows similar abilities to Mort, such as ordering the ghosts under Harry's control to stop when fighting his authority over them and they listen. And of course, the body switching.
• Nerves of Steel: Karrin has faced warlocks, a chlorofiend, emotion eating vampires, and stood with Harry against the Red Court. Will of the Alphas has faced vampires, ghouls, warlocks, and a Skinwalker. Father Forthill has faced vampires, and other dark forces in his life. Of the three, only the good Father is not scared by Molly's new persona, the prospect of her coming to a meeting, and her sudden arrival. He shows this again by going to face Aristedes.
• Nervous Wreck: Molly Carpenter becomes one, following Harry's apparent death in the previous book and her own attempt to fill in his shoes as the magic defender of Chicago.
• Never Found the Body: Murphy uses this to justify her belief that Harry isn't dead. Subverted when she then meets Harry's spirit. Double subverted when it turns out Harry's body was alive after all, taken and kept in a coma-like state by Demonreach, Mab, and "the parasite".
• New Meat: Of the Chicago Alliance, Daniel Carpenter, son of Michael and Charity, is basically this. He is strong in a fight but doesn't always read the situations well and leads to some mistakes, like announcing in presence of a White Court vampire that Karrin has two Swords of the Cross in her protection.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mort tells Harry, all to late, that bringing the crazy ghosts with him to save Mort helped Corpsetaker because she now could feed on them, precisely what Mort was trying to avoid.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Mort tells Corpsetaker how epically stupid it was to leave him alive in a room filled with Wraiths. He then proceeds to use them to finally destroy her for good.
  • Corpsetaker also, incidentally, rectifies the problem of the dangerous Lecter Specters on a permanent basis.
• Non-Fatal Explosions: Justified, as Harry was already dead at the time. He even intentionally stood in front of the explosive just to see what an explosion is like from close up (not that impressive, it turns out).
• Noodle Incident: Harry'd had some previous mishaps when he'd tried to fly with carpets or broomsticks, at least one of which wound up on the Internet as a UFO sighting.
• No-Sell: Illusion magic, while a powerful form of magic, is generally not regarded as strong as others by the White Council as their Sight can see through the lies.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: By the end of the Changes/Ghost Story arc, you would be hard pressed to find anything about Harry's day-to-day life that has not irrevocably, well, changed.
• Not Quite Dead: Harry, as it turns out in the end. His soul had just been separated from his body while said vessel was being kept alive by Mab, Demonreach, and a certain "parasite".
• "Not So Different" Remark: Harry tries to argue that Molly and Thomas aren't that different from him. Molly is the Rag Lady because of a lie Harry was told by a Fallen Angel, while Thomas was tortured by a skinwalker. Averted because Uriel says Molly wasn't the one lied to by the Fallen, so her free will was not influenced by one. And Thomas, though influenced by the torment, is still alive and has a choice. So they are different from Harry's predicament.
• Obligatory Joke: When Father Forthill is meeting with Fitz he asks if he wishes to make a pedo-priest joke or would he like Forthill to give an opening for one. The latter ends up happening, albeit by accident.
• Off with His Head!: With Harry's current predicament, and no one to vouch for Molly, the Wardens are back to hunting her. See Police Are Useless for a bit more.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • In the first couple chapters, Harry has a moment where he realizes that, as a ghost, he has no magic. As he's being attacked by a wraith.
  • In the last chapter, Harry does it again when he wakes up, alive... in Mab's lap. But then Uriel passes on his advice...
  • When Fitz realizes he is hearing the voice of Harry Dresden he has a minor one—which is then inverted, as the first thing that he remembers hearing about Harry is that he helps people, which helps solidify the at-the-time touchy alliance he and Harry had.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Because they are using unsecured CB radios, Murphy insists on only nicknames being used over the radio. So Butters is "Eyes" and the Alphas in general are "shadows".
• Plausible Deniability: Harry notes that Uriel positioned himself before Harry with this as the mortal doesn't know whether the Archangel either ignored the evidence of Colin Murphy lying to Harry or was completely in the dark about Murphy's actions.
• Police Are Useless: Invoked when Karrin notes that Warden Ramirez is very useful in combat situations, but when it comes to hunting down Molly, he really sucks. She suspects he is purposefully not working hard to locate Molly and take her head.
• Power Born of Madness:
  • The most insane ghosts are the ones able to break through into the world of the living and interact with it.
  • Corpsetaker, as it turns out, wasn't insane enough already to be able to manifest from a Shade to a ghost able to screw with the world of the living. So she consumed the craziest of the shades under Mort's protection, giving her not just the memory power but sufficient insanity to break into the world of the living.
• The Power of Creation: Bob notes that while he likely gave up 100 years or so of memories and magic when ordered by Harry back in Dead Beat, and thus created Evil Bob, Evil Bob would really only have the dark and destructive magics. Strong stuff, sure, but Harry's Bob has the knowledge of creation and construction, which he views as the harder and stronger stuff. Evil Bob would mostly know only how to destroy.
• The Power of Love: When Aristedes was badly beaten and Fitz stood up to him, defying him before Zero and the other runaways, Aristedes tries to force Zero to attack Fitz with a magical compulsion, the one who genuinely cared for him, the one who would protect him and defend, who loved him like family, Fitz stood firm and ordered Zero to drop the weapon, to no longer listen to Aristedes. The love of brotherhood between the two young boys was enough to wrest Zero free from Aristedes' will and then all the boys.
• The Problem with Fighting Death: As mentioned under Don't Fear the Reaper and Dark Is Not Evil, the Angels of Death are quite powerful entities. They likely know the True Name of every mortal they see, thus giving them absolute power to stop them if they are causing trouble with the angel's duties. The angels will also take on Satan if he tries to redirect a soul from its proper resting place.
• Profound by Pop Song: Played With when Dresden tries to console Molly by saying "for everything there is a season." She tells him to stop quoting The Bible. He says he's quoting "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds. He's doing both; the song's lyrics are taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes.
• Properly Paranoid: When dealing like scum and monsters like the Fomor, blood tests, security questions, and holding off on invitations are smart things. As a result, despite Mister, Molly, and Mort saying the shade is Harry, Butters has Bob shadow him when they go to save Father Forthill, presumably to alert them if Harry was not Harry or proved to have gone evil.
• Prophetic Fallacy: In the first few chapters, Captain Jack tells Harry that if he doesn't go back to Chicago and find his murderer, three of his friends will come to great harm. Later on, it's revealed Jack wasn't telling the future; he was speculating. He figures Dresden's got a lot of friends, if he's not around to bail them out they'll be in trouble, and three's as good a guess as any. Uriel was less than amused by this tactic.
• Psychopomp: The Angel of Death, standing guard over unconscious Father Forthill, ready to accompany his soul to the afterlife and protect him from demons.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Leanansidhe rebukes Molly's claim that she was strong and fought with Harry at Chichén Itzá. The rebuker noted that Molly did but she was taken out of the fight because of a bullet from a muggle mercenary and nearly died from it.
• Rerouted from Heaven: Harry encounters the above mentioned Angel of Death sent to a critically wounded Father Forthill to escort him safely to Heaven if he dies. She explains that Hell would steal even the souls of saints if they could get away with it. And the nether zone of the afterlife is unsafe enough that the souls working there need an angel security guard.
• The Reveal: The identity of Harry Dresden's murderer. Back in Changes, a Fallen Angel lied to him by saying everything that had happened was his fault, pushing him to order a hit on himself by Kincaid.
• Rewatch Bonus: Several moments take a new meaning when one knows Harry is still alive on Demonreach, being cared for by Mab and the Island. In particular the discussion between Harry and Lea. When interrupted by Eternal Silence Really Demonreach, Lea appears to be listening to a voice Harry can't hear, which makes her reconsider her answers, and later suddenly act courteous to Eternal Silence. She's listening to Mab's commands, who is on Demonreach itself.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Averted. Unlike the previous Winter Knight Lloyd Slate who betrayed his Queen, Harry's attempt to cheat Mab by getting around their deal, even having the forethought that she would make him promise to not commit suicide or have someone kill him in an ambush, was met with approval and joy to The Chessmaster Queen. She wants that intelligence and cunning in her Knight.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: See Spot the Thread below.
• Room Full of Crazy: Some of the Big Hoods' squalid sleeping quarters have deranged messages scrawled on the walls.
• Rule of Three: In exchange for a tale of Harry's past she didn't know, Lea agrees to answer three questions.
• Rule of Seven: A Fallen Angel spoke seven words to Harry back in Changes. These seven words were a Lie. To balance the scales, Uriel speaks seven words of pure Truth in the final chapter.
• Rules Lawyer:
  • Because Lea took up Harry's mantle of Molly's Mentor, he argues that if Lea is meant to emulate his style, if being harsher about it, then she must give Molly enough money for some food and a place to warm up on the cold night. Lea resists but Harry points out these are her own rules she previously stated, so she must follow through on his demand.
  • Butters created a twenty page contract to make sure Bob couldn't abuse any loopholes or deliberately misinterpret any orders, before allowing Bob to do a ride-along for Thanksgiving Dinner at his mom's.
• Saintly Church: St. Mary's makes another appearance. And unlike the last time a ghost tried to enter back in Grave Peril, Harry could enter the holy place.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Best explanation as to how Marcone got a castle built in the middle of Chicago.
• Scylla and Charybdis: Lea, Harry's godmother, ends up in this situation as she has two obligations she must fulfill. First, she must honor her word to Harry and answer his question about who killed him. On the other side she is bound, presumably by Mab, to not tell Harry who killed him. She is forced to fulfill both by using Exact Words and being true from a certain point of view.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: The painted logo of Ragged Angel Investigations.
• Seeking Sanctuary:
  • First, Harry tells Fitz a safe place he can rest up in is St. Mary's.
  • Later, to save the children Aristedes had under his control from both the police and a pissed off Murphy, Molly gets them taken not to St. Mary's, but to her father and mother, knowing that this is one place Murphy wouldn't go after them for the crimes they committed.
  • The Better Future Society's main location is a good place for those in the Chicago Alliance, Paranetters, or other visiting people to rest up.
• Semper Fi: Sir Stuart is a truly badass Marine hailing from the Colonial Army in the American Revolutionary War. Death has not stopped this giant of a man from being a dangerous fighting force against other shades.
• Sharing a Body:
  • Ghosts can do this to a receptive mortal. Morty can not only summon multiple ghosts into him, he inherits their memories, and thus skill sets. Harry later jumps into Molly to save her life.
  • Harry has all the Lecter Specters and Guardian Ghosts enter him before he enters the Corpsetaker's base to allow the surprise ambush to work.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: There are two significant instances of this:
  • First, when Harry tells Evil Bob to take his We Can Rule Together offer and shove it because he will never belong to the Dark Side.
  • Second, when Harry tells off Mab herself at the end, vowing that he is not hers and will decide if, when, and how he carries out her orders.
• Smarter Than You Look: Harry shows off his deduction skills when talking with Archangel Uriel. When Harry states the surprising deduction, the wetwork agent of the Lord gives Harry a look that Harry describes as one a wise teacher would give a dumb kid who got the answer right.
• The Sociopath: Wraiths and what Harry dubbed the Lecter Specters only care to indulge their own desires and wants. The danger of the later is they can manifest into the real world and enact their desires there.
• Something Only They Would Say: Murphy does not believe Mortimer when he says Harry's shade is following him... until Mortimer makes references to things only Harry and she would know about.
• So Proud of You: Harry is worried Mab would be pissed when his suicide gambit tried and failed at getting around the promise he would make to her. Mab isn't. She's delighted at the brilliance and ingenuity of Harry's plot and if Harry hadn't fallen into her domain, the cold, dark waters of the lake, it might have worked.
• Spot the Thread:
  • To sneak into the den of a sorcerer and rescue his band of thieving street urchins, Butters and Daniel Carpenter disguise themselves as Wardens in order to put the sorcerer off his guard. It very nearly works... until the sorcerer points out that neither of them carries the trademark enchanted swords a Warden usually has. Subverted in that because Luccio is incapable of making new swords, none of the Wardens since Harry have swords. But because the swords are so associated with the Wardens Baldy wouldn't have known anyway and Butters big mistake was hesitating when he could have made up a believable story.
  Harry: The hell of it was that he was coming to a correct conclusion from incorrect assumptions.
  • Many characters who are experts in the spirits, like Father Forthill and Morty, note there is something queer about Harry's ghost. Morty bases this on a magical scan and Forthill by Harry entering St. Mary's, which should block all ghosts. What the reason is for these differences, they don't know, but Morty is scared this some trick aimed to capture him. It is later revealed these suspicions were founded as Harry was different from ghosts because he isn't one. He is an astral projection and what's running around is his pure soul without the protection of the shade.
• Spring Is Late: Chicago sees regular snowfall well into May due to the fact that Queen Mab herself is in the city, keeping Harry's body warm.
• Squick: In-universe. Harry tries to explain how ghosts "feel" injury or discomfort by drawing analogies to this trope. He also experiences it more directly when the Lecter Specters tear into Evil Bob's Ghostapo demon-wolf troops.
• Stealth Pun: Flickum Bicus is actually kinda subtle unless you regularly flick your bic. It's explained outright, though: when Harry was training under Justin DuMorne, he tried to cheat at a magical fire-lighting test with a lighter, causing Justin to remark "You won't always be able to flick your Bic." When Harry finally does light the candle with magic, he uses "Flickum Bicus" as the invocation as a nod to Justin's lecture.
• Stern Teacher:
  • The Leanansidhe. See Evil Teacher for more.
  • Justin DuMorne shows himself to be this. He is sometimes cruel to Harry when teaching him magic ("Pain is a good teacher"), but he is always strict and demanding. When he asks something of Harry, he doesn't like to repeat himself. If Harry misbehaves, he will strike Harry, although claiming that it is never in anger. When Harry excels at magic, like casting a spell for the first time, he is warm and comforting for a time, although kindnesses (like a new baseball glove and playing catch outside) may turn into cruelty (like throwing baseballs at Harry's face, hard, until he learns to shield properly).
• Suicide by Assassin: Harry hired Kincaid to kill him so Mab couldn't use him, and then had Molly erase his memory of doing so.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "Grenades!" I ordered, in a firm and manly tone that did not sound at all like a panicked fourteen-year-old.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Uriel reveals he does have some sympathy for naagloshii, for the pain they have and lies they must tells themselves to attain some false sense of peace.
• Take Up My Sword: When the gravely-wounded spirit of Sir Stuart throws Harry his gun. Harry initially thinks he's been given a powerful one-use weapon, but later figures out that it is actually a symbol of Sir Stuart's authority that allows Harry to rally Mort's spirit friends and take on Sir Stuart's former position as their commander, leading them into battle to rescue Mort.
• Taking You with Me: When Molly is fighting Corpsetaker in her mind, her Spock!Molly side wants to burn the mind while Corpsetaker is inside. Kirk!Molly wants to find another solution. It takes an idea from Harry to avert this from happening.
• Talking in Your Sleep: An interesting version: Harry the ghost doesn't need to sleep, but has to retreat to his grave lest the sun wash him away. While there, with nothing else to do, he ends up recalling past memories with picture perfect clarity (an explicit power of sentient ghosts), and is only jostled from them when in turns out Lea has been watching them along with him. It's never explicitly stated how this happens, and Harry naturally finds the constant interruption annoying.
• Teleport Spam: Ghosts who know how to "vanish" (which is essentially ghostly teleportation) use this when they fight. Harry and Corpsetaker have a magical duel while teleporting around a cavern, including teleporting inside solid structures like walls to duke it out.
• Tempting Fate: Harry is able to convince Mort to help him. Mort agrees to give Harry one hour, stating that nothing serious should happen in so short a time. With these words, Harry knew Mort was serious when he said he wasn't a hero.
  Harry: Heroes know better than to hand the universe lines like that.
• Terms of Endangerment: He Who Walks Behind was practically cooing to sixteen-year-old Harry when the creature was menacing him in the flashback. Creepy as hell.
• Terror Hero: Molly Carpenter becomes a Type 4 deliberately to try to impose order in the city.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Harry learns quickly, Uriel will never tolerate his name being familiarized into "Uri." He will, however, accept "Mr. Sunshine" as another nickname.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: When trying to stop Corpsetaker from leaving with Butters's body, Molly resorts to a mental battle with Corpsetaker as a final means of delaying her to save her friend's life.
• Time Abyss: Harry meets Uriel at the end of the book, who has been around since before the Universe existed (roughly speaking that is 13.798 billion years plus or minus 37 million years), before even Time existed. And Uriel reveals that he likes watching Star Wars because it makes him feel "young."^note "A long time ago" indeed!
• Time Skip: Takes place six months after Changes, and a lot has changed in Harry's absence.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: It is revealed Harry went through this with his planning his own assassination. His back was broken and he saw no way to save Maggie but to go to Mab and become her Knight. He couldn't stand the thought of becoming a monster and arranged for Kincaid to kill him after Maggie was saved and for Molly to remove the memories of the plot. It is then revealed this was invoked by a Fallen whispering a lie to Harry during a Moment of Weakness to shove him into a tragedy by adding an incredible weight of guilt to his mind.
• Training from Hell: How Lea trains Molly after Harry's death. She even calls a pack of mid-level Fomor mooks against an exhausted and malnourished Molly and expects her to handle it. Then, when Harry predictably intervenes, she reveals that she used that particular sequence to train them BOTH at the same time. The Fae are NOT to be taken lightly. After this episode, Harry begrudgingly admits that she might have a point and that, by going relatively easy, he might not have done the best job of preparing Molly for just what kinds of trauma and hardship she'll naturally be exposed to as a wizard, especially as a psychic sensitive.
• True Companions:
  • When Harry hears a person call Karrin "Karie", he notes he can count on one hand the number of people are close enough to Murphy to not be attacked. The only non-blood family person he can think of is Rawlins, Captain Collin Murphy's close friend and practical uncle to Karrin.
  • Fitz cares about the runaways under his care. And they care about him. It's this brotherly love which helps Fitz break them free of Aristedes' control. It is also for their sake Fitz returns to face the man when Harry tells him Aristedes would soon just kill the lot of them now that they have seen him injured.
  • Harry realizes the depth of the love Michael and Charity have for him by accepting his daughter Maggie (and Mouse) into their house and loving her like their own.
• Trust Password: Besides the above mentioned questions to Harry to prove himself, Harry tells Fitz the homeless teen to go to Nicholas Christian. Harry has the person repeat a moment from Nick and Harry's past to get Nicholas' help.
• Tyke Bomb: Bob postulates He Who Walks Behind could have wanted to turn Harry into one, as Harry was a weak little squirt against an ancient and powerful evil, by getting Harry angry enough to kill him, so Harry would go back and try to kill his mentor Justin.
• Unbroken Vigil: The ending reveals Mab and Demonreach have been doing this to Harry while his soul is away. It is necessary as they are helping sustain Harry's body until he can return to it. The months sitting there have left Mab with a thin body described akin to a cadaver.
• Underestimating Badassery: Lara mentions in Turn Coat she has files on plenty of Wardens. So it would be likely she has files on Harry's friends, especially those who joined him to fight the Red Court in Changes. So, Felicia the White Court rep for the Chicago Alliance meeting thinks she can blackmail Karrin into being fed on or she would reveal the Swords are in her care. Karrin pistol whips the woman, slams her face into a hot teapot and breaks the coffee table beneath it and then throws the vampire out with a warning Karrin would come to kill her if the White Court even blinks in the direction of the Swords.
• Unfinished Business: Mort reveals nearly every shade still exists because of this issue. Some unfinished ordeal and Mort tries his best to help move on. Those who cannot generally come under his command to keep them from being a danger should they go crazy. However, Harry finding out who killed him is actually not that important. Saving his friends one last time might not have been that important either; the book's Big Bad quite possibly would have been stopped without Harry's intervention. However, it was important to him that he make sure his loved ones were OK and say goodbye properly to Molly. And he had to go through the entire book to put Uriel's scale-balancing advice in the proper context.
• Unreliable Narrator: Happens once again, when it turns out that Harry arranged for his own death with Kincaid before accepting the mantle of the Winter Knight, then had Molly erase his memory of it.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Molly's penchant for illusion magic. As mentioned under No-Sell, not that impressive by White Council standards. It is, however, a powerful tool against the unskilled in magic and those who cannot open their Sight.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Harry turns out to have been running an exaggerated version in Changes. He hired Kincaid to kill him so Mab couldn't use his powers, then had Molly erase it from his memory so that even he didn't know what the unspoken plan was. Then subverted when the unspoken plan ultimately fails at preventing Mab from gaining a wizard Winter Knight, but ultimately to little effect when Uriel tells Harry that, even as Winter Queen, Mab cannot change who Harry is if he doesn't let her.
• Villain Ball:
  • See Underestimating Badassery for what happens when one grabs it near Karrin Murphy.
  • Evil Bob was more interested in gloating and trying to make Harry become his apprentice than just smiting the shade of a wizard. And then he believed his progenitor's words about the path and didn't rush to stop Harry from escaping.
  • Corpsetaker shouldn't have let Mort continue to live or shop for a good body when a powerful ectomancer was in the area with a bunch of spirits near by.
  • Lea and Harry discuss his evil mentor Justin and Lea notes for his plot to make Harry and Elaine into his slaves, he doesn't hold it when it comes to training Harry as he never taught Harry how to fight and hurt another person, and so give Harry training to better fight Justin if it came to it. He does, however, hold it in regards to not anticipating Harry skipping school to come home early to see how Elaine was.
• We Can Rule Together: Evil Bob makes this offer to Harry during their battle, suggesting a master-apprentice sort of relationship. Harry being Harry, he mocks it out of hand — then he flat-out rejects it, having come to the inverse of his earlier Heel Realization.
• We Help the Helpless: Nick Christian is about to turn Fitz away when Fitz tells Nick, "I don't have anywhere else to go." With an annoyed tone, Nick begrudgingly listens to Fitz for a short time.
• We Have Reserves:
  • When Harry overhears a Fomor servitor speaking, the servitor says he may die as part of the reply to his lord, but he is inconsequential. There are many more to take his place. That said, he does have a sense of self-preservation and would not like to die in any means that isn't helping his lord.
  • Harry bluntly tells Fitz that because Aristedes was not only seen injured by his crew of children but Fitz was how the attackers got into the stronghold, even if they didn't fight him now, he was no longer an invincible powerhouse in their minds. So, it would be easier to just kill the whole crew and start from scratch again.
• Wham Line: When Molly said, "[I]'ve been like that ever since [I] killed you."
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Father Forthill calls Molly out on her disrespectful attitude towards Karrin and others, citing that if she truly wished to be treated as an adult, she best start comporting herself as one, which includes giving due respect to her host and ally (Karrin).
  • Harry looks upon Uriel and tells him to not even try the "Mysterious Ways"-BS and things he is not meant to know before making him choose whether to go onto the next train or stay on Earth as a shade. He was twice screwed with, once by a Fallen lying to him, and the other by Captain Jack's lie of vagueness. He deserves to have some key questions answered if Uriel is all about openness and honesty.
• Who Dunnit To Me: The job that Captain Jack from "between" sends Harry to find out.
• Worth It: When Fitz meets Nicholas Christian, Harry's PI mentor, for some information Fitz asks what he does primarily. Nick responds he still works divorces and looking for lost kids. Fitz asks how many children Nick has found alive and in one piece, Nick tells him seven in thirty years. Fitz looks about the messy office which doubles as Nick's home and cannot understand why he continues. Nick simply replies "That's enough."
• Would Hurt a Child: The Fomor have no qualms about going after children to get people to serve them. So the Better Future Society has a daycare in its HQ to help protect them.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: Common in spirit stuff, in the Dresden Files, time is malleable for spirits. Time in the Inbetween flows slower than in the real world. Harry finds that his short stint there covered six months of real time. Bob implies Uriel and Mab arranged this on purpose so he'd be there to stop the Corpsetaker at a critical moment. Bob also explains he can make this happen in his skull.
• You Are Not Alone: Molly's current path and choices leaves her going at things alone. When Karrin and Father Forthill try to get her see she isn't alone, she rebukes them and ignores them. While training with the Leanansidhe, Harry's godmother tries to teach Molly she isn't alone and needs others to survive. She does this by pushing her to her limit and then summoned servants of the Fomor to attack. Had Harry not been present, she would have died and she makes sure Molly knows this when things are over.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: An inversion to typical usage. When Karrin's buttons are pushed far enough, she calls Waldo Butters "Wally"
• You Can See Me?:
  • It comes as a surprise to Dresden that Butters and Lea can see him. He's also surprised when he comes across someone else who can hear him.
  • Also that Toto can sense him enough to bark at him through the window, or that Mister can not only sense him, but can still body-slam his shins in greeting.
• You Owe Me: Harry bluntly tells Archangel Uriel he is owed some straight up answers to allow him to make an informed choice. Uriel, after a moment, sees that Harry has been jerked around by one of his subordinates to come back to Chicago on top of being lied to by a Fallen, so he agrees to give Harry the information he asks for.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Harry has a slightly downplayed version when Lea says his explanation of what happened at the climax of Changes is "Spoken as someone worthy to wield power" he replies that coming from her "that's a little unsettling actually". Characteristically, she's flattered by the sentiment.

---