“Eat me,” I whispered. “I don’t … I don’t understand.”

While this has been an innuendo-heavy book, this turn of phrase is actually quite appropriate. It literally ate a part of him, as will be clarified in a moment.

Remember how Morty offhandedly called this thing a nightmare because it was so badass, and Harry immediately adopted it and started taking credit on the basis it was badass and the name was badass? Apparently also it can attack you in a nightmare, which is a ridiculous level of contrivance.

The rapist skull also weighs in on the vampire thing:

“Got to be something important to make them risk going out in daylight like that. Even in a specially equipped van.”

Now, he’d know what he’s talking about, since that’s his whole role in the story. But a bit earlier Harry claimed the two of them were Bianca’s strongest hitters on the basis of jack shit. Using your most valuable pieces for something risky means it must be incredibly important…conversely, it being something risky suggests they’re not actually her strongest hitters. And because we’re not being given information coherently, it’s impossible to make any guess.

Or, well – you can guess that because it’s being incompetently laid out, the author isn’t setting anything up here, which means it’s not important how it fits together and we shouldn’t bother trying to work anything out.

How did it get past the threshold?”
“Your threshold isn’t so hot to begin with, Bachelor Man.”

See, this would’ve been a great time to bring that up rather than Harry claiming he was suddenly ignorant of it. It’s particularly weird it’s being repeated – more evidence stuff was added later and something went wrong in editing, I think.

“The wards, then. I’ve got all the doors and windows warded. And I don’t have any mirrors it could have used.”

Except for that one you looked into when you came home last chapter, speaking of editing snafus.

How long has Harry had wards, and how common are they? Since muggles are scum in these books, I’ll assume all wards are things that require magic to activate and nothing interesting ever happens with muggles who are in the know making sure to keep up their salt lines and such. Does it require a good portion of his energy, or is it pretty easy? He’s confident Morty has nothing but the weak threshold, but perhaps that’s because Morty no longer has the magic power to do anything else. Victor, blessed be his innovative name, had none, but he was self-taught and crazycakes. Certainly the demon of the first book didn’t trip any but maybe Harry beefed up security as a result.

Also, by implication, mirrors can’t be warded. Good to know. You might be able to kill a wizard by chucking mirrored tiles at them and giving whatever it is a line of attack.

My stomach quailed again, and a fresh burst of shuddering made me put my hands in my lap. I felt like sprawling somewhere, crying my eyes out, puking up whatever shreds of dignity remained in my stomach, and then crawling into a hole and pulling it in after me.

Harry’s quite messed up by all this, by the way. Now, to fit the magic eats emotions theory, we’ll have to wait and see if doing magic provokes an improvement. Closing the circle earlier didn’t, but Harry was willpowering that and being out of willpower would just make the rest of this worse.

ANYWAY, the true reveal here is that the nightmare doesn’t need thresholds because if you fall asleep, your dumbass soul can wander out.

From what the rapist skull says, this is mostly a wizard issue – “When a mortal dreams, all kinds of strange things can happen. When a wizard dreams, it can be even weirder. Sometimes, dreams can be intense enough to create a little, temporary world of their own. Kind of a bubble in the Nevernever. I really wish the book could decide clearly if wizards have unique vulnerabilities or not. It’d really help it make more sense that they think the rest of human civilization can get by fine without knowing about magic if wizards were a lot weaker to magic attacks, and it’d make sense that there could be some sort of tradeoff. Instead of “humans get thresholds, nonhumans don’t, fucked if I know why or care” it could be that the more magic you are, the less you have threshold and related protections. Wizards can manually buff theirs up if they know to, because they’re mortal enough to have something to buff, while anything even more magical doesn’t have one at all and goes in the demesne direction instead.

Which, incidentally, is what the dreambubbles are. The ghost had one, and Harry apparently generated one.

you’ve got everything it takes to make a ghost inside you except for the right set of circumstances. Ghosts are only frozen images of people, Harry, last impressions made by a personality.” Bob paused, reflectively. “People are almost always more trouble than anything you run into on the Other Side.”

Spirits probably shouldn’t define “people” as “humans”, also lol no, we’re seen vampires and rapist skull spirits and molesty fairies, nonhumans are doing just fine at upholding the suckiness of people.

The rapist skull goes on to say that most of the time dreams don’t do this, but the fucked up border is evidently fucked up both ways, so human dreams are bubbling out there more.

Now. Go back far enough, and people thought all dreams were magic. What if they were? If we’re trying to do something with what the border is, perhaps this means that it didn’t always exist. Maybe humans made it, or maybe it is the result of natural forces but it’s more along the lines of land bridges, there’s some underlying process that can create or destroy it that we have no control over.

(And if it’s human-made, this suggests the possibility of a faction planning to take it down. Maybe widespread knowledge of magic let us put it up, and ignorance means it’s no longer being maintained. We’re sure the current turbulence is caused by something, but we don’t know if the damage is permanent. Maybe it is. Maybe the border isn’t self-repairing at all, and that’s part of why Morty was so convinced it was coming down in the long run.)

At any rate, that’s how it got Micky. Harry works this out and proceeds to not reevaluate anything he thought about Lydia, because this was never, ever about Lydia.

The rapist skull goes on to tell us that it must’ve actually been in the dream, so, who was acting weird.

“Um. Everything went wrong. That demon he’d called. It was stronger than it had been in life.”

Also your spell fizzled and got turned back on you by the other wizard. That happened first, actually. The more relevant part here would probably be how the demon started talking to you and then chewed through your stomach.

Harry doesn’t clarify that so they move on to considering the demon.

Is it possible for something like a demon to leave a ghost?”
“Oh, uh,” Bob said, “I don’t think so-unless it had actually died there. Eternally perished, I mean, not just had its vessel dispersed.”
“Michael killed it with Amoracchius,” I said.
Bob’s skull shuddered. “Ow,” he said. ” Amoracchius. I’m not sure, then. I don’t know. That sword might be able to kill a demon, even through a physical shell. That whole faith-magic thing is awfully strong.”

Except before, ghosts appeared to be specifically for humans. The rapist skull even did his whole “people are the real monsters” bit.

Can fairies leave ghosts? It’s not that I’m going to insist they’re human only (souls for humans is never something that interests me), it’s just that’s how it’s been presented so far. It would be perfectly reasonable to say any strong emotion can leave an afterimage-ghost so long as we’re consistent about it.

Right now, the rapist skull seems to know demons definitely do leave ghosts when they die, as foreshadowed never, and demons generally seem to be operating really far outside the bounds of the other magic creatures, so they should be least likely to follow the same rules. If it was confirmed that more than just humans leave ghosts, like fairies, the rapist skull might not know of any specific demon ghosts – I mean, he obviously isn’t even clear on what it takes to kill one, it’s not like there’s going to be many chances for this to happen – but think it was plausible. And if it’d been confirmed, readers could’ve been speculating about it, instead of getting it brought up only now when they’re telling us what to think.

“Okay, so. We could be dealing with the ghost of a demon, here,” I said. “A demon that died while it was all fired up for a fight. Maybe that’s what makes it so … so vicious.”

Continuing the subject of “but is that how ghosts work???”, poor Agatha didn’t seem fired up when she died and sure managed to get vicious when provoked. Do demons enjoy fights? Do demons hate fights? The best guess for what makes one is strong emotion, but it seems hard to believe demons would have super strong emotions regarding a contractual fight. Maybe demons are hyperemotional. It’d explain the one in Fool Moon screwing up the temptation bit in frustration, and it’d actually be a pretty good addition to demons generally fucking up reality to say that even killing them just makes a scar in the area.

Do demons even need to be fired up? If they’re just into torture, the viciousness isn’t an emotional thing, it’s just there.

Harry then says the barbed wire thing must be another actor – it’d be nice if he explicitly said demons can’t use magic here instead, because we actually don’t know that.

“Maybe the spells are someone else’s work,” Bob offered.
“Bianca,” I said, suddenly.

I would go with “vampires” but okay fine, as long as we’re finally getting to them at all.

“She and her lackeys are all messed up in this somehow-remember that they put the snatch on Lydia? And they were waiting for me, that first night, when I came back from being arrested.”
“I didn’t think she was that big time a practitioner,” Bob said.
I shrugged. “She’s not, horribly. But she just got promoted, too. Maybe she’s been studying up. She’s always had a little more than her share of freaky vampire tricks-and if she was over in the Nevernever when she did it, it would have made her stronger.”

Did she get promoted? Is this magic that’s particularly in line with vampire powers? Since when do you know jack shit about vampires in general let alone Bianca’s power standing and tricks in relation to the rest? I’m pretty sure you don’t even know any freaky vampire tricks! You just know they’re got addictive spit and glamour.

ANYWAY. What did I keep saying? If he’d just called Bianca, he’d have something to go on here! That’s how hardboiled detectiving is supposed to work – you talk to someone you think is involved one way, then it turns out they’re involved in another but you poking them makes them nervous so they try to kill you early, etc etc.

Harry also quickly reminds us that Bianca blames him for a death, which, given it was a minor sidepoint in the first book, is a completely appropriate reminder!

Now, two problems.

1. Bianca doesn’t give a fuck about those other people. If the goal was siccing a dream demon ghost on Harry, sending Lydia to get the charm off him makes sense but not anything else. At very most, if she wanted to hide her involvement she might want to kill Lydia first (and even then, better to kill Harry then kill Lydia, you start with the harder one), yet we know Lydia is still alive – for that matter, she’s being guarded by a starving vampire and she’s still alive, so whoever’s involved is putting a stupid lot of effort into this.

2. Bianca still can’t get across thresholds. It’s the barbed wire that’s the problem here! There’s not even proof that the nightmare ever attacked Micky, we’re just guessing, and moreover it was specifically the barbed wire that was the spell that would be way too difficult to pull off, Harry didn’t say the spiritual mauling was all that hard.

“And she could have been everywhere in question?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, she could have been.”
“Means, opportunity, motive.”

NO. She didn’t have opportunity, and that’s even if we accept “means” to include “I don’t have any fucking idea how vampires work, who knows, it’s possible she learned vampire magic at some point and possible vampire magic could be this”. Neither did she have motive for attacking Micky, which is the only instance of barbed wire within a threshold and the thing we’re trying to explain here.

Now, if the idea was to make Harry suffer by hurting people he cares about first, then we have a reason for Harry not to be the first victim, but we still have no reason for Micky to be targeted. There are two good female targets to fridge for Harry’s manpain, one of whom he’s sleeping with so it’s extra obvious, and moreover, Bianca said she knows (he thinks) he’s chivalrous, so there’s extra reason to think to target them.

Harry just claims it’s “Damn shaky logic and that he doesn’t have explicit proof, which means no council backup. But you do have proof there’s barbed wire and murderous dream ghosts attacking people – is the White Council solely for legal matters and doesn’t get involved unless they can put someone on trial at some point?

And then, well…

There’s this exchange.

“So?” Bob said. “Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved.”
“Bob,” I said. “You can’t just go around killing people.”
“I know. That’s why you should do it.”
“No, no. I can’t go around killing people, either.”
“Why not? You’ve done it before. And you’ve got a new gun and everything.”
“I can’t arbitrarily end someone’s life because of something they may have done.”
“Bianca’s a vampire,” Bob pointed out cheerfully. “She’s not alive in the classic sense. I’ll get Mister and go fetch the bullets and you-”
I sighed. “No, Bob. She’s got lots of people around her, too. I’d probably have to kill some of them to get to her.”
“Oh. Damn. This is one of those right and wrong issues again, isn’t it.”
“Yeah, one of those.”
“I’m still confused about this whole morality thing, Harry.”

And you do a good job of confusing Harry, evil rapist skull! Look at the progression. “I can’t kill somebody when I have no proof” transforms into “I’d have to kill other people along the way to murdering someone with no proof” after the rapist skull reminds Harry killing nonhumans is a-okay!

But…Harry was fine killing people who were absolutely alive in the classic sense last book. He spends the entire thing gleefully informing us every time he could technically kill somebody because they’re not human enough to count. What changed?

Maybe it’s an inner monologue thing – he knows how horrible it’d be to say aloud, so in a conversation, he repeats the words he knows he’s supposed to say. He doesn’t really sound like he has much conviction here, does he? And we also know he’s terrified of vampires but isn’t mentioning that as a factor either, which strongly suggests how he presents himself in conversation is different than his real reasoning.

But alternatively, maybe he does view vampires as more human than some of the wolf variants before. Tera may have been an ally who treated him with respect, but she was an anathema to everything Harry values in women – self-confident, unflusterable, unconcerned with her body. The lycanthropes similarly aren’t what he likes from people, and they were weak – it takes a mob of them to put Harry down, and it doesn’t stick.

In contrast, Harry loved how Bianca played being a proper lady. While he was disgusted by what she looked like once he peeled her skin off, once he had the upper hand and hurt her, she folded. She even put herself back together pretty and went back to the act he liked. She fits into how he views people just fine. He may not like her because she’s dangerous and hates him, but for all Harry’s many, many faults, he doesn’t seem to take someone being an enemy as a reason to kill them.

So, maybe there is some honesty there – maybe vampires squeak in as “people”.

I stood up and walked to my work table, my eyes by now adjusted to the dimness. I reached for the nearest candle, but there weren’t any matches handy. So, I pointed my finger at it, frowned, and muttered the words, ” Flickum bicus.”
My spell, a tiny one I had used thousands of times, stuttered and coughed

So, he does use magic to light candles, and he does it all the time, but he does keep matches around for the other times, because who knows.

Harry tries harder and lights the candle only to become dizzy. It looks like his first and second book ability to tell how much fuel was left in the tank are gone.

Turns out, it didn’t just go for the stomach for the chewy intestines but to swallow a good lot of Harry’s magic ability.

Got you right in the chi.”
“Bob,” I whispered.
“Good thing he didn’t go after your mojo though, right? I mean, you have to look on the bright side of these-“

As I have no other guess as to the distinction between “chi that relates to magic” and “mojo”, I’m going to assume he’s talking balls. Also, I regret that it didn’t happen. There is no bright side to Harry not getting his testicles chewed off by a demon, rapist skull.

Harry, don’t worry about it, you’ll heal. Sure, you might be down for a couple of months. Or, um, years. Well, decades, possibly, but that’s only a very outside chance-“

Bah.

This is obviously not a serious depowering or it’d be getting talked about in a more serious manner. And while Harry desperately needs a depowering, this would be an awful way to go about it.

“Okay, okay. We’ve really got to find this thing now.” I started pacing back and forth. “If it’s using my power, it makes me responsible for what it does with it.”
Bob scoffed. “Harry, that’s irrational.”
I shot him a look. “That doesn’t make it any less true,” I snapped.

No, I’m going to have to side with the rapist skull on this one. I mean what the fuck Harry. Why is this in particular your line in the sand? The horrible things it’s done aren’t reason? And the fact you did your absolute best to ignore one of the people it’s going after doesn’t make you feel even a tiny bit responsible for what happens to her?

The rapist skull says that luckily, he did all the journal reading for Harry, in the process confirming that ectomancer is a valid term.

The thing can show up in nightmares, but there’s going to be commonality between all of it. Ghosts can only have the kind of power this Nightmare has while they are acting within the parameters of their specific bailiwick.”
“Baili-what?”
“Look at it this way, Harry. A ghost can only affect something that relates directly to its death somehow. Agatha Hagglethorn couldn’t have terrorized a Cubs game. That wasn’t where her power was. She could mess with infants, with abusive husbands, maybe with abused wives-”
“And meddling wizards,” I mumbled.
“You put yourself in the line of fire, sure,” Bob said.

Christ this is badly thought out.

Given Agatha killed both her baby and her husband and she’s super good at smothering babies, it’d be fine to just assume she has +10 ax power against men. Saying Harry was totally outside her specialty yet still very nearly died means you absolutely can sic a dream ghost on unrelated people, you’ve just got to figure out a way to get them in that line of fire.

“Me,” I said. “And Lydia. And Mickey Malone. How the hell do all of those relate? I never saw Lydia before in my life.” I frowned. “At least, I don’t think I have.”
“She’s kind of an oddball,” Bob agreed. “Leave her out of the equation for a minute?”

She’s the one the ghost wanted so bad it tried to smash its way into a church, and did manage to destroy plenty of stuff on concreted ground. She’s the one it went for first. All it did with Micky was quietly kill some animals and pop in when it had opportunity. The evidence says she’s the one most connected to the ghost.

But no, Harry is quite happy for an excuse to leave Lydia to whatever fate she has. Instead, he decides that if he completely ignores one out of three data points, it’s totally obvious! The demon wants revenge.

“I’ve got to find Murphy.

To quickly recap, Murphy was in the general vicinity as backup, Harry attacked its summoner, and Michael shiskabobed it.

Valid to be concerned about her given it attacked another person who was just in the general vicinity, admittedly, but from what the rapist skull said, it may have tried for Harry and Michael the first night and not had an appropriate dream. Otherwise, it must not be acting based on revenge, and in that case, there’s again no reason to assume Murphy is at the top of the shitlist.

Overall, god, these books are a disaster as mysteries. The possibility nonhumans leave ghosts should’ve come up originally rather than being introduced now. We finally get it confirmed that vampires are undeadish, which you’ll recall is the main reason to connect Bianca and the barbed wire spell, and it’s pretty obvious this connection wasn’t intended because Harry lays out an argument for Bianca being involved that doesn’t even reference it. There’s still a ton of other factors that should’ve been brought up concretely so the reader can consider them. And this is now the second time in a row Harry’s had a theory revolving around how it got past the threshold that doesn’t explain getting past the threshold.