'''''Ghost Story''''' is book #13 in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''.

When we last left the mighty wizard detective Harry Dresden, he wasn't doing well. In fact, he had been murdered by an unknown assassin.

But being dead doesn't stop him when his friends are in danger. Except now he has nobody, and no magic to help him. And there are also several dark spirits roaming the Chicago shadows who owe Harry some payback of their own.

To save his friends -- and his own soul -- Harry will have to pull off the ultimate trick without any magic...
----
!!''Ghost Story'' provides examples of the following tropes:

* AbnormalAmmo: Sir Stuart uses a large gun to blast a wraith to oblivion. Harry finds out that, much like everything else [[spoiler: a ghost]] can do, it is powered by memory. Stuart makes a great effort to recover that energy each time it is used. [[spoiler: 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 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.]]
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Harry finally realises that [[spoiler: Molly's]] feelings for him go beyond a mere crush. He also feels sorry that he cannot reciprocate them.
* [[spoiler:AnAstralProjectionNotAGhost]]: Ironically, one of the [[TwistEnding twists]] of ''Ghost Story''. Maybe. [[spoiler: The things that Harry experienced, such as the "between", were most certainly real, and almost certainly restricted to ghosts.]]
* BackFromTheDead and UndeathAlwaysEnds: [[spoiler:Thanks to Mab, Demonreach, Uriel, and the efforts of a certain "parasite", Harry is brought back at the end.]]
* BadassNormal: Daniel Carpenter takes after both of his parents in the badass department, knife fighting with a supernaturally fast warlock.
* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: [[spoiler:Uriel]] revealed to Harry that [[spoiler:he was unduly influenced by the words of a Fallen that led him to wanting to die after becoming the Winter Knight.]] It heavily affected Harry. To balance things in the end [[spoiler:Uriel gives Harry seven words when Mab "lies" to him at the end.]]
* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: [[spoiler: Molly engages the Corpsetaker in a mental battle in order to rescue Waldo Butters, whose body Corpsetaker has stolen. Then Corpsetaker tried 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 [[Franchise/StarTrek 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.]]
* BeardOfSorrow: [[spoiler:At the very end we find out that Thomas has one as well, because of Harry's death in Changes.]]
* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler:Mortimer Lindquist and his wraiths]] are this for [[spoiler:Molly]].
* BittersweetEnding:[[spoiler:Molly is still mentally damaged. Murphy is still hurting. Harry is alive but still Mab's Winter Knight. The Formor 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.]]
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler: Aristides used subtle mind magic to convince his crew of children to do crazy things, like firing into the house of Karrin Murphy.]]
* BreakTheCutie: [[spoiler:Molly. Her overt madness is a BatmanGambit to scare away some of the nastier critters lurking around Chicago, but helping Harry arrange his own murder and then being as sensitive as she is at 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 Pussies" brand of magical training.]]
* BreatherEpisode: It's a bit ironic, considering that Harry's ''not actually breathing'', but when you look at [[{{Literature/Changes}} the book before]] and [[Literature/ColdDays the book after,]] this really is one...
* BrokenBird: Molly
* CallBack: Harry has Fitz knock on the wall of Father Forthill's office, in the exact spot where he'd learned Forthill keeps [[spoiler: documents of a secret priestly order he belongs to]] in the short story "The Warrior".
** Similarly, when Murphy and crew are trying to determine if Harry is really Harry, most of the plots of the previous books are mentioned.
* CastFromHitPoints: 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 is bye-bye. [[spoiler:Harry comes dangerously close to this without realizing it.]]
* ChekhovsGun:
** Similar to ''Small Favor'' using the ''absence'' of Harry's [[spoiler: fire magic and blasting rod]] as a subtle hint that something's wrong, this book conspicuously lacks any mention of [[spoiler: Thomas]] until the end, when Harry reasons he must have subconsciously blocked himself from thinking about [[spoiler: his brother]] to avoid the shame he would feel thinking about how much pain he caused must have caused [[spoiler: him with his suicide]].
** Harry's first question to Lea with their deal, [[spoiler:"If shades are memories, are the memories truth?"]] and her response that [[spoiler: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 3 pound flesh organ in a 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.
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Harry still moves to rescue those who are in need, [[spoiler:from Fitz and his kids, to his closest friends]]. Special mention goes to a flashback seen from Harry's youth when [[spoiler:he saw He Who Walks Behind brutally kill a gas station attendant named Stan Harry met, while trying to rob Stan]] 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.''
* ColdBloodedTorture: [[spoiler: 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.]]
* ContinuityNod: 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.
* CreepyChild
** Inez, the spirit of a little girl in the Graceland cemetery who Harry meets. 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." [[spoiler:It is implied that Inez is actually 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 ghost children who love to "play" with living children down by the river.
* CrypticConversation: ''Every spirit'' in ''Ghost Story'' 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 [[spoiler: 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. [[spoiler:As with Inez, it's implied that the Eternal Silence is actually Demonreach.]]
* DarkIsNotEvil: 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 whites of her eyes are black. All that said, she is one of the go ofod guys who will guard the soul the dead to its final place. [[BadassBoast Not even the Prince of Darkness would wrest the soul from her protection.]]
* DeaderThanDead:
** The [[spoiler: Corpsetaker]] after Harry allows her personal supply of wraiths to [[HoistByHerOwnPetard assault and consume her]]. Harry reports that the last sound he hears of her is replaced by the [[CallBack sound of a]] [[{{Hell}} southbound train]].
** Upon realizing [[spoiler:Harry is not a ghost but his pure soul wandering around]] he is told, that if he "dies" this will be his fate.
* DeadPersonConversation: Inverted: Harry is the dead person in question.
* DeadToBeginWith: The whole premise.
* {{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 [[spoiler: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 TheDreaded 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.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: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 Literature/{{Changes}}]].
* DumbMuscle:
** While certainly {{Bad Ass}} during his fight with Aristedes the sorcerer, Daniel Carpenter displays shades of this during his first appearance in ''Ghost Story'', [[spoiler: blurting out in his over-enthusiastic and dour-but-righteous zeal that Murphy has two of the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Swords of the Cross]] and that they should be used. The problem with this is that there is a member of the [[OurVampiresAreDifferent 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 [[TooDumbToLive blackmail Murphy into being her [[HornyDevils next]] [[EmotionEater meal]], leading to a [[TalkToTheFist swift]] and [[PistolWhip brutal rebuttal]].]]
** Also [[spoiler:Corpsetaker]]'s thugs, who are uniformly and deliberately kept large and dumb.
* DontFearTheReaper: Dresden meets an Angel of Death [[spoiler: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.
* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:Harry, apparently.]]
* EldritchAbomination: We finally get the scoop on He Who Walks Behind. Lovecraft would have been impressed.
* EnemyWithout: [[spoiler:Evil Bob]].
* FamilyEyeResemblance: Lea notes that while Harry has his mother's Sight, she has felt he favored his father Malcolm when it comes to the eyes.
* FunWithAcronyms: In Ghost Story Harry's friends have formed the [[{{BFS}} Better Future Society]] it could have been a coincidence but then Butters mentions that he wanted to name it the [[{{BFG}} Better Future Group]] for the sake of the [[FunWithAcronyms Acronym]]
* GenreBlindness: Played with in ''Ghost Story''. [[spoiler: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 CastFromHitPoints, 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}}: [[spoiler: Nazi-dressed Evil Bob commands a spirit realm shaped like the Nazi defenses on the beaches of D-Day, patrolled by werewolf Nazi soldiers Harry dubs wolfwaffen.]]
* GirlOnGirlIsHot: [[spoiler: Justine invokes this in order to get Thomas to feed on her at the end.]]
* GodsHandsAreTied: 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, however 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.
* GuardianAngel: 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.
* GuiltComplex: Harry also spends ''Ghost Story'' 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 survive on her own, for setting a bad example by crossing the line when he [[spoiler: 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.]]
* HesJustHiding: [[spoiler:Murphy refused to accept Harry's death, including after she ''met his ghost'', because she had 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, [[spoiler: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.]]
* HeelRealization: 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, [[HeWhoFightsMonsters he became what he fought.]] [[spoiler: But this is inverted later when he rejects Evil Bob's WeCanRuleTogether offer, realizing that one bad choice at the end of a lifetime of fighting evil does ''not'' make him evil.]]
* HeroicBSOD: In ''Ghost Story'', it is obvious that [[spoiler: this has happened to Murph, Molly, and Thomas after Harry's death]].
* HeroicFatigue: Played with in ''Ghost Story'': [[spoiler: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.]]
* HeroOfAnotherStory: 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.
* HiddenDepths: Mort, who turns out to have both more grit and more magical talent than Harry ever suspected.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Two of the [[spoiler: psycho ghosts guarded by Mort]] are RealLife figures from Chicago history.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:The Corpsetaker should have been more careful with those powerful wraiths.]] See NiceJobFixingItVillain.
* IdiotBall: Harry realizes he was holding it during a specific event near the end of ''Changes'': [[spoiler: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.]]
* IgnoredExpert: Morty feels like this when [[spoiler:despite him being known to the Chicago Alliance as an ectomancer, his testimony that Harry Dresden's spirit is with them and came with him to Murphy's home is not accepted. 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.]]
* IKnowYourTrueName: Harry realizes when two angels speak his True Name with perfect inflection at him, any attempt to fight them would be a moot one.
* ImpostorExposingTest: Murphy has Mort cut himself in ''Ghost Story'' 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.
* TheInternetIsForPorn: In ''Ghost Story'', Bob now has access to the internet. He declares, almost giddy, "It's like ninety-percent porn!"
* IronicEcho: 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 ''Ghost Story'', and she's again practicing shields. Only this time, it's [[spoiler:[[TheFairFolk Leanansidhe]] throwing ''hunks of ice'' like a major league pitcher, and Molly's as far from her warm, safe, loving home as you get.]]
* JewishMother: Butters has one, and she's rubbed off on Bob since he took possession of the skull.
* TheKidWithTheLeash: Butters winds up holding Bob's leash by the end, 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).
* KillItWithFire: In ''Ghost Story'', Harry points out that 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'''.
* LateArrivalSpoiler: Present in some of the later books, but ''Ghost Story'' takes this to new heights: it is ''impossible'' to discuss its plot ([[spoiler:WhoDunnitToMe]]) without giving away the last few pages of ''Changes''.
* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard: [[spoiler:The Corpsetaker knows Morty is a decent level practitioner and an expert on ectomancing. When Harry [[NiceJobBreakingItHero 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 BigDamnHeroes.
* MagicallyBindingContract: Butters makes one with Bob that is twenty pages long so [[spoiler:Bob can spend time in Butters during some dinners.]]
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Harry wants desperately for [[spoiler:Uriel to help save Molly from the 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 the Corpsetaker despite being 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 [[BigDamnHeroes Mortimer appears controlling the Corpsetaker's own army of wraiths]] and saves Molly's life.]]
* MeaningfulEcho: Harry said in ''Changes'' the world could burn if it meant he would save his daughter. [[spoiler:Uriel notes that his apprentice Molly and Karrin would suffer greatly as well. And because of his actions, they have suffered are suffering.]]
* MeaninglessVillainVictory: Harry ultimately realizes [[spoiler: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) [[Literature/SummerKnight was up to]] when Harry first found out that the [[OurFairiesAreDifferent fae courts had knights]].]]
* MustMakeAmends:
** Harry Dresden to an extent when he realizes the effects of his actions. Easier said than done since [[spoiler: he happens to be dead]].
** [[spoiler:Molly feels this as she helped Harry plan his death, and now is making "amends" by becoming a terror against the Formor and corruption in Chicago by killing people.]]
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Much of ''Ghost Story'' consists of this sort of realization regarding his RoaringRampageOfRevenge in ''Changes''.
* NervousWreck: Molly Carpenter becomes one in ''Ghost Story'', following [[spoiler: Harry's apparent death in the previous book and her own attempt to fill in his shoes as the magic defender of Chicago]].
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:Mort tells Harry, all to late, that bringing the crazy ghosts with him to save Mort helped the Corpsetaker because she now could feed on them, precisely what Mort was trying to avoid.]]
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:Mort tells the Corpsetaker]] how epically stupid it was to leave him alive in a room filled with [[spoiler:Wraiths. He then proceeds to use them to finally destroy her for good.]]
* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: 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.
* NotQuiteDead: [[spoiler: Harry, as it turns out, at the end of ''Ghost Story''. His soul had just been separated from his body while said vessel was being kept alive by Mab, Demonreach, and a certain "parasite".]]
* NotSoDifferent: Harry tries to argue that [[spoiler: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. Thomas was tortured by a skinwalker.]] Averted because [[spoiler:Uriel says Molly wasn't the one lied to by the Fallen. Her freewill was not influenced by one. And Thomas, though influenced by the torment, he is still alive and has a choice. So they are different than Harry's predicament.]]
* OhCrap
** In the first couple chapters of ''Ghost Story'', Harry has a moment where he realizes that, [[spoiler: as a ghost, he has no magic. As he's being attacked by a wraith.]]
** In the last chapter, Harry does it again when [[spoiler: 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.
* PlausibleDeniability: [[spoiler: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.]]
* RightForTheWrongReasons: See SpotTheThread below.
* RuleOfThree: [[spoiler:In exchange for a tale of Harry's past she didn't know, Lea agrees to answer three questions.]]
* SaintlyChurch: St. Mary's makes another appearance. [[spoiler:And unlike the last time a ghost tried to enter back in ''Grave Peril'' Harry could enter the holy place.]]
* ScheduleSlip: ''Ghost Story'' was originally scheduled for release in April 2011, before being delayed until July 2011.
-->Said Jim (paraphrased): “It came down to, readers could either get a half-assed story in April, or a full-assed one in July!”
* ScyllaAndCharybdis: [[spoiler:Leah, Harry's godmother]] ends up in this situation as she has two obligations she must fulfill. First, [[spoiler:she must honor her word to Harry and answer the his question about who killed him.]] On the other side [[spoiler:she is bound, presumably by Mab, to not tell Harry who killed him.]] She is forced to fulfill both by [[spoiler:using ExactWords and being true from a certain point of view.]]
* SeekingSanctuary:
** First, Harry tells Fitz a safe place he can rest up in is St. Mary's.
** Later, [[spoiler:to save the children Aristides had under his control from both the police and a pissed off Murphy, Molly gets them taken not to St. Mary's, but her father and mother knowing that there is one place Murphy wouldn't go after them for the crimes they committed.]]
* ShutUpHannibal: There are two significant instances of this: first, [[spoiler: when Harry tells Evil Bob to take his WeCanRuleTogether offer and shove it because he will ''never'' belong to the Dark Side]], and second, [[spoiler: 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]].
* SpotTheThread: In ''Ghost Story'', to sneak into the den of a [[TheFagin sorcerer]] and rescue his [[Literature/OliverTwist band of thieving street urchins]], [[spoiler: [[TookALevelInBadass 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. [[SubvertedTrope 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 [[BaldOfEvil 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.
* SpringIsLate: Chicago sees regular snowfall well into ''May'' [[spoiler: due to the fact that Queen Mab herself is in the city, keeping Harry's body [[IncrediblyLamePun warm]].]]
* {{Squick}}: Harry tries to explain how ghosts "feel" injury or discomfort by drawing analogies to this trope. He also experiences it more directly when [[spoiler: the Lecter Specters tear into Evil Bob's Ghostapo demon-wolf troops.]]
* StealthPun: Flickum Bicus is actually kinda subtle unless you regularly flick your bic. ''Ghost Story'' outright explains this one, though: [[spoiler: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.]]
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: "Grenades!" [[UnreliableNarrator I ordered,]] in a firm and manly tone that did not sound at all like a panicked fourteen-year-old.
-->''Willie let out a high-pitched scream as we narrowly avoided being smashed by a truck.\\
Seriously. It was her. Nobody can prove otherwise.''
* SympathyForTheDevil: [[spoiler: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.]]
* TakeUpMySword: A straight example occurs in ''Ghost Story'', when the gravely-wounded [[spoiler: 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 [[spoiler: 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.]]
* TalkingInYourSleep: An interesting version in ''Ghost Story'': [[spoiler: 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.
* TeleportSpam: Ghosts who know how to "vanish" (which is essentially ghostly teleportation) use this when they fight. Harry and [[spoiler: the Corpsetaker]] have a magical duel while teleporting around a cavern, including teleporting ''inside'' solid structures like walls to duke it out.
* TermsOfEndangerment: He Who Walks Behind was practically ''cooing'' to sixteen-year-old Harry when the creature was menacing him in the flashback. Creepy as hell.
* TerrorHero: Molly becomes a Type 4 deliberately to try to impose order in the city.
* TheyCallMeMisterTibbs: [[spoiler:Harry learns quickly, Uriel will never tolerate his name being familiarized into "Uri." He will, however, accept "Mr. Sunshine" as another nickname.]]
* ThirteenIsUnlucky: This is the thirteenth book in the series, and Harry is dead. [[spoiler: Well, until the end. Or, depending on your point of view, he never was dead in the first place]].
* TrainingFromHell: How Lea trains [[spoiler: Molly]] after [[spoiler: Harry's death]]. She even calls a pack of mid-level Fomor mooks against an exhausted and malnourished [[spoiler: Molly]] and expects her to handle it. Then, when [[spoiler:Harry]] predictably intervenes, she reveals that she used that particular sequence to train them BOTH at the same time. [[TheFairFolk The Fae]] are NOT to be taken lightly. After this episode, [[spoiler: 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 [[spoiler: Molly]] for just what kinds of trauma and hardship she'll naturally be exposed to as a wizard, especially [[spoiler:as a psychic sensitive]].
* TykeBomb: Bob postulates [[spoiler: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.]]
* UnfinishedBusiness: ''Ghost Story''. [[spoiler: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 BigBad 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.]]
* UnreliableNarrator: Happens once again, when it turns out that [[spoiler:Harry arranged for his own death with Kincaid before accepting the mantle of the Winter Knight, then had Molly erase his memory of it.]]
* VillainBall:
** [[spoiler: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.]]
** [[spoiler:The Corpsetaker shouldn't have let Mort continue to live or shop for a good body when a powerful ectomancer was in the area.]]
* WeCanRuleTogether: [[spoiler: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 [[ShutUpHannibal flat-out rejects it]], having come to the inverse of his earlier HeelRealization.]]
* WeHaveReserves: Harry bluntly tells [[spoiler:Fitz that because Aristides 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.]]
* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"They've been like that ever since they killed you."]]
* WhoDunnitToMe: [[spoiler:The job that Captain Jack from "between" sends Ghost Harry to find out in ''Ghost Story.'']]
* YouCanSeeMe: It comes as a surprise to [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler: not only sense him, but can ''still body-slam his shins in greeting'']].
* YouOweMe: Harry tells [[spoiler:Uriel]] bluntly, he is owed some straight up answers to allow him to make an informed choice. [[spoiler:Uriel, after a moment, sees that Harry has been jerked around by one of his subordinates to come back to Chicago and was ''lied'' to by a Fallen.]] So, he agrees to give Harry the information he asks for.
* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: Harry has a slightly downplayed version when Lea says his explanation of what happened at the climax of ''Literature/{{Changes}}'' is "Spoken as someone worthy to wield power" he replies that coming from her "that's a little unsettling actually".
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