Plot

Dresden takes on the case of a father being haunted by his daughter, but the circumstances of her murder send Harry in a different direction that endangers Connie.

Ghosts they're really echoes of past wrongs. The trick is to understand what's broken, and then fix it. Because if you don't, well, you're gonna end up haunted.

An antiques dealer named Harding came to me about his dead daughter, Lisa, haunting him. In investigating, Lisa actually made me relive her murder. A recently released ex-con named Gus Boone knocked Harding out, shot Lisa, and stole an Egyptian tablet called the Lock of Anubis.

Interestingly, Harding had tried to sell the object online but withdrew it after disappointing bids. One bid came from someone in prison, but it wasn't Boone.

Boone dropped and shattered the tablet before being shot and killed while carjacking a guy named Edward Miller.

So, I visited the wealthy Mr. Miller, who claimed to know nothing about Boone or Lisa. He gave me little more than my fill of evasive snottiness, and he asked me to leave so he could get to his scheduled massage. I left, but not before seeing Miller's Egyptian hieroglyphics tattoo and a statuette of Egyptian deity Anubis.

I found out Lucas Sabin was the prisoner who unsuccessfully bid on the Lock and that Sabin was Boone's cellmate at the time. In fact, Sabin was an Egyptophile who had killed and mummified a child. We met, and I saw that he had the same tattoo that Miller had. He claimed to have given the same tat to Boone before Boone was released.

Somehow, Boone had no tattoo in the autopsy photos.

Murphy took me with her to Miller's house, where she started asking some of the same questions I had been asking, which freaked Miller out. Then he freaked me out by shooting himself in the head and, apparently, transferring his soul into Murphy's body.

It all became clear to me. Having the tattoo and the Lock of Anubis enabled people to switch bodies. Sabin gave Boone the tattoo, and was supposed to steal the tablet so he could switch into a guard's body and release Sabin.

Too bad for Sabin that Boone had no intention of breaking him out. I used that fact to get all the information I needed to right things.

Using magic and psychology, I lured Boone/Murphy to Harding's store, where I was able to knock his soul out into the apparently painful ether. Lisa's ghost looked on and, after giving her father a settled but still mournful look, faded.