fire vs Corpsetaker

Mort spotted me and slurred, “Dresden. You moron. What have you done?”
Corpsetaker tilted her head back and laughed.
“I wasn’t keeping them shut away because they might hurt this bitch,” Morty said. He sounded hurt and exhausted and furious. “I was protecting them because she was going to eat them.”
I stared for a second.
The Corpsetaker had been going to eat the Lecters. The most vicious, dangerous, powerful spirits in all of Chicago.
Just like she had planned to do to Chicago’s ghosts when Kemmler’s disciples had attempted a ritual called a Darkhallow several years before, I realized—a ritual that, if successful, would have turned the necromancer who pulled it off into a being of godlike power.
“Ahhhh,” the Corpsetaker said, the sound deep and rich and full of satisfaction.
I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’m almost full,” she continued. She smiled at me with very wide, very white, very sharp-looking teeth. “Almost.”

Ghost Story Chapter 46, Page 490


One thing you never do in a fight, no matter how emotionally satisfying it might seem, is pause to gloat with an enemy standing right in front of you. Savvy foes aren’t going to just hang around letting you yak at them. They’re going to take advantage of the opening you’re giving them.
The same goes for desperate foes who aren’t interested in trying to win a fair fight.
Before the Corpsetaker finished speaking, I snapped my staff forward and snarled, “Fuego!”
Fire lashed toward her. She deflected the strike with a motion of her hand, like you’d use to ward off a fly. The memory-fire went flying on by her, through the wall and gone.
“Such a pity,” she said. “I was just going to—”
She wanted to keep up the gloating, I was game.
I hit her again, only harder.
This time I sent it flying a lot faster and it stung, though she slapped the fire aside before it could do much more than singe her. She let out a furious sound. “Fool! I will—”
Some people. I swear they never learn.
I’d built up a rhythm. So I gave her my best evocation, a burst of fire and force, sizzling with a lot of curve and English on it, an ogre-buster the size of a softball, blazing with scarlet and golden light.
She swept both arms into an X-shaped defensive stance, fingers contorted in a desperate defensive gesture, and she snapped out a string of swift words. She stopped the strike, but an explosion of flame and force rolled over her and she screamed in pain as she was driven twenty feet back and into the solid rock of the wall.
“Yahhh!” I shouted in wordless defiance, even as I reached for my next spell . . .
. . . and suddenly felt very strange.
“—sden, stop!” Mort was screaming. His voice sounded very far away. “Look at yourself !”
I had the next blast of fire and energy ready in my mind, but I stopped to glance at my hands.
I could barely see them. They were faded to the point of near invisibility.
The shock drove the spell out of my head, and color and substance rushed back into my limbs. They were still translucent, but at least I could see them. I turned wide eyes to where Mort still hung over the wraith pit. His voice suddenly snapped back up in volume, becoming very clear.
“You keep throwing your memories at her,” Mort said, “but part of what you are now goes out with them—and it doesn’t come back. You’re about to destroy yourself, man! She’s luring you into it!”
Of course she was, dammit. Why stand around trying to block my attacks when she could just vanish from in front of them? Evil Bob’s fortifications, it seemed, had served a purpose other than simply barring the way—I’d used up way too much of myself on the way through them. And then here, trading punches with Corpsetaker, I’d used up a lot more, slinging out the memory of my magic left and right, when I’d seen how careful Sir Stuart was to recover such expended power practically the minute I’d gotten out of Captain Jack’s car.

Ghost Story Chapter 47, Page 492-493