by Jim Butcher
"Then what?" I asked.
"It went away. I felt a little silly. Like I was a scared little kid. Or one of those dogs that's staring at something growling when nothing is there."
I shook my head. "Dogs don't just stare and growl for no reason. Sometimes they can perceive things people can't."
She frowned. "Do you think something was here?"
I didn't want to tell her that I thought a Black Court vampire had been lurking unseen in the shop. Hell, for that matter I didn't particularly want to think about it. If Mavra had been here, there wouldn't have been anything Shiela or Bock could do to defend themselves against her.
"I think you wouldn't be foolish to trust your instincts," I said. "You've got a little talent. It's possible you were sensing something too vague for you to understand in any other way."
She put the last book away and turned to face me. She looked tired. Fear made her expression one of sickness, an ugly contortion. "Something was here," she whispered.
"Maybe," I said, nodding.
"Oh, God." She tightened her arms across her stomach. "I… I might be sick."
I leaned my staff against the shelf and put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her. "Shiela. Take a few deep breaths. It's not here now."
She looked up at me, her expression miserable, her eyes wet and shining. "I'm sorry. I mean, you don't need this." She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and more tears fell. "I'm sorry."
Oh, hell. Tears. Way to go, Dresden -terrify the local maiden you showed up to comfort. I drew Shiela a little toward me, and she leaned against me gratefully. I put my arm around her shoulders and let her lean against me for a minute. She shivered with silent tears for a little bit and then pulled herself together.
"Does this happen to you a lot?" she asked in a quiet voice, sniffling.
"People get scared," I murmured. "There's nothing wrong with that. There are scary things out there."
"I feel like a coward."
"Don't," I told her. "All it means is that you aren't an idiot."
She straightened and took a step back. Her face looked a little blotchy. Some women can cry and look beautiful, but Shiela wasn't one of them. She took off her glasses and wiped at her eyes. "What do I do if it happens again?"
"Tell Bock. Get somewhere public," I said. "Call the cops. Or better yet, call Billy and Georgia. If what you felt really was some kind of predator, they won't want to stick around if they know they've been spotted."
"You sound as if you've dealt with them before," she said.
I smiled a little. "Maybe a time or two."
She smiled up at me, and it was a grateful expression. "It must be very lonely, doing what you do."
"Sometimes," I said.
"Always being so strong when others can't. That's… well, it's sort of heroic."
"It's sort of idiotic," I replied, my voice dry. "Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up."
She let out a little laugh. "You fail to live up to your ideals, eh?"
"Nobody's perfect."
She tilted her head again, eyes bright. "Are you with someone?"
"Just you."
"Not with them. With them."
"Oh," I said. "No. Not really."
"If I asked you to come have dinner out with me, would it seem too forward and aggressive?"
I blinked. "You mean… like a date?"
Her smile widened. "You do… you know… like women? Right?"
"What?" I said. "Oh, yes. Yes. I'm down with the women."
"By coincidence I happen to be a woman," she said. She touched my arm again. "And since it seems like I might not get a chance to flirt with you a little more while I'm at work, I thought I had better ask you now. So is that a yes?"
The prospect of a date seemed to me like a case of bad timing in several ways. But it also seemed like a good idea. I mean, it had been a while since a girl had been interested in me in a nonprofessional sense.
Well. A human girl, anyway. The only one who even came close was in Hawaii with someone else, giggling and thinking about pants. It might be really nice just to be out talking and interacting with an attractive girl. God knows it would beat hanging around my crowded apartment.
"It's a yes," I said. "I'm kind of busy right now, but…"
"Here," she said. She took a black marker out of a pocket in her sweater and grabbed my right hand. She wrote numbers on it in heavy black strokes. "Call me here, maybe tonight, and we'll figure out when."
I let her do it, amused. "All right."
She popped the cap back on the marker and smiled up at me. "All right, then."
I picked up my staff. "Shiela, look. I might not be around this place. I'll respect Bock's wishes. But let him know that if there's any trouble, all he has to do is call me."
She shook her head, smiling. "You're a decent person, Harry Dresden."
"Don't spread that around too much," I said, and started for the door.
And froze in my tracks.
Standing in the little entry area of the bookstore, facing Bock at his counter, were Alicia and the ghoul, Li Xian.
I stepped back to Shiela and pulled her around the corner of a shelf.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Quiet," I said. I closed my eyes and Listened.
"… a simple question," Alicia was saying. "Who bought it?"
"I don't keep track of my customers," Bock replied. His voice was polite, but it had an undertone of granite. "I'm sorry, but I just don't have that information. A lot of people come through here."
"Really?" Alicia asked. "And how many of them purchase rare and expensive antique books from you?"
"You'd be surprised."
Alicia let out a nasty little laugh. "You really aren't going to volunteer the information, are you?"
"I don't have it to volunteer," Bock said. "Both copies of the book were bought yesterday. Both were men, one older and one younger. I don't remember anything more than that."
I heard a couple of footsteps, and Li Xian said, "Perhaps you need help remembering."
There was the distinct, heavy click of a pair of hammers on a shotgun being drawn back. "Son," Bock said in that same voice, "you'll want to step away from the counter and leave my shop now."
"It would appear that the good shopkeeper has taken sides on this matter," Alicia said.
"You're wrong, miss," Bock said. "I run this shop. I don't give information. I don't take sides. If I had a third copy, I'd sell it to you. I don't. Both of you leave, please."
"I don't think you understand," Alicia said. "I'm not leaving here until I have an answer to my question."
"I don't think you understand," Bock replied. "There's a ten-gauge shotgun wired under this counter. It's loaded, cocked, and pointing right at your bellies."
"Oh, my," Alicia said, her voice amused. "A shotgun. Xian, whatever shall we do?"
I ground my teeth. Bock had asked me to stay away, but even so he was standing there protecting my identity, even though he knew damned well that the two in front of him were dangerous.
I checked. The door to the back room of the shop was open. "The back door," I said to Shiela in a whisper. "Is it locked?"
"Not from this side."
"Go into the back room and get in the office," I said. "Get on the floor and stay there. Now."
She looked up at me with wide eyes and then hurried back through the open door.
I gripped my staff and closed my eyes, thinking. I patted my duster's pocket. The book was still there, riding along with my.44. Ghouls were hard to kill. I had no idea what Alicia was, but I was willing to bet she wasn't a mere academic assistant. For her to command the respect of a creature like Li Xian, she had to be major-league dangerous. It would be an extremely foolish idea to assault them.
But that didn't matter. If I didn't do something, they were going to get unpleasant at Bock. Bock might not have been a stalwart companion who stuck through thick and thin
, but he was what he was: an honest shopkeeper who wanted neither to become involved in supernatural power struggles nor to compromise his principles. If I did nothing, he was going to get hurt while protecting me.
I stepped around the shelf and started walking toward the front of the store.
Bock sat in his spot behind the counter, one hand gripping its edge in a white-knuckled grasp, the other out of sight below it. Alicia and Li Xian stood in front of it. She looked relaxed. The ghoul was slouched into an eager stance, knees bent a little, arms hanging loosely.
"Shopkeeper, I will ask you one last time," Alicia said. "Who purchased the last copy of Die Lied der Erlking?" She lifted her left hand and faint heat shimmers rose from her fingers along with a whisper of dark power. "Tell me his name."
I drew in my will, lifted my staff, and snarled, "Forzare!"
The runes on the staff burst into smoldering scarlet light. There was a thunderstorm's roar, and raw power, invisible and solid, lashed out of the end of my staff. It whipped across the shop, knocking books from the shelves on the way, and hit the ghoul in the chest. It lifted him off his feet and sent him smashing into the plywood-covered door. He went through the wood without slowing down, out over the sidewalk, and into the wall of the building across the street, where he hit with a crunch.
Alicia spun toward me, her eyes wide and shocked.
I stood with my feet spread. My shield bracelet was on my left hand, thrumming with power and drizzling blue-white sparks. My staff smoldered with the scent of fresh-burned wood, and the scarlet runes shone in the darkness at the back of the store. I pointed it directly at Alicia.
"His name," I snarled, "is Harry Dresden."
Chapter Seventeen
You," I snarled, gesturing at Bock with the end of my staff. "You little weasel. You were gonna sell me out. I ought to kill you right here."
From his vantage point above Alicia's curly-haired head, Bock blinked at me in confusion. I stared at him, hard, not daring to leave anything in my expression that the girl would see. If I'd tried to protect Bock, it would only have made it more likely that she would do something to him. By appearing to threaten him, it would make him seem more unimportant to the necromancer and her henchman. It was the best thing I could do to protect him.
Bock got it. His expression flickered through several subtle shades of comprehension, fear, and guilt. He twitched his head at me in a nod of thanks.
"Well, well," Alicia said. She hadn't moved, other than to turn toward me. "I've never heard of you, but I must admit that you know how to make an entrance, Harry Dresden."
"I took lessons," I said.
"Give me the book," she said.
"Ha," I said. "Why?"
"Because I want it," she said.
"Sorry. It's the hot Christmas present this year," I said. "Maybe you can find a scalper in a parking lot or something."
She tilted her head, the fingers of her hand still flickering with little shimmers, like heat rising from asphalt. "You refuse?"
"Yes, moppet," I told her. "I refuse. I deny thee. No, already."
Her eyes narrowed in anger and… well, something happened that I hadn't ever seen before. The store got darker. I don't mean that the lights went out. I mean everything got darker. There was a low, trembling sensation that seemed to make my eyeballs jiggle a little, and the shadows simply expanded up out of the corners and dim areas of the store like time-lapse photography of growing molds. As they slid over portions of the store, that nasty, greasy sensation of cold came with them. When the shadows washed over an outlet that housed the power cords to a pair of table lamps, the lamps themselves went dim and then died out. They covered the old radio, and Aretha Franklin's voice faded away to a whisper and vanished. The shadows got to the register and its lights went out, and when they brushed the old ceiling fan it began to whirl down to a stop. The shadows crept over Bock and he went pale and started shaking. He thrust one hand down onto the counter as if he had to do it to keep himself upright.
The only place the darkness didn't spread was over me. The shadows stopped in a circle all around me, maybe six inches away from me and the things I was carrying. The Hellfire smoldering in the runes of my staff glowed more brightly in the darkness, and the tiny sparks falling in a steady rain from my damaged shield bracelet seemed to burn away tiny pockets of the darkness where they fell, only to have it slide back in once they had burned away.
This was a kind of power I hadn't felt before. Normally when someone who can sling major mojo around draws their stuff up around them, it's something violent and active. I'd seen wizards who charged the air around them with so much electricity it made their hair stand on end, wizards whose power would gather light into nearly solid gem-shaped clouds that orbited around them, wizards whose mastery of earth magic literally made the ground shake, wizards who could shroud themselves in dark fire that burned anyone near them with the raw, emotional rage of their magic.
This was different. Alicia's power, whatever it was, didn't fill the store. It emptied it in a way that I didn't think I fully understood. Utter stillness spread out from her-not peace, for that would have been something tranquil, accepting. This stillness was a horrible, hungry emptiness, something that took its power from being not. It was made of the emptiness at the loss of a loved one, of the silence between the beats of a heart, and of the inevitability of the empty void that waited patiently for the stars to grow cold and burn out. It was power wholly different from the burning fires of life that formed the magic I knew-and it was strong. God, it was so strong.
I began to tremble as I realized that everything I had wasn't enough to go up against this.
"I don't like your answer," Alicia said. She smiled at me, a slow and evil expression. She had a dimple on one cheek. Hell's bells, an evil dimple.
My mouth felt dry, but my voice sounded steady when I spoke. "That's too bad. If you're so upset about not getting a copy, I suggest you take it up with Cowl."
She stared at me with no expression for a moment and then said, "You are with Cowl?"
"No," I told her. "I was, in fact, forced to drop a car on him last night when he tried to take the book from me."
"Liar," she said. "Had you truly fought Cowl, you'd be dead."
"Whatever," I replied, my tone bored. "I'll tell you what I told him. My book. You can't have it."
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Wait a moment. You were at the mortuary. In the entryway."
"We call it the Forensic Institute now."
Her eyes glittered. "You found it. You succeeded where Grevane failed, didn't you?"
I turned up one corner of my mouth, and said nothing.
Alicia took in a deep breath. "Perhaps we can reach an understanding."
"Funny," I said. "Grevane said the very same thing."
Alicia took an eager step toward me. "You denied him?"
"I didn't like his hat."
"You have wisdom for one so young," she said. "In the end he is nothing but a dog mourning his fallen master. He would turn on you in a moment. The gratitude of the Capiorcorpus, by contrast, is an eternal asset."
Capiorcorpus. Roughly translated, the taker of corpses, or bodies. I suddenly had a better idea of why Li Xian had referred to Alicia as "my lord."
"Assuming I want that gratitude," I said, "what price would it carry?"
"Give me the book," she said. "Give me the Word. Stand with me at the Darkhallow. In exchange I will grant you autonomy and the principality of your choice when the new order arises."
I didn't want her to know that I had no freaking clue what she was talking about, so I said, "That's a tempting offer."
"It should be," she said. She lifted her chin, and her eyes glittered with something bright and utterly confident. "The new order will change many things in this world. You have the opportunity to help shape it to your liking."
"And if I turn you down?" I asked.
She met my eyes directly. "You are young, Harry Dresden. It is a
great tragedy when a man with your potential dies before his time."
I shied away from her gaze at once. When a wizard looks into another person's eyes for an instant too long, he sees into them in a profound and unsettling kind of vision called a soulgaze. If I'd left my gaze on Alicia's eyes, I would get an up-close and personal look at her soul- and she at mine. I didn't want to see what was going on behind that dimpled smile. I recognized that perfect surety in her manner and expression as something more than rampant ego or fanatic conviction.
It was pure madness. Whatever else Alicia was, she was calmly and horribly insane.
My mouth felt a lot drier. My legs were shaking, and my feet were advising the rest of me to let them run away. "I'll have to think about it."
"By all means," Alicia said. Her face took on an ugly expression and her voice hardened. "Consider it. But take a single step from where you stand and it will be your last."
"Killing me might get you a copy of the book, but it won't get you the Word," I said. "Or did you think I was carrying both of them around with me?"
Her right hand clenched into a slow fist and the room got a couple of degrees colder. "Where is the Word?"
Wouldn't I like to know? I thought.
"Wouldn't you like to know," I said. "Kill me now and there's no Word. No new order."
She uncurled her hand. "I can make you tell me," she said.
"If you could do that, you'd have done it by now, instead of standing there looking stupid."
She started taking slow steps toward me, smiling. "I prefer to attempt reason before I destroy a mind. It is a somewhat taxing activity. Are you sure you wouldn't rather work with me?"
Gulp. Mental magic is a dark, dark, dark grey area of the art. Every wizard who makes it to the White Council has received training in how to defend against mental assaults, but that was perfunctory at best. After all, the Council made it a special point to wipe out wizards who violated the sanctuary of another's mind. It's one of the Laws of Magic, and if the Wardens caught someone doing it, they killed them, end of story. There was no such thing as an expert at that kind of magic on the White Council, and as a result the defense training was devised by relative amateurs.