Jim Butcher - Dead Beat

Bock looked around again, nervous. "Yeah. That's him. Look, Mister Dresden, I just run the shop, okay? I don't want to get involved with any trouble. I had no idea who the guy was. He was just a customer."

"All right," I told him. "Thanks, Bock."

He nodded and passed over the book. I folded the sack, book and all, into a pocket on my duster, and fished my car keys out of my pocket.

"Harry," came Shiela's voice, low and urgent.

I blinked and looked up at her. "Yeah?"

She nodded toward the front of the store, her face anxious.

I looked out.

On the street outside the shop stood two figures. They were dressed more or less identically: long black robes, long black cape, big black mantles, big black hoods that showed nothing of the faces inside. One was taller than the other, but other than that they simply stood on the sidewalk outside, waiting.

"I told these guys last week I didn't want to buy a ring," I said. I glanced at Shiela. "See that? Witty under pressure. That was a Tolkien joke."

"Ha," said Bock, more than a little uneasy. "I don't want any trouble here, Mister Dresden."

"Relax, Bock," I said. "If they wanted trouble, they'd have kicked down the door."

"They're here to talk to you?" Shiela asked.

"Probably," I said. Of course, if they were more of Kemmler's knitting circle, they might just walk up and try to kill me. Grevane had. I drummed my fingers thoughtfully along the solid wood of my wizard's staff.

Bock looked at me, his expression a little queasy. He wasn't an easy man to frighten, but he was no fool, either. I had wrecked three… no wait, four. No… at least four buildings during my cases in the last several years, and he didn't want Bock Ordered Books to be appended to the list. That hurt a little. Normals looked at me like I was insane when I told people I was a wizard. People who were in the know didn't look at me like I was insane. They looked at me like I was insanely dangerous.

I guess at least four buildings later, they've got reason to think so.

"Maybe you'd better close up shop for the night," I told Bock and Shiela. "I'll go out and talk to them."

I paused just before I opened the shop's door and walked outside. It was one of those moments that would have had dramatic music if my life were a movie, but instead I got a radio jingle for some kind of submarine sandwich place blaring over the store's ambient stereo. The movie of my life must be really low-budget.

The trick was to figure out which movie I was in. If this was a variant on High Noon , then walking outside was probably a fairly dangerous idea. On the other hand, there was always the chance that I was still in the opening scenes of The Maltese Falcon and everyone trying to chase down the bird still wanted to talk to me. In which case, this was probably a good chance to dig for vital information about what might well be a growing storm around the search for The Word of Kemmler .

But just in case, I shook out my shield bracelet to the ready. I took my staff in hand and settled my fingers around it in a solid grip, curling them to the sigil-carved surface of the wood one by one.

Then I called up my power.

Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They're a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting "Hey!" in time to that damned song-they're all charged with magic.

My magic comes from the same places. And maybe from darker places than that. Fear is an emotion, too. So is rage. So is lust. And madness. I'm not a particularly good person. I'm no Charles Manson or anything, but I'm not going to be up for canonization either. Though in the past, I think maybe I was a better person than I am today. In the past I hadn't seen so many people hurt and killed and terrorized by the same kind of power that damn well should have been making the world a nicer place, or at the least staying the hell away from it. I hadn't made so many mistakes back then, so many shortsighted decisions, some of which had cost people their lives. I had been sure of myself. I had been whole.

My stupid hand hurt like hell. I had half a dozen really gut-wrenchingly good reasons to be afraid, and I was. Worst of all, if I made any mistakes, Murphy was going to be the one to pay for it. If that happened, I didn't know what I would do.

I drew it all in, the good, the bad, and the crazy, a low buzz that coursed through the air and rattled the idols and candles and incense holders on their shelves in the store around me. In the glass door of the shop I saw my left hand vanish, replaced with an irregular globe of angry blue light that trailed bits of heatless fire to the floor. I pulled in the energy from all around me, readying myself to defend, to attack, to protect, or to destroy. I didn't know what the two cloaked figures wanted, but I wanted them to know that if they'd come looking for a fight, I'd be willing to oblige them.

I held my power around me like a cloak and slipped out to face the pair waiting for me on the sidewalk. I took my time, every step unhurried and precise. I kept an eye on them, but only in my peripheral vision. Otherwise I left my eyes on the ground and walked slowly, until the blue glow of my shield light fell on their dark robes, making the black look blue, darkening the shadows in the folds to hues too dark to have names. Then I stopped and lifted my eyes slowly, daring them to meet my gaze.

It might have been my imagination, but I thought the pair of them rocked back a little, swaying like reeds before an oncoming storm. October wind blew about us, freezing-cold air that took its chill from the icy depths of Lake Michigan.

"What do you want?" I asked them. I borrowed frost from the wind and put it in my voice.

The larger of the pair spoke. "The book."

But which book? I wondered. "Uh-huh. You're a Schubert fan boy, aren't you? You've got the look."

"Goethe, actually," he said. "Give it to me."

He was definitely after a copy of der Erlking , then. His voice was… odd. Male, certainly, but it didn't sound quite human. There was a kind of quavering buzz in it that made it warble, somehow, made the words slither uncertainly. The words were slow and enunciated. They had to be, in order to be intelligible.

"Bite me," I answered him. "Get your own book, Kemmlerite."

"I have nothing but disdain for the madman Kemmler," he spat. "Have a care what insults you offer. This need not involve you at all, Dresden."

That gave me a moment's pause, as they say. Taking on arrogant, powerful dark wizards is one thing. Taking on ones who have done their homework and who know who you are is something else entirely. It was my turn to be rattled.

The dark figure noted it. His not-human voice swayed into the night again in a low laugh.

"Touche, O dark master of evil bathrobes," I said. "But I'm still not giving you my copy of the book."

"I am called Cowl," he said. Was there amusement in his voice? Maybe. "And I am feeling patient this evening. Again I will ask it. Give me your copy of the book."

Die Lied der Erlking bumped against my leg through the pocket of my duster. "And again do I answer thee. Bite me."

"Thrice will I ask and done," said the figure, warning in its tone.

"Gee, let me think. How am I gonna answer this time," I said, planting my feet on the ground.