Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

Casey regarded her without much in the way of expression. "Ma'am, we do not make that kind of information available to the public, in order to protect the relatives of the deceased."

She nodded, drew an envelope out of her purse, and passed that to Casey as well. "The doctor had no surviving family or next of kin," she said. "But he granted me power of attorney over his estate two years ago. The paperwork is all in order."

Casey scanned it, frowning. "Mmmmph."

Alicia pushed brown curls wearily from her eyes. "Please, sir, the doctor had several personal effects which I need to take into custody as soon as possible. Passwords, credit cards, keys, that sort of thing. They were in his wallet."

"What's the rush?" Casey drawled.

"Some of his effects could potentially grant a thief access to his accounts and security boxes. As you can see in the documents, he wanted control of them to pass to me until I could arrange to have them passed on to the charities he patronized."

Casey folded the pages up again and put them back in the envelope. "Ma'am, you're going to have to speak with our director, Dr. Brioche. I'm sure he'll be happy to help you out."

"All right," Alicia agreed. "Is he available?"

"I'll go speak to him," Casey said. "If you'll wait here, please."

"Of course," the girl replied. She waited for Casey to go through the security door and then spun on her heel and stalked over to the entrance, staring out at the morning sunlight. Her posture was stiff with anger. She leaned her forearm on the glass door and pressed her forehead to it.

The tall young man, Li Xian, had remained silent the whole while. He followed her over to the door and spoke in a quiet voice I could scarcely hear. I narrowed my eyes and Listened.

"... back at any moment," Xian murmured. "We should sit down."

"Don't tell me what to do," Alicia shot back in a heated whisper. "I'm weary, not idiotic."

"You should get some rest before you do anything more," Xian said. "I don't see why you're playing games. You should have let me follow the guard back."

"Stop thinking with your stomach," the girl growled. "It's bad enough that you lost control without adding a further lack of discipline to the situation."

"We are not here because I stopped to eat," Xian replied, anger of his own in his whisper. "If you hadn't indulged yourself we wouldn't face this problem."

The girl spun from the glass, facing Xian squarely, her face contorted with pride and anger. "Your attitude, Li, is making you part of the problem. Not part of the solution."

The long- haired man went white and cringed back from the girl. His face rippled, a sort of slithery motion just beneath the surface of his skin that stretched his features grotesquely, causing a slight sinking of the eyes, a slight elongation of the jaw. He let out a gasp, and when his mouth opened I could see the teeth of a carnivore.

It happened for only a second, but I averted my eyes before he might have noticed me watching him. If he had seen me, I would have been in immediate danger. I'd seen a flash of Li Xian's true face-he was a ghoul. Ghouls are preternatural predators who derive their primary sustenance from devouring human flesh. Fresh, cold, rotting, they don't care as long as it gets into their bellies.

My stomach turned. Butters said that someone had removed Bartlesby's quadriceps, the long, strong muscles on the front of the thigh. It had been Xian. He'd carved himself steaks from the old man's corpse. If he suspected that I knew what he was, he might decide to protect himself with extreme prejudice, and that would be bad. Ghouls are quick, strong, and harder to kill than a juicy rumor about the president. I'd fought ghouls before, and it wasn't something I wanted to repeat if I could avoid it. Especially given that I'd left my staff in Butters's office.

Xian recovered his normal appearance and lowered his eyes. He bowed his head to Alicia.

"Do I make myself clear?" the girl whispered.

"Yes, my lord," Xian replied.

Lord? I thought. My mind raced over the possibilities.

Alicia exhaled and pressed her thumb against the spot between her eyebrows. "Don't talk, Xian. Just don't talk. We'll all be happier. And safer." She breezed past him, back to the little waiting area, and sat down. She picked up a copy of Newsweek sitting out on an end table and began to flick through it, while Xian remained standing near the door. I pretended to be drowsing.

Casey returned a couple of minutes later and said, "Ms. Nelson, it's going to be a while before Dr. Brioche can see you."

"How long?" she asked, smiling.

"An hour or so at least," Casey said. "He says that if you'd like to make an appointment for this afternoon that he will be glad to-"

"No," she interrupted him, shaking her head firmly. "Some of his business is time-critical, and I need to recover his effects at the earliest possible opportunity. Please tell him that I will wait."

Casey lifted his eyebrows and then shrugged. "Yes, ma'am."

I blinked my eyes a few times and then sat up straight, stretching. "Oh, hey, Casey," I mumbled, standing. I feigned a limp and went to the desk. "I left my cane in Butters's office. Would it be okay to go back and grab it?"

Casey nodded. "One second." He picked up the phone, and a second later I heard polka music pumping through the little speaker. "Doctor, your consultant friend forgot something in your office. You want me to send him back?" He listened, nodding, and then waved me at the door, buzzing me through.

I hurried back to Butters's examination room and knocked. Butters unlocked the door to let me in.

"Hurry," I told him, glancing back down the hall. "We've got to go."

Butters gulped. "What's going on?"

"There are some bad guys here."

"Grevane?" he asked.

"No. New bad guys," I said.

"More of them?" Butters said. "That's not fair."

"I know. It's getting to be like Satan's reunion tour around here." I shook my head. "Is there a back door?"

"Yes."

"Good. Grab your stuff and let's go."

Butters gestured at the exam table. "But what about Eduardo?"

I chewed on my lip. "You find out anything?"

"Not a lot," he said. "A car hit him. He suffered some pretty massive blunt impact trauma. He died."

I frowned and took a few steps toward the corpse. "There's got to be more to it than that."