Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

Though now that I thought about it, Ebenezar hadn't handed me a copy of the book when he'd been teaching me. He hadn't even lectured me more than a couple of times. He told me what he expected, and then he lived it in front of me. Damned effective teaching method, to my way of thinking.

I drew out a copy of his book and stared at it for a moment. My stomach fluttered a little. Of course, he'd been lying to me, too. Or at least not telling me the whole truth. And the whole time he'd been teaching me, he'd been under orders from the Council to execute me if I wasn't perfectly behaved. I hadn't been perfect. The old man didn't kill me, but he didn't trust me enough to come clean, either. He didn't tell me that he was in charge of dirty jobs for the Council. That he was their wetworks man, the one who broke the Laws of Magic with their blessing, who betrayed the same responsibility he wrote about, talked about, and had apparently lived.

He was trying to protect you, Harry, I told myself.

That didn't make it right.

He never tried to be your hero, your role model. You did that.

That didn't change a damned thing.

He never wanted to hurt you. He had the best intentions.

And the road to hell is paved with them.

You need to get over it. You need to forgive him.

I slammed the book back onto the shelf. Hard.

"Hello?" called a woman's voice from behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. My staff clattered to the ground, and when I spun around my shield bracelet was up and spitting sparks, and my.44 was in my right hand, pointing at the office.

She was young, mid-twenties at most. She was average height, dressed in a long wool skirt, a turtleneck, and a cardigan sweater, all in colors of grey. She had hair of medium brown, held up into a bun with a pair of pencils, wore glasses, and had a heart-shaped face that was more attractive than beautiful, her features soft and appealing. She had a smudge of ink on her chin and on the fingers of her right hand, and she wore a name tag that had the store logo at the top and HI, MY NAME IS SHIELA below it.

"Oh," she said, and stiffened, becoming very pale. "Oh. Um. Just take what you want. I won't do anything."

I let out my breath between my teeth, and slowly lowered the gun. For crying out loud, I had nearly started shooting. Tense much, Harry? I let go of the energy running through the shield bracelet, and it dimmed as well. "Excuse me, miss," I said as politely as I could manage. "You startled me."

She blinked at me for a second, confusion on her features. "Oh," she said, then. "You aren't robbing the store."

"No," I said.

"That's good." She put a hand to her chest, breathing a little quickly. It had to be a fairly generous chest, given that I could notice the curves of her br**sts even through the cardigan. Ah, trusty libido. Even when I am up to my ears in trouble, you are there to distract me from such trivial matters as survival. "Oh. Then you're a customer, I suppose? May I help you?"

"I was just looking for a book," I said.

"Well," she said with businesslike cheer, "flick on that lamp next to you, to begin with, and we'll find what you're looking for." I did, and

Shiela smoothed her skirts and walked over to me. She was average height, maybe five-six, which made her approximately a foot shorter than me. She paused as she got closer, and peered up at me. "You're him," she said. "You're Harry Dresden."

"That's what the IRS keeps telling me," I said.

"Wow," she said, her eyes bright. She had very dark eyes that went well with skin like cream, and as she got closer I saw that her outfit did a lot to conceal some pleasant curves. She wasn't going to be modeling bikinis anywhere, but she looked like she'd be very pleasant to curl up with on a cold night.

Man. I needed to date more or something. I rubbed at my eyes and got my mind back on business.

"I've wanted to meet you," she said, "ever since I came to Chicago."

"You new in town? I haven't seen you here before."

"Six months," she said. "Five working here."

"Bock works you pretty late," I said.

She nodded and brushed a curl of hair away from her cheek, leaving a smudge of dark ink on it. "End of the month. I'm doing books and inventory." Then she looked stricken and said, "Oh, I didn't even introduce myself."

"Shiela?" I guessed.

She stared at me for a second, and then flushed and said, "Oh, right. The name tag."

I stuck out my hand. "I'm Harry."

She shook my hand. Her grip was firm, soft, warm, and tingled with the energy of someone who had some kind of minor talent to practice.

I'd never really considered what it might be like for someone to sense my own aura. Shiela drew in a sharp breath, and her arm jumped. Her ink-stained fingers squeezed tight for a second and smudged my hand. "Oh. Sorry, sorry."

I rubbed my hand on my fatigue pants. "I've seen worse stains tonight," I said. "Which brings me to the books."

"You stained a book?" she said, her face and voice distressed.

"No. That was just a bad segue."

"Oh. Oh, right," she said, nodding. She absently rubbed her hands together. "You're here for a book. What are you looking for?"

"A book called Die Lied der Erlking."

"Oh, I've read that one." She scrunched up her nose, eyes distant for a second, then said, "Two copies, right-hand shelf, third row from the top, eighth and ninth books from the left."

I blinked at her, then went to the shelf and found the book where she'd said. "Wow. Good call."

"Eidetic memory," she said with a pleased smile. "It's... sort of my talent." She gestured vaguely with the hand she'd touched me with.

"Must come in handy during inventory." I checked the shelf. "There's only one copy, though."

She frowned, then shrugged. "Mister Bock must have sold one this week."

"I bet he did," I said, troubled. It bothered me to think about Grevane standing in a store, speaking to people like Bock or Shiela. I pulled the cage closed and started slowly for the front of the store.

I opened the book. I'd heard it referenced before, in other works. It was supposed to deal with the lore around the Erlkoenig, or Elfking. He was supposed to be a faerie figure of considerable power, maybe a counterpart to the Queens of the Faerie Courts. The book had been compiled by Wizard Peabody early last century from the collected notes of a dozen different crusty wizards, most of them dead at the time, and was considered to be a work of nearly pure speculation.