Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

"How much?" I asked.

"Should be on an index card inside the cover," Shiela said, walking politely beside me.

I looked. The book was worth half a month's rent. No wonder I'd never bought a copy. Business hadn't been bad lately, but between handling all of Mouse's licensing and shots and the trucks of food he ate, and Thomas's job troubles, I didn't have anything to spare. Maybe Bock would let me lease it or something.

Shiela and I walked out of the back room and started toward the front of the store. As we came out of the book areas, she said, "Well, I think you know the way from here. It was a pleasure meeting you, Harry."

"You too," I said, smiling. Hey, she was a woman, and pretty enough. Her smile was simply adorable. "Maybe I'll bump into you again sometime."

"I'd like that. Only next time without the gun."

"One of those old-fashioned girls, huh?" I said.

She laughed and walked back toward the rear of the store.

"Find what you needed?" Bock asked. There was an edge to his voice, something I couldn't quite place. He was definitely uncomfortable.

"I hope so," I said. "Uh. About the price..."

Bock looked at me hard from under his thick eyebrows.

"Uh. Would you take a check?"

He looked around the store and then nodded. "Sure, from you."

"Thanks," I said. I wrote out a check, hoping it wouldn't bounce before I got to the door, and sneaked my own glance around the shop. "Did I run out your customers?"

"Maybe," he said uncomfortably.

"Sorry," I said.

"It happens."

"Might be better for them to be home. You too, in fact."

He shook his head. "I have a business to run."

He was an adult, and he'd been in this town longer than I had. "All right," I said. I handed him the check. "Did you sell the other copy you had in inventory?"

He put the check in the register, and put the book into a plastic bag, zipped it shut, then put that in a paper sack. "Two days ago," he said after a moment's thought.

"Do you remember to whom?"

He puffed out a breath that flapped his jowls. "Old gentleman. Long hair, thinning. Liver spots."

"Real loose skin?" I asked. "Moved kind of stiff?"

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."

Chapter Eight

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.