Dead Beat

"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.