by Jim Butcher
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.
"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.
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.
Cowl made a hissing sound, and spread its arms slightly, hands still low, by its hips. The cold wind off the lake began to blow harder.
"Thrice I ask and done," Cowl said, his voice low, hard, angry. "Give… me… the book."
Suddenly the second figure took a step forward and said, in a female version of Cowl's weird voice, "Please."
There was a second of shocked silence, and then Cowl snarled, "Kumori. Mind your tongue."
"There is no cost in being polite," said the smaller of the two, Kumori. The robes were too thick and shapeless to give any hint at her form, but there was something decidedly feminine in the gesture she made with one hand, a roll of her wrist. She faced me again and said,
"The knowledge in der Erlking is about to become dangerous, Dresden," she said. "You need not give us the book. Simply destroy it here. That will be sufficient. I ask it of you, please."
I looked between the two of them for a moment. Then I said, "I've seen you both before."
Neither of them moved.
"At Bianca's masquerade. You were there on the dais with her." As I spoke the words, I became increasingly convinced of them. The two figures I'd seen back then had never shown their faces, but there was something in the way that Cowl and Kumori moved that matched the two shadows back then precisely. "You were the ones who gave the Leanansidhe that athame."
"Perhaps," said Kumori, but there was an inclination to her head that ceded me the truth of my statement.
"That was such an amazingly screwed-up evening. It's been coming back to haunt me for years," I said.
"And will for years to come," said Cowl. "A great many things of significance happened that night. Most of which you are not yet aware."
"Hell's bells," I complained. "I'm a wizard myself, and I still get sick of that I-know-and-you-don't shtick. In fact, it pisses me off even faster than it used to."
Cowl and Kumori exchanged a long look, and then Kumori said, " Dresden, if you would spare yourself and others grief and pain, destroy the book."
"Is that what you're doing?" I asked. "Going around trashing copies?"
"There were fewer than a thousand printed," Kumori confirmed. "Time has taken most of them. Over the past month we have accounted for the rest, but for two here, in Chicago, in this store."
"Why?" I demanded.
Cowl moved his shoulders in the barest hint of a shrug. "Is it not enough that Kemmler's disciples could use this knowledge for great evil?"
"Are you with the Council?" I responded.
"Obviously not," Kumori replied from the depths of her hood.
"Uh- huh," I said. "Seems to me that if you were on the up-and-up you'd be working with the Council, rather than running around reinterpreting Fahrenheit 451 from a Ringwraith perspective."
"And it seems to me," Kumori answered smoothly, "that if you believed that their motives were as pure as they claim, you would already have notified them yourself."
Hello. Now that was a new tune, someone suggesting that the Council was bent and I was in the right. I wasn't sure what Kumori was trying to do, but it was smartest to play this out and see what she had to say. "Who says I haven't?"
"This is pointless," Cowl said.
Kumori said, "Let me tell him."
"Pointless."
"It costs nothing," Kumori said.
"It's going to if you keep dawdling," I said. "I'm going to start billing you for wasting my time."
She made a weird sound that I only just recognized as a sigh. "Can you believe, at least, that the contents of the book are dangerous?"
Grevane had seemed fond enough of his copy. But I wouldn't know for sure what the big stink was about until I had time to read the book myself. "For the sake of expediency, let's say that I do."
"If the knowledge inside the book is dangerous," Cowl said, "what makes you think that the Wardens or the Council would use it any more wisely than Kemmler's disciples?"
"Because while they are a bunch of enormous assholes, they always try to do the right thing," I said. "If one of the Wardens thought he might be about to practice black magic, he'd probably cut off his own head on pure reflex."
"All of them?" Kumori asked in a quiet voice. "Are you sure?"
I looked back and forth between them. "Are you telling me that someone on the Council is after Kemmler's power?"
"The Council is not what it was," said Cowl. "It has rotted from the inside, and many wizards who have chafed at its restrictions have seen the war with the Red Court reveal its weakness. It will fall. Soon. Perhaps before tomorrow night."
"Oh," I drawled. "Well, gee, why didn't you say so? I'll just hand you my copy of the book right now."
Kumori held up a hand. "This is no deception, Dresden. The world is changing. The Council's end is near, and those who wish to survive it must act now. Before it is too late."
I took a deep breath. "Normally I'm the first one to suggest we t.p. the Council's house," I said. "But you're talking about necromancy. Black magic. You aren't going to convince me that the Council and the Wardens have suddenly gotten a yen to trot down the left-hand path. The
y won't touch the stuff."
"Ideally," Cowl said. "You are young, Dresden. And you have much to learn."
"You know what young me has learned? Not to spend too much time listening to the advice of people who want to get something out of me," I said. "Which includes car salesmen, political candidates, and weirdos in black capes who mug me on the street in the middle of the night."
"Enough," Cowl said, anger making his voice almost unintelligible. "Give us the book."
"Bite my ass, Cowl."
Kumori's hood twitched back and forth between Cowl and me. She took three steps back.
"Just as well," Cowl murmured. "I have wanted to see for myself what has the Wardens so nervous about you."
The cold wind rose again, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose up stiffly. A flash of sensation flickered over me as Cowl drew in power. A lot of power.
"Don't," I said. I lifted my shield bracelet, weaving defensive energy before me with my thoughts. I solidified my hold on my own power, wrapping my fingers tight around my staff, and then slammed it down hard on the concrete. The cracking sound of it echoed back and forth from darkened buildings and the empty street. "Walk away. I'm not kidding."
"Dorosh," he snarled in reply, and extended his right hand.
He hit me with raw, invisible force-pure will, focused into a violent burst of kinetic energy. I knew it was coming, my shield was ready, and I braced myself against it in precisely the correct way. My defense was perfect.
It was all that saved my life.
I've traded practice blows with my old master Justin DuMorne, himself at one time a Warden. I fought him in earnest, too, and won. I've tested my strength in practice duels against the mentor who succeeded him, Ebenezar McCoy. My faerie godmother, the Leanansidhe, has a seriously nasty right hook, metaphysically speaking, and I've even gone up against the least of the Queens of Faerie. Throw in a couple of demons, various magical constructs, a thirteen-story fall in a runaway elevator, half a dozen spellslingers of one amount of nasty or another, and I've seen more sheer mystic violence than most wizards in the business. I've beaten them all, or at least survived them, and I've got the scars to show for it.
