Dead Beat(16)

"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 breasts 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.
"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.