Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher Page 0,84

about her stealing what's mine."

I stared at her for a second. "Are you insane?" I said. "Do you think you'll get away with this?"

"I'd love to see some prosecutor try me for witchcraft," she responded.

Trixie was too stupid to believe me about the White Council and too self-absorbed to keep my name straight, but for crying out loud, she had to be human. "Hell's bells, Trixie. Emma's got kids."

"So did Hitler," Trixie snapped.

"No, he didn't," I said. "He had dogs."

"Whatever," Trixie said.

I checked the clock. Eleven-forty-three. In four minutes, give or take, Emma would die.

Trixie's attention snapped to the phone and she listened for a moment, throwing out a terse, "Yes." Then the phone abruptly squealed with feedback, and Trixie flinched hard enough to make me worry that she'd lost control of her weapon. "Dammit," she said. "I hate these stupid cell phones."

Cell phones are the caged canaries in the coal mines of the supernatural. When a little magic gets moving, cell phones are some of the first pieces of equipment to be disrupted. Odds were good that someone on the other end of that phone was starting to move energy around.

Which meant that the malocchio was coming to kill Emma.

And so long as Trixie kept me in the greenroom, there wasn't a damned thing I could do to prevent it.

Chapter Twenty-Six

If I didn't do something, another woman was going to die, and a couple of kids were going to become orphans. Of course, I also had a gun in my face. If I did do something, I would die. The smart thing would be to let Trixie finish delaying me and wait for her to leave. Emma would be dead, but I'd have at least twelve hours in which I could shut the Evil Eye franchise down. If I didn't cooperate, Emma and I would both die, and the bad guys would still be at large.

So the smart money was on staying put. Simple logic.

But there are things older than logic—like instinct. One of the most primal instincts in the human soul is the desire to protect children from harm. Even if the idea of Emma's death hadn't been motivation enough, the very thought of how savagely this stupid, venal, selfish harpy might scar Emma's children made me want to call down fire enough to roast Trixie Vixen and her sculpted ass to ash.

I found myself tensing to go after her, and damn the gun. It wasn't as brainless as you might think. Killing is not so easy as it seems. Most people are wired to be careful of their fellow human beings. Soldiers and cops both are specifically given training to overcome that instinct, and the criminals who fire at other people are usually driven to it by desperation.

And even trained soldiers and hardened criminals are often wildly inaccurate. Billy the Kid once emptied his Colt revolver at a bank teller from less than three feet away, and missed him six times. I'd seen a police reel of a cop who had been forced to draw and fire at a suspect, and he'd emptied a full clip at the man from less than twenty feet, missing him every time.

Trixie may have had the gun, but she didn't have experience, training, or much in the way of composure. If she hesitated, even for a fraction of a second, it would be possible for me to close on her. If she didn't hesitate, the odds against me were not unthinkably high. It was possible that she might miss me enough times to let me take the gun.

Of course, it was possible she'd put a bullet through my eye, too. Or through my throat. Or maybe my guts.

I felt a sudden, ethereal wind, cold and ugly. The curse was almost there, and it was deadlier, more potent than ever before. A bare second of concentration told me that I would have no prayer of blocking that much magic, and even redirecting so much raw power would be nearly impossible. I don't know what had happened to make the curse that much stronger, that much deadlier, and it scared me half out of my mind.

I had to do something, and I had to do it now.

I needed a distraction, but the best I could do was to abruptly whip my head toward the door, and to shift my weight as if I might stand up.

"Don't move," Trixie snarled.

I licked my lips, staring at the door.

I saw her expression become uncertain. She rubbernecked