Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher Page 0,87
to keep happening. Someone else on the crew will get hurt tonight."
Her expression became angry. "Don't you dare threaten these people."
"It isn't a threat," I half screamed. I hated to do it, but I pointed the gun at her. "Move."
She started shaking but adjusted her grip on the hammer and shook her head.
"I mean it," I said, and took a step forward, radiating as much menace as I knew how.
Joan stared at the gun for a moment. Then an expression of resolution took the fear from her face. She lowered the hammer and took a step toward me, putting the barrel of the gun about six inches from her sternum. "I can't let you hurt anyone else. If you want to leave," she said quietly, "you'll have to kill me too."
I stared at her for a moment. Then I gripped the gun's barrel with my left hand, left the handkerchief around the handle, and offered it to her.
She stared at me. "What are you doing?"
"Take it," I said. "Trixie's fingerprints are on the handle, so don't touch it. She was the shooter. She's working with someone and they're responsible for all the deaths and injuries lately. But when the cops show, she'll lie to them, and it looks bad for me. If the police arrest and hold me, I won't be able to help you when they strike again tonight. I have to go."
She shivered and took the gun. She held it like it might bite her. "I don't understand."
"Joan. If I was the one who shot them, I'd have shot you too. Would I give you the gun if I'd done it? Just leave the murder weapon here for the cops?"
She hesitated, uncertain.
"Help me," I told her. There was a tense note of fear in my voice. "I need to get back to my place, get a few things, and go before the cops start watching it. Try to delay them. Just for five minutes, please. My God, it's going to happen again if I don't stop it."
She glanced over her shoulder at the door.
"Please, Joan," I said quietly. "God, please help me." Silence fell heavily, except for more footsteps, coming closer.
"I must be insane," she said. "I must be insane."
She stepped aside.
I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. It made me look guilty as hell, but if I wanted to keep breathing I didn't have much choice.
I ran.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I hit the parking lot at a run, piled into the Blue Beetle, and started it up. Behind me I heard the building's fire alarm go off, a deafening ringing of emergency bells. In addition to the police, and probably an ambulance, a bunch of fire trucks were about to show up as well. It was going to be one hell of a mess to sort through, at least for the CPD. By the time they made sure the building had been evacuated, seen to Trixie's wound, and taken statements from everyone in the building I could probably walk to Havana. She'd bought me at least ten minutes and probably more.
"Bless you, Joan," I muttered. I slapped the old car into reverse and cleared out, heading for my apartment. I was on the highway and gone before any sirens started converging. I drove carefully and under the limit, since getting pulled over for a citation could be fatal, and tried to think unobtrusive thoughts. But I found myself mulling over the details of the malocchio.
Trixie Vixen had been in the room with me when the last curse came down, and while she was clearly involved, it hadn't come from her. She'd known about it in great detail, though, and she'd known enough about magic to screw up the hurried wards I'd raised around the studio. Couple that with bragging about her power, and I figured she'd been involved in the actual magic at some point—she probably had handled part of the ritual that brought the curse down.
It made sense. Trixie was a jumbo-sized self-obsessed drama queen, complete with melodramatic dialogue, tantrums, and smug confidence that she was the center of the universe. The deaths and near-deaths from the malocchio had given new depths to the term freak accident. Swarms of bees, bridge-jumping cars, and electrocution in a puddle of one's own blood were some pretty ridiculous ways to kill someone. And that frozen turkey thing had come straight out of a cartoon.
They would have been funny if it hadn't been for the deaths.