Strange Brew by Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Karen Chance, P. N. Elrod, Rachel Caine, Faith Hunter, Caitlin Kittredge, Jenna Maclane, Jennifer van Dyck, Christian Rummel, Gayle Hendrix, Dina Pearlman, Marc Vietor, Therese Plummer, Karen Chapman Page B

was pure enough! I just wanted to wipe that smile off of that bastard’s face!”
    I looked up at Caine with a gimlet eye, my teeth bared. “You ain’t saying anything that makes me want you to keep on breathing.”
    “I can’t ,” Caine wailed. “She’ll know !”
    I fixed my stare on Caine and raised my hand in a slow, heavily overdramatized gesture. “ Intimidatus dorkus maximus !” I intoned, making my voice intentionally hollow and harsh, and stressing the long vowels.
    “Decker!” Caine screamed. “Decker, he set up the deal!”
    I lowered my hand and let my head rock back. “Decker,” I said. “That twit.”
    Murphy watched me, and didn’t let go of Caine, though I could tell that she didn’t want to keep holding him.
    I shook my head at Murphy and said, “Let him scamper, Murph.”
    She let him go, and Caine fled for the stairs on his hand and knee, sobbing. He staggered out, falling down the first flight, from the sound of it.
    I wrinkled up my nose as the smell of urine hit me. “Ah. The aroma of truth.”
    Murphy rubbed her hands on her jeans as if trying to wipe off something greasy. “Jesus, Harry.”
    “What?” I said. “You didn’t want to break into his place.”
    “I didn’t want you to put a gun to his head, either.” She shook her head. “You couldn’t really have…”
    “Killed him?” I asked. I broke the circle and rose. “Yeah. With him right here in sight, yeah. I probably could have.”
    She shivered. “Jesus Christ.”
    “I wouldn’t,” I said. I went to her and put a hand on her arm. “I wouldn’t, Karrin. You know that.”
    She looked up at me, her expression impossible to read. “You put on a really good act, Harry. It would have fooled a lot of people. It looked…”
    “Natural on me,” I said. “Yeah.”
    She touched my hand briefly with hers. “So, I guess we got something?”
    I shook off dark thoughts and nodded. “We’ve got a name.”
     
    Burt Decker ran what was arguably the sleaziest of the half a dozen establishments that catered to the magical crowd in Chicago. Left Hand Goods prided itself on providing props and ingredients to the black magic crowd.
    Oh, that wasn’t so sinister as it sounded. Most of the trendy, self-appointed Death Eater wannabes in Chicago—or any other city, for that matter—didn’t have enough talent to strike two rocks together and make sparks, much less hurt anybody. The really dangerous black wizards don’t shop at places like Left Hand Goods. You could get everything you needed for most black magic at the freaking grocery store.
    But, all the same, plenty of losers with bad intentions thought Left Hand Goods had everything you needed to create your own evil empire—and Burt Decker was happy to make them pay for their illusions.
    Me and Murphy stepped in, between the display of socially maladjusted fungi on our right, a tank of newts (PLUCK YOUR OWN *#%$ING EYES, the sign said) on the left, and stepped around the big shelf of quasi-legal drug paraphernalia in front of us.
    Decker was a shriveled little toad of a man. He wasn’t overweight, but his skin looked too loose from a plump youth combined with a lifetime of too many naps in tanning beds. He was immaculately groomed, and his hair was gorgeous black streaked with dignified silver that was like a Rolls hood ornament on a VW Rabbit. He had beady black eyes with nothing warm behind them, and when he saw me, he licked his lips nervously.
    “Hiya, Burt,” I said.
    There were a few shoppers, none of whom looked terribly appealing. Murphy held up her badge so that everyone could see it and said, “We have some questions.”
    She might as well have shouted, “Fire!” The store emptied.
    Murphy swaggered past a rack of discount porn DVDs, her coat open just enough to reveal the shoulder holster she wore. She picked one up, gave it a look, and tossed it on the floor. “Christ, I hate scum vendors like this.”
    “Hey!” Burt said. “You break it, you