Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

the shot. You'd be dead before you realized what happened."
    That scared me. I've faced more than a few gruesome or nightmarish creatures, but none of them had been that calm and practical. Kincaid believed that he could kill me, if it came to that.
    And thinking about it, I believed him too.
    He watched my face for a minute, and his smile turned a shade wolfish. "You sure you want me on board?"
    There was a pregnant half second of silence. "Yeah."
    "All right." Kincaid stepped forward and brushed the salt circle with his toe. The tension of the circle's barrier vanished. "But I'm on the clock. I've got to get back to Ivy's place before Sunday."
    "Understood," I said. "How do I get in touch?"
    He slipped his gun into his jacket pocket and drew out a grey business card. He put the card on my desk and said, "Pager."
    He turned to leave. I stood up and said, "Hey, Kincaid."
    He glanced back at me. I tossed the sleep mask to him. He caught it.
    "Just plain folk?" I asked.
    "Yeah."
    "Not supernatural?"
    "I wish," he said. "Vanilla mortal."
    "You're a liar."
    His features smoothed into a neutral mask. "Excuse me?"
    "I said you're a liar. I saw you during the fight at Wrigley, Kincaid. You fired a dozen shots, on the move and dodging bad guys the whole time."
    "What's so supernatural about that?"
    "In a fight, just plain folks miss sometimes. Maybe most times. You didn't miss once."
    "What's the point of shooting if you're just going to miss?" He smiled, made a mime-gun of his thumb and index finger, and aimed at me. His thumb fell forward and he said, "I'm as human as you are, Dresden. I'll see you later."
    Then he left.
    I didn't know whether to feel better or worse. On one hand, he was an experienced gunman, and absolutely deadly in a fight. Human or not, I might need someone like that with me when I confronted Mavra.
    On the other hand, I had no idea how I would be able to pay him, and I believed him when he said he'd assassinate me. The entire concept was scary as hell. The threat of a death curse that could be levied against a wizard's slayer was a major asset. It meant that anyone or anything that tried to attack a member of the White Council would hesitate, unwilling to risk the burst of destructive power a wizard could release in the last instants of his life.
    But those instants would be too slow against a high-powered sniper round fired from ambush. I could imagine it, a flash and a thump on the back of my head, a split second of surprise, and then blackness before I could even realize the need to pronounce my curse.
    Kincaid was right: It could work. The tactical doctrine of the powers-that-be in the magical communities of the world tended to run along a couple of centuries behind the rest of the planet. It was entirely possible that the seniormost wizards of the White Council had never even considered the possibility. Ditto for the vampires. But it could work.
    The future abruptly seemed like a fairly unpleasant place for professional wizards.
    I set about cleaning up the salt and settled down at my little desk, putting my thoughts in order. I had to find out more about the circumstances around the victims of the
malocchio
. I had to go digging for more information on Arturo Genosa's venture into the world of erotic film.
    And if that wasn't enough, while I did all of that, I
also
had to figure out how to get enough money to keep my own hired thug from putting holes in my skull.
    For most people it would be a desperate situation. But most people hadn't been through them as many times as I had. My worry and tension slowly grew, and as they did I took a perverse comfort in the familiar emotions. It actually felt
good
to feel my survival instincts put me on guard against premature mortality.
    Hell's bells. Is that insane or what?
     

Chapter Eleven

    I ran up a long-distance bill while I did my digging on Genosa. I called a dozen different organizations and business entities around Los Angeles, but computers answered