Read Online 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 - Free Book Online

bought it.”
    “Yeah, right,” Murphy said.
    I showed him my teeth as I walked up and leaned both my arms on the counter he stood behind. It crowded into his personal space. His cologne was thick enough to stop bullets.
    “Burt,” I said, “make this simple, okay? Tell me everything you know about Caine.”
    Decker’s eyes went flat, and his entire body became perfectly still. It was reptilian. “Caine?”
    I smiled wider. “Big guy, shaggy hair, kind of a slob, with piss running down his leg. He made a deal with a woman for some bloodstone, and you helped.”
    Murphy had paused at a display of what appeared to be small smoky quartz geodes. The crystals were nearly black, with purple veins running through them, and they were priced a couple of hundred dollars too high.
    “I don’t talk about my customers,” Decker said. “It isn’t good for business.”
    I glanced at Murphy. “Burt. We know you’re connected.”
    She stared at me for a second, and sighed. Then she knocked a geode off the shelf. It shattered on the floor.
    Decker winced and started to protest, but it died on his lips.
    “You know what isn’t good for business, Decker?” I asked. “Having a big guy in a gray cloak hang out in your little Bad Juju-Mart. Your customers start thinking that the Council is paying attention, how much business do you think you’ll get?”
    Decker stared at me with toad eyes, nothing on his face.
    “Oops,” Murphy said, and knocked another geode to the floor.
    “People are in the hospital, Burt,” I said. “Mac’s one of them—and he was beaten on ground held neutral by. the Unseelie Accords.”
    Burt bared his teeth. It was a gesture of surprise.
    “Yeah,” I said. I drew my blasting rod out of my coat and slipped enough of my will into it to make the runes and sigils carved along its length glitter with faint orange light. The smell of woodsmoke curled up from it. “You don’t want the heat this is gonna bring down, Burt.”
    Murphy knocked another geode down and said, “I’m the good cop.”
    “All right,” Burt said. “Jesus, will you lay off? I’ll talk, but you ain’t gonna like it.”
    “I don’t handle disappointment well, Burt.” I tapped the glowing-ember tip of the blasting rod down on his countertop for emphasis. “I really don’t.”
    Burt grimaced at the black spots it left on the countertop. “Skirt comes in asking for bloodstone. But all I got is this crap from South Asscrack. Says she wants the real deal, and she’s a bitch about it. I tell her I sold the end of my last shipment to Caine.”
    “Woman pisses you off,” Murphy said, “and you send her to do business with a convicted rapist.”
    Burt looked at her with toad eyes.
    “How’d you know where to find Caine?” I asked.
    “He’s got a discount card here. Filled out an application.”
    I glanced from the porn to the drug gear. “Uh-huh. What’s he doing with bloodstone?”
    “Why should I give a crap?” Burt said. “It’s just business.”
    “How’d she pay?”
    “What do I look like, a fucking video camera?”
    “You look like an accomplice to black magic, Burt,” I said.
    “Crap,” Burt said, smiling slightly. “I haven’t had my hands on anything. I haven’t done anything. You can’t prove anything.”
    Murphy stared hard at Decker. Then, quite deliberately, she walked out of the store.
    I gave him my sunniest smile. “That’s the upside of working with the gray cloaks now, Burt,” I said. “I don’t need proof. I just need an excuse.”
    Burt stared hard at me. Then he swallowed, toadlike.
     
    “She paid with a Visa,” I told Murphy when I came out of the store. “Meditrina Bassarid.”
    Murphy frowned up at my troubled expression. “What’s wrong?”
    “You ever see me pay with a credit card?”
    “No. I figured no credit company would have you.”
    “Come on, Murph,” I said. “That’s just un-American. I don’t bother with the things, because that magnetic strip goes