The only place the darkness didn't spread was over me. The shadows stopped in a circle all around me, maybe six inches away from me and the things I was carrying. The Hellfire smoldering in the runes of my staff glowed more brightly in the darkness, and the tiny sparks falling in a steady rain from my damaged shield bracelet seemed to burn away tiny pockets of the darkness where they fell, only to have it slide back in once they had burned away.

This was a kind of power I hadn't felt before. Normally when someone who can sling major mojo around draws their stuff up around them, it's something violent and active. I'd seen wizards who charged the air around them with so much electricity it made their hair stand on end, wizards whose power would gather light into nearly solid gem-shaped clouds that orbited around them, wizards whose mastery of earth magic literally made the ground shake, wizards who could shroud themselves in dark fire that burned anyone near them with the raw, emotional rage of their magic.

This was different. Alicia's power, whatever it was, didn't fill the store. It emptied it in a way that I didn't think I fully understood. Utter stillness spread out from her—not peace, for that would have been something tranquil, accepting. This stillness was a horrible, hungry emptiness, something that took its power from being not. It was made of the emptiness at the loss of a loved one, of the silence between the beats of a heart, and of the inevitability of the empty void that waited patiently for the stars to grow cold and burn out. It was power wholly different from the burning fires of life that formed the magic I knew—and it was strong. God, it was so strong.

I began to tremble as I realized that everything I had wasn't enough to go up against this.

"I don't like your answer," Alicia said. She smiled at me, a slow and evil expression. She had a dimple on one cheek. Hell's bells, an evil dimple.

My mouth felt dry, but my voice sounded steady when I spoke. "That's too bad. If you're so upset about not getting a copy, I suggest you take it up with Cowl."

She stared at me with no expression for a moment and then said, "You are with Cowl?"

"No," I told her. "I was, in fact, forced to drop a car on him last night when he tried to take the book from me."

"Liar," she said. "Had you truly fought Cowl, you'd be dead."

"Whatever," I replied, my tone bored. "I'll tell you what I told him. My book. You can't have it."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Wait a moment. You were at the mortuary. In the entryway."

"We call it the Forensic Institute now."

Her eyes glittered. "You found it. You succeeded where Grevane failed, didn't you?"

I turned up one corner of my mouth, and said nothing.