"It should be," she said. She lifted her chin, and her eyes glittered with something bright and utterly confident. "The new order will change many things in this world. You have the opportunity to help shape it to your liking."

"And if I turn you down?" I asked.

She met my eyes directly. "You are young, Harry Dresden. It is a great tragedy when a man with your potential dies before his time."

I shied away from her gaze at once. When a wizard looks into another person's eyes for an instant too long, he sees into them in a profound and unsettling kind of vision called a soulgaze. If I'd left my gaze on Alicia's eyes, I would get an up-close and personal look at her soul— and she at mine. I didn't want to see what was going on behind that dimpled smile. I recognized that perfect surety in her manner and expression as something more than rampant ego or fanatic conviction.

It was pure madness. Whatever else Alicia was, she was calmly and horribly insane.

My mouth felt a lot drier. My legs were shaking, and my feet were advising the rest of me to let them run away. "I'll have to think about it."

"By all means," Alicia said. Her face took on an ugly expression and her voice hardened. "Consider it. But take a single step from where you stand and it will be your last."

"Killing me might get you a copy of the book, but it won't get you the Word," I said. "Or did you think I was carrying both of them around with me?"

Her right hand clenched into a slow fist and the room got a couple of degrees colder. "Where is the Word?"

Wouldn't I like to know? I thought.

"Wouldn't you like to know," I said. "Kill me now and there's no Word. No new order."

She uncurled her hand. "I can make you tell me," she said.

"If you could do that, you'd have done it by now, instead of standing there looking stupid."

She started taking slow steps toward me, smiling. "I prefer to attempt reason before I destroy a mind. It is a somewhat taxing activity. Are you sure you wouldn't rather work with me?"

Gulp. Mental magic is a dark, dark, dark grey area of the art. Every wizard who makes it to the White Council has received training in how to defend against mental assaults, but that was perfunctory at best. After all, the Council made it a special point to wipe out wizards who violated the sanctuary of another's mind. It's one of the Laws of Magic, and if the Wardens caught someone doing it, they killed them, end of story. There was no such thing as an expert at that kind of magic on the White Council, and as a result the defense training was devised by relative amateurs.

Something told me that Alicia the Corpsetaker wasn't an amateur.