"That's close enough," I said in a cold voice.

She kept walking, very slowly, a sort of sinuous enjoyment in her stride. "Last chance."

"I mean it," I said. "Stay ba—"

Before I could finish the word, she made a rippling gesture with the shimmering fingers of her left hand.

There was a whirling sensation, and I was suddenly caught in a gale, a whirlwind that tried to carry me toward the girl. My feet started sliding across the floor. I leaned back with a cry, lifting my shield bracelet, and it blazed into a dome of solid blue light before me. It did nothing— nothing at all. The vicious vortex continued to draw me to her outstretched hand.

I started to panic, and then realized what was happening. There was no wind—not physically, anyway. The books on the shelves were not stirring, nor was my long leather duster. My shield offered me no protection from a wholly nonphysical threat, and I released it, saving my strength.

The hideous vacuum wasn't meant for my body. It was targeting my thoughts.

"That's right," Alicia said.

Holy crap. She'd heard me thinking.

"Of course, young man. Give me what I want now and I may leave you enough of your mind to feed yourself."

I gritted my teeth, marshaling my thoughts, my defenses.

"It's too late for that, boy."

Like hell it was. My thoughts coalesced into a unified whole, an absolute image of a wall of smooth, grey granite. I built the image of the wall in my mind and then filled it with the power I'd been holding at the ready. I felt a nauseating confusion for a second, and then the mental gale ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

Alicia's head jerked as if she'd been slapped across the cheek.

I glared at her, teeth gritted, and asked, "Is that all you got?"

Corpsetaker snarled out a spiteful curse, lifted her left arm, and twisted her fingers into a raking claw.

There was a hideous pressure against the image of the granite wall in my mind. It wasn't a single, resounding blow, as I had expected from my training, a kind of psychic battering ram. Instead it was an enormous, steady weight, as if a sudden tide had flooded in to wash the wall away completely.

I thought that pressure would ease in a moment, but it only became more and more difficult to bear. I struggled to hold the image of the wall in place, but despite everything I could do, dark and empty cracks began to appear and spread through it. My defenses were crumbling.

"Delicious," Corpsetaker said, and her voice didn't sound strained at all. "After a century, they're still teaching the young ones the same tripe."