Though now that I thought about it, Ebenezar hadn't handed me a copy of the book when he'd been teaching me. He hadn't even lectured me more than a couple of times. He told me what he expected, and then he lived it in front of me. Damned effective teaching method, to my way of thinking.

I drew out a copy of his book and stared at it for a moment. My stomach fluttered a little. Of course, he'd been lying to me, too. Or at least not telling me the whole truth. And the whole time he'd been teaching me, he'd been under orders from the Council to execute me if I wasn't perfectly behaved. I hadn't been perfect. The old man didn't kill me, but he didn't trust me enough to come clean, either. He didn't tell me that he was in charge of dirty jobs for the Council. That he was their wetworks man, the one who broke the Laws of Magic with their blessing, who betrayed the same responsibility he wrote about, talked about, and had apparently lived.

He was trying to protect you, Harry, I told myself.

That didn't make it right.

He never tried to be your hero, your role model. You did that.

That didn't change a damned thing.

He never wanted to hurt you. He had the best intentions.

And the road to hell is paved with them.

You need to get over it. You need to forgive him.

I slammed the book back onto the shelf. Hard.

"Hello?" called a woman's voice from behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. My staff clattered to the ground, and when I spun around my shield bracelet was up and spitting sparks, and my.44 was in my right hand, pointing at the office.

She was young, mid-twenties at most. She was average height, dressed in a long wool skirt, a turtleneck, and a cardigan sweater, all in colors of grey. She had hair of medium brown, held up into a bun with a pair of pencils, wore glasses, and had a heart-shaped face that was more attractive than beautiful, her features soft and appealing. She had a smudge of ink on her chin and on the fingers of her right hand, and she wore a name tag that had the store logo at the top and HI, MY NAME IS SHIELA below it.

"Oh," she said, and stiffened, becoming very pale. "Oh. Um. Just take what you want. I won't do anything."

I let out my breath between my teeth, and slowly lowered the gun. For crying out loud, I had nearly started shooting. Tense much, Harry? I let go of the energy running through the shield bracelet, and it dimmed as well. "Excuse me, miss," I said as politely as I could manage. "You startled me."

She blinked at me for a second, confusion on her features. "Oh," she said, then. "You aren't robbing the store."

"No," I said.