Dead Beat Read Online Free PDF

flannel robe and a Coke, and headed downstairs.
    I live in a basement apartment, but a trapdoor underneath one of my rugs opens up on a folding wooden stair ladder that leads down to the subbasement and my lab. It's cold down there, year-round, which is why I wear the heavy robe. It's one more drop of romance sucked out of the wizarding mystique, but I stay comfortable.
    "Bob," I said as I climbed down into the pitch-dark lab. "Warm up the memory banks. I've got work to do."
    The first lights in the room to flicker on were the size and golden-orange color of candle flames. They shone out from the eye sockets of a skull, slowly growing brighter, until I could see the entire shelf the skull rested upon—a simple wooden board on the wall, covered in candles, romance novels, a number of small items, and the pale human skull.
    "About time," the skull mumbled. "It's been weeks since you needed me."
    " Tis the season," I said. "Most of the Halloween jobs start looking the same after a few years. No need to consult you when I already know the answers I need."
    "If you were so smart," Bob muttered, "you wouldn't need me now."
    "That's right," I told him. I pulled a box of kitchen matches out of my robe's pockets and began lighting candles. I started with a bunch of them on a metal table running down the center of the small room. "You're a spirit of knowledge, whereas I am only human."
    "Right," said Bob, drawing out the word. "Are you feeling all right, Harry?"
    I continued on, lighting candles on the white wire shelves and workbenches on the three walls in a C shape around the long steel table. My shelves were still crowded with plastic dishes, lids, coffee cans, bags, boxes, tins, vials, flasks, and every other kind of small container you can imagine, filled with all kinds of substances as mundane as lint and as exotic as octopus ink. I had several hundred pounds' worth of books and notebooks on the shelves, some arranged neatly and some stacked hastily where they'd been when last I left them. I hadn't been down to the lab for a while, and I don't allow the faeries access, so there was a little bit of dust over everything.
    "Why do you ask?" I said.
    "Well," Bob said, his tone careful, "you're complimenting me, which is never good. Plus lighting all of your candles with matches."
    "So?" I said.
    "So you can light all the candles with that stupid little spell you made up," Bob said. "And you keep dropping the box because of your burned hand. So it's taken you seven matches now to keep lighting those candles."
    I fumbled and dropped the matchbox again from my stiff, gloved fingers.
    "Eight," he said.
    I suppressed a growl, struck a fresh match, and did it too forcefully, snapping it.
    "Nine," Bob said.
    "Shut up," I told him.
    "You got it, boss. I'm the best at shutting up." I lit the last few candles, and Bob said, "So did you come down here to get my help when you start working on your new blasting rod?"
    "No," I said. "Bob, I've only got the one hand. I can't carve it with one hand."
    "You could use a vise grip," the skull suggested.
    "I'm not ready," I said. My maimed fingers burned and throbbed. "I'm just… not."
    "You'd better get ready," Bob said. "It's only a matter of time before some nasty shows up and—"
    I shot the skull a hard look.
    "All right, all right," Bob said. If he had hands, the skull would have raised them in a gesture of surrender. "So you're telling me you still won't use any fire magic."
    "Stars and stones." I sighed. "So I'm using matches instead of my candle spell and I'm too busy to get the new blasting rod done. It's not a big deal. There's just not much call for blowing anything up or burning it to cinders on my average day."
    "Harry?" Bob asked. "Are your feet wet? And can you see the pyramids?"
    I blinked. "What?"
    "Earth to Dresden," Bob said. "You are standing knee-deep in de Nile."
    I threw the matchbook at the skull. It bounced off halfheartedly, and the few matches left in tumbled out at random.