Jim ButcherFool Moon
By Jim Butcher
Dresden Files - Book 2
The Dresden Files
01 - Storm Front
02 - Fool Moon
03 - Grave Peril
04 - Summer Knight
05 - Death Masks
06 - Blood Rites
07 - Dead Beat
08 - Proven Guilty
09 - White Night
10 - Small Favor
11 - Turn Coat
12 - Changes
Short Stories: Side Jobs
13 - Ghost Story
Chapter One
I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon. So I didn’t know that it was one night shy of being full when a young woman sat down across from me in McAnally’s pub and asked me to tell her all about something that could get her killed.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.” I folded the piece of paper, with its drawings of three concentric rings of spidery symbols, and slid it back over the polished oak-wood table.
Kim Delaney frowned at me, and brushed some of her dark, shining hair back from her forehead. She was a tall woman, buxom and lovely in an old-world way, with pale, pretty skin and round cheeks well used to smiling. She wasn’t smiling now.
“Oh, come on, Harry,” she told me. “You’re Chicago’s only practicing professional wizard, and you’re the only one who can help me.” She leaned across the table toward me, her eyes intent. “I can’t find the references for all of these symbols. No one in local circles recognizes them either. You’re the only real wizard I’ve ever even heard of, much less know. I just want to know what these others are.”
“No,” I told her. “You don’t want to know. You’re better off forgetting this circle and concentrating on something else.”
“But—”
Mac caught my attention from behind the bar by waving a hand at me, and slid a couple of plates of steaming food onto the polished surface of the crooked oak bar. He added a couple of bottles of his homemade brown ale, and my mouth started watering.
My stomach made an unhappy noise. It was almost as empty as my wallet. I would never have been able to afford dinner tonight, except that Kim had offered to buy, if I’d talk to her about something during the meal. A steak dinner was less than my usual rate, but she was pleasant company, and a sometime apprentice of mine. I knew she didn’t have much money, and I had even less.