Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  I decided to follow Jane’s initial advice to “shut it” and I let her concentrate. If I didn’t, she might grab the wrong book off the shelves of the Black Stacks and I’d be screwed. Right now she was my only hope.

  With the volume of rats reaching waist height now, I figured there had to be a way to at least get above them or on top of them, packed in as they were. I attempted to pull myself up. It felt like I was fighting my way out of a pit of quicksand, only quicksand tended to bite a lot less. At least my upper body was protected by my leather jacket, but my legs were still being scratched to hell.

  The writhing rat mass shifted underneath me. My balance gave out and I toppled over. My body immediately sank into the rats, tails and claws flicking against my face as I hurriedly tried to curl myself up into a protective ball. A tail slid into my ear and I pushed it away with my phone, stifling a scream. I didn’t want to even think what would happen if I opened my mouth.

  “Not to rush you,” I said through clenched teeth into the phone, “but right now would be a good time for . . . anything!”

  “I’m not sure if this will work,” Jane said, “but I think I found something.”

  Although magic wasn’t my thing, I was willing to give it a shot. Dire circumstances made strange bedfellows.

  “Lay it on me,” I said. “Read it to me.”

  “No time to explain it,” she said. “It’s not somatic. Just hold out the phone and put me on speaker.”

  As much as I didn’t want to expose any part of myself, I pushed the speaker button and extended my arm. Instantly I felt tiny noses and heads trying to jam their way up the sleeve of my jacket.

  “Okay,” I shouted through gritted teeth.

  Sound started coming through the phone, but it wasn’t speech, or even Jane’s voice. If anything, it sounded like the first computer I had ever owned trying to dial into a network, all electronic hisses and whirs. The rats around me became frantic.

  A crackle of electricity shot out through the phone and into the sea of rats. Smoke but no flame rose from the mass around me, and I felt myself slowly lowering to the floor of the room as, one by one, the rats turned into gelatinous, rust-colored goo.

  Nothing beats the smell of burning rat hair, and although there had been no fire as such, the air was filled with the charred odor.

  Even through my gloves, the phone became unbearably hot and it started melting in my hand like it was made of chocolate. I pulled the glove off my free hand, pried off the back of the phone, and tore my SIM card free. Near-death experience or no, there was no way I was reprogramming all the numbers I had stored.

  2

  As I waited for Connor and the Inspectre to finish lowering the remains of the rope after they disabled the guillotines, I paced back and forth, squicking my way through the rat goo underfoot. My nerves were shot. My clothes were soaked with the rat frappé, but I wouldn’t allow myself to freak out right now. I was too concerned about Jane. She must have been out of her mind worried once we had lost communication. If I could have climbed the walls to call her back, I would have.

  When the rope finally made its way down, I looped it around my waist, granny-knotted it secure, and let Connor, Wesker, and the Inspectre hoist me up. As I reached the top of the well, I pulled myself up over the edge and collapsed with a sticky squelch onto the hideous red carpeting of the convention hall, the fluorescent lights blinding me as I lay there. I was exhausted and could barely move, but I was able to turn my head and take a look at the well I had just crawled out of. The giant gypsy who had rented it to us knelt beside it, inspecting it.

  A shadow fell over me and I turned to see Thaddeus Wesker standing there, shaking his head. He was holding his phone. I reached my goo-covered hand up for it, feeling the strain in my arm from climbing.

  “Phone,” I said, opening and closing my hand like a kid wanting a toy.

  “Very good,” Wesker said as if speaking to a child. He pointed at one of the Wheels of Misfortune. “And that’s a circle. Now what other simple objects can you identify?”

  “Well, I can count to one,” I said, flipping him off. “Now give me the phone. I have to call Jane.”

  I almost couldn’t believe I was talking back to Wesker so boldly. I guess after being entombed in living rats, he didn’t seem that intimidating in comparison. It was close, though.

  “She just called me,” he said, sliding the phone back inside his suit coat. “She knows you lived, regrettably.”

  “Why did she call you?” I said, jealousy rearing its ugly head before I could think.

  “She works for me, remember? I had told her I was coming down here to supervise,” he said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand. “Besides, as the head of Greater and Lesser Arcana, I think she and I have to have a little chat about what just happened.”

  His ominous tone made it sound like it wasn’t going to be a particularly pleasant conversation. Not that any of his conversations were pleasant.

  “Is Jane in some kind of trouble?” I asked. Wesker just gave me a wicked smile. I turned to the remainder of my rescuers. Connor shrugged and looked to the Inspectre.

  “Not sure, my boy,” Quimbley said. “But in all my years I’ve never seen someone do anything quite like that.”

  “Liquefy rats?”

  “Oh goodness, no,” he said with a chuckle. “That I’ve seen countless times. My old partner in the Department used to do it during feeding time at the reptile house out at the Bronx Zoo. Poor snakes didn’t know what to do . . . What I mean to say is that I’ve never seen it done over the phone. Technomancy. That’s something you don’t see every day.”

  “I’d like to know just what the girl is doing even dabbling in it,” Wesker said. “We’re not even offering technomancy right now. Not many in-house people can do it.”

  I really didn’t give a rat’s ass, liquefied or not, about the magical logistics of it all. If I could get a closer look at the winch, maybe I could figure out just what the hell had gone wrong. The gypsy was still squatting by the well.

  “Aren’t there supposed to be safety features on this thing?” I asked with righteous anger in my voice. “The rules for the Oubliette state one peril and a set of tools to contend with it. I got the peril of fighting those rats plus guillotines, and I was down there with useless tools. That’s not how it’s supposed to go. I spent weeks studying it.”

  Julius Heron was still crouched over, peering intently at the side of the well.

  “There are safety features,” he said. “It seems that all of them failed . . . simultaneously.”

  “What are the odds of that?” I asked.

  Wesker laughed. “About the same as you staying in a relationship with Jane.”

  I ignored him.

  Sudddenly, he shot up. “This Oubliette’s been tampered with,” Julius said. He leaned down and ran his fingers over a section of the well, but I didn’t notice any difference at first. After a few seconds, though, something wavered in the pattern and I could see a spot in the stonework that differed from the rest.

  Connor bent down next to it. His hair fell across his eyes. He pushed it out of the way and studied the Oubliette. “Looks like someone has it in for you, kid. Not surprising, given our line of work.”

  “So who’s out to get me this time?” I asked. I turned to look specifically at Wesker. “I can probably spit on one of them from here.”

  “I don’t much care for what you’re implying, boy,” Wesker said, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “You did spend a lot of time working undercover with cultists,” I said. “And the only reason I trust you at all is because you helped turn Jane away from them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve given up their ways. Maybe you had a hand in rigging the Oubliette to fail.”

  Wesker looked indifferent and shrugged. “Sometimes things break,” Wesker said, his voice flat and unapologetic.

  “I’m awfully sorry, gentlemen,” Julius said. He clasped his hands together. “The Brother
s Heron are world renowned for their commitment to quality, and we stand by our equipment. It wasn’t our fault. There was outside interference.”

  “Stand by it?” I said. “Sure, just as long as you don’t have to be in it. I could have been killed.”

  “Again, my apologies,” Julius said, but his voice was much less apologetic this time. I backed down a bit. “I’ll wheel it back to my booth and my brothers and I will try to figure out what exactly happened here.”

  “I say,” the Inspectre said, “I trust there will be some kind of discount, what with your machine almost killing our young charge here.”

  “That,” Julius said, “is a matter I will have to discuss with my brothers. If you will excuse me . . .”

  Julius took up a thick piece of rope attached to the cart beneath the Oubliette and started to pull it off through the curtains. It would have taken Connor, Wesker, the Inspectre, and me to move the cart an inch, but it was no trouble for the giant of a man. Once I had watched him go, I turned back to our group.

  “So where were we?” I asked. I stepped toward the director of Greater & Lesser Arcana. “Oh, yes. Wesker was just about to tell us just exactly how he was involved in this . . .”

  “Simon!” the Inspectre said with such force I swung around to him. His face was expressionless. “That will be enough. May I remind you that you are still a member of F.O.G. and although you are still a fledgling, you will conduct yourself in accordance with the Order.”

  The Inspectre was right. I knew better than to engage Wesker. Besides, I knew he was always wallowing in a sty of his own anger over the fact that he had been refused entry into our elite order. I shut up.

  “That’s better,” the Inspectre continued.

  Connor came over and slipped off his shoulder bag, handing it to me at arm’s length.

  “What’s this?”

  “Fresh clothes,” he said. He pointed down. A little puddle of rat goo had started to form on the ground where I was standing. I shivered from where it was still against my skin.

  “Now go get yourself changed,” Connor continued. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, picking up the bag, careful to hold it away from my body. “Really? What kind of surprise?”

  Connor smiled and shook his head. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now, would it? Just go change, kid.”

  “Hold on,” Wesker called out. “Aren’t you going to clean up your . . . drippings?”

  I gave him a look and headed off in search of the rest-rooms.

  “I expect you to clean up this mess, Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said as I walked away.

  “Me?” Wesker shouted, half laughing. “Make Connor do it. Or better yet, Simon. Call him back here.”

  I stopped for a moment, waiting to see if I was going to get called back. I’d rather have had a rat slither into my mouth than give Wesker control over me. “Connor and Simon are part of Other Division,” the Inspectre said, twirling the end of his gray handlebar mustache with one hand and dabbing his other into a small pool of the goo. “This ichor that used to be rats is technically the result of a magical transformation, which is a matter for someone in your division. And as there is only one representative of Greater and Lesser Arcana here—namely you—I’ll leave that matter in your capable hands.”

  I turned away and hurried off. It was hard not to laugh. I just prayed I could control it, though. The thought of accidentally snorting any of the rat goo up my nose wasn’t appealing at all.

  I gave myself a truck-stop shower in the sink and changed into the clothes Connor had brought for me, then checked my ears one last time for any bits of rat before hitting the show floor. Connor was waiting for me outside the rest-rooms.

  “So, where’s my surprise?”

  “Follow me, kid,” he said and started walking off at a brisk pace into the heart of the convention center.

  The crowd was thick and I had to dart through it before I lost him.

  “My surprise is in here?”

  Connor nodded. “We’re gonna be working for a Department recruiting booth for a shift or two.”

  “Here?”

  Connor lowered his voice. “You’d be surprised how many Extraordinary types a convention like this attracts,” he said. “Besides, there’re a couple of side benefits to working here that I think you’ll find interesting.”

  “Such as . . . ?”

  “Well, two things, really,” he said. He stopped at one of the booths. Dozens of still-boxed action figures lined the booth. “First, think about the great scores you could find here with your powers.”

  I had been slacking in using my psychometry to supplement my government salary at the D.E.A., and my SoHo apartment’s maintenance fees weren’t going to pay for themselves. If I could get some good readings on some of the collectibles here and get them into the hands of the right consumer, I’d be set for a while.

  “Brilliant,” I said. “Thanks, partner. What’s the second?”

  Connor stopped and pointed ahead. I looked and saw our booth. There was nothing that suggested the secretive nature of our organization, but there was a table full of pamphlets and reading material . . . and the Inspectre was manning it.

  “What’s the Inspectre doing over here?” I said. “I thought he was just here to oversee the Oubliette.”

  Connor shook his head. “He’s also here to work the booth.”

  “Isn’t that kind of beneath him, playing booth jockey?”

  “You know the Inspectre,” he said. “He’s a hands-on kind of guy. Likes to take a personal interest in who’s coming into the Department. Like you. I thought you’d appreciate the bonding time I bought by volunteering us for this.”

  I was touched by his thoughtfulness. Before I could think of anything to say, Connor patted me on the shoulder and took off down the aisle toward the Inspectre. I followed him into our booth. Connor took a spot at the back of the space organizing stacks of papers while the Inspectre stood at the front, handing out information. The table was covered with a variety of pamphlets and handouts: Homebrew Potions: Ask Me How!, The Truth About Gated Communities: Ghost Dancing & Ancient Indian Burial Grounds, Your Neighbor Might Be Possessed If: Ten Signs It’s Time to Move.

  The list went on and on.

  “You know,” I said, approaching Connor, “for a secret organization, we’re sure making quite a spectacle of ourselves.”

  “Relax, kid,” he said. He sounded more curt than usual. “Most of the people just look at us as a marketing ploy for some new line of comics or something. They don’t even give us a second glance.”

  I looked around and noticed what he said was true. A five-hundred-pound guy dressed as Legolas took one of the leaflets the Inspectre handed him and moved on without batting an eye. No one was really paying us any attention.

  “So, do you think I passed the Oubliette?” I asked, switching back to my main concern.

  Connor paused, silently shuffling the papers in his hand.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Connor gestured for me to move closer, farther away from the Inspectre.

  “What the hell did you do back there?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “The Oubliette has rules. No outside items. You had your phone on you.”

  “What was I doing?” I said, angry. “I was surviving . . . because the fucking thing malfunctioned.”

  “Maybe that was part of the test,” he said with an air of superiority. “Did you ever consider that?”

  I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell him.

  “Well, was it?” I asked. “Was it part of the test?”

  “Well . . . no,” he said, becoming less heated. “But you didn’t know that.”

  “Look,” I said. “Before you jump further down my throat, let’s talk about what I did know. First, the rules stated that no weapons could be brought in. I wouldn’t have thought my cell phone would be considered a weapon, and since no one’s ever done what Jane did before, y
ou wouldn’t have considered it a weapon, either.”

  Connor glared at me, but conceded the point with his silence.

  “And second,” I continued, “I studied for that damned Oubliette for weeks.”

  Connor’s jaw tightened.

  “Not with me, you didn’t,” he said. And there it was.

  “There was nothing personal in my choice of Jane,” I said. “It’s just that Jane had more access to the books I needed.”