Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  “Don’t you have some children to scare?” I asked.

  “Watch it,” he said. “I still have seniority over you.”

  Unlike at the convention center, I didn’t have Connor or the Inspectre here to back my bravado just now. Plus, Jane still had to answer him, so it was in my best interest to not sound too much like a smart-ass.

  “I wasn’t being snarky, sir,” I lied. It was getting easier after almost being caught rummaging through Connor’s desk. “I just thought I saw some of the kids in the Young Adult section acting suspiciously, and since no one’s up front, God knows what they’re up to . . .”

  Wesker didn’t look like he believed me fully, but I knew he wouldn’t abide any potential shoplifting under his watch. He excused himself from the Stacks and headed off toward the front of the store.

  Jane pushed me up against one of the bookshelves and kissed me. I kissed her back with equal fervor until I became self-conscious. We were, after all, making out in a roomful of evil—or at least enchanted—books, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. I pulled away, though it pained me to do so.

  “So . . . what was up with that rat-blendering spell?” I asked.

  Jane looked surprised. “Arcana hasn’t let me start working with greater magic in an official capacity yet, but Thaddeus has authorized me for some Lesser Arcana practice.”

  Thaddeus? I bristled at her familiarity. Since when had Divisional Director Wesker become Thaddeus to her? I tried to swallow the ridiculous schoolboy jealousy that I found had sprung up inside me. My relationship with Jane was the first one that had lasted more than a few weeks—now that I had learned to control my powers somewhat—but it also meant that I had to start learning how to control the teenlike jealousy that came with the unfamiliar territory of something long-term.

  “What other magic can you do?” I asked, trying to get back on track.

  Jane shrugged and shied her eyes toward her feet. “Just little things. I can light a match, change the temperature of water, make milk go sour . . . April Fool’s Day-level stuff, really.”

  “Well, that’s great,” I said with as much encouragement as I could muster. “So the rat thing . . . ?”

  She reached over and squeezed my hands, passing her excitement over to me. “I don’t know. I’ve been spending a lot of time filing things away in the Stacks and when you called, I guess I just let my fingers do the walking. I found what I hoped would work on maybe a few of the rats in the second book I opened.”

  “It didn’t just take out a few, Jane. It was like a Cuisinart had been taken to all of them to make one big rat smoothie . . .”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Don’t get too excited,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of you delving into the spells that fill the books of the Black Stacks here.”

  “Why? Because I’m a girl?” Jane gave a little pout. “No offense, hon, but that comes off as kinda sexist. Am I going to have to call HR?”

  I shook my head and held up my hands. “I don’t mean it like that. I was just surprised to hear that you were dabbling a little bit with black magic. I dunno . . . I just thought that’s something you would have told me about.” I suppressed the urge to ask what else she might have neglected to tell me about, specifically just how she had become so chummy with her boss, “Thaddeus.” I took a deep breath until the feeling passed before changing tactics. “It’s just that you’re not a field agent. You’re a researcher for now, and I don’t want you to get mixed up in practicing anything from all this dark source material back here.”

  “That practical application did save your life, you know,” she said, striking a he-man pose and flexing her muscles.

  “Fair point,” I said, relaxing a little and kissing her on the nose. “I just worry; that’s all.”

  “I know,” she said, and hugged me. I grabbed her head and kissed the top of it, which gave me an idea.

  “Speaking of worrying,” I said. “I suppose I could give you a little field agent expertise, like how to fight zombies. I’ve already been through “Shufflers and Shamblers,” so this will give you a leg up.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “First off, never let them get as close to your skull as I just did.”

  Jane gave me a thumbs-up. “Check.”

  “And your best bet is to try to outrun them. You’re faster than ninety percent of the zombie variants out there, but if you’re cornered and have to fight, blunt trauma to the head still seems to be the best way to take them down.”

  Jane went a little gray. “You really are worried, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “About a lot of things, but zombies are on the rise and just this afternoon we came across this boatful of dead people that might have been killed by vampires. I haven’t really been schooled so much on them yet or else I’d be teaching you about them, too. There’s only so much vampire slaying I can learn from watching the Buffy boxed set. Then, on top of all that, somebody messed with the Oubliette . . . so I just want to make sure that you’re prepared.”

  “Vamps? For real?” she asked, practically bouncing up and down with a morbid excitement. I took a moment to observe how all the right parts on her shifted with the movement. It was hard not to.

  “You might want to rethink the low riders,” I said, pointing at her pants.

  She looked at me with a mask of confusion.

  “Do zombies or vampires have something against fashion?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, before I could stop myself, “but maybe you could not wear them while working with Director Wesker.”

  It was juvenile, but I couldn’t help it. Being with Jane brought out something protective in me.

  She tugged them up a little higher to cover the hint of her zebra-stiped underwear that was sticking out. “Simon,” she said, a little perturbed, “don’t be silly.”

  “I’m just saying,” I said, trying to sound disarming, but failing completely. I didn’t quite know how to deal with this feeling welling up inside me, and although I had held my tongue at first, I could feel myself slipping.

  “I’m just saying,” I repeated, “you don’t see me calling Inspectre Quimbley ‘Argyle.’ ”

  Jane rolled her eyes. “Can we not get into this now?” she asked. She lowered her voice. “I’m kinda at work here . . .”

  Do not get into this with her, especially not here, I thought to myself. Just leave before you say something stupid.

  “Sure,” I said. I picked up the requisition she had signed, folded it, and slipped it in my pocket. “Thanks.”

  I turned toward the gate.

  “Simon, don’t go away mad,” she pleaded.

  “Just go away, right?” I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Jeesh,” Jane said. “Do I crawl up your butt when you’ve got a case you’re working on? I’m making real progress here. They’ve got me researching like crazy in total Willow-mode here, and I think I have the Stacks actually playing nice with me.”

  I paused. Truthfully, I was impressed, but with the horrible day I’d had, this wasn’t the way I wanted to end it. She was the one good thing I had going for me right now, but I couldn’t control the schoolboy jealousy.

  “Can we discuss this later, then?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as cranky as I felt. Jane nodded, wrapping her arms around the book she held, but she didn’t move. “Just come on over after you’re done here. I’ll be home. I hope you and Thaddeus have a great time researching.”

  I wish I hadn’t said it, but it was too late. I walked away before I could make it any worse that it already was, but Jane let out a heavy sigh as I went. I never would have thought the hardest thing to deal with back in the Black Stacks would be my girlfriend.

  7

  I headed back downtown for my appointment with the Inspectre, going over what had just happened and wondering why my inner alpha male had flared up so much over Wesker. How had a little light instruction on combating the u
ndead turned into a fit of jealousy?

  Things with Jane had been going great. Well, as great as they could be for an ex-cultist and a psychometric detective with little experience in long-term dating, anyway. I cursed the years I hadn’t been able to control my power. They had kept me from ever having a relationship successful enough to get to this stage of emotional irrationality.

  Now that I was confused and full of steam to blow off, it was the perfect time to head back to the D.E.A. for that Fraternal Order of Goodness-level Unorthodox Fighting Techniques the Inspectre had mentioned. When I got there, I wove my way through an area upstairs that was a labyrinth of musty old offices but with slightly emptier corridors because of the restrictive exclusivity of F.O.G. The furniture was ancient, as if the minds of ages had been battling evil here for centuries, and after several wrong turns, I found Inspectre Quimbley in one of the training areas, suiting up in elbow pads that he was slipping on over his tweed coat.

  The Inspectre looked up and gave me a fatherly smile.

  “Almost ready,” he said.

  He slipped on his protective headgear, the kind a boxer wears, and over his chest he pulled on an umpire’s padded vest with a large red heart painted where one would expect the actual heart to be, only it had a target on it. The padding made him appear even more walruslike than his mustache did, but I knew all too well that was only in appearance. Looks could be deceiving with Inspectre Quimbley. You didn’t live to be his age in his field unless you had serious skills.

  “You F.O.G.gies don’t mess around when it comes to fighting,” I said.

  The Inspectre was still giving me that paternal look when he stood up. “The forces of Darkness certainly don’t mess around when it comes to attacking us, so why should we hold back? Especially vampires. I’d rather have you prepared, my boy, than dead. Now, then . . .”

  He pulled a long black cape off the back of the chair he had been sitting in. As he tied it on, I almost laughed. I was pretty much looking at a walruslike version of Count Dracula. He scooped up an enchanted coatrack in both his hands and brandished it like it was a staff. The little metal coat hooks at the top of it snaked to life like tiny metal pincers. All of this certainly helped dissipate the patriarchal mood and any humor.

  I looked around the general clutter of the room for something weapon-y of my own.

  “That’s your first mistake,” the Inspectre said.

  “Sir?”

  “Unorthodox Fighting Techniques at this level provides very little in the way of conventional weaponry. Open your mind to the art of improvisation during conflict. Few fights ever go as smoothly as they look in the movies, do they? You never know under what circumstance you might be called upon to defend yourself. Or with what.”

  I missed the lower levels of this class. In those, I had fought with weapons like carnivorous sofa cushions, fire stokers that kept blowing soot into my face, potted trees that screamed when you hit them, pool cues, fountain pens, living lawn gnomes, and once, purely by accident, normal swords.

  This time, however, nothing really jumped out to me and I was at a loss.

  “You’ve already got the best weapon,” I said, backing away. Even the length of the coatrack gave it a considerable advantage. I was unsure of what to do, but I was still in the mood for a good fight. I had so much pent-up anger and frustration over the whole Jane situation.

  “Use your head, boy,” the Inspectre said, smiling and moving cautiously toward me, “for more than just a place to hang your hat.”

  His smile betrayed him. Even in a fight, the Inspectre couldn’t help throwing encouraging clues at me. A place to hang your hat, I thought to myself . . . would be at the top of another coatrack. I glanced quickly around the room and there it was, another coatrack blending in to the wall on the opposite side of the room. The Inspectre moved into swinging range. I had to act.

  I turned and dashed across the room, feeling my hair stir as the air from the Inspectre’s swing blew by me. Ever the gentleman, the Inspectre waited until I got my hands on the other coatrack before charging me. The hooks on the rack sprang to life and I relished the chance to finally let my growing aggression out. All of it—the discovery of the people on the booze cruise, my troubles with Jane, the fact that someone had tried to sabotage the Oubliette—all of it came flooding out in quick, vicious attacks, all of which the Inspectre was trying his best to counter. On the plus side, he had landed very few strikes against me, so I considered our score pretty even by my count.

  The old man spent the better part of an hour putting me through the wringer.

  As fatigue started to set in, our coatracks clashed together as we struggled across the floor of the fight studio. For once, I realized I had the Inspectre on the defensive and pressed my advantage. I lunged toward him with the business end of the coatrack. The hooks waved like tentacles as they sought to disarm Inspectre Quimbley. I thought for sure I had him, but he sidestepped and parried. My weapon smacked harmlessly against the wall, and one of the hooks latched on to a light fixture, forcing me to stop while I untangled it.

  “Good form,” the Inspectre said, “good form.”

  I was too caught up in freeing my weapon, and the Inspectre knew it. He swung his own rack low and caught me behind the knees before I could turn back to him. They buckled, causing me to fall flat on my back, and I stayed there, the wind knocked out of me.

  “The hardest part to mastering the coatrack,” he said as he triumphantly planted his on the floor, “is forgetting that it is not a staff. Most apprentices treat it like they’re sixteenth-century warrior monks from a Hong Kong action movie. Well, who ever heard of a monk using a coatrack to fight? Staff forms are the totally wrong fighting technique for them to practice . . . when what they should master is the tricky art of the rack.”

  He offered his hand and helped me up.

  “Of course,” he continued, his breathing a little labored, “if you were using this combat technique and a vampire was involved, the smart thing to do would be to snap off the end of it to make a stake to impale him with, but, bless my heart, these coatracks are so bloody cute with their hooks. They’re like little baby fingers.”

  I pulled at my own tangled coatrack, which was now swinging playfully from the light fixture. It grumbled as I tugged it free, and I turned, readying myself. The Inspectre, however, looked winded and was leaning heavily on his own rack. The hooks seemed to be petting his shoulder.

  “Sir . . . ?”

  “No worries, my boy.” He looked up and smiled. “That last parry simply took a lot out of this old man. Guess it is best that we’re training a new generation. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, after all.”

  I hobbled to the table at one side of the room and helped myself to a fresh donut there.

  “Ahh, the spoils of victory,” the Inspectre said.

  Putting in the extra hours being part of F.O.G. added to my already overloaded work schedule, but at least there were snacks.

  “You keep this up,” I said, “and you’re going to have to roll me out of here. Remind me to hit the gym more often. Or maybe at all.”

  “You might want to look into that, son. It’s just one of the perks of being a F.O.G.gie, you know. It’s free. I wouldn’t want you to put on the ‘Fraternal Fifteen’ on my account.”

  “Sure it’s free,” I said. “You want to get me on a treadmill so I can get better at running from even nastier things than I’m already used to running from.”

  The Inspectre nodded.

  “I think I’m starting to learn that ‘more perks’ really means I stand a greater chance of dying. The more access I have around the Department, the shorter my life expectancy, right?”

  “Well, don’t beat around the bush,” the Inspectre said, letting out a hearty laugh. “Perks aside, ‘doing good’ is supposed to be its own reward, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have free donuts and an elliptical machine. Ready?”

  “Do you mind if I ask you more about the Fr
aternal Order of Goodness?” I asked. The Inspectre shook his head. “We’re the most-talked-about secret society I’ve ever heard of. Divisional managers like Wesker call the order a bunch of snobby do-gooders.”

  “ ‘Dangerously underqualified’ is what we call blokes like him,” he said, then paused. “My boy, you don’t get to be Inspectre without learning to read people over the years. I can sense some kind of trouble with you, and I know what turmoil can do to a young agent.”

  I looked up, drawn in by the kindness in his voice.

  “I still don’t feel right about being in charge of Connor,” I said. “I mean, he is my mentor, after all. I just don’t know if I’m ready for this. And frankly, he’s touchy on a good day. Then there’s the responsibility of calling the shots . . . What if I make the wrong call and do something rash?”