Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  For a second I wanted to just get it out of my system and tell Mina everything—about my psychometric powers, the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, the Fraternal Order, even about the fact that Jane and I weren’t such the happy little couple—but I held my tongue.

  I knew Mina too well. If I even hinted at any part of my new life or showed any signs of weakness, she would only twist it to her advantage.

  Could I believe her? Would she keep her word and leave me alone if I just did this one last job for her? Mina had always had a strange honor-among-thieves thing she stuck to. Her words might be crazy, her legality was questionable, but in matters with her associates, she kept her word. Just get rid of Mina by simply helping her out with this one job. Get in, get out, say good riddance, and have her get the hell out of my life for good, as she promised. I could compromise myself this one last time if it would protect the people I cared for. I could already feel myself justifying it. It wasn’t like I was doing the actual stealing. More of an assist, really . . .

  I picked myself up off the floor of the coffee shop. “You may find my life boring,” I said. I brushed a bunch of muffin crumbs from the table off my pants. “But I like it just fine, thank you very much. Just tell me when we’re doing this.”

  “Tomorrow night,” Mina said. “I’ve got previous obligations tonight in preparation—‘casing the joint,’ as they say in all the cop shows. Bring whatever you need for picking locks, Mr. Golden Touch. I need you to get me in and then watch my back while I actually switch out the painting. I’ll be busy not setting off the sensors on it, and the last thing I need is to have to handle some guard at the same time. So be ready for a fight. I hope that fits into your busy schedule. If it doesn’t, tough.”

  I just stared at Mina, wanting to yell at her, but the Lovecraft Café was not the place for it. I stepped away from her.

  “You’re a real piece of work, Mina. I’m surprised some lucky guy hasn’t snatched you up and married you yet. Really, I mean, with a soft side like yours . . .”

  “Bite me,” she said, and spun around, heading for the door. “Better brush up on your lock-picking skills, Boy Scout.”

  17

  The encounter with Mina left me all riled up, and I gave up on the idea of sleep before meeting up with Connor at the park. It was around eight, and I thought I had enough time to try to patch things up with Jane. With a fresh idea in my head, I called her and told her to meet me around ten at Eccentric Circles.

  When Jane found me at the back of the Department’s favorite watering hole in one of the dark and secluded booths, she stopped in her tracks and smiled. The bar was the usual hangout for our unusual crowd, but I had chosen the back dining area for a quiet meal alone with her. I had set the booth up for dinner for two, complete with a red-and-white-checkered table cloth I had picked up along the way, candles, and an array of Italian dishes.

  As she walked up the booth, she stopped when she saw everything. “Isn’t it a little late for a big dinner? And Italian? Does Eccentric Circles even do Italian?”

  I nodded my head.

  “For the right price they do,” I said, standing up. “I would have made it for you myself at home, but my schedule’s been pretty crazy.”

  “You arranged all this?” Jane’s grin widened.

  I nodded. “I’ve been feeling pretty Lady and the Tramp lately.” Flashes of my Lovecraft Café encounter with Mina filled my head. “Let’s just say I’ve gotten a little perspective on how healthy you are for me, and I wanted to make up for the way I’ve been acting.”

  I took her hand in mine and raised it to my lips. I was glad to see she didn’t pull away when I kissed it and her smile remained. I helped her slide into the booth.

  Jane picked up the glass of wine on her side and raised it. “Well, you’re certainly off to a good start.”

  I raised mine as well, clinked it with hers, and the two of us drank.

  “So Director Wesker told me about the book that attacked you,” Jane said.

  I wasn’t thrilled to hear that he had told her about my embarrassing little incident, but I was glad she had thrown “Director” in in place of “Thaddeus” as a peace offering.

  “Yeah, well,” I said, “at least it was only one book this time. Plus, double bonus, I remembered to wear my gloves.”

  She laughed.

  “Well, that is something, isn’t it?”

  I liked seeing her smile.

  “So,” I said. “Any new developments with the technomancy? Have you figured out how, exactly, you saved me from those rats?”

  I shivered at the thought of the Oubliette and whoever had sabotaged it against me.

  “Actually, I’m trying to cut back on using it,” she said, “for now.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel a little funny suddenly having all this power at my disposal. Doesn’t feel right.”

  “If you say ‘with great power comes great responsibility, ’ I might gag.”

  “Well,” she said. “It is true, but that’s not my main reason. I just don’t feel as happy, I guess, when I use it. Of course, Wesker keeps encouraging me to experiment with it.”

  “Of course he does,” I said.

  Jane cocked her head at me, the blond tip of her ponytail momentarily swinging into view.

  “What I mean,” I continued, “is that he’s all about the accumulation of resources, and I’m sure he considers the development of your power as one of the new shinies in his dark little toy box.”

  Jane shifted her face into a half smile, half frown.

  “You make me feel so owned.”

  Now it was my turn to shrug. I didn’t want to say anything too damaging. I wanted her to mull over the possibility that maybe she shouldn’t get so chummy with her potentially evil boss, especially when the two of them spent so much time alone together at Tome, Sweet Tome. I pushed away fantastical images of Jane and Wesker bumping uglies in the Stacks.

  Of course, it would only take touching something of Jane’s that had been with her all day to find out the truth, if I really wanted to know. But I resisted. I hadn’t learned to control the very type of incident that had led to every ugly breakup of my adult life only to turn around and use it now simply because it was the easy way. Instead, I dove into my food.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Jane said, her eyes lighting up. She turned to her shoulder bag on the seat beside her. “I brought this for you.” Jane produced a book and put it on the table, sliding it across to me. The Rough Guide to Supernatural New York City. “This is the book you came for, isn’t it?”

  “Jane,” I whispered, pulling the book off the table and out of sight in a flash. “I thought the Stacks were a no-lending area?”

  “They are,” she said, giving me a devilish grin, “but who says I can’t use my occasional evil tendencies to benefit my man every once in a while?”

  It was a tiny bit wicked, but who was I to lecture her on flouting Departmental rules? Besides, I was the one who was about to by involved in an art heist. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m hoping I can figure out just what the hell the significance of Cleopatra’s Needle is, if any, before I meet up with Connor in Central Park at three a.m. I appreciate it, but no more evil on my behalf, okay?”

  “Sure thing, cutie,” she said, her grin still in place. I felt her foot start to trace its way up my calf under the table. “Sure I can’t coax you into a little more evil?”

  Oh, I could definitely have gone for some of the horizontal evil Jane was hinting at. Then I remembered that Mina was staying at my apartment, and even though she was out making preparations for our heist tomorrow night, she could come back at any time. “Can we make it your place?” I said. Jane’s eyes narrowed.

  I slid the book into my own bag.

  “I’ve got to meet Connor in a few hours,” I said, skirting the issue of my houseguest, “and Chelsea’s a little closer to Central Park. It’ll give me more time to cuddle . . . ?”


  “Cuddle?” she said. “Honey, when I’m done with you, you’ll be lucky if you can even move.”

  I’d worry later about the delicious damage Jane might do to me and how I was going to be able to walk to meet Connor afterward. This was certainly a much better distraction than irrational jealousy, psychotic ex-cons, and vampires.

  18

  When I met Connor at the base of Cleopatra’s Needle, it was three a.m. and I was too exhausted to even speak. Aside from the mind-blowing sex, my body had already been pushed to its limit today—physically from the chase Connor and I had engaged in with the ghost, and emotionally from trying to deal with both Mina and Jane.

  Just being in the silent darkness of the park after hours was clearly freaking Connor out. This was on top of whatever had spooked him in that letter I had seen in my psychometric vision—or rather hadn’t been able to see. There was no way in hell I could ask him about it directly, though, so for now I was happy to meet Connor’s silence with my own. My brain was thinked out.

  I took a seat on the steps of the white pedestal supporting Cleopatra’s Needle. I stared up at one of the four bronze crabs standing guard at each corner. Connor paced back and forth. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and I spoke up.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “You think the jogger or maybe the vampires might return to the scene of the crime?”

  Connor shook his head. “Not the vamps. Just the jogger hopefully,” he said, and went silent again.

  I became bored and stood on the top edge of the white base, reaching up to grasp my gloved hands onto one of the metallic crab claws. I hung my full weight from it, letting my feet dangle, feeling a bit like a prize from one of those arcade claw vending-machine games. The mental image caused me to laugh out loud.

  Connor twirled around, full of nerves.

  “Jesus, kid,” he said. “How can you laugh at a time like this?”

  “It probably helps that I’m dangling from this here crab,” I said, but Connor wouldn’t even smile at that. “My arms are numb, but it’s a nice, cooling sensation.”

  “Just keep sharp,” he said, and resumed his pacing. “That’s gotta be nine hundred pounds’ worth of bronze crabs yer dangling from.”

  “I’m not sure how important this is,” I said, dropping down, “but it would help if I knew what I was staying sharp for. Or rather, what we plan to do should anything show up here tonight.”

  “Huh?” Connor said, looking up from his pacing. “Oh, right. Sorry, kid.”

  Connor’s bag sat on one of the benches and he went to it. He pulled two shapes from it, but I could barely make them out in the pervading darkness.

  “Are those . . . hair dryers?”

  “Close, kid,” he said, “but no cigar.”

  Connor stepped closer. In each hand he held identical hair-dryer-shaped devices. Both were bright yellow with red stripes down the sides.

  “Bubble blasters?” I asked, and Connor nodded. “I don’t get it.”

  “What’s not to get?” he said. “They blast bubbles.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that.”

  He handed me one. “Go on, give it a try.”

  As if things couldn’t get more surreal, I pulled the trigger. Bubbles filled the air—but they weren’t ordinary bubbles. The smell of patchouli rose from the gun. I popped one of the bubbles and it splashed onto my face. “Great,” I said. “I smell like one of the squatters in the East Village now.”

  “Look, kid. These vampires, or whatever it is we’re hunting, might not return to the scene of the crime, but the jogger might. A free-floating ghost almost invariably repeats the patterns it formed in life, like jogging this path. It’s just a matter of time.”

  I held up my bubble blaster, waving it at Connor. “I thought mentors were supposed to be older and wiser. You’ve got the older part down.”

  Connor stared at me. “Just get away from the crab and get on the other side of the path, will you? When we see the guy coming, we get the blasters going and create a wall of this stuff.”

  My memories of the foul-smelling scent were always intertwined with the night we defeated the Sectarians at the Museum of Modern Art. Hundreds of ghosts, including my then-ghost-crush Irene, had been trapped by barrels filled with the stuff. I shook it off, heading down to the path at the bottom of the steps that led up to the Needle. I crossed to the far side of the path and waited for Connor to join me.

  “We don’t have anything more high-tech?” I asked hopefully. I didn’t want to bet my life on something from the summer clearance bin at Toys ‘R’ Us.

  “After you just did all that paperwork to requisition a new phone from Supply?” Connor asked. “We’d do double that to get any gear for an op like this, and then add a two-week wait for signatures, plus possible back-order time. It was just easier using these.”

  I flexed my finger against the trigger of the gun. It felt plastic and flimsy, like it was just waiting to snap off at a crucial moment.

  “And if this doesn’t work?” I asked.

  “It’ll work,” Connor said, offended.

  I looked at the white streak in Connor’s otherwise sandy brown mop of hair. “I don’t want to become part of your Hair Club for Men,” I said, using my favorite name for the White Stripes.

  “It’ll work,” Connor said, and huffed. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll at least have had a fun time in Central Park blowing bubbles together.”

  “You really need to work on your deadside manner,” I said.

  “You really need to shut up and get ready,” Connor said, looking down the path. “It’s Don Ho time.”

  “Eh?” I said, cocking my head.

  Connor looked at me, exasperated. “‘Tiny Bubbles’? Get with the program, kid. Jesus, you’re making me feel old.”

  “That would be your white hair talking,” I said, “and midthirties is old.”

  I shifted my focus down the path. I could barely see anything through the mist covering the pathway . . . until I realized the mist was actually the see-through body of the dead jogger coming toward us. He looked exactly as we had seen him the other day in his “Sherlock Ohms” T-shirt. He appeared to be oblivious to our presence.

  “Start your engines,” Connor said, pulling the trigger on his blaster. I did the same. The tiny whirr of the fans felt anticlimactic considering what we were doing here, but the bubbles started flowing freely back and forth across the pathway. If only there were a mirror ball present, we’d have had a full-on disco.

  Onward ran the jogger, still not noticing us, until he hit the first of the bubbles. He stopped abruptly, like he’d been shot. One of the bubbles hit his arm and popped, and he looked down as he hissed in pain. A sticky-looking patch formed on his translucent arm. Connor frantically waved his blaster up and down around the ghost in an attempt to contain him.

  “Get around the back, kid,” he said. “We’ve got to encircle him before he makes a break for . . .”

  Connor’s words were cut short as the spirit shot backward. Connor and I jockeyed for position to get around him, but that was when the jogger finally seemed to take notice of us. The ghost’s eyes widened in cartoonish horror, and his face distorted beyond the way a normal human’s could.

  “N-n-no!” the spirit stammered. He turned and shot up the stairs toward the needle.

  “Crap,” Connor said. “Looks like were gonna have to Scoob and Shag it, kid.”

  “Scoob and Shag . . . ?”

  “Improvise,” he said, and dashed off up the stone steps after it. I fell in behind him, my legs already aching. The spirit limped in a circle around the base of the needle, trying to shake free of a few of the bubbles that had popped on his leg. When he saw us coming, he circled around to the far side of the needle.

  “Don’t hurt me,” the jogger shouted.

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Connor said, trying to calm him. The spirit gave Connor a look of doubt.

  While the two of them continued their exchange, I
crept around to the jogger’s side of the needle. Connor kept talking while I snuck up on him.

  “We just need to know a few things,” Connor said. He checked my position by stealing a glance at me, but the spirit noticed and twisted around. His face was a contorted mask of inhuman rage. His sudden ferocity scared the crap out of me. I pulled the blaster’s trigger, and the bubbles started blowing. The jogger stumbled back in terror to avoid them.