Deader Still

by Anton Strout

“Troubles in paradise, kid?”

  I stepped back into our booth and sulked toward the rear of it.

  “I don’t know,” I said, thankful for the change of subject even if it was also a dark one. “I don’t know if I can take her being in Greater and Lesser Arcana. I just don’t like Jane working so closely with Wesker. Every time I see them, she’s laughing and having a good time, but whenever I’m around her lately, it’s like she’s reserving all her lingering bits of darkness just for me. You don’t think that she and Wesker . . . ?”

  I couldn’t even finish my sentence without my brain feeling like it might explode. My heart jackhammered in my chest.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Connor said. He came over to me. “Jane and Wesker? What? You think she’s doing the dark deed with the Dark Dud?”

  He started laughing and shook his head.

  “What?” I said. “I’m dead serious. What’s so hard to believe about that? He’s powerful, commanding; they share an affinity for dark things . . .”

  “But he’s Thaddeus Wesker,” Connor said, unable to control himself. I felt the uncontrollable urge to smash him in the face. When he saw the serious look in my eyes, he composed himself. “Look, kid. I know that actually maintaining a relationship is new to you. It’s probably why you’re having all these out-of-whack jealousy issues. It’s like you’re in high school.”

  Connor was right, though I hated to admit it. I felt my rageful urges calming down.

  “I’ve never had to deal with any of this before,” I said. “I’m in uncharted water here.”

  “You and Jane make a cute, if annoying, couple,” he said. “Don’t blow it over something as ridiculous as your imagined jealousy, okay?”

  “Should I really be taking this advice from someone as single as you?”

  Connor’s face darkened.

  “Hey,” he said. “My being single is a choice. I made that decision when I entered the Department, so that no one close to me would ever come to harm. Let’s not get off topic here. We’re talking about you.”

  I stared down into my hands—my powerless hands.

  “Believe me,” Connor said. “There are worse problems than not having paranormal powers.”

  “Things okay with you?” I said. Like the lights going out in a house, Connor’s eyes changed right before me, and he looked away.

  “It’s nothing, kid,” he said, but I could still see he carried some kind of extra burden. That letter he had received had something to do with his brother. I would have bet money on it. Why had it been blocked from me in my psychometric vision, though? I had to find out.

  “You know, you can talk to me,” I said. “About anything.”

  Connor gave me a sidelong look of suspicion. “Is that an order?”

  My stomach clenched at his words.

  “Knock it off,” I said simply.

  The Inspectre pushed his way back through the crowd, elves and Klingons flying to his left and right. He approached the booth, breathless.

  “Anything?” Connor asked.

  “As you said, the blasted wagon of theirs is nowhere to be found,” the Inspectre said.

  “So there’s nothing we can do,” I said, frustrated. The only people who might have any sort of answers about the chupacabras or my power loss had literally vanished into thin air. It was all I could do not to scream. “I have to get out of here.”

  The Inspectre, still winded, gave me a stern look.

  “Sir, please,” I begged. I held my ungloved hands up to him. “We’re called the Department of Extraordinary Affairs. Right now I’m barely qualified for ordinary affairs, if that. I just need to get away for some time to think.”

  My pleas seemed to soften the Inspectre, and he nodded.

  “Of course,” he said finally. “Why don’t you take the afternoon off from the show floor and collect yourself.”

  “Yeah, kid,” Connor said. I turned to him.

  “Can I use your phone?” I said.

  Connor hesitated. I never asked to borrow it from him, but that had been because I generally didn’t want to trigger off anything personal of his unless it was under the right circumstances. Without my powers, it really didn’t matter what I touched, but Connor didn’t move to hand it over.

  “Mine melted in the Oubliette, remember?” I reminded him.

  Connor nodded, and reluctantly pulled out his phone. He started to hand it to me, then pulled it away. “Maybe I should dial whatever number for you, just for safety’s sake.”

  I reached over and snatched the phone from him. It felt oddly liberating not to have to worry at all about keeping my power in check while holding it. Liberating, yes, but also a little bit empty.

  “Give me that,” I said, stepping away before he could grab it back. “I just need to get in touch with Jane.”

  I’d have to contend with Mina and the heist details later, but now that I was powerless, the desire to see Jane was suddenly overwhelming. Sure, I had poor impulse control, but I wasn’t scheduled to take “Controlling Your Poor Impulse Control” until next spring anyway, so I couldn’t feel guilty about it.

  23

  I called Jane and begged her to meet me once again at Eccentric Circles in half an hour. I didn’t feel like heading into the Black Stacks over at Tome, Sweet Tome in my current condition. Jane agreed to meet me downtown. I hurried off the floor of the Javits Center and headed down to the bar.

  Eccentric Circles was jumping considering it was midafternoon, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. Thanks to the gypsies, I could walk around gloveless. Normally a bar was a potential minefield for my psychometric powers. It felt weird to be bare-handed.

  Since Jane had farther to travel coming down from Tome, Sweet Tome on the Upper West Side, I grabbed a beer and settled into the same booth Jane and I had dined in at the back of the bar the other night. By the time she showed up, I was down to the dregs of it. She had her trademark pile of arcane books sticking out of her shoulder bag. She didn’t look happy.

  “All this research is going to kill me,” she said, “or, at the very least, crush me.”

  “I hope you didn’t bring any books that have a vendetta against me,” I said, holding up my hands in a defensive posture.

  “It’s not the books you should be worried about,” she said, with a little attitude to it.

  I was a little blindsided after our time spent patching things up last night.

  Jane’s eyes went to my bare hands as she slid the bag off her shoulder and onto the seat. She raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re not wearing your gloves,” she said.

  “Yeah, about that . . .”

  I told her everything that had happened since seeing her last—about Central Park, chasing dead Dr. Kolb, and about the confrontation with the gypsies on the convention floor at New York Comic Con.

  “So they just evil-eyed you?”

  I shrugged. “Something like that. All I know is that I haven’t been able to read a single thing psychometrically since.”

  Jane took my hands across the table.

  “Wow,” she said.

  We sat there in silence for a minute, the bar and the rest of life continuing on around us.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Actually, yeah.” I smiled. “For so long, my power dictated who I was, or limited what I could do. I came to the Department of Extraordinary Affairs because, let’s face it, where the hell else was I going to fit in with what I could do. Now I feel kinda free. I thought about it while waiting for you . . . Maybe I should leave the Department. I thought I’d run it by you before I came to any real decisions, though.”

  Jane looked wounded, but then she shook her head.

  “I don’t think you want to quit, Simon. I really don’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” I asked. “It’s not like I fit in with our little Island of Misfit Toys anymore. Besides, I wouldn’t have to deal with seeing you working for Wesker anymore . . .”

  Jane sighed but s
queezed my hands.

  “Despite whatever issues you seem to be having with me, Simon, you’re good people. This job is in you, even if you’re never able to read another item in your life.”

  “How do you know I’m all that good?” I sure didn’t feel like all that good a person. I was a jealous boyfriend and a deceiver. I thought about Mina and the fact that I was about to help her steal something. Was that what a good person let himself get wrapped up in?

  “How do I know you’re good?” Jane asked with a look of duh upon her face. “Because I’m constantly fighting my dark tendencies, especially these days. But you? You made a choice to walk away from all the bad in your life, and look at you now.”

  I squirmed in my seat. I was desperate to tell her that I wasn’t a saint, that right now I was plotting a nefarious heist with Mina. Sure, I had the best of intentions in doing it, but still . . .

  “If anyone’s made a change here, it’s you,” I said to Jane. “Coming over to the D.E.A. like you did, giving up everything that Faisal Bane and his organization had to offer.”

  Jane raised a hand and waved it away.

  “But working for the Sectarians was a delicious brush with dark power,” Jane said, “and that changes a girl, mostly for the worse.”

  “But you’re turning out okay,” I said.

  “That’s why I said mostly, dum-dum,” she snapped with dark anger, then caught herself. I sat back like I had been pushed. “See? See what I mean? It’s a hard habit to break.”

  “Hanging with Thaddeus Wesker probably doesn’t help,” I muttered to myself.

  “Whoa,” Jane said, pulling her hands away. “Can we stick to one mental crisis at a time?”

  “Sorry,” I said, but it was too late.

  Jane scooted herself out of the booth and pulled her bag of books toward the edge of the bench seat.

  “I’ve got to get back to the office,” she said, her face looking like she had tasted something unpleasant. “I want you to give something some serious thought, Simon. Maybe it’d be best if we took a break until you get your act together and get over this thing about me and Wesker.”

  “What?” My stomach balled up in an instant.

  “I don’t like what’s been happening between us,” she said. “I don’t need you going all jealous on me around Director Wesker every time you see me when I’m just doing my job. It’s like you only call me when you want to apologize and get all needy like this. I know you’re going through a lot right now and I know you’ve never really had the opportunity to be in a relationship like this before, which is why I’m not telling you to get lost. But honestly, there’s only so much a girl can take before the dark thoughts start taking over.”

  This day was rolling downhill from suck to double suck.

  “Are you . . . breaking up with me?”

  Jane shook her head.

  “We’ll see about that,” she said. “I just think you need to focus on where your head is at for now.”

  Other than up my ass? I thought. It sure sounded like she was breaking up with me, but before I could speak, Jane headed back up to the front of the bar and out the door. I walked toward the front, too, but not out the door. The call of one more beer was too strong, and frankly I was in the mood to self-medicate.

  God only knew what Mina would have in store for me later tonight, heistwise. Plus, now I didn’t have my powers to help me out. But until then, there was a lot of stuff I wanted to forget, and liquid courage seemed the best way to do it.

  24

  On my way back to the Lovecraft offices, I touched everything I saw with my gloveless hands, but it was no use. Whatever the Brothers Heron had cast on me seemed to be sticking.

  I settled in at my desk. I felt pretty useless, and it meant the best I could do was dig into the mountain of paperwork in my in-box. Just as I was contemplating driving a pen into my eye to save me from filling out the multiple forms, case briefs, requisitions, and follow-up reports in triplicate, I was given a momentary reprieve when Supply called to tell me that my replacement cell phone had finally come in. After a quick trip down to them, I felt victorious but only a little better with my shiny new cell phone in hand. There was no way I could go back to tackling my mountain of paperwork madness. Being powerless was making me too antsy to concentrate. I needed to get away from my desk and get some actual legwork done on one of my cases, and luckily I knew just where to chase one of my hunches. I thought of how Batman detective-y I’d have to be without my powers, and this idea actually got me excited.

  I found Godfrey Candella in the coffee shop scrawling away in one of the Gauntlet’s trademark Moleskine notebooks.

  “Hey, God.”

  He finished the sentence he was writing and then looked up from his notebook.

  “Simon. Hey.”

  “Do you think we could head down to the Gauntlet and, I don’t know, maybe just hang out and talk in private?”

  Godfrey looked wary. “Is this about a case?”

  “Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “More of a social call.”

  He looked surprised but excited, and without another word he closed his notebook and we headed off to the offices and down the carved stone steps that led to the Gauntlet. There were fewer people down there than in the bull pen, and he led me to a private office where he had a large wooden desk covered with books, along with several comfy chairs. He went into one of the lower drawers of the desk and pulled out a bottle of scotch and two glasses, pouring an ample amount into both of them.

  Godfrey was practically bouncing in his seat. “Sorry,” he said. “No one ever asks us Gauntlet folks to do much of anything social. This bottle of scotch has had a few extra years to age because of it.”

  “Really?” I said. Godfrey smiled and gave a modest nod. I reached over and loosened his tie for him. “For God’s sake, man, relax a little. Consider yourself off the clock for a few minutes.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said, as if he hadn’t thought of relaxing until I prompted him. Getting his story out of him was going to take more prodding than I thought. I decided to help my odds of getting anything out of him and raised my glass. He raised his, and, despite my buzz from earlier, I took a long pull of scotch from mine until I drained it, to make sure he followed suit and loosened his lips.

  Not being a scotch man, the burn of it filled my throat, and I waited for it to pass as Godfrey poured us a second round. Already I felt it hitting me stronger than I’d thought it would, and I decided to slowly sip the next one. Unfortunately, drinking in the late afternoon only helped me to feel worse about losing my powers, and I found myself staring blankly into my glass instead of pumping Godfrey for info.

  “Simon . . . ?” Godfrey said. I don’t know how long I had been staring, but I lifted my head. “You okay?”

  I actually thought about it for a second. Was I okay? A wave of anger overtook me and I slammed my glass down onto the corner of his desk. “Frankly, no, I’m not. Fucking gypsies . . .”

  Godfrey sat upright at my language and pushed his glasses back up on his face. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I don’t want to bore you with the details,” I said. “I just . . .”

  “No, really, please do tell,” he said. “If I’m about anything, I’m about the details.”

  “I just . . . crossed paths with the wrong Romnichal, and now I’m jinxed or cursed or whatever you want to call it. I’m powerless. I haven’t been able to get a psychometric reading off anything all day.”

  Godfrey looked at me with sympathy.

  “I’m normal now,” I said, with bitter distain in my voice. “I always wondered what type of life I would have lived had I never had my power.”

  I didn’t want to get into my past with him, but questions about my whole life started flooding my head. Would I ever have gotten mixed up with Mina and her gang when I had worked the antiques stores? Would I ever have worked at an antiques store? But the scotch was bringing out my darker heart about it all. “The trut
h is, I miss having them so far. It set me apart from the rest of the world. Not to mention I feel a little scared to be without them. I feel like I’m missing a limb.”

  I looked up at Godfrey. He looked hurt.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  “You act like being normal is a curse,” Godfrey said, a little upset. “Some of us like being ‘normal,’ you know. Most of the planet deals with it.”

  I hadn’t come down here to argue. I had come here to try to wean a little information out of my archival little friend.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, hoping to swing the conversation back around. “I wouldn’t label you as normal, Godfrey. I mean, think about it. You have a real knack for being at the right place at the right time.”