by Anton Strout
After watching Godfrey in action for a bit, I said, “Well?”
“Well,” he said, shaking his head like he was pulling out of a trance. “Like you said Dave Davidson mentioned to you, there are three of these needles. The second is in London and the third in Paris, but all three of them originally hail from the city of Heliopolis in Egypt.”
He paused as his brain accessed another mental file.
“I’m unfamiliar with that city,” he continued. Godfrey pulled out his personal notebook and scribbled down Heliopolis, Egypt. “I’ll have to check it out later.”
He started to zone out again, but I tapped the folder he was holding.
“Is there anything about the markings on the obelisk?” I asked.
“Do you know how to read hieroglyphs, Simon?” Godfrey asked, snapping out of it. I looked to see if he was being a smart-ass, but he was dead serious.
I shook my head no.
“Sorry,” I said. “I took Spanish. They didn’t offer Ancient Egyptian at my high school. Can you imagine?”
Godfrey didn’t even crack a smile.
“The school systems these days,” he said with a shake of his head.
I hoped they had a section on Humor down here. Perhaps I could go find a few books for him.
Godfrey turned back to the file he had opened and scanned the page. “It looks like the monoliths were cut from Aswan quarries circa 1450 B.c. under the orders of Thutmose the Third, but the inscriptions are far more recent. They weren’t added until two hundred years later.”
“By who?” I asked, feeling a little excited now that we were getting somewhere. “Please tell me it was some kind of vampire lord or something, because that would so jive with what I’m chasing.”
Godfrey checked the page and shook his head. “Not unless there’s something seriously paranormal about Ramses the Second that we don’t know about. It’s only in truly bad fantasy books that popular historical figures ever turn out to be supernatural or dabbling in the dark arts.”
He scanned the page with his finger. “Sadly,” he continued, “the monolith needles were erected in celebration of Ramses’s military victories, not to celebrate a dark covenant or anything like that. You know, I’m starting to think this Cleopatra’s Needle might not be as evil as you think it is. After all, I doubt Egypt would have gifted it to America if it was a lightning rod for collecting evil. Don’t you think?”
I couldn’t argue with him.
“You talk sense,” I said. He saw the look on my face and gave my shoulder a collegial pat. It felt awkward and forced, as if Godfrey didn’t often have much contact with other people.
“I can work on the hieroglyphs,” Godfrey said with a spark in his voice, “but that’s going to take a while. It’s also going to take some time to go through all the cross references too, but on the surface I don’t see anything terribly supernatural about this needle of yours. Sorry.”
I stood up and gave him a reciprocal pat on the back. When I was done, Godfrey pulled at his lapels to smooth out his coat where my hand had touched him.
“Well, thanks for trying,” I said.
Without another word, Godfrey shoved his face back into the pile of reading on the table and was once again off in his private mental world. I slowly backed away so as not to disturb him and headed back to the stairs, alone.
I had to figure out how to best utilize what remained of my day. I checked my watch as I climbed back up to the Department’s office level. I could go to the Javits Center, but by the time I got there most of the day on the show floor would be over. Perhaps I could serve the Department better by staying at the office and working on my backlog of paperwork. Having a break from Connor would be nice, too. I’m sure we’d have a jolly old time later staking out Central Park for the jogger’s ghost at the crack of “Oh God” o’clock, but for now, some mindless office work seemed the perfect remedy.
Once I was back at my desk, I started sorting through my mountain of paperwork, looking for anything to fill out in conjunction with the vampire case. There had to be something I could do to help move things along while the office bureaucrats flowed with their molasseslike efficiency. Ever since the Inspectre had secretly put me in charge of the investigation, I had felt like a bossy ass, but at least I had some time alone for now to get some paperwork out of the way.
Not that I was able to get anything started. After looking through the first few inches of paper, I realized I was fresh out of Form SSO—Shufflers, Shamblers, & Others, where the vampire qualified under Other. Filling it out would speed up the Enchancellors, and without it I was screwed. Connor, seasoned pro of pencils and papers, probably had it, though. I snuck over to his desk to snag a few. Connor’s desk was locked this time. I thought back to when I had been looking for the Spidey PEZ Dispenser but found his folder of clippings about me instead. Maybe he thought I might accidentally find it—like I had—and decided to lock it away just in case.
Without being able to check the drawers for the form, I hoped he had some of them in the shuffle of paperwork on top of it. Psychometry was a great tool when it came to playing lost and found.
I sat down at his desk and placed my hands flat across the top of it and paused before throwing my power into it. The electric connection was instantaneous and I set my mind to finding the forms I needed.
The world in my mind’s eye switched to some time yesterday, the only indicator being the slightly smaller piles of paperwork on both of our desks. It was disorienting being Connor, because I was staring across the desk at yesterday Simon filling out the incident report on the party boat massacre. At that moment, that version of me wasn’t paying attention to Connor at all.
Connor, however, was focused on a single sheet of paper, which I assumed was the form I was looking for, but something was wrong. I tried to change my focus to the paper itself … only to find it blank. I could feel Connor’s eyes moving. He was definitely reading something on the page, but I couldn’t see it, even though I was staring straight at it.
I threw all of my concentration into it, pressed my power into reading the paper. Something that felt like a sinus headache started to throb, but I pushed even harder in my attempt to read the letter. The world went black.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on the floor, tipped over in Connor’s chair. Luckily, since I had fallen over behind both our desks, I was blocked from the view of anyone who would have been passing down the aisle. The back of my head hurt like crazy, and when I felt it, there was a painful lump just above the base of my skull from where I had hit the floor.
I stood up, shaking worse than I usually did after a psychometric episode. I stumbled over to my desk and fished around in my drawer for a roll of Life Savers. Erring on the side of caution, I grabbed two of them. This wasn’t normal. Usually I felt a little drained from using my power, but it shouldn’t have been this bad.
Someone or something had blocked me from reading Connor’s letter.
16
I headed home nursing the goose egg on the back of my head. I was all prepared for a good sulky walk and then a few hours of sleep before meeting up with Connor at Central Park again, but sadly, what I wanted didn’t seem to matter much to the universe at large. When I parted the curtains of the movie theater, there was Mina, sitting in one of the coffee shop’s comfy chairs, waiting for me. Her back was pressed into one corner of the chair, and her legs were thrown in irreverence over the opposite arm of it, showing off her evil little curves. She was still dressed as if she had come from watching The Matrix one too many times.
“What are you doing here?” I said. I quickly closed the curtain behind me, not really sure what I was trying to hide. The offices were well obscured behind the door at the very back of the theater, so all I really ended up hiding was the movie theater itself. I quickly looked around the coffee shop. At this time of night there weren’t too many people I knew from the D.E.A. in there. More important, I was glad to see that Jane wasn’t there. Her runni
ng into Mina right now was the last thing I wanted.
Mina swung her legs off the arm of the chair and crossed them at the ankle as she sank farther back into the cushions, giving a catlike stretch that accentuated every curve of her body. I tried not to notice, but failed miserably.
“You must really like vampires, huh?” she said when she settled down.
I wasn’t following. “I’m sorry … ?”
Mina looked at me like I was thick in the head. “I’ve been sitting here for hours,” she said. “You must have sat in there and watched Nosferatu a million times today.”
Right, Nosferatu. It all came clear. For a moment I’d forgotten that Mina didn’t know what I really did for a living, so she assumed I had been sitting in the movie theater all day.
Still, what was she doing here at all?
I sat down across from her and leaned in close, whispering. “Have you been following me, Mina?”
She laughed, a little bit of that old-school crazy lighting up in her eyes. “God, that sounds so stalkery …”
“And yet here we are.”
“I didn’t follow you the whole day,” she said, as if that somehow excused following me at all. Her face turned to a mask that was a combination of disgust and disdain.
“Okay, look, yes, I followed you,” she continued, “but I didn’t want to pay to get into the Javits Center, not with all those comic nerds there. They kept approaching me outside of the place, getting their skeevies all over me, asking if I had come as Trinity or some chick from BloodRayne, whatever the hell that is. Creeps. Anyway, I just had to wait you out. I lost you for a few hours after that, but caught up with you again. When you came into this coffee shop, I followed you in, but man, you and your vampires.”
“I’m sorry,” I fired back. “Are you giving me shit over vampires?” I laughed. “Yeah, I’m the one who loves vampires, Mina. Me. Yep. Pot, have you met Kettle?”
I stood up, fuming. “Look,” I said, staring down into her eyes with the darkest, most serious look I could muster. “You can’t follow me like this, Mina. So knock it off.”
I tried to walk away, but she grabbed my sleeve. She tugged it much harder than I thought her capable of, and I fell off balance into the same chair she sat in. Mina wrapped her arms around me to hold me in place, cradling me on her lap. Before I could wriggle free, her voice was in my ear.
“I can follow you, and I will,” she said with commanding sharpness. “You forget. I don’t have a ‘day job’ to go to, and who’d hire an ex-con, anyway? An ex-con, by the way, who ended up in jail in the first place because someone—and I’m not naming names here, Simon—didn’t have my back. I’ve got all the time in the world to follow you around, thanks to that. Until you agree to help me, I’ve got nowhere else to go. So stop hanging out at comic conventions and watching movies all day, and say you’ll do what I’m asking you to. I need to get my hands on The Scream.”
Despite her obvious delight in torturing me, there was also that note of desperation in her voice again.
“Don’t you think need is a little strong, Mina?” I said, trying to twist out of her hold on me. To anyone watching it might have looked like we were a frisky new couple fooling around. That would turn a few heads around here, since everybody knew I was with Jane. I wanted to break free, but Mina was even stronger than I remembered. “You don’t need that painting; you want it.”
“That’s really none of your concern,” Mina said, finally pushing me away. I slid onto the coffee table and across several open magazines before falling to the floor, but not before slamming my hip bone on one of the corners of the table.
Pain shot down my leg in tiny needles.
“The only thing you should be concerned with,” Mina continued, “is what I’ll do to your precious little Janey if you don’t go along with my plan. Help me out and we part ways, no harm done. I’m out of your life forever.” She stood up, not even bothering to give me a hand from where I was on the floor. The look on her face was one of disbelief as she shook her head at me. “God, how can you stand it? Doesn’t living an upright life just drive you nuts? Going shopping instead of taking what you want, having a happy little girlfriend, going to the movies all day? You used to do bold, beautiful, brash things. You used to be somebody worth knowing. If I lived your life now, I’d die of boredom.”
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.
