by Anton Strout
Aidan grabbed my arm and stopped me. It was like being grabbed by a stone statue.
“So, how did it go?” he asked. “Did you take care of her? And again, why are you all wet?”
“Oh, we saw her all right,” Jane said. “That’s one creepy bitch.”
“We might be talking some property damage in there,” I said. Aidan looked concerned and I sighed. “Okay, fine. We’re probably talking a lot of property damage in there. There was a small fire and the sprinklers went all Singin’ in the Rain on us, not to mention all the broken lamps . . .”
“There was a fire?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, good to see the fire-suppression system works, anyway,” he said. “I’d hate to think of Vampire Central going up in flames.”
I shivered as the images of Cassie taking the needles to her eyes came back to me. “That spirit was messed up,” I said. “You’re going to get a lot of property damage with something like that.”
Jane walked over to Aidan. “You really didn’t have any way of dealing with her?”
“We’re biters and fighters,” Aidan said. “Hard to drain the blood from something you can’t touch. So, as you might have figured out, we’re not really fans of haunting.”
Jane laughed. Aidan and I looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just. . . well, technically, I haunted this place once.”
Aidan shook his head. “We’re not talking about a ghost in the machine here, technomancer. You saw that woman. My master, Brandon, tasked me with checking it out after shoppers started complaining, but, well, there’s really nothing one of my kind can do to something of her kind, you know?”
“Which is why you called in the experts,” I said.
Aidan nodded, and then started walking again. “Believe me, Brandon considers this a huge favor, stopping to check it out.”
“So, why didn’t Brandon ask us himself, I wonder?” I asked.
“Maybe there’s a 90210 marathon on?” Jane offered. “I mean, the great vampire lord did take his name from it, after all.”
Aidan jammed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and shrugged. “He’s a private guy,” he said. “King of the castle and all that.”
“Literally,” Jane said. “Speaking of which, you never invite us to pop over to your little Epcot Castle anymore.”
Aidan stopped walking once again, looking like a pissed-off teenager despite his fortysomething years. “First of all, it’s far more real than anything at Epcot. Castle Bran is authentic. They moved it here long before I was turned, building this arcology around it to hide it. Secondly, I don’t think just dropping in is all that great an idea nowadays.”
I shook my head and started walking again. Jane followed. “Geez,” I said. “Stop the great vampire/human war and I can’t even get a visitor’s pass? I’m hurt.”
“Give it time,” Aidan said, coming up soundlessly next to us. “You know how it flows differently for us.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ve already got a more pressing date. Business down at the Lovecraft Café.”
The massive glass doors leading out of the atrium to Columbus Circle came into view up ahead. Aidan cocked his head. “I know the night is just starting off for me, but isn’t it a little late for you guys to be calling meetings?”
“No rest for the wicked, or government employees,” Jane said with an enthusiastic smile. As wet and damaged as she was, I don’t know where she found the energy to be so chipper.
“I’m sure something sinister is going down for them to be calling us in now,” I said.
“Brandon may have us under orders to stay out of most human affairs right now, but you did do us this favor,” Aidan said. “So just let me know if you need me. . . you know, if things go bad.”
“Then I should just ask now,” I said. “Ninety percent of this job is cleaning up things that go bad.”
“And the other ninety percent is filing paperwork on it,” Jane said.
“That’s bad math,” I said.
“That may be,” she said, “but we deal with impossible things all the time. You’re suddenly going to start arguing about the math getting wonky now, hon?”
“Fair point,” I conceded. Part of the tattooist’s raw emotions were welling up again, and had me wanting to pick a fight, but I fought the urge. “Truth be told—if we’re going for messed up math here—I’d probably say that my caseload paperwork takes up at least a hundred and twenty percent of my time on the clock.”
Aidan cleared his throat. A ring of keys was in his hand. “Do you mind?” he asked, unlocking one of the glass doors that led out onto the rainy streets of Manhattan.
“Your gratitude is underwhelming,” I said. I held my hand out and felt the rain coming down hard on it. “At least I don’t have to worry about getting dry anytime soon.”
“Sometime tonight, kids,” Aidan said. “You don’t have to go home but you can’t banter here.”
“Fine,” I said. “Although I’ll have you know that I consider banter a necessary tool in keeping from wetting myself in a lot of these situations.”
Jane gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Sexy.”
Aidan frowned. “Can I add that to my list of things I wish I could unhear?”
I started to respond, but Jane grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out into the streets. “Come on,” she said, “before you say anything else that makes me question our relationship further.”
As we exited the building, the Columbus Circle wind at the southwest corner of Central Park whipped Jane’s long wet hair around like she had gone all Medusa. I turned around as something struck me odd.
“I’m surprised you didn’t call Connor first,” I said. “My partner is the resident ghost whisperer in Other Division with the Department, you know. . . and your brother.”
“Oh, believe me, I did call him first,” Aidan said, “but he was busy.”
“So nice to be considered second choice,” I said. “It’s like my prom all over again.”
“Connor’s too busy for his own brother?” Jane asked. She ran her fingers through her already windblown hair as she tried in vain to make it settle down. “You’d think after a twenty-year absence . . .”
Aidan pulled his hood up to avoid the water. Whether it was vanity or some vampiric aversion to it, I didn’t know.
“That’s kinda the problem,” he said. “Not every day can be a happy family reunion. . . especially with the workload your boss heaps on him. Plus there’s all the work Brandon has Connor doing for our cause. Apparently vampires going bye-bye the past few years, and then just showing up again all friendly like, has caused a lot of meetings between our people.”
“Lucky Connor,” I said, “playing liaison to the undead. . .”
Aidan smiled as the two of us walked off to the curb, his fangs showing once again. “I guess having a vamp in the family means he gets the short straw.”
“We’ve got to get to our own meeting,” I said, not wanting to delay any longer. “Hopefully ours doesn’t involve your meetings. They might meet to make little baby meetings.”
“Let’s hope not,” Jane said, hailing a cab that was rounding Columbus Circle. It slowed for her, even as disheveled as she was. “I hope the meeting goes quickly either way. I still need to wash all the glass out of my hair. Ick.”
“Better glass than blood,” I said.
“Agreed,” Aidan added from over by the great glass doors of the Gibson-Case Center, and then gave me a dark smile as his eyes moved to Jane. “Would be a waste of perfectly good blood.”
I ignored his words, but the residual anger I was experiencing rose up inside me and wanted me to go back and see how large a pile of dust I could leave him in. I didn’t need to reawaken the vampire/human war simply because I had an all-too-intense reading with my power.
3
As our cab shot down Broadway to the East Village, the two of us jostled around in the back of the vehicle. Sti
ll distracted by the intense jealousy of the tattooist coursing through me, I almost jumped out of my skin when Jane’s hand brushed up against the back of mine.
“Brandon’s going to be pretty cheesed off by the amount of damage we did in there,” Jane added.
“We didn’t do the damage,” I said. “That creepy tattooist lady did it all. Granted, she was tossing stuff at us left and right, but we didn’t do anything except try to stay alive through all that.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
“Let the Big Biter on Campus try to collect damages,” I said. “Ha! Compensation from the Department of Extraordinary Affairs during a budget crisis? Good luck with that. Don’t worry. Aidan’s just worried what his boss will think of all the damage done under his instruction like a good little vampire lapdog.”
“Fangs and all,” Jane said. “You’re right. Connor will probably talk some sense into them.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said. “Hopefully a little brotherly love should calm Captain Emo and his master down.”
I laid my head back against the seat and remained silent for the rest of our cab ride. When it dropped us off at our East Village coffee shop cover operation on Eleventh Street, we hit the sidewalk right outside of the large red doors that led into the Lovecraft. We raced out of the rain and into the café, embracing its warmth and its dark wood floors and exposed brick walls that were adorned with movie posters on both sides of the long, open space. Most of the décor was a clutter of mismatched furniture—comfy chairs, low café tables—and a long, wooden counter ran along the entire right side of room. The coffeehouse wasn’t full, but the faces I did see gathered around in the café area were all people I knew from the Department hidden beyond the cover operation.
“Looks like half the Department is on a coffee break,” I said, acknowledging the throng of coworkers that had assembled in the public café area.
“What’s going on?” Jane asked. “Why is everyone up here in the coffeehouse?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe they’re fumigating the Department again. Don’t tell me. . . they can’t get the smell of rotting zombies out of the curtains in the hidden office area.”
An especially familiar face came into view as my partner, Connor Christos, came walking over to us. “Not quite, kid,” Connor said, his hands jammed down into the pockets of his beaten old trench coat. His clothes underneath it were a bit dressier than my usual jeans and T-shirt but my partner always looked a little wrinkled around the edges. His simple black tie was loose and skewed to one side. As if the thick white streaks in his sandy brown hair weren’t enough, the grim look on his face made him look older than his midthirties. “We were in the middle of one of our all-night financial meetings, when the Inspectre took a call from Dave Davidson downtown. Quimbley’s got the details. Wouldn’t tell me a thing except I needed to get you down here.”
Ever since a set of even more draconian Departmental cuts than usual a few weeks ago, and the loss of lots of ancillary staff members, I knew things had been rough, but I hadn’t realized it was so bad they had to be going over the books in the midnight hours. I switched my focus to farther back in the coffeehouse over by the service counter where Inspectre Argyle Quimbley was surrounded by a few other people. The old Brit leader of Other Division was in his usual tweed, twirling the ends of his walrus-like mustache as he looked over a folder. Next to him was a dark-skinned woman whose hair was pulled back off her shoulders in a no-nonsense ponytail—Allorah Daniels, doing double duty as a member of our governing Enchancellors as well as our resident vampire hunter. She held a folder identical to the one in the Inspectre’s hands.
I headed across the room to them, addressing my boss. Connor and Jane followed. “Inspectre. . . ?”
Despite the concern on the old man’s face, he smiled when he saw me. “Hello, my boy,” he said.
“What’s going on?” I asked as a horrible thought dawned on me. “We’re not. . . fired, are we?” I could barely say the words, and when I did, a panic rose in my chest. The last thing I wanted was to be forced back into a life of thieving to survive in the skyrocketing real estate market that was Manhattan. My apartment down in SoHo was my last holdover from those days, the one thing I had kept to ease into the transition to using my powers for good.
The Inspectre sighed. “I won’t lie,” he said. “The budget doesn’t look good.”
“That’s an understatement,” snorted Allorah from next to him. “We’ll be lucky if the Enchancellorship keep their jobs.”
Something in me snapped. “No offense, Enchancellor , but I’m not worried so much about the upper management,” I said. “Most of them are retirement age, anyway. I’m worried about me and my fellow agents.”
Allorah gave me a dark look. “Your compassion is underwhelming, Mr. Canderous,” she said.
“Hey, I’m just saying that since you got the order a few weeks back to trim the fat, I think it would make sense to keep the agents out in the field. If we’re going to clean house, start at the top. Mediocrity rises, after all.”
“Don’t worry,” Allorah said, looking through her folder. “You Other Division people are always safe when it comes to the budget.”
Connor laughed. “Of course we are,” he said. “Us Other Division folk are such multitaskers by designation that we can be set to any task. We’ve had to kiss any downtime good-bye these past few weeks.”
“We had downtime?” I asked. When no one answered, I felt my blood rising. “I thought all this would have changed when we became the heroes of the city. Money should be raining down on us, right? Didn’t the Mayor hear that we saved the city from a bloodbath of vampiric proportions?”
Connor walked past me and threw himself down into one of the lounge chairs nearby. “That’s the problem, kid. There wasn’t a bloodbath.”
I looked at him, frustrated. I tossed up my hands. “And that’s a problem how?”
“Not enough of a body count,” he said. I went to speak, but Connor held his hand up to silence me. “Think about it, kid. If you have a regular-world shooting in this city, suddenly there are all these extra resources to go around. . . more cops and cars on the street. Puts on a big show, sends a message out to the general public: Bad guys beware! But what we do, well, it’s secretive. Everything we do is masked in seclusion. And let’s face it. To the power brokers down at City Hall, nothing bad happened, technically. No one died, so how are they going to justify putting a lot of money toward the Department? There wasn’t enough of a bloodbath to justify more money coming toward us.”
“That’s insane,” Jane said. She grabbed onto my arm and squeezed like she was trying to hold herself up.
“Insane?” the Inspectre asked, sadness filling his face. “No. That, my dear, is simply bureaucracy.”
“So, now what?” I asked. “Do we hope for a high body count or something so we can reappropriate some funds?”
Allorah gave a grim smile at that and sighed. “I’ll talk to the Enchancellorship,” she offered. “They have some pull when it comes to dealing with City Hall. I think we may know where a skeleton or two of theirs may be buried.”
“And if not,” Jane offered, “I’m sure someone over in Greater and Lesser Arcana can always reanimate a few . . .”
Allorah fixed Jane with a look of disdain that I knew well, as it had been directed at me a few months ago when I had been hiding knowledge of New York-based vampires from her. It had been an uncomfortable look to have directed at me, but seeing it focused on my Jane hurt even more.
She was clearly going to let loose on Jane, but the Inspectre cut her off. “Enough,” he said, stern. “The both of you. We shouldn’t fight among ourselves. To answer your question, Simon, before you jumped down Miss Daniels’s throat, no. None of you are being fired. We’re already reduced to a skeleton crew as is. That is not why I called you in tonight. You were requested by Mr. Davidson from the Mayor’s Office of Plausible Deniability. We’re waiting on him to arrive, I’m afr
aid.”
Jane looked concerned. “Begging your pardon, Inspectre, but I have to ask. Is that just an expression, or are we talking actual skeletons?”
“A fair question, but no,” he said, taking it seriously. “In this case, it is just an expression, my dear girl.”
The main doors to the Lovecraft Café opened behind me, causing a sudden hush in my circle of people. Connor looked past me and his face turned dark, his hands digging into the arms of the chair, but he didn’t move to get up. I turned around with caution while discreetly slipping one hand inside my coat and unlatching the safety loop on my retractable bat hanging there.
Mayoral liaison David Davidson had just entered the bar, a dripping wet umbrella in hand. I relaxed my hand. Davidson was a bureaucrat through and through, but he wasn’t enough of an evil entity for me to go all Babe Ruth on his ass. Politicians walked a dangerous line awfully close to it, though.
The few coffee shop customers who weren’t employees of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs took no notice, but the rest of us eyed him. He slowly lowered his umbrella and shook it out over the floor mats before sliding it into the umbrella stand off to the left of the door. Once Davidson spotted us, he walked back to our group with slow, deliberate steps, taking his time. He wore all the trappings of his political office—a dark gray suit, a red splash of color from his power tie, and a much nicer trench coat than the one Connor was wearing. His tie was, as usual, knotted perfectly and his graying black hair parted and all in place despite the stormy weather he had just walked in from.
As he approached us, his eyes were wary.
“How’s the mayor?” Connor asked from his chair with a little venom to his words. “Busy with support groups for the zombie hordes that pop up every now and then? Let me guess. . . they’re probably lobbying to be called the Formerly Living.”
Davidson gave Connor a dismissive look. “His Honor is fine,” Davidson said. “Thank you for asking.” He turned his attention away from Connor and looked to the Inspectre and Allorah.
The Inspectre fixed Davidson with a fake smile that beamed out from beneath his walrus-like mustache. “Your call sounded urgent earlier, so what can we do for the Office of Plausible Deniability this rainy evening?” the Inspectre asked.
