by Anton Strout
I went back to scanning the bookshelves. “Just throwing out suggestions in the face of nothing here,” I said. “Trying to keep my thinking outside of the box.”
“Could you try to keep it in a nearby box at least?” Connor said, agitated.
“Hey,” I said, spinning around, his agitation causing my tattooist’s anger to spike. “I’m trying here.”
“Guys,” Jane said, but the two of us were too busy sniping at each other to give her our attention.
“Try harder, then,” Connor said.
“Guys,” Jane whispered, with urgency this time. Connor and I turned to look at her. She was staring past us at the wall of windows behind us. I turned back to it with caution. Beyond the glass, a lone female figure stood in the darkness and pouring rain on the patio out by the swimming pool. Long black hair rolled in loose curls over her shoulders and a green drape of a gown that covered her body. She stood there motionless, staring.
Jane whispered, “What do we do?”
“We establish contact,” Connor said, creeping toward the glass doors. He reached into the outer pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a corked vial. “Or trap her and make her talk.”
“Lead on, ghost whisperer,” I said and fell in step behind him. When he got to the glass doors, he slid one of them open and the three of us stepped out onto the patio. The rain came down hard, making countless circular ripples along the surface of the pool as it fell. Connor stepped out into the rain. The woman’s eyes followed him, yet she remained poised and stock-still.
Connor thumbed the stopper off the vial in his hand. Its contents rose up into the air in a twist of brown smoke and drifted off toward her, but the tendrils failed to wind their way around her, instead dissipating. Connor looked back over his shoulder at us. “Not a ghost,” he said and slipped the empty vial back into his coat pocket. “Never trust neighbors to classify something right.”
I stepped forward. “Excuse me,” I shouted out to her. “You want to tell us what you’re doing out here?”
The woman shifted her focus over to me. She was striking, with high cheekbones, but when her eyes met mine, a chill cut into my soul.
“Hey!” Connor said, snapping his fingers to get her attention once more. “The kid asked you a question. Did you know the professor. . . and how did you get out here?”
“She’s not talking,” Jane said.
“I noticed that,” Connor said.
“We can take care of that downtown,” I said. I pulled out my bat and extended it even though the woman definitely wasn’t hiding anything on her—not in that dress, anyway.
Her eyes went to my hands. I walked toward her through the downfall of rain, but for every step I took, the woman backed away one.
“Easy, now,” I said. “We’re going to get answers from you, one way or the other.”
I kept advancing as she retreated until her back was pressed up against the railing between two of the gargoyles at the far edge of the patio. I paused as I gave the stone statues the once-over. If they came to life or anything like that, I was not going to be happy.
The farther away from the building I stepped, the worse the storm got, wind whipping all around us. Behind the woman, I could see the East River and the skyline of Queens off in the distance, giving me a bout of vertigo from the perspective.
After a moment of inspecting the gargoyles, I decided they looked inanimate enough and started closing with the woman once more. I stepped around the pool to avoid it and kept moving with caution toward the woman, fishing a pair of handcuffs out of my coat’s inside pocket. It was exciting to have someone cuffable for a change. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said. “We’re authorized by the Department of Extraordinary Affairs to take you into custody for the possible murder of Professor Mason Redfield.”
The woman locked her eyes with mine and stepped toward me. She placed her hands out in front of her as if prepared to be arrested, and I tucked my bat under my arm as I closed the distance to cuff her, but then I realized her arms kept moving. The woman brought them straight out in front of her, then spread them out to her sides like she was about to be crucified. When she bent her knees a second later, I realized what she was about to do.
“Jumper!” I shouted. Connor ran around the other side of the pool toward her, but I was closer. Falling rain stung my eyes as I stumbled forward, and it took all I had not to slip into the pool as I lunged to grab the woman, but I was too late.
With very little effort, the woman leapt up into the air and fell back over the railing in a graceful arc, sliding out through the pouring rain like she was doing a back handspring. She disappeared out of sight like a shot as I slammed into the spot along the railing where she had stood just seconds ago.
“No!” I shouted. Connor and Jane arrived next to me a second later and the three of us watched in horror as the woman fell through the open air. Like an Olympic diver, her form was spot-on—arms high over her head and legs pulled tightly together in perfect form. I waited for the gruesome result of it all as she plummeted to the roof way down below, but my eyes caught something promising there—another pool. The woman hit the water with professional diving precision, but despite the beauty of it, a large plume of spray rose up as she entered the water.
I took my satchel from over my shoulder and threw it toward Jane. I pulled off my jacket and tossed it to Connor, the rain immediately soaking through the black T-shirt I had on underneath it.
“Kid. . .” Connor started, but I didn’t give him a chance to say much more.
I threw my legs over the railing and judged the distance out from the side of the building to the pool down below. “Can’t let her get away,” I said. “For the Inspectre.”
“Simon,” Jane called out as she grabbed for me. “Don’t.”
It was too late. I caught the last of her words seconds after I let go and pushed off the ledge of the building. The rain whipped at me as I fell and I squeezed my eyes shut, leaving them open just enough to calculate if I had aimed for the pool correctly or if I should prepare to have my feet driven all the way up into my skull. I balled myself up, tucking my legs to my chest in cannonball position as best I could. My already soaked-through jeans made it difficult to do, but I didn’t want to survive the fall only to break my legs on the pool bottom or by landing on the woman I was chasing.
I hit the water hard, the shock of its coldness driving the air from my lungs. My ass hit the bottom of the pool, my tailbone slamming into it. I struggled to get my legs underneath me. The fire in my chest from lack of oxygen burned. I pushed off the bottom of the pool, the weight of my clothes making my struggle sluggish. When I couldn’t hold my breath anymore, I gasped in, praying I was near the surface. My initial intake, however, was water, which set me in a deeper panic, but thankfully I broke the surface and my next breath was sweet, delicious air. I gagged, fighting to keep my head above water, and gasped for my next breath. My elbow came down hard against the edge of the pool as I flailed for something to grab onto, adding a new pain to the one already burning in my lungs. I slid down, but my left hand caught the edge of the pool and I dug my fingertips in. With my other arm, I hoisted myself above the water to shoulder level and turned to scan the pool for the woman as I cleared my lungs in a fit of hacking coughs.
Between the pouring rain and the waves from my impact, I couldn’t make out anyone in the pool with me above or below the surface. I searched the murky darkness as I waited for the water to calm, but I didn’t see anything until a female form pulled itself out of the shadowy water across the pool.
“Crazy bitch,” I muttered to myself, my heart still pounding from the fall. “I’ll see your crazy and raise you.”
In my soaked clothes, I felt like I weighed a million pounds, but there was no time to waste. My suspect was already turning, and once she noticed me there, the chase would be on again. Keeping my eyes on her, I pressed the palms of both hands onto the pool’s edge and hoisted myself up and out of the water.
<
br /> Or tried to, at any rate.
Before I could get all the way out, a wave of water rose up in front of the woman and rolled across the top of the pool, washing over my legs. Pressure wrapped around my calves, becoming solid as if it were hands pulling at my lower half. It tugged at me and I fell onto the expensive-looking tile work along the pool’s edge. My ribs screamed in pain from the impact, but I didn’t have time to concern myself with it—I was being dragged back into the pool against my will.
I fought whatever strange riptide had me as something about the feel of the water changed. The pressure of it was increasing, making it more and more difficult to breathe. I made for the shallow end, but it was like trying to swim through molasses. As spots of light started to fill my vision from lack of oxygen, I caught sight of the woman once again. One of her arms was extended out from her, taut and muscular. She closed her fist slowly and the pressure increased. I would have loved to marvel with Other Division curiosity at how she was controlling the water, but right now all I could think about was how nice it would be to not die this way.
Movement from above the woman caught my eye. Another figure was plummeting down from above. Between the dark, the rain, and the figure’s growing speed, I couldn’t tell if it was Connor or Jane, but whichever one of them it was, they were not going to make it into the pool, a fact that caused my heart to leap out of my chest. Before I could even think to look away, the figure landed square on top of the woman. The sound of them impacting against each other was not as meaty as I had expected. The collision was more like stone grinding against stone—one of the gargoyles from up above. It shattered, crumbling on the spot into a million broken pieces in a pile of rubble.
The woman, however, didn’t crumble like the gargoyle did. She exploded, not into a geyser of bloody, fleshy bits, but into water. The spray flew in every direction like an ocean wave hitting an outcropping of rocks, leaving no trace of the woman whatsoever. The pressure in the water faded and in a flash I was across the pool to where I could finally stand and wade my way out of it. I ran over to the spot where the broken gargoyle lay.
As I shifted the rubble around with my boot, Jane came barreling out of a set of exit doors onto the patio, her hair wet and my satchel still in her hands. Her face washed with relief when she saw I was alive. As she walked over to me, she looked to the pile of stone, and then up into the rain toward Professor Redfield’s patio.
“What the hell happened?” she asked.
“I happened,” a voice called out from behind her. Connor stood in the doorway Jane had just come through, panting and rolling his left shoulder. “Jesus, those gargoyles weigh as much as a kraken.”
Jane hugged me and handed my satchel over. “What happened?” she repeated. “The second you threw yourself over the railing, I took off down the stairs and missed everything.”
“It looked like that woman was doing something to you in the pool, kid,” Connor said, walking over to us. He handed me my jacket, looked down at the pile of stone, and kicked a few pieces around, too. “Interesting. No body.”
“Oh, you noticed?” I said, still catching my breath. “I don’t know what the hell she really is, but basically she was using the pool water to crush me. Maybe she’s some kind of water elemental. . . ?”
Connor shook his head at me. “And this is why we don’t go jumping over high-rise railings after strange women,” he said. His chiding was probably the closest I was going to get to hearing him say that he was glad I was okay.
“Well, I thought it was heroic,” Jane said, smiling. “Stupid, but heroic.”
“Thanks,” I said. I brushed her wet hair out of the way and kissed her forehead. “Next time, you get to jump first.”
She hugged me and I hissed as pain flared up my side.
“Careful,” I said.
Jane stepped back quickly, concern on her face. “Are you hurt?”
I pressed along my bruised ribs gently, testing them. “Not too badly,” I said. “More my pride than anything. Drowning in someone’s pool isn’t the way I really pictured myself dying. A vampire, werewolves, maybe, but not this.”
Connor tsk-tsked me.
“What?”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, heading back toward the door, “before I nominate you for the Departmental Medal of Stupidity.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a real thing or not. I wouldn’t put it past the Department to issue something like that, maybe a dunce cap to make an object lesson out of foolhardy agents. Connor walked off before I had a chance to ask him. All I could do was let Jane help me hobble my way off the patio. Given all our cuts recently, I wondered whose paycheck was going to cover the damage the falling gargoyle had made. I doubted we could expense it.
7
I wasn’t normally one to strip in the partially walled office cube that comprised the space Connor and I shared, but by the time we got back to the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, I hadn’t dried off at all and was shivering from my jump into the pool. Jane left me with Connor and ran off to report to Director Wesker over in Greater & Lesser Arcana as I hung up my satchel to dry out, and then peeled off my suede leather jacket before dropping it into a plastic-lined bin I now kept next to my desk.
Connor looked down at it. “Nice idea, kid. When did you put that there?”
I leaned against our partners desk as I struggled out of my wet Doc Martens, which were now clinging to my feet like they were glued on. “After that ectoplasm in the popcorn-machine incident in that off-Broadway theater,” I said. “My cleaning bills are through the roof, and even before these cuts, the Inspectre stopped letting me expense them. You’d think damage done in the line of duty would be covered . . .”
“I wouldn’t press him, kid.”
“No?” My Docs didn’t want to come off. I undid the laces even more and wiggled off the first one, tossing it in the bin.
“No,” Connor said. “It could be worse.”
“Worse than bagging my clothes up here on a weekly basis and then dragging them to the cleaners on my own dime? How could it be worse?”
“You press the Inspectre on it, and they might start issuing us uniforms. You want to wear a tan jumpsuit with your name stitched over the pocket?”
“Depends,” I said. “Do I get to be Egon? Do I get a Proton Pack?” My other boot came free and I put it with the other one.
“I don’t think so.” Connor pointed to the mountains of files and paperwork piled on both of our desks. It had grown several inches in the few hours we had been gone. “Think of what it takes to even get ballpoint pens from supply. You rip a field-issued jumpsuit and try to requisition a new one? You’ll be roaming the halls in your boxers at least a week waiting.”
“Speaking of which, can you watch our cubicle door? I need to finish getting out of the rest of this stuff.”
Connor turned away. “Gladly. Although why you need to do it here . . .”
“It’s just easier,” I said. I walked around to the work side of my desk, slid the lower-left-hand drawer open, and fished out a dry T-shirt. I pulled off the wet one, threw it on top of my boots, and slid the new one over my head. The front of it read: I BRAKE FOR IMAGINARY CREATURES. “I’m living out of my drawer here.”
Connor laughed. “Now you know how Jane feels at your place.”
His comment stung. I tried to ignore it, but another flare of the tattooist’s way over-the-top emotions hit me. I bit my lip and fought the urge to say something, instead focusing on putting on a dry pair of jeans that were also sitting in the drawer. I slid them on, thankful to be dry once again and forcing the emotions down. “Okay,” I said. “Done.”
Connor turned and gave me a skeptical look.
“What?” I asked.
“Your face, kid. What’s the matter? Did I strike a raw nerve with my Jane comment?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess,” I admitted. “That tattooist emotional-baggage thing flared up again.”
I sat down at my desk a
nd Connor walked over to his.
“Look at the bright side,” he said, sitting down. “You probably won’t have to worry about Jane getting the itch to marry you.”
“I won’t?”
“You jumping to conclusions that Jane wanting more drawer space means she wants to move in should land you in a padded room long before that.”
“Comforting,” I said. I set to work writing out the details of the events of the past few hours, almost enjoying the silence while doing it. At least Connor wasn’t jabbing me about my newfound domestic issues with Jane. When my eyes started to blur from all the paperwork, I stopped and gathered my papers. I stood up. “I’m going to run this up to the Inspectre.”
“Go crazy, kid,” Connor said, looking up from his own chaos of paper across from me, “but aren’t you forgetting something?”
I thought for a moment, and then shrugged.
Connor pointed at my bare feet. “No socks, no shoes,” he said. “No service.”
I opened my lower-left-hand drawer once more. “Thanks for the reminder,” I said. “I don’t know where my head’s at. Maybe that water woman squeezed some of my brains out when she was trying to drown me.” Fresh socks and dry boots, and under that, nothing more. I pulled them out and put them on. “Time to restock my wardrobe. Looks like this is all that’s left.”
“Then you better hope you don’t run into anything heading up to the Inspectre’s office,” Connor said.
I stood up, feeling almost human again, the leather of the new boots stiff against my feet. “A wandering monster encounter is highly unlikely. I think I can manage.”
I turned and headed away from our desks, walking off toward the stairs that led to the Inspectre’s office up on the second floor.
“Oh, you say that now,” Connor shouted after me, “but don’t forget where we work.”
I slowed my pace as I walked. Connor had a point. A healthy amount of paranoia about danger lurking around every corner had kept my older partner alive so far, and if there was ever a place full of potentially menacing corners, it was the Department of Extraordinary Affairs.
