by Anton Strout
I always hated giving bad news, but it was worse since I didn’t have anything positive to tell my mentor about so personal a case to him. He listened as I went on about asking around campus about the professor, minus my in-store incident with the dresser, to the attack Jane and I had endured from the green woman.
“That’s everything?” he asked when I was done.
I nodded. “The students who did talk to me about Professor Redfield spoke very highly of him,” I said, going with encouragement again. “But even after that aquatic she-beast attacked and marked Jane last night, we still don’t know why she killed Mason Redfield. On the plus side, Aqua-Woman did try to drown Jane as she was trying to escape us when we cornered her, so we must be getting closer to the truth.”
The Inspectre slammed his fist on his desk. “People are dying and this city would rather have us worrying about how much printer paper we use and who we can live without in the Department.” He shuffled through the files on his desk, snatching up a piece of paper, shaking it at me. “Do you know that we spent over ten thousand dollars last year on pens alone? How on earth did we even do that?”
“Actually,” I said, “I have an answer for that one.”
“Oh?” the Inspectre said, raising one of his busy eyebrows. He stroked at his mustache.
“Jane mentioned it to me. It seems the ink in them is a perfect replacement for Wyrm’s Blood. Easier to find, too. Greater and Lesser Arcana have been going through them like crazy. At first I thought maybe Jane was a closet pen fetishist, but nope. Just Wesker and his crew scrounging up spell components.”
Inspectre Quimbley sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Well, then! Maybe the Enchancellors should put Director Wesker in charge of everything here. I haven’t the heart for all this red tape or letting people go.”
“I suspect Thaddeus Wesker would take a perverse pleasure in assuming the throne,” I said.
“The budget cuts,” he said, angry. “The passing of old friends . . . How is one supposed to mourn let alone get anything done around here?”
“I’m sorry there hasn’t been more progress,” I said. “It’s no excuse, but like you said, everyone is overworked these days. It’s causing a lot of stress, even more so with me and Jane.”
“Power still flaring up on you?” he asked.
“You’ve heard about it, too?”
“A good leader keeps his ears open for what may be troubling his agents,” he said. “A lesson I learned far too late to help Mason with his problems years ago, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t want to trouble you with it, sir.”
“Nonsense,” the Inspectre said, gesturing toward the free chair across from him on the other side of the desk. “Clearly it’s troubling you or you wouldn’t have brought it up. If something’s distracting you from your work, I’d like to know about it. An undistracted agent is a living agent, as it were.”
“Very well,” I said as I sank into the leather chair, feeling a bit like I was in therapy. “Ever since helping out our sunlight-challenged friends over at the Gibson-Case Center, I’ve been channeling all this jealous anger and rage. This ghost tattooist left me trying to shake off all these twisted feelings of hers from when she had been living, and it’s been causing me to snap at Jane. She had been asking me about more space for her at my apartment, and I don’t know. After feeling the tattooist’s rage after trusting someone and being betrayed, it’s just messing with me being close to someone right now. It really gives me pause.”
“So, what?” the Inspectre asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I want to take it slow, but I found myself looking at antique dressers the other day when I should have been concentrating on fieldwork. When I was hunting around for students who knew the professor.”
“Be sure to note that on your time card,” the Inspectre said.
“I’m salaried, so . . .” I started to say, and then stopped myself when I saw him smiling. “See? Even my sense of humor is thrown off.”
All the anger was gone from the Inspectre’s face now. He looked me in the eye, his hands folded together in front of him. “My boy,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of things over the years that I don’t understand. Things that naturally defy understanding, but there are some things I do understand. That girl Jane loves you. Not everyone gets that in this world, not the way I see she looks at you.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I could feel my face going red.
“Now, now,” the Inspectre said. “I also understand this: our lives, especially in the Department and at F.O.G., are always too brief. That is always a possibility in our simple day-to-day existence. You want to make sure you do right by her. Pushing people away, well, that’s something I do know a little bit about. It makes you live with regret, and regret is a monster that slowly eats away at you.”
“It killed you when you heard Professor Redfield was dead, didn’t it?”
The Inspectre closed his eyes and nodded. “More than you know, my boy,” he said. “When Mason left the Fraternal Order of Goodness, I all but pushed him out of my life. I simply didn’t have time for someone who walked away from what I considered the noblest of causes. If he didn’t care enough to stand against evil, he was dead to me.”
“But after hearing about his life as a teacher in my preliminary reports, you felt different.”
The Inspectre nodded. “A life had happened to that man since I knew him,” he said, “one that I never got to know. From what you’ve told me of his university life and his students, it sounds like it was a good one.”
“From what I can tell so far,” I said, “yes.”
The Inspectre looked distant. “I should have liked to have known it, that’s all.” He turned to look at me. “Sometimes I envy you your power, Mr. Canderous, your ability to reach into the pasts of others and truly see it.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “I’ve spent so much time trying to avoid reading anyone I was close to psychometrically because it always ruined things for me in the past. I always saw what I did as a bit of a curse or, at best, a way to score a quick buck. I never thought of it like that.”
“I’m afraid that I am partly to blame for that,” the Inspectre said.
“How so?”
“I’ve pushed you too hard with this, on top of your regular caseload,” he said. “I’ve let my own personal involvement get in the way. For that, I am truly sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it . . .”
The Inspectre stood and came around his desk. He patted me on the shoulder, and then started toward his office door. I stood and followed.
“Do me a favor, would you?” he asked. He stopped at the door, his hand on the knob, and turned to look at me.
“Sure. What is it?”
“Take the rest of the afternoon off.”
I stepped back, shocked. Was I hearing him right? “Now?” I asked. “What about everything we just talked about? The budget cuts and the workload . . .”
“That can wait,” he said. “And that wasn’t all we talked about.”
“This is about Jane, isn’t it?”
The Inspectre opened his office door. “I want you to give it some thought,” he said. “About what really matters, about who really matters to you. Do it without distraction, but take a little gratis downtime approved by me to do so.”
Something deep inside me felt like it had just been freed and a tension I didn’t even realize I had been carrying released. Maybe a few hours of downtime would do me some good after all. “Thank you,” I said.
He nodded.
“A few of us are meeting up tonight after work at Eccentric Circles,” he said. “Nothing formal, just getting together to celebrate the passing of one of our own.”
“But Mason left the Fraternal Order of Goodness,” I said.
“Nonetheless,” he said. “I think the other agents are mostly humoring me. Still, I could use a few drinks to loosen my lips and wax nostalgic.”
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“I’ll try to be there,” I said, stepping out of his office. “Thanks.”
As the Inspectre closed the door behind me, his face registered a silent sadness. I wasn’t sure if it was from old age having seeped into his bones or not, but I decided that after taking a little time off for myself, at least a round or two of drinks would be on me tonight. Getting the Inspectre a little drunk seemed like a fine way to respect my elders, and now that I thought of it, I never did ask him for the damned boat requisition I had come up here for in the first place. Ah, well, it could wait. That would probably go over better with a few drinks in him, too.
14
I considered spending my free afternoon going through my ever-growing catalog of antiques back at my apartment, but, afraid of triggering another messed-up vision, I instead found myself wandering alone over on Broadway in the Village. For hours I shopped up and down the stretch, with only one object in mind—a new dresser for my bedroom, without using my powers for once. My last incident hadn’t gone so well, but I was determined to work through the mental gymnastics my power was putting me through. I looked through stores that had existed for decades, but after hours of poking about, nothing felt quite right. Frustrated, I checked my watch—my hunt would have to continue later. Right now I had to get over to Eccentric Circles if I was going to catch up with the Inspectre.
I entered the old bar. It looked like a T.G.I. Friday’s designed with sort of a Harry Potter theme, oddities of the arcane world that would have given it an almost tourist-attraction hokeyness except for the fact that it was all real to those of us in the know.
The place was packed with an after-work crowd, but I didn’t think all of them hailed from the Department of Extraordinary Affairs. I crushed through the crowd at the front by the bar and found the Inspectre seated on one side of a booth out back, several pitchers and glasses of beer spread out on the table. Some of the booths held familiar faces, but it was the faces seated with the Inspectre I was surprised to see. The brothers Christos sat there opposite him.
“Oh, look,” Aidan called out, pointing at me. “Delivery!” The vampire couldn’t help but laugh at his own joke. I, however, wasn’t quite as amused.
“Funny,” I said, slipping into the booth next to the Inspectre. I turned to him. “I didn’t realize the undead were into memorial tributes, unless it’s for one of their own.”
Connor thwacked me on the arm. “Consider him my plus one, kid.”
“Besides,” Aidan said, “did you ever consider maybe that’s part of the problem between our people? You keep assuming that our kind is only interested in what is best for us.”
“Your leader sure seems to be looking out for his own interests,” I said.
Aidan shook his head. “Not true,” he said. “Don’t mistake his general desire to be left alone as a single-minded attempt to break away from humanity completely.”
“Gentlemen, please,” the Inspectre interrupted, already sounding like he had put away a few beers. “Tonight is not a night to discuss vampiric affairs. We’re here to mourn the loss of Mason Redfield.”
I grabbed a glass and poured myself a beer from one of the pitchers at the table. I raised it and the group of us toasted to the dear, departed professor. While I drank it down, I looked around the room. “Quite the turnout,” I said. “I didn’t realize so many people knew Redfield. Not bad for a guy who left the Fraternal Order of Goodness—what—thirty years ago?”
The Inspectre looked around the room, a bit melancholy. “Most of them don’t recall him,” the Inspectre said, wiping away a bit of foam that had accumulated in his mustache. “I think this crowd is mostly a mix of the usual oddities that inhabit Eccentric Circles. There are a few Departmental people here who came out on my behalf, but I really think there are few left in our ranks who actually remember Mason before he left the Order.”
“You think any of them would know anything about the case?” I asked.
The Inspectre shook his head. “Doubtful,” he said. “I don’t know of anyone who’s kept in touch.” He took a long pull on his glass, and then set it down empty. “Least of all me.”
“Don’t worry, boss,” Connor said from across the table. “We’ll find that creepy water woman who killed Mason and attacked Jane.”
I looked to Connor. “Maybe your brother has some kind of powers that can help,” I said. “Something, you know, all vampirey.”
Aidan smiled, but it was not one of confidence. “ ’Fraid not,” he said. “I’ve only been a bloodsucker with them for about twenty years. They still call me fledgling back at the Gibson-Case Center, despite my high ranking among Brandon’s core group of cronies. They’re a bit secretive about what they will and won’t teach the newer vampires about their growing powers, so I’m not even sure what will develop with me over time.”
“Great,” I said, feeling a bit defeated.
“But hey,” Aidan continued, “I’m pretty sure I could charm the truth out of some of these people. Does my natural charisma count as a supernatural ability?”
“Looking all emo in your Hot Topic hoodie doesn’t make you charismatic,” I said. “It makes you look like a tool. Especially at forty.”
“It not my fault that I look so much younger than my age,” Aidan said. “You can blame Brandon and his people for that. I’m just dressing my part. Trying to fit the fashion of the time for someone in their late teens. Otherwise, I’d probably go with Connor’s style, but I just look too fresh-faced and youthful to pull off an old man’s trench coat.”
“Hey,” Connor said. “Watch it. I’m still your younger brother.”
“You know,” the Inspectre interrupted, pointing at the brothers Christos, “that’s what I miss the most.”
I looked at him. He had filled his glass again and was halfway done with it already. “Sir?” I asked.
“That camaraderie,” he said. “That banter that comes so easily between people. Mason was a master of it.”
“If it helps, Connor and I could bicker some more,” Aidan said. “We’re still making up for lost decades of it . . .”
The Inspectre answered the vampire, but I didn’t quite catch what he said. My focus had just shifted, drawn to another table that caught my deep focus halfway across the back of the bar.
“Hold up,” I said, continuing to stare.
“What is it, kid?” Connor said.
“Those are some of his,” I said.
Connor shifted in his seat and looked off toward where I was staring. “His what?” he asked. “Whose what?”
“The professor,” I said. “Those are some of his students sitting right over there. I’m pretty sure I saw them when I was flashing on some of Redfield’s classes and lectures in one of my visions.” At least, I thought they were the professor’s from where we sat. It was hard to forget the cute blond actress with the short spiked cut, but the four other faces at their booth looked vaguely familiar as well. The girl might even make it as an actress, given how memorable her face was.
“So, those are Professor Redfield’s little doters, eh?” Connor said, also checking them out.
“You want some answers?” Aidan said, rising up, forgetting his preternatural strength and practically flipping over the table. The rest of us struggled to save the pitchers of beer and our glasses. Aidan was eyeing the group at the other booth now with a dead-eyed stare. “I’ll get you answers.”
The Inspectre stood to meet him. “No, Aidan,” he said. “Thank you. I appreciate your willingness, but as you’ve mentioned, your leader would rather your kind minimize their exposure.”
“You can consider this a freebie,” Aidan said.
“It’s all right,” I said, standing up myself. “I’ve got this. After all, I’m most likely to pass for college age, remember?”
“I could totally pass for a freshman,” Aidan said, sitting back down.
“Relax, forty-year-old,” I said. “You may look all of nineteen, but I’ve got this one.”
The Inspectre clapped me on the shoulder. “See what you can find out,” he said, looking around the bar with caution. “And remember what I told you: err on the side of discretion.”
“Don’t worry,” Connor said from behind his beer, “Simon’s a master of erring.”
“Thanks, drunkie,” I said, and headed off toward the table of students farther off across the room. The group of them was crammed into one of the deep booths, the table crowded with an assortment of pitchers, mugs, glasses, and book bags. There were five of them altogether and they were animatedly laughing and talking to one another as they drank. At the back of the booth was a young brown-haired kid sandwiched between a heavier one with greasy black hair to his left and a goateed Hispanic guy with blond punk hair to his right. More recognizable to me were the two people sitting at the outermost seats of the booth, both of whom stuck out from my visions. One end of the booth held the tall black guy with the ear gauging who was busying himself with a beer in one hand and a net book in the other. The other far end of the booth seat was occupied by the blond girl I had first recognized. She had perfect dimples and bright eyes that screamed actress in training. If there was an entry point to talking to them, it was going to be her. It didn’t matter if I went in smooth approaching her. A lifetime of not being smooth around women had prepared me to go into this with the intent of crashing and burning.
As I walked toward the bar, I passed by their table at first, ignoring it, and then I did a double take.
“Hey,” I said, stopping and turning to the blond girl, “don’t I know you?”
She turned from her conversation with her friends and rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, brother,” she said. “Are you for real? Is that seriously your ‘A’ game?”
I resisted the urge to launch into her, but it would blow my cover even before I started, so I bit my lip and gestured to everyone in the booth.
“No,” I said. “I meant all of you.”
