Dead to Me (7 page)

“Maybe we better take this out back?” I suggested. Connor nodded.

“Miss?” Connor asked. The woman was flustered and paid him no attention. Despite the oddness of her circumstance, she was desperately trying to keep her composure.

Admittedly, I was, too. The only thing that made sense right now was taking this situation out of the front room of the Lovecraft Café. It was perhaps the best idea I had come up with during the entire encounter. Things would be better once we were out back in the Department’s offices.

Being the well-meaning gentleman that I am these days, I tried to help the woman up from the couch by taking her arm. My hand passed effortlessly through it and a shock tingled through my fingers, startling her. Connor shot me a look.

“Please don’t do that,” he warned.

“Why not?”

“Because you might force me to say ‘please don’t do that’ again,” he said, agitated.

“Oh.”

I had never experienced such a sensation before. My fingers continued to tingle as if they were charged with electricity. In the reflection of the glass covering a Bogart poster on the wall, I checked my hair to make sure that I hadn’t suddenly become a member of the White Stripes. Luckily, I was fine.

I turned my attention back to the situation. Connor finally caught the woman’s eye. He smiled purse-lipped at her. “Yes, hello? Hi, could you tell me your name, please?”

My heart softened as she attempted to smile back despite the obvious stress this situation caused her.

“It’s Irene…I think.”

Connor looked at me and lowered his voice. “Not good. Memory displacement’s already set in.” He turned back to her. “Hello, Irene. My name is Connor Christos and my young colleague here is Simon Canderous.”

“I’m notthat young,” I mumbled. Connor shot me another glare and I fell silent. Now was not the time to be glib, apparently.

“If you’d just follow us back to our offices,” he said, “I think that I or one of our other ‘guidance’ counselors can help make sense out of everything you’re experiencing.”

Irene cocked her head, distrustful. She looked far from convinced, and I didn’t blame her. How would I react to being told that I was dead? Probably far worse than she was.

“We’re here to help,” Connor said with a smile. “Honest.”

He reached into his right pocket and pulled out a small vial like the one from the other night, and twisted its stopper free with a well-practiced motion. I watched as the same smoky haze rose from the vial and twisted dreamily around Irene’s head. The familiar smell of patchouli and cloves hit my nostrils, and the woman’s face went slack. She rose from the couch like smoke rising from a fire. Just like that, Connor took control of her.

Connor’s approach bordered on wrangling her like cattle, and I wanted to speak up—but what was I really prepared to say? None of the departmental seminars or brochures had covered this, and my own training had yet to cover the shaky legal gray area of spirits’ rights. Wasn’t Connor somehow violating those, coercing Irene by magical means? Before I could give it another thought, Connor turned away and led our brown-haired beauty toward the back of the coffee shop. I stumbled my way over the upturned coffee table and followed. The counter jockey scowled at me for leaving the mess, but I pointed to Connor and the ghost, shrugging as if to say,Whatcha gonna do?

Irene floated along with an unnatural, ghostly grace. But she took care to avoid tables, chairs, and other people as if she were still alive. We moved like a procession of geriatric zombies. I smirked at the image it conjured in my head. If shehad been a zombie, at least she’d be something I had read up on in the departmental pamphletShufflers &Sham-blers .

Her body flickered as if she had a loose bulb inside her.

“You okay, Irene?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. Her voice came out as if she were off in a faraway dream. “Just troubled a bit. I want to follow your friend here, but…I’m not sure why. Strange.” She tried to move her head to look at me, but her eyes couldn’t turn away from Connor. “It’s that intoxicating scent, isn’t it?”

I stopped. Surely this was coercion at it basest level. “Connor…”

My partner stopped and turned.

“Kid, it’s okay,” Connor said in an effort to soothe both of us. “Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

As we passed through the black velvet curtains at the back of the shop, Irene gasped. The ordinary confines of the coffeehouse gave way to a majestic, old movie theater that embodied days of glory gone by. In the soft glow of the movie’s projector, I could make out the muted gold leaf fleur-de-lis hidden on the wall amid the decorative architecture. I was especially taken with the ornate chandelier that glittered in the darkness high overhead. What stories it would tell if I ever got my psychometric mitts on it.

We headed down the right-hand aisle. The theater was enchanting, but not in a paranormal way. It always gave me the impression that something magical would happen if only I were to fall back into one of the red velvety cushions of the Lovecraft’s hundred seats. But that was the point of old theaters—to weave a spell, preparing a journey beyond these four walls. Up on the screen, Clark Gable was noisily chomping a carrot as he sat on a fence talking to Claudette Colbert.

Irene craned her head about the theater. She was taken in by the majesty of it all. At the end of the aisle, Connor stopped opposite a large wooden door markedH.P. and produced a ring of keys. He sorted out a plastic keycard and waved it in front of an electronic plate to the door’s left. The latch clicked softly and Connor pushed the door open, gesturing for Irene to enter.

“Welcome to the world of weird,” Connor said.

6

Holding the door for a woman who could just as easily walk through it was a nice touch on Connor’s part. With five years on the job, Connor did have many of the finer points down when it came to helping the deceased cross over. Keeping me alive on a daily basis? That was a different matter.

He waited for Irene to pass through the doorway before he spoke.

“The dead have heap-big issues,” he told me in the worst Native American accent he could muster. He was a movie buff and always doing accents or impressions. Almost all of them were impossible to figure out. In his regular voice, he continued, “Sometimes the simple gestures we associate with being human can get an investigator through even the most difficult of spirit-handling situations. Think of the soul as shell-shocked when it’s torn from the world of the living. Spirits who can’t get past that tend to linger with the confusion of it all. That’s when it can grow restless and a haunting might commence. I’ll get reports from family members who say that they’ve started seeing dead ole’ Uncle Lou sitting on the can in the upstairs bathroom. Stuff like that.”

Although I had hoped to catch up on the paperwork threatening to take over my desk, Irene had suddenly become our “heap-big” issue du jour—which meant that I would have to table two zombie infestations and an investigation of a Shambler sighting. The Department of Extraordinary Affairs was probably going to be a big shock to Irene, and that would pretty much fill up a good part of our workday.

Irene looked overwhelmed by the change of pace from the mesmerizing tranquility of the theater to the red-tape office environment that spread out before her. Dozens of desks, cubicles, and a throng of pencil pushers cluttered the busy aisles of our unlikeliest of office spaces. The stucco walls gave the lengthy main room a warm, golden glow, reminiscent of California’s grand hotels from the early days of Hollywood. Irene spotted the only significant difference between those hotels and our main office at the D.E.A.—an assortment of arcane symbols carved deeply into a vast portion of the wall.

“What on earth are those?” Irene asked. Her eyes were wide with wonder, everything remaining of her humanity exaggerated to cartoonish proportions.

“Standard ritualistic markings, ma’am,” Connor said politely as he led her down the main aisle. “‘All operations involving the use or potential use of supernatural powers must be properly warded, glyphed, and otherwise protected by our Division of Greater & Lesser Arcana.’”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means,” she muttered absently, too busy drinking in the flurry of activity around her.

“Allow me,” I said. I wasn’t sure how much I was allowed to tell her, but I figured Connor would stop me if I overstepped my bounds.

“This,” I continued, “is the heart of our organization, the Department of Extraordinary Affairs. We’re mostly a hush-hush offshoot of the Mayor’s Office that deals with paranormal matters in the Tri-State Area.” I pointed to an endless row of doors along the far wall. “See those? We’re divided up into several divisions…”

“Too many divisions if you ask me,” Connor added. “Greater and Lesser Arcana, Haunts-General, Things That Go Bump in the Night…the list goes on and on.”

“And which are you?” Irene asked, turning to me.

“Connor and I work for Other Division,” I said, “which basically means we pick up cases that don’t pigeonhole neatly into the rest of the divisions, or that we pick up their slack when the casework builds up. I only know a handful of the divisions by name, but the Enchancellors seem to come up with two or three new ones every time I turn around.”

“What’s an Enchancellor?” Irene asked. She reminded me of a little kid with all her questions, but I realized to an outsider, it must all seem overwhelming.

“They’re like an overseeing committee for the D.E.A. They monitor the whole of what’s going on, assigning new divisions at will while overseeing the rest.”

“Sounds confusing,” she said. I nodded. “So you’re a part of the government then?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “We’re official, but they don’t really acknowledge us.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Look around you. Are most government offices hidden behind a hipster coffee shop–slash–movie house? Remember that guy on the television before?”

It was Irene’s turn to nod.

“David Davidson. He’s our liaison to the Mayor’s Office. The fact is that the bulk of citizens in Manhattan—and more importantly to him, the registered voters—are simply not ready to cope with the notion that The Big Apple’s government deals in the supernatural. ‘Living Voters are Happy Voters!’ is his motto. Besides, most residents turn a blind eye to it anyway. It’s New York City. Weird shit happens.”

“And people just ignore it?” she said, fascinated.

“Mostly,” I said. “Even though it’s right under their noses. Most occurrences end up being reported in the daily New York rags. Urban Bigfoot in Central Park, alien abductions on the Great Lawn…”

Before I could finish my diatribe on the finer points of half-assed journalism, I sensed watchful eyes upon me. I scanned the room only to find Thaddeus Wesker—Matrixy sunglasses forever hiding his eyes—looking in our general direction while he verbally bitchslapped a team of people from his division.

“So Wesker’s in charge of both Greaterand Lesser Arcana now?” I asked.

I knew little about the man except that he was very, very scary. I had heard that he had impressed the Enchancellors by carving the latest batch of arcane runes into the walls by himself. I also knew that he seemed perpetually pissed off. Somehow, he still looked like slickness personified as he yelled at the elite squad—black hair slicked perfectly straight back and sporting just the right amount of five o’clock shadow at all times.

Irene gave him a quick glance and just as quickly turned away.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“It makes me uncomfortable to look at him,” she said, her voice trembling with weakness.

“Relax,” Connor said. “It’s not you, Irene. Everyone gets the same spooky vibe from him.”

“Makes me wonder exactly how Mr. I-Wear-My-Sunglasses-at-Night got involved with us men in white hats in the first place,” I said.

Connor continued along the main aisle of the cubicle farm, and lowered his voice. “He volunteered to head up the Witchcraft backlog around here, kid, and when they merged departments with Greater Arcana during the City Hall budget crunch last week, he simply stared the other directors down for leadership. And he pulled that trick again over the newly formed Greater and Lesser Arcana that rose from the ashes.”

“Authority through intimidation,” I said. “Nice.”

Irene looked terrified.

“Don’t worry,” Connor offered with reassurance. “I don’t think you’ll have to deal with him.”

I smiled at Irene and stepped closer as we continued walking.

“When I was first training, the big threat for us newbies was that if I didn’t keep on my toes, the teachers would assign me to one of Wesker’s seminars over at Witchcraft.”

“Well, I don’t care for him,” Irene said. “He gives me the heebie-jeebies.”