Nevermore (23 page)

“Yeah, well,” McBain said, shaking her head,

“you been lucky. And luck always runs out eventually. That’s the first thing you learn in this job.”

Frowning, Sam asked, “You mean the job of hunter or being a cop?”

McBain stared right at Sam with her large brown eyes. “Both.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment before Mackey said, “Well, it’s late, and the wife will be getting worried. If there’s nothing else?”

“Just stay out of our way, okay, Artie?” Dean said.

Mackey twisted his thin lips. “Yes, well, I’d say 236 SUPERNATURAL

I’ve had more than enough excitement for one night. I’ll happily leave it to the pair of you. Unlike your father, I’m sure that you two will handle things well.”

That got Dean’s back up. “The hell’s
that
supposed to mean?”

As Mackey walked over to his Civic, he said,

“I mean that the two of you are a good deal better at this than your father is. Which, I suppose, is encouraging—better to see that the next genera-tion is improving.” With that, he got into his car and drove down the steep hill that Fordham Road became, heading toward the Major Deegan Expressway.

Dean found he had no idea how to feel about that. This wasn’t the first time he’d discovered that he and Sam had any kind of reputation. Gordon had mentioned it back in Montana as well, and it still threw him for a loop. Hell, he was still having trouble wrapping his brain around the notion that there was this whole community of other hunters they didn’t know about. He and Sam had always assumed that the few people Dad had introduced them to—Pastor Jim, Caleb, Bobby—were the only ones out there fi ghting demons.

And now finding out that their rep was
better
than Dad’s? That made no sense to him. Dad, whatever his flaws, was a master.

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Wasn’t he?

Sam said something to McBain that shook him out of his thoughts—he was asking about Roxy.

Squinting, McBain said, “Nah, that doesn’t ring a bell offhand—but I’ll check the computer when I’m in the offi ce Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?” Dean said. “What, you don’t work a full week?”

“Yeah, brushy-top, I do—it’s just from Wednesday to Sunday. This is my weekend. And believe me, there are people I’d much rather be spendin’

my off-duty time with than your sorry asses. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m goin’ home.” It took several minutes for him to get his breathing back under control. He had debated whether it was such a hot idea to put up the trip wire, but the last thing he needed was someone barging in on him unannounced. It wasn’t likely late at night, but the neighborhood was suffi ciently troubling that he couldn’t be sure that an empty apartment wouldn’t be used for a drug buy or something.

But no, he’d been lucky enough not to have
that
happen.

Instead, it was something far worse.

He didn’t recognize the people who came in, but obviously they weren’t from the housing authority 238 SUPERNATURAL

or angry neighbors or drug dealers. Leaving aside any other consideration, they were a little too white for the neighborhood.

Of course, that didn’t automatically disqualify them, but if they were just angry because he was horning in on their “crib” or what have you, he doubted they would have chased him down the fi re escape.

Then again, perhaps they were just high on something.

It didn’t matter. They didn’t catch him. If nothing else, they helped him out by contaminating the crime scene with irrelevant evidence. Not that he left anything behind—he’d been very careful to eliminate as much as possible. He watched
CSI,
he knew how much they could potentially fi nd with the right technology.

They just couldn’t bring back the dead with technology.

For that, he had to go to something older. It had taken so long to find the right ritual—so

many of them depended on the death being recent. Poe had been dead for 157 years. The only resurrections he could find that would bring back someone dead that long required means he simply did not possess.

Except for Percival Samuels, that underappreci-ated genius, foolishly imprisoned by an ignorant constabulary.

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He just hoped that those three people were merely drug dealers. He had only seen the one who chased him—he never got a good look at the other two.

Three down, one to go. Then, at last, the answer will be mine!

FIFTEEN

Fordham University

The Bronx, New York

Wednesday 22 November 2006

As soon as he set foot on the campus of Fordham University, Sam felt his heart pound into his rib cage. He felt like he had come home again, and wanted to run away screaming.

In general, Fordham and Stanford didn’t look much alike. Both campuses were built in the nineteenth century, and both had a mix of architectural styles, though Stanford had much more elaborate architecture on the more modern buildings. Being in California, Stanford had plenty of palm trees—most notably on the aptly named Palm Drive, the mile-long entrance to the campus—and a great deal of open space.

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Fordham had smaller patches of greenery, more trees (none of them palms), and a tendency toward more old- fashioned architecture, with the buildings much closer together. The campus’s center-piece was Keating Hall, built in 1936. A giant stone edifice that rose above the other buildings on campus, it was topped off by a large antenna from which the campus radio station WFUV broadcast.

Laid out in front of Keating was Edward’s Parade, a huge green field bordered by a paved pathway and a short iron fence. Had he gone into a coma somewhere

else and awakened on the Fordham

campus, he would never have guessed he was in New York City. It didn’t even
smell
the same—

green grass and cold stone and battered wood all teased the nose, where just out the gate onto either Fordham Road or Southern Boulevard you got car exhaust and garbage.

On this cold November day there weren’t very many students on the parade, though Sam imagined that in warmer weather the place was packed with scantily clad students sunbathing and throwing Frisbees around.

Looking over at his brother, he decided not to share that image with Dean. It would just distract him.

Their destination was on the other side of the parade from Keating Hall: Dealy Hall, one of two more stone buildings that faced Keating with the 242 SUPERNATURAL

parade between them, the other being Hughes Hall, a dormitory. Dealy was the home of the English Department, and they had made an appointment to see Dr. Ross Vincent during his offi ce hours today. They’d tried for yesterday, but he was booked.

Dealy Hall’s stately exterior was a contrast to its very traditional interior, as the inside looked just like every school hallway in existence: lino-leum floor, brightly painted walls, and old wooden doors with small square windows leading to large rooms filled with small desks.

“You okay, Sam?” Dean asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Sam said. “Why?”

“You’re twitching.”

“I am not,” Sam said defensively, even though he knew he was. “I just—this is weird, y’know?” Grinning, Dean said, “Thought you liked all this academic stuff. Ivy-covered halls, higher learning, all that crap.”

“Yeah, and the dead girlfriend,” he said bluntly.

Dean opened his mouth and closed it. “Sorry, dude,” he said quietly.

Sam found himself unable to respond to that.

Dean rarely apologized for anything, and Sam didn’t want to cheapen so rare an occurrence with a snarky comment.

They walked to the back of the building where the elevators were, and Dean pushed the up button.

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And then they waited.

Several ice ages later the elevator fi nally arrived, the metal doors sliding open at a glacial pace. Dean looked at Sam. “Shoulda walked.”

The elevator then moved up to the fi fth floor at a speed that was so slow that if they were going only a hair slower they’d have been going down instead of up.

Eventually they arrived at the top floor of the building and stepped off to see a small wooden desk at which nobody was sitting, and behind it a hallway with several mailboxes hanging on the wall, leading back to a series of cubicles and offi ces. Sam assumed this was the English Department offi ce, though there was also a hallway behind them that had more offices and cubicles.

A short man with a frizzy red beard and wild brown hair came out wearing the classic professor clothes: corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows, flannel shirt, dark-colored tie, and jeans.

Sam couldn’t believe it—four years at Stanford, and nobody ever really dressed like that. Yet here this guy was.

“Yolanda? Listen, I—” He saw that the desk was empty, stopped short and looked at Sam and Dean. “Neither one of you is Yolanda.”

“No, sir,” Sam said quickly before Dean could comment. “We’re here to see Dr. Vincent—we have an appointment.”

244 SUPERNATURAL

“Well, you’re in luck, then. I’m Dr. Vincent. You must be the gentlemen from Lincoln Center.” He started walking back the way he came. “Come, come, let us speak.”

Sam and Dean followed him back and to the left, past several cubicles on the left and offices on the right, before coming to a partic u lar office, the front door of which was decorated in various bits of Poe memorabilia, much of which Sam recognized from similar items in the Poe Cottage—mostly reproduc-tions of book covers—as well as a few yellowed
Far
Side
cartoons.

Vincent sat down on a big leather chair and started fiddling with the gold wedding band on his left ring finger. There was only one other chair in the room, and it was covered in books and papers.

“So—which of you is which?”

“Uh, I’m Archie Leach, and this is Marion Morrison.”

Dean glared at Sam for a second. Sam managed to keep a straight face. Somehow the fact that his nom de guerre for this partic u lar interview was the real name of John Wayne wasn’t enough to mollify Dean’s annoyance with being given the name “Marion.” Of course, Dean would think that his fake name was from
A Fish Called Wanda
, which it was, but that movie used it for the same reason he did—it was Cary Grant’s real name.

In response to Dean’s annoyance in the Impala Nevermore

245

on the way over, at the names he’d come up with, Sam had just shrugged and said, “This is what happens when I pick the names, man. At least it beats yet another classic- rock pairing.” Dean had pouted most of the rest of the way to Fordham. Not that Dean would admit that he pouted, though Sam didn’t know what else to call it when his lips set like that.

“And you gentlemen are taking Dr. Lauer’s class, and she recommended you talk to me?” the professor said.

“We’re collaborating on a short story for Dr. Lauer’s creative writing class,” Sam replied. He’d checked Fordham’s website and noted that, while this was the main campus, it wasn’t Fordham’s only location.

In addition to the Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, there was the College at Lincoln Center, located on the west side of Manhattan, and another up in Tar-rytown. He had pulled Lauer’s name as one of the English teachers down there who taught a creative writing class. “It’s supposed to be about a historical figure, and we went with Edgar Allan Poe.” Vincent smiled, took a cigarette pack out of his pocket and pulled one out. “Don’t worry,” he said quickly, “I won’t light up. Thanks to the ridiculous new laws, I can’t even smoke in the privacy of my own office. Used to be this was a civilized campus.

Anyhow, I’m glad you came to me instead of just going to some stupid website.”

246 SUPERNATURAL

“Well, we did some research on the web, and we found this one site—”

Grabbing the unlit cigarette out of his mouth, Vincent said, “Please, God, tell me it isn’t Wikipedia. I swear, that site should be banned.” He leaned back and put his hand to his forehead. “I’ve had to give out more F’s because of numbnut students who think copying an entire Wikipedia page con-stitutes research. You know what I did one time? I went in and edited one of their idiotic pages and filled it with false information. Sure enough, fi ve students put the wrong information—which was only there for a day, and that day was the one before the paper was due—in their papers. It is to weep.” He started fondling the cigarette. “So, what is it you want to know?”

“Actually, the site belonged to someone who calls himself Arthur Gordon—”

“Pym?” Vincent winced, and got up from his chair. Sam, who was standing in the offi ce’s doorway next to Dean, stared longingly at it, even as Vincent stood by the window, staring out at several leafless trees and the maroon-brick administration building, which was behind Dealy. “That lunatic gives Poe scholarship a bad name. For one thing, he keeps insisting on defi nitive scholarship, but there’s no such thing when it comes to Poe.

Sometimes Poe said he shunned fame and didn’t care for it, yet sometimes he claimed he was des-Nevermore