Anton Strout: Dead Waters

For my grandparents

Ray & Edna Van Valkenburg,

who have supported me all along

Welcome to book four in the Simon Canderous series, dear readers. Thanks for dropping by once again. Glad you made it through the zombie-filled streets.

It takes a village to bring a book to fruition. . . a haunted, creepy, fog-filled village. It’s time to thank some of those villagers personally for ushering Dead Waters into existence, including: everyone at Penguin Group, most notably the creepy crawlies who inhabit paperback sales; my editor, Jessica Wade, beater-upper of bad writing whenever it rears its ugly head in my manuscript; production editor Michelle Kasper and copy editor Valle Hansen; Annette Fiore DeFex, Judith Murello, and Don Sipley, for an action-packed jacket, complete with gargoyle and Simon’s trusty retractable bat; Erica Colon and her crack team of ad/promo people; Jodi Rosoff and my publicist, Rosanne Romanello, who parade me out from time to time to interact with the public; my agent, Kristine Dahl, and Laura Neely, at ICM, who keep track of the kind of details that make my head all ’splodey; the Dorks of the Round Table—authors Jeanine Cummins and Carolyn Turgeon; the League of Reluctant Adults, for continued support and stocking of the bar; glamazon Lisa Trevethan, for her eye in all things beta; Jennifer Snyder, webmistress of UndeadApproved.com, the unofficial fan site that knows more about me than me; my family; and last but certainly not least, my wife, Orly, who puts up with long hours of me ignoring her while I bring these books to you. She has the patience of a saint and my undying love. Now, let’s see what shenanigans the gang down at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs is up to this time, shall we?

I wanted to be home. I wanted to be in my nice comfy bed in my nice swank SoHo apartment with my beautiful girlfriend, Jane, at my side, not dressed up in my three-quarter-length leather coat, sporting my trusty Indiana Jones-style satchel. I certainly didn’t want to be using the retractable metal bat hanging from my belt as we answered a late-night haunting emergency in an antiques store at the Gibson-Case Center on Columbus Circle. Sadly, it was a rare day when I got what I really wanted.

The motif of the store was that of an old-world warehouse, maybe New York dock houses circa 1900. The interior was massive, blocked off here and there with partial walls that broke the space up into a cluttered maze of furniture.

Jane let out a quiet whistle. “I feel like I stepped out of time,” she said.

I nodded in agreement. “It looks like the gathered treasure hoard of a secret Time Police.”

She looked back over her shoulder at me, continuing off into the darker depths of the store. Her long blond hair was still half-crazed looking from the warm September winds that had whipped at it along Central Park West. “Is that an actual division of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs?”

I grinned. “I love that in our line of work, that is a serious question, but no,” I said. “I think maybe I caught it from an episode of Doctor Who .” I had hoped for a little laughter out of her, but all I could get was a weak smile. “You know, nothing good comes from skulking through a closed-up shop in the middle of the night,” I whispered. “Especially if it’s a favor to someone.”

“Especially if that someone is undead,” she said. “Still, it could be worse.”

I stopped skulking along for a minute and looked at her in the low, dull red cast down from distant EXIT lights. “How? How could it be worse?”

“Technically we’re not on the clock with the Department of Extraordinary Affairs tonight, right? So, as you said—this is a favor . Doesn’t count as work, so . . .”

I smiled, despite the creepiness of our surroundings. “No paperwork,” I said. “I won’t have to spend half my night documenting this. Score one for us.”

Jane nodded, clapping, but I grabbed at her hands, stopping her. The sound echoed out in the silent stillness of the store for a moment before dying completely.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

I looked around the store. “Antiques,” I said, cringing a little. “Why did it have to be antiques?”

Jane squeezed my hand. “You going to be okay?”

I nodded. “I understand your concern, hon, but I’ll be fine.”

Jane didn’t look convinced. “It’s just that. . . I know how your psychometry gets. I don’t want it triggering while we’re taking care of whatever is haunting this place.”

“I know,” I said, putting my nerves aside. “I’m like a kid in a candy store, except that kid would be less likely to go hypoglycemic.” New and simple objects could trigger my psychometry, but every damned thing in here had so much history bound to it. If I used my power to read the past on any of this collection of goods, its richness would drain my blood sugar in no time.

“I can catch you if you pass out,” Jane said with a smile.

Despite my trepidation in the still spookiness of the store, her words calmed me. I let go of her hands, pulled out a pair of gloves that helped dampen my powers, and slipped them on before starting off through the maze once again. “Although,” I said, looking at some of the pieces, “I’m not sure I want to control my powers. The quality of this stuff really speaks to the ex-thief in me. It makes me want to—what’s the word?—re-thief.”

“Focus, hon,” Jane said. She reached inside my knee-length leather coat and pulled back the left flap of it, revealing the holster at my side. She pulled out the foot-long metal cylinder and handed it to me. “Here, this should help.”

The weight of my retractable bat felt good in my hand. I clicked the safety off it by hitting Jane’s initials on its keypad— JCF for Jane Clayton-Forrester—and it sprung to its full lethal length. There was power in holding it.

We continued creeping along as quietly as we could. The navigation was hard going but it became easier to see as a faint glow rose beyond a long bank of armoires up ahead. Jane stopped in her tracks as she rounded the corner, using one of her hands to steady herself against the closet. “Whoa,” she said, her eyes widening.

I hurried ahead through a clutch of tables to join her and looked for myself. The store opened up into an empty circle in the middle of the cavernous space with an old-fashioned barber’s chair at the center of it. The black leather of its seat had intricate waves of color, the type of flame details you usually saw on a hot rod, not a chair. That wasn’t what had Jane’s attention or mine now. Floating unsupported at least fifteen feet above it was a swirling mass of intricately arranged lamps. The bulk of the structure was made up mostly of Tiffany-style lamps of every shape and size, their bulbs burning softly.

“Take notes,” I whispered. “For instance. . . lamps should not float in the air like that.”

“Ya think?” Jane asked. “No offense, but I think that floating lamps fall more into my job expertise in Greater and Lesser Arcana Division.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but Aidan Christos called me in for this favor, so I’m gonna handle them.”