Anton Strout - Deader Still

“So,” he said, “you think it was sabotage?”

I nodded.

“If you had to make a guess,” he continued, “who do you think tried to kill you?”

He said it so earnestly, I laughed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and then thought about it. “Well, I’ve only been here half a year, so I haven’t had a ton of time to make that many enemies, I hope.” I thought for a moment. “I’d say the Sectarians, for a start. But their leader is locked up in jail.”

“The Sectarians,” he said. Godfrey’s eyes rolled up into his head as if he were a computer accessing some archived file. “Oh, right. That whole pincushioning their leader to the wall of the Met thing . . .”

Yeah,” I said, “ that .” I couldn’t help but have a little bitterness in my tone.

“Did I say something wrong?” Godfrey said. He looked genuinely concerned that he might have somehow offended me. He worried the notebook back and forth in his hands.

I shook my head.

“I just thought things would be different; that’s all,” I said.

“Different how?” he asked, looking enrapt.

“I don’t want to trouble you with any of this,” I said, starting to stand.

“No, please,” he said. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were eager like a starving man coveting someone’s sandwich.

I sat back down.

“After that night at the museum,” I said, “when you caught me just outside on the steps almost immediately after it went down . . .”

Godfrey nodded. He tapped the side of his temple. “I remember.”

I was sure the Computer Who Wore Horn-Rims did. I continued.

“I was on cloud nine . . . cloud ten, even. Everyone was patting me on the back, congratulating me. I had been in hog heaven with all that attention, plus with Jane on my arm. The Fraternal Order had just taken me in . . .”

I couldn’t put words to it.

“You’re lamenting your success,” Godfrey offered.

“That’s exactly it,” I exclaimed, almost physically relieved to hear him say it.

“I hear that a lot, actually,” he said.

“Really?”

Godfrey nodded. “A lot of agents bring it up when they’re recounting stuff for the Gauntlet. Let me guess. Right now you’re experiencing a bout of depression, especially after the day you’ve had . . .”

“Yes,” I said. It was invigorating to get this kind of validation. “I spent three months after the whole Met incident doing the paperwork on it. Three months . And then I have days where I almost die on an hourly basis and everything goes wrong around here. Then I have to file a twenty-page form to get a new cell phone from Supply. With all these swings between the mundane and the fantastical, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Godfrey gave me a kind smile. “You do realize you work for the Department of Extra ordinary Affairs, don’t you? Try not to confuse things. It’s the affairs that are extraordinary, not us. We still have to be ordinary in the face of it. Sure, some of us might do extraordinary things, but we can’t live our lives at that heightened level.”

I did feel better having heard it, but it still nagged at me. “It feels so crazy and thankless.”

“Welcome to civil service,” Godfrey said, and he laughed. “Good deeds are supposed to be their own reward, are they not?”

I nodded and started to laugh as well, hearing the Inspectre’s words echoed. “Yeah, well, a little reward every now and then wouldn’t hurt. Do you know what I came up with when they finally forced me to do my own performance appraisal? I wrote ‘Didn’t die.’ ”

Godfrey laughed harder, the two of us now cackling like witches around a cauldron. A few of the norms who hung out in the Lovecraft Café gave us the evil eye, but I didn’t care. Something pleasant in me had bubbled up to the surface, and I embraced it.

Godfrey reached into a messenger bag sitting on the floor next to his chair and pulled out a stack of paper. “This is mine,” he said. “Forty-three pages so far, and still counting . . .”

I raised my mug to him once again.

“You, sir, have given me a sense of perspective,” I said, the laughter starting to calm. “Not to mention the best laugh I’ve had all day.”

He clinked his mug against mine.

I was somewhat exhausted from my day, but at least my mind was in better spirits. Too bad I was about to spoil it by heading home to deal with the fallout from my tiff with Jane earlier this afternoon.

A calm washed over me as I embraced the nighttime quiet of the SoHo streets. By the time I clambered into the wrought-iron cage of my building’s elevator, I was practically asleep. I was also full of regret, remembering how I had conducted myself at the bookstore with Jane earlier. Now all I wanted was a chance to apologize, if Jane was even going to stop by now.

When the elevator hit my floor, I slid the accordion doors open and stumbled down the hall, barely awake. My apartment door wasn’t locked, but with my brain shutting down for the day, I didn’t think much of it. I was expecting Jane, after all, and besides, if I had afforded myself any luxury in this world, it was that I lived in a pretty nice and secure building. But I’d been wrong before. I woke right the hell up when a fist shot out from behind my door and popped me in the jaw. The hook of the swing made the left side of my head smack hard against the solid oak of the door itself.

Part of my special training from the D.E.A. kicked in as one of the lessons I’d learned in the first session came to me. He who turns and runs away, lives to live another day . I wasn’t about to get ambushed in my own apartment, and since the punch had spun me to face my door and potential freedom, I gladly started off in that direction . . . until an arm snaked around my neck from behind and dragged me back into the apartment. My legs were sprawled out in front of me as I was pulled backward toward the couch in the center of the room. Whoever was attacking me was strong as hell. There was no way I was going to overpower him from this position.

I waited for him to stop dragging me. My training was more than just how to fight; it was how to fight dirty if need be. I vividly remembered the unfortunate day when our instructor had said, “When you’re not sure what you’re dealing with—be it humanoid, lycanthropic, or other—go for the breadbasket.” I did just that. I put all my weight on my right leg and threw the rest of it into the heel of my left foot, raising it high and hard into my attacker’s crotch. My attacker let out a grunt but didn’t release the hold around my neck. Just then, it dawned on me with rising horror just what type of creature could withstand a kick to the groin. I was being sleeperholded by a woman.

Jane couldn’t be that pissed, could she?

“I apologize,” I croaked out, but it was lost in the commotion.

“Apology accepted,” a woman who was most definitely not Jane said from right behind my ear. Panic set in, but before I was able to free myself, the weight of my body was used against me and I was thrown down onto my couch. Luckily I landed in an upright position, almost perfectly sitting, but before I could get up my attacker straddled me and pushed me back against the leather. I caught a flash of steel in the darkness and felt a cold blade against my neck. Just like that, the fight went out of me.

The figure leaned forward, crossing into a stream of moonlight coming in through the ceiling-high bay windows that covered one whole wall of my living room. The woman’s hair was dark red and shoulder length, cut so she sported Bettie Page bangs. Her eyes showed a hint of devilish delight in manhandling—womanhandling—me. Her lips were pressed thin as she slid the knife against my throat, but there was something familiar about her.