Anton Strout - Deader Still

“Thaddeus, shh!” she said on the line. “I’m sorry, Simon. What were you saying?”

Last night’s paranoia quickly seeped back into my heart. I cleared my throat.

“The Stacks,” I repeated. “I need to use them.”

“Oh,” she said. Jane sounded distracted. I tried to imagine what she could possibly be doing there that was so damned important. Maybe she’s doing Wesker, Mina chirped up in my head. I tried to shake that image loose, but couldn’t.

“I’ll be there soon,” I said, and hung up.

Was I crazy and just simply the victim of an overactive imagination? Or was I right on the mark about there being something going on between the two of them? I grabbed my shoulder bag and stuffed the printouts of the photos into it. I headed back toward the exit, trying not to break into a full sprint across the office as I did so. The entire office didn’t need to get caught up in my private life. As it stood, there was ample material for them to ridicule me about.

In the cab heading uptown to Tome, Sweet Tome, I reminded myself to give Mina a swift kick in the ass later for causing all this doubt in me with her evil, twisted whispers last night. Not to mention the fact that because of her, I might be committing a felony tomorrow night, and that was weighing heavily on my shoulders.

The cab pulled up to the curb. After I paid the driver, I hurried toward the bookstore and swung open the front door, but no one was up by the registers. Of course not. Why would there be? Why would either of them hang out up there when they could be all alone hidden away at the back of the store? I wandered through the towering piles of books, careful not to knock any of them over, although lashing out at something felt like a pretty good idea right about now.

I entered the gated Black Stacks and was relieved to find Jane seated alone cross-legged in the middle of one of the aisles. She made notes on a PDA, but she wasn’t actually using a stylus to enter information. Jane was staring at the screen while that now-familiar sound of old-school dial-up came from her mouth and words magically appeared on the screen in front of her.

“Well, that’s new, isn’t it?” I asked.

She looked up, startled. She didn’t smile.

“That was rude,” she said, and turned back to the PDA.

“What was?”

Jane finished whatever she was working on and then set the machine down. “Hanging up on me like that before,” she said. “What was that all about?”

I looked down the aisle toward the back of the store. “Is Wesker around?”

Jane shook her head. “One of the books tried to escape again. I think they really miss having Cyrus as their owner. I know he was evil and responsible for the whole Ghostsniffing operation, but they really seem like they were attached to him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say his name. Just hearing it mentioned was enough to bring back horrifying memories of the several times I had been attacked by the Black Stacks at Cyrus’s command.

“Anyway, Thaddeus went chasing off after it somewhere,” she continued, still looking somewhat disconnected. “I suggested we start chaining the more aggressive ones to the shelves but he said no.”

“Can you please not call him that?” I said, losing patience. “He’s your boss. You should call him Director Wesker. That’s just good business”

Jane rose from the floor with a sinister look in her eyes. She slammed the book she had been working with back on the shelf, then gave it a soothing pat. “I’m sorry if Other Division is so formal.”

“Don’t tell me you’re now part of the Departmental in-fighting, too? Are you telling me that you and Thaddeus are thick as thieves? Ask anyone in Greater and Lesser Arcana about him, Jane. Do you think they all live in fear of him because it’s some kind of joke?”

“If you remember,” Jane said, defensive, “Director Wesker saved us from the Sectarians. He’s the one who clocked Faisal Bane when we were cornered in my old office . . . with your own bat even.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m just going to blindly trust him.”

“And I’m not either,” Jane said, getting angry now. “But I do work for the man, and I have to take how he treats me at face value. So far he’s been nothing but kind, which is more than I can say about you lately.”

I felt slapped in the face by that. “Meaning what?”

“How’s Mina?” Jane asked with acid in her voice, and there we had it.

Now I felt slammed in the stomach, feeling shady once again for having to even deal with Mina. I wasn’t cheating on Jane with her, I reminded myself, but I still felt shady hiding our criminal past together.

“You said you were okay with her staying for a few days,” I said.

“Well, thanks to you getting all suspicious about me, I just became un-okay with Mina staying in your apartment,” Jane said. She stormed past me toward the gates. “I’ll be up at the front of the store. Try not to agitate the books, will you?”

“Wait,” I said. “How am I going to find what I need?”

“Find it yourself,” she said, and I watched as she walked out the gates toward the registers.

Maybe it had been a blessing when my powers used to be out of control. Sure, I couldn’t really stay with a woman too long because of my inability to harness my psychometry, but at least it kept me from having to deal with these petty jealousy issues that came with a long-term relationship. It was enough to drive me mad, but I pushed it from my mind as best I could.

I turned my attention to the Black Stacks and started walking up and down the aisles, gloves on and careful not to touch any of the books that might take offense. I didn’t want a repeat of the time Connor had had to rescue me from a rampaging shelving unit.

I needed something that might give me more information on Cleopatra’s Needle and what arcane purpose it served. After a few minutes of pacing the aisles, I found a stretch of books that was a section on local historical phenomena, and I perused the titles until I came across one that looked the most promising: The Rough Guide to Supernatural New York City .

I reached for it, then stopped myself before actually coming in contact with it. I looked up at the bookcase it sat in.

“Umm, hello,” I said, feeling somewhat foolish. “I don’t know if you’re friends with that other bookcase that had a gripe with me that other time I was here, but I was hoping to take one of the books off your shelves.”

The bookcase, as I expected, didn’t react.

“Okay,” I said. I raised my hand to the book. “Well, I promise I’ll read it right here and then return it in the same condition. No harm done. No need to attack me or anything like that.”

Still no reaction. With one hand I reached for the book and with the other, I thumbed off the leather safety strap on my bat holster. I grabbed the book and pulled it slowly from the shelf, ready to put it back at the slightest hint of movement on the part of the bookshelf.

I let out a sigh of relief when nothing happened.

“Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this particular bookcase was even like the other, more homicidal one, but it didn’t hurt to be polite anyway.

I sat down on the floor just as Jane had, put the book on my lap, and flipped it open.

Only to have it slam shut on both my hands. Well, it wasn’t a slamming shut so much as it was a biting down. With teeth. Hard. I let out a scream of pain and instantly reached for my bat, pulling it out by using the open palms of both hands. I had to push the button to telescope it out against my knee, but I was still screwed. In order to use the bat against the book, I needed to have one hand free to swipe at it. The pain in my fingers grew stronger, even through the gloves, but luckily there didn’t seem to be any blood seeping through the gloves.