Anton Strout - Deader Still

“Hey,” I heard Connor yelling from far off in the crowd. “Get your goddamn hands off my partner.”

Julius’s meaty grip on my arms tightened painfully. Marten looked into my eyes as if he was studying me. I tried to look away, but it was no use.

“Such a pity,” he said, disappointed. “Would that there was more time and we were meeting under more auspicious circumstances . . . Still, we can’t have you hounding us, can we?”

Marten raised his free hand up to my face, the pinkie and index finger extended and practically touching my eyeballs. I struggled to pull my head away, but Julius’s chest pressed against the back of my head, making it impossible to move. Marten then muttered something barely resembling a language, and all of a sudden I felt like I wanted to throw up.

Julius let go of me, and I was surprised to find that I couldn’t stand. I fell to the floor, gagging. I turned my head to the left and saw Connor arriving just on the other side of their tables.

The Brothers Heron stepped over my body, heading toward their wagon.

“Time to pull the old Baba Yaga, boys,” Marten said. Lanford and Julius looked at each other, total “is he serious” looks on their faces. They decided that their brother was indeed serious and made short work of stuffing themselves through the doorway of the gypsy wagon, Julius barely fitting. Marten backed up the steps. “We’re really not bad guys, honest.”

He pulled the door shut as he backed in, and smoke started pouring off the tiny wooden wagon, forming voluminous black clouds. It reminded me of those black snake fireworks I’d had as a kid. Cloud after cloud of black smoke rolled off it and rose toward the convention center ceiling high overhead. When it cleared, the entire gypsy wagon had vanished.

A few of the people who had stopped to watch applauded the spectacle, most likely convinced they were seeing some kind of staged Comic Con event.

Connor helped me up. I choked on the last of the smoke, but thankfully the sickening sensation in my stomach was gone.

“You okay, kid?”

I nodded, winded and unable to speak.

“Those guys had something to do with the chupacabra?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“I kinda figured that after you left me back at the booth playing ‘Where’s Lanford?’ with the crime scene photo.”

Finally my throat cleared enough that I could speak.

“Those douche bags are what gives gypsies an evil name, you know that?” I said. “Evil.”

“One of them actually looked like he was evil-eyeing you,” Connor said, looking me over. He put his hands on my face and pried my eyes open to examine them. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, then stopped myself. “Hold on.” The stomach pain had passed and the smoke inhalation too, but I somehow felt . . . off. I walked over to the table of goods the brothers had left behind as a result of their hasty exit.

I scooped up one of the totems at random with my bare hands. I pushed my power into it and . . . nothing. I threw it down and grabbed a deck of Tarot cards. Nothing. I scooped up several items at once, trying to roll my power into them.

All nothing.

“Kid?”

“My power,” I said. “It’s gone.” Then, as an afterthought, “I hate Illinois gypsies.”

While I stared at my hands, Connor checked through the space previously occupied by the gypsy wagon just to make sure we weren’t having the wool pulled over our eyes by some sort of illusion.

When we determined that the wagon truly wasn’t there anymore, I said, “Well, that’s pretty damn impressive.”

The crowd that had cheered when the wagon disappeared had dispersed, since it looked like the magic show was over and the wagon wouldn’t be reappearing anytime soon.

Connor paced in the now-empty booth. He looked hopeful, like maybe the wagon might suddenly reappear.

“I thought gypsies only did folk magic,” I said. “Trinkety stuff . . . lucky rabbits feet, love potions, wart removal, that kind of thing.”

Connor stopped pacing and looked up at me. He held his arms out and waved them in the empty space.

“Usually, yeah,” Connor said. “I guess some folk magic is a little bigger than others.”

“A little bigger?” I said. “We’re talking David Copper-field vanishing the Statue of Liberty proportions here. I think we should go fill the Inspectre in.”

Connor agreed and the two of us returned through a sea of geeks and nerds to our booth to give the Inspectre our rundown of what had just happened. Including the fact that I had lost my power.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Connor said once we had finished telling him. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Oh, really?” I said, agitated. “That’s pretty positive sounding coming from someone who hasn’t just lost their abilities . You’ll figure something out? Tell me, Connor, just how much folk magic have you reversed in your day?”

Connor held up his hand, his fingers tracing a circular goose egg.

“Exactly,” I said. I turned to the Inspectre. “Sir, I’m sorry. I have to get out of here.”

“Nonsense, my boy,” Inspectre Quimbley said, giving me an encouraging slap on the shoulder. “There’s plenty you can do around here to help with recruitment that doesn’t require a lick of power.”

I walked out from behind our table and went over to the next booth. It was just your average Comic Con booth, set up with a wide array of collectible comic memorabilia. I ran my hands up and down through the cardboard coffins of comics.

“Nothing,” I said, moving to the next table and the next one after that. “Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. ”

I must have looked insane.

Connor and the Inspectre stared in silence until I calmed down.

“Feel better, kid?” Connor said.

“Not really,” I said. “I feel kind of naked without my power, you know? It’s been a part of me for so long, I can’t remember life before it.”

The Inspectre gave a loud ha-room , stroked his mustache, and walked around the table to the outer side of the booth.

“Perhaps I’ll give you two a moment to collect yourselves while I check out this disappearing wagon for myself,” he said.

As he headed off in the direction we had just come from, Connor and I lapsed into awkward silence.

Several passersby sidled up to the booth, took a few pamphlets, and moved on. I was still shaking from the dawning realization of what losing my powers really meant. In many ways, they had defined my very existence up until this point.

“Listen, kid,” Connor said after a while. His voice was soft when he spoke. “Up until you joined the D.E.A., you considered your powers mostly a curse, right? Always messing up any chance with the ladies. So look on the bright side—now you don’t have to worry about your power getting in the way of your life anymore.”

I didn’t think I could feel worse than I already did, but apparently I was wrong.

“Yeah,” I said, “I can ruin my life all on my own just fine. Thanks.”

Connor cocked his head.

“Troubles in paradise, kid?”

I stepped back into our booth and sulked toward the rear of it.

“I don’t know,” I said, thankful for the change of subject even if it was also a dark one. “I don’t know if I can take her being in Greater and Lesser Arcana. I just don’t like Jane working so closely with Wesker. Every time I see them, she’s laughing and having a good time, but whenever I’m around her lately, it’s like she’s reserving all her lingering bits of darkness just for me. You don’t think that she and Wesker . . . ?”

I couldn’t even finish my sentence without my brain feeling like it might explode. My heart jackhammered in my chest.