Anton Strout - Deader Still

“Wait,” Connor said. “You’re telling me you didn’t even know the name of a person you were selling those . . . those . . . things to?”

Marten gave a sheepish grin. “In our business, it’s sometimes better if we don’t ask too many questions. Not if we want to make enough to support our little clan back in Illinois.”

“How very familial of you,” Connor said, “but where you’re headed, I think they’re going to have to fend for themselves for a while.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be happening,” said Marten, and he flourished his arms in a grandiose and arcane gesture. Lanford and Julius joined in, too. I braced myself for whatever was about to happen.

But when the gesturing stopped there was nothing but silence and the three of them still standing there.

Lanford looked at both of his hands, then turned to his shorter, balding brother.

“Marten . . . ?”

Director Wesker stepped toward them. “Did you really think that when we found this little exhibit, we would be stupid enough to just let you run rampant with your feeble brand of folk magic? The first thing any agent of Greater and Lesser Arcana worth his salt does is create a nullification field.”

I was impressed, despite all my recent misgivings about the man.

Connor stepped forward and got in Marten’s face. “I’ll ask you again,” Connor said. “How do you know Cyrus?”

All the life and theatrics fell from Marten’s face. Now he just looked like a tired, middle-aged man with a failing head of hair and a paunch.

“We had never met before,” he said with a slow shake of his head, “and until you told us his name, we had no idea who he was.”

Connor kicked one of the nearby crates and stormed off. I followed him as Wesker dragged the gypsies away.

Connor moved from the crowd and sat down on top of one of the crates. I hoisted myself up onto the one next to him.

“So these guys are useless to us,” I said.

Connor nodded. “Other than getting them off the street for being a menace all their own, I don’t think they can help us out.”

“There’s got to be something here in all this evidence around us to help,” I said. “Something that will give us some kind of clue as to just what the hell Cyrus has been up to these past few months.”

“You said your friend Mina was caught up in all this?” Connor said, perking up.

“I wouldn’t exactly call her a friend,” I said. “More of an old psychopath I used to work with. One that had been serving time in the same facility as—”

“Faisal Bane,” Connor said, getting up from the crate he was on. He headed off past the Inspectre in the direction of the little colored candy trail that led back to the exit. Connor already had his phone out and was dialing. “Thaniel Graydon, please.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. After the day I had been through, though, I was surprised I could remember my own name. I limped off after him.

“Since when do you own a boat?” Connor said as we walked down one of the west side docks toward the silhouette of a thirty-foot motorboat. Empty, it looked like a creepy little ghost ship. I expected to see spectral figures floating around inside the small cabin on its deck, but was relieved to see nothing of the sort.

“Well,” I said, “technically I don’t own a boat, but the Fraternal Order of Goodness does. You said you needed one, so I got us one.”

“And if I said I needed a supermodel?” Connor said. He undid the knot cleating the boat to the dock without an ounce of difficulty.

“I’d have to check the supply room for one of those,” I said.

Connor crossed down to the far end of the boat, undid the cleat there, and stepped onto the deck with one foot while pushing it away from the dock with the other.

He waved to me like he was leaving on the Love Boat . “You coming, kid?”

I hesitated as the boat floated away, but jumped over onto it before the gap spread too wide.

“I take it you’ve done this before?” I said, searching for the ladder leading up to the steering on top of the darkened cabin. “ ’Cause I don’t know how to drive one of these things . . .”

“A couple of times,” Connor said. “Not with this boat, mind you. I usually had to rent one, then expense it and wait to be reimbursed months later. Nice of you to save me the trouble this time. Maybe you F.O.G.gies aren’t worthless after all.”

I found the ladder and climbed up. I fished out the keys the Inspectre had given me and moved to the controls, but Connor held his hand out. “Keys, kid.”

I gave them over and Connor fired up the boat, leaving only the bare minimum of running lights on. He pulled away from the dock and out into the Hudson River at a good speed, heading north. “Boating isn’t that hard,” he confided. “The secret is not to hit the land or other boats.”

A fine mist rose around us as we sped toward the distant lit-up structure of the George Washington Bridge. I rode along for several minutes in silence, simply enjoying the disconnect from the city and the feel of the open water, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me.

“You want to tell me who this Thaniel Graydon is now?” I asked.

“Not who,” Connor shouted over the sound of the engine, “ what .”

“Sorry,” I said. “It sounded like a proper name.”

“It is, or rather was. You should know him; he’s part of your old-boys network. Thaniel Graydon was a F.O.G.gie. What I know about him is limited to his involvement with the early years of the D.E.A., but I think he had something to do with one of our founding fathers being a necromancer.”

This all felt oddly familiar, and then it hit me. “Benjamin Franklin,” I said.

Connor turned and looked at me. “How do you know that?”

“I think I was Thaniel Graydon,” I said. “For only for a few seconds. Back when we were working on Irene’s case, I accidentally triggered off this book that Wesker was carrying around and I got the most horrific flashes of this rotting creature . . .”

I shuddered, not sure if it was from the cold on the water or the ancient necromancer’s image that once again filled my head. “So I doubt we’re going to see someone well over two hundred years old,” I said. “Umm . . . are we?”

“Given our chosen profession, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility, I suppose,” Connor said.

“True,” I admitted, “but where are we going?”

“The Thaniel Graydon Center is a special annex to the Rikers Island facility.”

“Rikers?” I said, confused. “Isn’t that in the East River, closer to Queens? We’re going to have to circle Manhattan. Not that I mind. It’s a nice night and all . . .”

“Rikers Island is in the East River, yes,” Connor said, “but the Thaniel Graydon Center isn’t attached to it. It’s free-floating. It’s a prison barge where they keep a lot of their special cases.”

Connor took one hand from the wheel and pointed forward at a speck that looked like a giant, floating Lego that grew larger with every second we sped toward it.

I wondered if this was the prison where Mina had first heard my name again and met Faisal. Although she possessed no special powers that I knew of, she definitely qualified as “special” in a lot of ways, and given her somewhat dangerous and erratic behavior, she had probably earned a quick place within the prison community.

Up close, the barge was impressive, a miniature four-story city crammed onto the deck of an immense boat. Blocky white buildings were guarded by tall searchlight towers at the four corners of the barge. Even if you were able to escape the confines of your cell and avoid the lights, there was still the open water to contend with. It seemed a perfect place to house someone like Faisal Bane.