“That’s what Connor said. And the thing is, we found her down in the cafй…having apocalyptic images,” I added. “Throw in her determination to still be among the living…”
“And we’d be fools to ignore it,” Quimbley finished. He walked around his cluttered desk. “Let’s check her out. Then I’ll see if we need to bring the Fraternal Order of Goodness in on this.” I swelled with pride. The inspector thought my case might be important enough to bring the F.O.G.ies in on, and he trusted me enough to tell me that.
Quimbley paused as we headed for the door and looked back at the now cold cup of tea he left behind. “Bollocks!” he shouted. “Another teatime shot to hell.”
I heard a shuffle in the hallway and looked up to see Thaddeus Wesker trying to linger inconspicuously by the Inspectre’s door.
“Hello, Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said, narrowing his eyes. “Did you need to see me?”
“Just passing by,” the Arcana director said. The smile on his face looked forced, yet diabolical. I made myself disappear against the wall as the two men locked eyes in a struggle for dominance.
“I see,” the Inspectre said. He motioned toward the floor and pretended to scatter something with his foot. “Well, make sure you pick up these eaves you seemed to have dropped on your way, won’t you?”
Wesker’s smile fell away and he clenched his fists at his side.
“Come along, Simon,” the Inspectre said. Wesker looked at me with sheer disdain, but I was already moving away toward the stairs. “Let’s get moving before he corners you into hearing his woeful story of injustice for the millionth time. He’s still angry,” the Inspectre said conspiratorially, “because he’s been denied entry to F.O.G. again.”
Wesker stormed off toward his office as the Inspectre and I headed downstairs. Once downstairs, I was pleased to see that the Inspectre had a gentle touch with Irene. He fired off rapid questions at her, but without a hint of the irritation he had shown with Wesker moments before. Irene recounted much of what she had told us. When Quimbley pressed her about her death, she said all she remembered was a yellow blur. Then she began asking questions of her own. Her frustration over being dead, something she still didn’t seem to be buying into, crept out and her questions began to get more belligerent and sarcastic.
To the Inspectre’s credit, he took them well. Quimbley had seen a world of wonders over the years, and I doubted if this one woman’s sarcasm would be his breaking point. As it turned out, Irene was not the Inspectre’s breaking point. I was.
“Dammit, man!” he barked at me. “Stop cringing every time the woman asks me a question! You’re trifling with my concentration. Now sit quietly and listen…or better yet, why don’t the two of you do something useful…like figuring out how the devil she died and who she is!
“Unless you want Haunts-General to take care of this?” the Inspectre asked us quietly.
Connor shook his head. “This isn’t just a simple ghost bust. I need to figure out why she’s so…lively. Something peculiar is going on in the spirit world. There was that peculiar ghost we came across last night and all those broken jars. Maybe there’s a connection.”
The Inspectre nodded.
“Then you two had better get on with it,” he whispered to us. “I want you to find out as much as you can regarding this dear soul here.”
Connor looked frustrated, but nodded. “I guess we can backburner the Shambler,” he said. “The zombies can wait also.”
“This is wrath of God apocalypse stuff she brought up here,” I said. “Surely that takes priority.”
Connor turned on me, and I could see annoyance in his eyes.
“Kid,” he said, “you realize how many Four Horsemen scenarios we get everyday?”
I shook my head.
“How many of the supposed Seven Seals do you think Greater and Lesser Arcana break weekly?”
This time I shrugged.
Connor snorted.
“This is just another apocalypse,” he said, “lowercase ‘a,’ as far as I’m concerned. It’s no big. Probably is just a harbinger that something really bad happened to keep Irene’s spirit sticking around instead of crossing over.”
“Nonetheless,” the Inspectre said, moving our little powwow farther away from Irene. “I’m concerned that we’re getting this class of vision from a ghost, and a ghost so clearly full of life. I’ll have the Fraternal Order check her out, but my initial assessment is that, given Irene’s strong presence, you chaps make this a top priority.”
Connor swallowed whatever words were on his lips. “Yes, sir. We’ll figure out who she is and then check out her home, and get back to you.”
The Inspectre stood there waiting for us to leave. The final word had been his, and it was clear that, for now, any further discussion was over. As we walked away, I heard the Inspectre ask, “You don’t perchance recall if you were married, love?”
I turned to look and felt a wave of relief as Irene shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said and nervously tucked a lock of her dark brown hair behind one ear. “I wish I knew.”
Connor shook his head at me. I smiled guiltily. We stepped back through the curtain and stopped at our desks. I winced at the towering stack of files and reports sitting untouched in my in-box. I ignored my pile and looked over at Connors. His was just as tall and, like mine, getting taller. We divided up the most basic of tasks at hand. Connor called around to all the metropolitan area hospitals while I checked Google and the newswires for anything involving the disappearance of a woman named Irene. After a half hour, Connor hung up the phone.
“Anything, kid?”
I shook my head.
“Looks like we’re going to have to get off our asses…” he said and stood up.
“Too bad,” I said. “I was kinda looking forward to doing all this paperwork.”
I wondered if I had lighter fluid and matches somewhere in my desk.
“That can wait,” Connor said. “We need to figure out who this Irene is before her ghost starts degrading on us to the point she’s like that rogue spirit last night. I can think of only one place that might give us the answers we’re looking for. There’s this book-”
“Tome, Sweet Tome?” I offered.
Connor nodded.
I grabbed my retractable bat off my desk and slipped the handle of it into the loop on my belt. You never knew when you might need a good blunt instrument in a bookstore.
8
The Department of Extraordinary Affairs had its own stock of books regarding the paranormal, but there were plenty of dark and evil tomes that even we refused to keep on the premises. That meant that sometimes we were stuck having to go elsewhere for our supernatural information needs. Thus, Connor and I found a visit to Tome, Sweet Tome on the Upper West Side in order. It was Tamara’s neighborhood, and I dreaded running into her accidentally, but we had to hit Tome. Almost anything you could ever want on the subject on the dark arts, the gray arts, and even the off-white arts could be found somewhere on the dusty shelves of the nefarious bookstore. The two of us rode silently uptown in a cab. I thought about asking more questions about this missing brother of Connor’s to break the silence, but he was busy getting into character for our visit.
Tome, Sweet Tome was famous in the heavy-duty, no-holds-barred world of serious arcane research, but surprisingly its collection of knowledge did not make the store itself a dangerous place. Its owner, Cyrus Mandalay, had never been robbed, mugged, harassed, or otherwise mistreated in all the years that the D.E.A. had dealt with the bookstore. At nearly six feet four inches and sporting a tribal tattoo down the entire left side of his face, Cyrus was an imposing-looking fellow. His pale skin was drawn tight over his angular features and he sported long black hair done up in dreads. Cyrus was definitely not the type of shopkeeper the average criminal would think of messing with, and he definitely didn’t fit the bookish stereotype one would normally be buying literature from, either.