Dead to Me

22

Connor was silent the entire cab ride up to Tome, Sweet Tome, and I sensed the tension in him building. Hell, I felt it myself.

All because of Cyrus Mandalay.

Despite the tattoo down the entire left side of his face, his dreads, his sharklike teeth, and imposing figure, Cyrus had always portrayed himself as a good guy—an advocate of reading and responsible arcane usage—and we had believed him. He was supposed to be on our side. If Cyrus was somehow tied to Irene’s death or had dealings with the Sectarians without telling us…

It sat like a bad taste in my mouth.

We stopped in front of the bookshop, and I spied Cyrus through the front window. I was surprised to see that rather than wandering casually into the store and then cornering Cyrus, Connor leapt from the cab and sprinted toward the door. Clearly Connor didn’t like playing the fool, and Cyrus’s deception had gotten to him more than I thought. He had thrown caution to the wind. If I was suddenly the rational one, we were probably in trouble.

I saw Cyrus’s eyes widen through the main window at the sight of a charging Connor, and he took off toward the back of the store. I quickly paid the driver, but by the time I was done, Connor had already flung the doors to Tome, Sweet Tome open and stomped in. I raced in after him, pulling my bat free from my belt as I ran.

A crowd of kids stood in the teen-friendly section across from the registers, but they were pointing toward the back of the store down an aisle where a stack of books had recently been knocked over. Unheard of at Tome, Sweet Tome.

Connor dodged some of the still falling books and sped down the same aisle at a full run. He hadn’t even hesitated for a moment to look back and see what I was doing. That was either a sign that his trust in me was growing or that he was too angry to care. Probably a little of both.

“Cyrus!” he shouted as he ran through the Stacks. “Don’t make me chase you! I really don’t need this exercise, and when I catch you, I’m only going to be more pissed off!”

I paused by the confused-looking teens and smiled. “Stay here. Don’t come any farther into the store.” Another thunderous cascade of books rang out and several of the kids jumped. One of them looked like he was about to throw up. “On second thought, it might be safer if you just cleared out all together. Catch a movie or something. Go start a gang.”

Slinging my bat over one shoulder, I started down the aisle, slowing occasionally to make my way past several of the literary avalanches. My progress slowed even further as I stopped to check out two stunned customers I came across that had been knocked over in the chase. The first was a dazed older woman who had been shoved face first into the Horticultural Necromancy section, but was otherwise all right. The second was a man clasping his wrist. I stopped for a quick glance at his injury, but possessing no medical knowledge whatsoever, I could only pat him compassionately on the shoulder and point him toward the front of the store.

“Good luck with that,” I offered, and sped off.

“Simon!” Connor yelled out from somewhere nearby. “A little help here!”

As I rounded the corner of the next bookcase, I could see why. Cyrus stood just inside the gate of the Black Stacks with Connor’s head wedged between the gateway and the iron bars of the gate itself.

Cyrus slammed the gate hard against Connor’s throat and his face turned purple. Cyrus Mandalay would kill him in a matter of seconds if I didn’t intervene, and fast.

I closed the distance with five bounding steps and swung the bat, aiming for Cyrus on the other side of the gate. I got lucky on the downswing and the bat passed effortlessly between the bars, catching Cyrus on his right shoulder. He stumbled back, and Connor pulled himself free of the bars.

With Connor’s head no longer in the way, all three of us grabbed for the open gate, but Cyrus was quickest and snatched it closed. The clang echoed back into the Black Stacks.

“It’s not what you think, gents,” he said.

There was panic in his eyes, and it felt good to see it. I flicked the bat at his exposed knuckles where he held the gate closed and he flinched.

“I bet it’s exactly what we think,” I shouted.

I flicked the bat again, and this time it cracked fully against Cyrus’s right hand, causing him to let his grip on the gate go entirely. He grabbed another section of it, but he looked scared.

Connor tried to pry the gate away from him, but to no avail. I slammed my bat against the iron bars, rattling them.

“Relax, kid,” Connor said, grabbing my shoulder to stop my next swing. “We just chain this shut and wait until the D.E.A. shows up. I’m sure Cyrus here will be thrilled to have the Enchancellors upgrade him to a Class 3 Paranormal Fugitive!”

Cyrus laughed as he slowly backed away. “Do you really think I built the Stacks with only one means of exit?”

“Crap on toast!” Connor said as he reached through the gate toward Cyrus. He got a handful of Cyrus’s shirt for his effort. Cyrus struggled, but Connor impressively held him fast. “Don’t just stand there, kid. Get him!”

It was near impossible to open the gate as they struggled through the bars of it. They twisted and pulled at each other through the bars, each of them jockeying for an advantage. With neither man willing to relent, it was the cloth of Cyrus’s shirt that ended up giving way first. There was a tearing sound and both men stumbled back from the gate, finally giving me an opportunity. I threw open the gate, nearly smacking Connor on the head in the process.

As I closed in on him, Cyrus stumbled farther back into the Stacks. He grinned, showing off his vicious-looking rows of teeth.

“Black Stacks…attack!” he shouted and turned, running down the next aisle, his dreads bouncing side to side.

Before I had a chance to take another step, the bookshelves erupted. They shook as books flew recklessly through the air across the aisles. I couldn’t even inch forward, could only watch as Cyrus disappeared down the aisle. Connor finally entered the section and stopped next to me. We looked at the tornado of malevolent literature before us.

“We’ve got to keep after him,” Connor said, rubbing his throat where the gate had pressed against it. It already resembled the world’s largest hickey.

“How?” I shouted over the growing flutter of pages and heavily thumping tomes. “We’ll never make it through all this.”

“We have to try,” he said, and then grinned. “Besides, I got you a present.”

Connor held up the torn edge of Cyrus’s shirt and dangled it in front of my face.

“Let’s see what you can do,” he said. “Fetch, kid.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think I can divine anything off this.”

Connor shoved the piece into my hand, then closed his own around mine.

I didn’t get a chance to argue further. Before I could say that it was probably a useless exercise, Connor pulled his jacket protectively over his head, and dashed off down the aisle into the storm of books. Not one to leave my partner to face danger alone, I wrapped my hands tightly around the bat with the piece of cloth firmly in hand and batted my way after him.

Between the piles of scattered twitching books on the floor and the occasional ones targeting me as they leapt from the shelves, it was slow going. Several volumes gnawed at my ankles, biting like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas, but with only paper teeth, they were more a nuisance than any real threat.

I caught up to Connor, my arms already sore from swinging. He was standing at an intersection looking confused. He looked at me.

“Try,” he said.

“I can’t,” I said. “Clothing is a hard thing for me to get a reading from.”

“Don’t give me that,” he shouted, knocking away several flying books. “Remember when I hit you at the Antiques Annex? Tap into that raw emotion you felt, the kind that sparked your power. There’s a science to this!”

He wasn’t taking no for an answer so I threw my concentration into the strip of cloth and prayed that a book didn’t catch me in the temple while I attempted to pull a vision from it.

I thought of how Connor had hit me, the pain and shock of it causing my blood to rise. Then I thought of the events of the last few days—Irene’s tearful eyes and her trashed apartment, Jane’s fall through the air and her mangled arm. It could all be Cyrus’s fault. Anger mixed in to the swirl of emotion and I felt the sudden spark of connection to the piece of shirt in my hand. My psychometry kicked in.

I wasn’t sure how far back in time my mind’s eye was taking me, but I could see Cyrus sometime back in his past carrying a bucket full of building supplies and tools through the Black Stacks. It was hard to tell what aisle he was walking in, but I hoped it would give me some clue as to where he was going now. I needed some kind of visual clue to orient myself. I caught a small sign along one of the rows of books.

M.

I snapped myself out of the vision. “Head toward the M’s!” I shouted and dashed off to the right. I plowed my way through fallen books, made two lefts, and then another right before I led Connor into the M section. Cyrus was nowhere to be seen, but the books were even wilder here, harder to push through. I stumbled blindly forward as I attempted to get another reading from the strip of cloth. It took considerably more effort this time to read the item, and when the image came, it was not as strong as the previous one had been. “It’s losing its charge,” I said. I pushed Connor out of the way as a particularly nasty copy of Crime & Severe Punishment flew toward the bridge of his nose. Unfortunately, my selfless act meant that I caught the full force of the book’s corner against my cheek, and immediately tasted blood. But I was still clutching the cloth, and before I could control it, the pain flipped me back into my vision. I saw Cyrus with his tool bucket once again. I pushed back the pain and flipped back out. “Back to the B’s.”

We must have been on the right track, because as we continued forward, the intensity with which books were throwing themselves at us increased dramatically. I fended off books with such ferocity that I had to make sure I wasn’t in danger of cracking Connor’s skull open. By now, the books were piled knee-deep and our pace grew slower, both from weariness and from plowing the books aside. When we reached the B section, however, there was no sign of Cyrus.

“Again,” Connor said. He continued to dig away at the books around him.

I dropped my bat and gathered the piece of cloth in both hands. Concentrating like a kid taking the SATs, I felt weariness set in as I went for my third use of my powers. I hadn’t eaten anything coming into this to boost my blood sugar, and adrenaline was the only thing keeping me going. There was a tiny tingle of connection, but it was so faint I could only make out a quick psychic flash—Cyrus adjusting the hinges on a hidden doorway built into one of the bookcases. Behind the H’s, maybe for hidden, I thought.

Abandoning the image, I came back to reality, popped a roll of Life Savers out, and quickly began downing them one by one as we pelted toward the H’s. I immediately started to feel less shaky. It still took five minutes to clear our way to the bookcase I had seen. My arms felt like they had been digging for hours.

We cleared out a space in front of the bookcase. Once there was room to move, I pulled it away from the wall. Behind it was a hallway that led down a short dark corridor and dead-ended at a door. I pulled out my lock picks, but Connor barged ahead of me and kicked it open instead.

“Sorry, kid,” he said. “Time is of the essence.”

I prepared to swing at any sign of Cyrus, but when the door fell open, the sight before us caused me to forget all pursuit. We had been prepared for a secret escape route. We were not prepared for a pile of bodies. My arms went weak and the bat fell from my hands.

Cyrus was nowhere to be found. My first impression was that Connor and I had entered some kind of mass tomb, except it struck me (morbidly so) that there was no stench of rot or decay. The dark room smelled only of the unwashed, some of whom stirred lethargically in response to the thin column of light pouring in behind us. At a quick count, there were close to twenty people lying on the ground—and they all looked like utter crap, but I was relieved that they all looked alive. There were men and women, some old and some young, but they all had one thing in common: their hair was completely white.

“What in God’s name is going on in here?” Connor said softly.

I stooped over a girl in her midtwenties and moved her head from side to side gently, looking for bite marks. Despite the lack of vampires in a city like New York, I had no idea what else it could be. The girl seemed barely aware I was in the room. She looked quite gaunt, though physically unharmed. Connor bent over, scooped something up, and turned to face me. In his hand was a small clay pot, roughly the size of a tennis ball.

“Look familiar?” he said. “All those broken shards of pottery in the alley that night…”

“They looked strung out,” I said.

Connor handed me the pot. It was empty, but whatever had been in it had left a sickeningly sweet smell, like overripe fruit. A drop of opaque residue clung to the container’s lip. “What is it?” I handed the pot back to Connor, who slipped it into his coat pocket.

“It’s a residue left by the plasmic energy generated from the electrical impulses of a spirit when it’s been confined to a tiny area for too long.”

“Spirits are tangible?” In my dealings with Irene, I hadn’t been able to touch her, but it made sense that there must be some level of corporeality. As Connor had pointed out, she could sit on a chair or walk across a floor without constantly drifting through it.

Connor nodded. “Some spirits more so than others. Depends on their after-death strength. Like your Irene, for example. There’s not really an exact science to it, although I hear that Haunts-General is doing some fantastic phantasmagoric research in that area.”

“If these jars are here and the residue is here,” I said, “where the hell are the spirits?”

One of the bodies near my feet stirred, rolled over, and resettled on my shoes. I stepped back gingerly, careful not to disturb anyone in the process.

“That’s what I’m getting at,” Connor said. He looked sadder than I had ever seen him. “This is some serious stuff going on here, Simon. These spirits have been entirely destroyed by this group of junkies. They’re Ghostsniffers.”

I stared blankly at Connor.

Connor simply looked at me and continued. “The Fraternal Order of Goodness basically put a stop to this type of activity over thirty years ago, kid. Certain cultists and spiritualists became addicted to the momentary high experienced when a spirit passes through a living person. When an uncontained spirit passes through someone, no harm really comes to either party, unless you count the hair damage. Thing is, the spirits that were in these jars have been purposefully packed tight into containment. These addicts have been mainlining concentrated plasmic energy straight into their systems.”

“Sounds ghastly,” I said.

“Ghastly?” Connor said. “Christ, that’s an understatement. Just look at them! Even for Ghostsniffers, they look bad. Something’s amplifying the effect on these people like some kind of supercrack. Normally they’d have streaks in their hair, like mine, but they’ve gone totally white. Whatever is juicing things up is shocking out the pigment entirely.”

“Maybe the fish has something to do with this,” I suggested. “I mean, we asked Gaynor to point us toward the fish and this is what we find.”

“Maybe,” Connor agreed, “but we still don’t know the why of it all.”

I looked down at all the people lying around us. These had to be some of the sickliest-looking people I had ever seen. Not only were their eyes sunk deep into their sockets, it seemed like their very souls were sunken as well.

“This is bad juju, Simon. It’s a taboo practice even among the more hardcore cultists. It wouldn’t be so bad if the spirits survived the process, but it absolutely destroys them when they’ve been forcibly concentrated like this. We’ve got to figure out who’s been processing these spirits. Containing them, distributing them…it’s not an easy task.”

“You mean this isn’t just Cyrus’s doing?” I asked.

Connor shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” Connor said. “It’s too large a project. Look around. This is just a flophouse. There’s no equipment set up for this type of operation here. At the worst, it looks like he was running a Ghostsniffing lair, like one of those old opium dens.”

“I’m still going to hold Cyrus accountable when we catch up to him,” I said. “This is not cool. Not cool at all.”

I wished I knew what to do to help these pathetic souls, but this wasn’t my area of expertise at all. I pulled out my phone, but there was no signal. “Once we’re outside, I’ll call it in.”

“We need to get these people help,” Connor said. “Have them send a Shadower team to watch the store in case Cyrus comes back. Make sure they put someone on Cyrus’s apartment, too.”

I nodded.

“I’m sure Greater and Lesser Arcana would like to get their hands on some of these books,” Connor continued. “They’ll probably want to get one of their agents in here to run the store until the Enchancellors figure out exactly what to do with Tome, Sweet Tome.”

I looked down at the pile of near lifeless users on the floor. They were our first priority. Catching Cyrus would have to wait.