Dead to Me

24

When I got home, there was no sign of Irene. It seemed odd not to have her there, but I couldn’t imagine where to look. Connor hadn’t given me any ideas either. I hit the White Room to center myself and it seemed to do the trick. I thought about calling Jane at her hotel to see how she was doing, but decided against it. I could be under surveillance if Jason Charles was really out to get me. Just after midnight I had decided that my only possible course of action was sleep when my cell went off. It was Connor.

“You awake?”

“Does it really matter?” I muttered sleepily.

“Good point,” Connor conceded. “Can you get out to Williamsburg?”

“Now?” The other night, when Connor called me to help him with that feral spirit in the alley, I had been looking for a distraction, but tonight I was exhausted.

“Trust me, kid, you’ll wanna be here. I’ve tracked Cyrus down.”

I sat up and started dressing immediately, sliding on jeans and a tee. “What? How?”

“Well, interrogating those junkies was no use. They’re all still totally out of it. But you know how there have been more and more of those disoriented spirits showing up? I did a few therapy sessions with some of them. One of them knew of Cyrus, even had an address where he said Cyrus hangs out a lot. Make sure you bring your bat. He’s got a lot to account for. Plus, it’s payback for making us look like assholes in the paranormal community.”

Connor gave me the address and I took a car service over the Williamsburg Bridge to River Street and North Sixth. River Street, aptly named for its location by the East River, had a spectacular nighttime view of the New York skyline. I stood marveling at it when I stepped out of the car until Connor psst end at me from the shadows nearby. I walked across the deserted stretch of Sixth and joined him. He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed to an old wooden industrial warehouse at the water’s edge.

“You think maybe we should have brought a task force or something?” I whispered.

Connor shook his head. “The Department already blew their budget using emergency funds just to get all those people out of Cyrus’s bookstore and take it over. Besides, I think the two of us can easily exact a little vengeance on a book nerd, even an occult one. Hope you brought your lock picks.”

I nodded. We crossed the street in silence, headed for the building. When we got to the door, there were three locks to work my way through. My biggest concern was busting one of the thin metal slides I was using, but after ten minutes I had successfully opened all the locks. Connor gave me a silent golf clap and I felt a swell of pride. It was disgraceful how much I craved his approval at times.

“The place has been dark for hours,” Connor whispered, “so either Cyrus goes to bed super early or else he’s not here.”

After I gave my eyes a moment to adjust to the low light pouring in from the city skyline, Connor and I headed up a flight of stairs set straight across from the front door. The upper floor opened up to a large loft space with floor-to-ceiling windows and the same spectacular view. The room itself was a mishmash of boxes, crates, and stands, all with one common theme—there were fish everywhere.

“One fish, two fish, evil fish, good fish,” I said with a low whistle. Every square inch of space was occupied by fish statues or artwork relating to fish. Most of them had been carelessly thrown around, but some of the pieces were hung on the wall with care. It looked like Cyrus was either a collector or else he had been searching in vain for a while for a very specific fish…the one from Irene’s apartment, I would bet.

I would never have guessed that there were so many potential forms of fish art out there. The most striking piece was a large silvery metallic fish that hung on display as a clear centerpiece for the room. “Ooh, shiny,” I said and headed for it. I pulled off one of my gloves to read it. Clearly something that ornate had a story to tell.

“Simon, don’t,” Connor said, when he spied where I was heading, but it was too late. I attempted to trigger my power, but instead felt a swell of magical energy building from the fish and knocking me back. Instantly the shiny fish started glowing and arcane runes I didn’t recognize traced themselves out in fiery lines along its body, and then out along the warehouse’s floor and walls. Glowing lines began to crawl across the wall from one mounted fish to the next, until the flame patterns actually ignited the wood of the old warehouse. A building as old as this was built to burn, and already the heat was intense.

“Everything in here’s been warded,” Connor said, looking around. “It’s a trap.”

“Gah!” I shouted, disappointed in myself. “Can’t believe I fell for the old shiny object ploy. We deserve to be incinerated.”

“Speak for yourself, kid,” Connor said and ran back toward the stairs. As he tried to head down them, he slammed into an invisible barrier at the top of the stairs and bounced back. “It’s impassable. I bet this place is riddled with magic meant to mess with us.”

Smoke rapidly filled the room and I breathed in a big lungful of it. I looked to see if Connor was okay, but…inexplicably…he had turned into a zombie—skin gray, flesh hanging in messy strips from his face, dead sunken eye sockets, and a slack jaw that seemed to be hanging on his face by a thread. His clothes were in ruins also, his Bogey trench torn, tattered, and covered in blood.

“Meant to mess with us,” I repeated. I was sincerely hoping that Connor’s sudden transformation was simply a glamour caused by the nefarious, hallucinogenic smoke. Oh God, unless he’d been bitten the other night during the zombie extermination. “You don’t say?”

Zombie Connor tilted his head at me, his slack jaw falling off onto the floor. “You okay, kid?” it said, slowly shambling toward me. “Did you breathe in some of that smoke? You know you gotta avoid that stuff. Breathe through your shirt.”

I nodded, but pulled my retractable bat out just in case. If I had stopped, dropped, and rolled in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t be wondering if I might have to take a bat to my mentor. But he was a zombie now. I choked the bat up like I was in the World Series.

“You having any strange cravings?” I asked, backing away.

“What?!” the zombie said, shuffling closer. “Like chocolate?”

“Or brains,” I suggested. “Or chocolate-covered brains…whatever.”

Zombie Connor looked at the bat nervously. “Why don’t you put that down?”

It was hard to see through the smoke, and I stumbled back as I tried to think of a plan. Nothing came to mind other than beating Zombie Connor down, but I was reluctant to do that. I stopped when I backed into the wall of windows. I glanced over my shoulder in an effort to find one of the handles, but when my hand found one, the handle bit me. Luckily it was my one gloved hand, but it still hurt. I screamed in pain and Zombie Connor rushed me.

“Give me the bat,” the rotting corpse said, and started prying it from me.

“No!” I shouted. “I’m too young to have my brains eaten!”

“Just give me the bat!”

I held on as tight as I could, but it was no use. Connor’s two hands were stronger than my single one that held the bat. He was strong for a zombie. He tore it away from me and raised it over his head to strike me. Of all the ways I had imagined my death, getting beaten by my zombified mentor while trapped by a cannibalistic window handle wasn’t one of them.

Zombie Connor’s blow never came. He swung the bat down in a fluid arc, but he went wide and smashed through a section of the window. The tiny metal fangs I felt biting into my glove let go, and I pulled my hand away, nursing it while the zombie went to town on the rest of the window. When the one section of the frame was clear of glass, he tossed me my bat, his hand still attached to it as it flew through the air at me.

Zombie Connor looked out the window, then back at me before his eyes melted away.

“Hope you can swim, kid,” he said. He ran for the gaping hole in the window and leapt out. Seconds later, I heard a splash. I could burn to death up here or I could take my chances leaping into zombie-infested waters. I opted for the water when the sleeve of my coat started to smolder. I took one last look at the warehouse full of burning fish and leapt out the window, hoping I could at least use the rotting zombie as a flotation device.