Dead to Me

33

Eccentric Circles was the ancient dive that catered to a clientele of the mysterious and the strange. Naturally, it was a departmental favorite. As usual, the place was packed with secretive folk who wanted little in the way of small talk or questions, but it was a safe bet that just about all of its patrons dabbled in something arcane, otherworldly, or just plain fucked up. We fit in perfectly.

The first few drinks helped rebuild my sugar depletion, but the trade-off was that I was slowly getting drunk. Three rounds into it, I started feeling bad. There was a growing mountain of things I should be dealing with and I was sick of not dealing with things—it had gotten Tamara killed. Also, I had essentially abandoned Jane right after she had helped me bring in Faisal, and now she was somewhere out there alone in the city, unsure of her own fate. Irene had yet to manifest again, and I didn’t know if she’d be hostile or not when she did. I attempted to leave at one point to check my messages, but the Inspectre stopped me and confided that our drinking and bonding were every bit departmental job functions as time in the office was. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but after my third pint I was willing to give it a shot. Other Division was buying, and after the downward spiral my day had taken, I found it a meager but welcome reward. Three cheers for job-sanctioned drinking!

Connor returned from the bar, pushing his way through the buzzing crowd. He was carrying several pints, which he slammed down on the table. Having matched the Inspectre and me drink for drink, he was in a jovial mood.

“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “Some of the guys from Greater and Lesser Arcana were up at the bar and pulled me into the old argument.”

“What argument?” I asked, grabbing one of the glasses.

“Historically,” Connor said, “drinking is a common pastime among agents. There’s a lot of stress on everyone and the biggest in-Department pissing contest is over who suffers the most. Those guys always think that they’re the ones.”

“They could be right,” the Inspectre said. “They do carry the additional burden of answering to Thaddeus Wesker.”

I liked hearing the Inspectre be a little cheeky, and knowing Director Wesker as I did, I thought the old man made a pretty convincing argument.

“I don’t think they do,” Connor said. “Shadower has the largest group of heavy drinkers. I think their world of infiltration, subterfuge, and constant surveillance might take the prize.”

I stared at my pint as the foam slowly settled, and I felt the weight of the past day pressing down on me.

“You okay, kid?” Connor asked.

“None of today happened the way I imagined,” I said with a sigh. I took a sip, relishing the oaty thickness of the brew.

“Anything particular?” Connor asked.

I sipped at the dark pint again, having no recollection of what I had ordered but happy with it nonetheless. “Everything! The entire evening. The whole epic struggle between good and evil. We’ve dead-ended on tracking down Cyrus even.”

The Inspectre laughed as he took a swig. His mustache was covered with foam as he pulled the pint glass away. “Not quite the theatrics you were expecting, eh?”

“I guess not,” I said with a shrug. My moment of triumph had turned into two separate games, one that ended in a stalemate during the questioning of Faisal Bane and the second of departmental politics that generated so much red tape that I was sure I could patch the Titanic with it.

Connor shook his head at me, and started speaking with that lecturing attitude he had been taking all too frequently lately. “You can keep your ideology when it comes to the battle between good and evil, kid. The somewhat romantic notion of the clear-cut struggle doesn’t exist. None of the fight has ever been black-and-white, or if it has, I sure as hell ain’t ever seen it.”

He put his pint down, leaned across the table, and gave me a serious look that was undercut by the amount he had been drinking.

“There’s more to be seen in the shades of gray,” he added.

“Then how the hell do we fight it if we can’t make heads or tails of where the line is?” I asked.

The Inspectre looked at me with a mixture of kindness and inebriation. “My boy, you are talking about evil as a concept. You can’t fight a concept!”

I slammed my glass down on the table a bit too hard, and its contents sloshed onto my hand. “But I expected something to come out of tonight! Conflict, fighting, something, anything!”

“Evil is damned peculiar that way,” the Inspectre said. He picked up a napkin and wiped the foam from his mustache with it. “It takes many forms, as you might well expect, but evil is at its most devious—at its worst, actually—when it makes us lazy, when we cease to take action against it. Evil is slow, crafty, and even slothful at times.”

“You speak of it like it’s a person, not an idea,” I said.

The Inspectre leaned closer. “Isn’t it like a person? What makes up the essence of a person but the totality of their actions, Simon? Every person has the chance at any moment to choose their own path, their actions coming down to simple good or bad intent. Conceptually, evil itself is not half as frightening as the actions of those who follow its path.”

“That’s comforting,” I muttered.

Connor grabbed my arm across the table. “Don’t discount what the Inspectre has to say, kid. It has a lot of bearing on what you’re going through. If what Faisal said is true—that Irene was a freelancing thief for the Sectarians in life—that part of her is gone now. Those actions are dead and the evil gone on with them. It’s not a part of who she is anymore, and you have to judge her soul based on the person you’ve come to know.”

It was a blow to find out that someone I held affection for—my dark-haired beauty gone wild—was in league with the Sectarians. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to believe it even though I had seen it. Had my powers failed me, distorted what I was seeing? The woman I knew was not an agent of Darkness.

In truth, I was no better than her, was I? I had once been a criminal in the not so far away past, yet I had always felt that at my core I remained a good person. That was long behind me anyway. I had given up those actions, my petty crimes, and turned away from that path.

It made my relationship to Jane seem even more important than ever. She was choosing the right path now, and I wanted to be there for her.

“Fat lot of good all this talk does us,” I said. “The only lead we had—the manifest on that wooden fish and who it was going to—is back in Bane’s hands. We had it in our possession, and thanks to Davidson, we lost it again.”

“Yes,” the Inspectre said. “About that…”

“We kinda brought you here to get you away from the Department so you could recharge a bit, kid,” Connor said. He rummaged around in his satchel and pulled out the clipboard from the interrogation. “Remember this?”

He tossed it across the table and it slid to rest in front of me. I looked at the empty clipboard.

“Yep,” I said. “Looks great without the manifest on it, too.”

Connor pulled a notebook and a pen from his satchel and slid them over to me.

“I don’t know how it looks with the manifest on it,” he said. “You tell me.”

“Stop tormenting me, all right?” I said. “Just let me drink in peace.”

“I’m not tormenting you,” Connor said. “I’m telling you to read the clipboard…psychometrically.”

It was a brilliant idea on his part, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. “With my luck, I’ll probably get stuck in a mental documentary on the exciting world of clipboard making.”

“Just try,” Connor said.

I avoided the pen and paper for now. I didn’t want it conflicting with anything I might get off the clipboard. I laid my hands on it like it was a Ouija board and envisioned the Inspectre as I had seen him before, placing the copy of the manifest on it. I flipped into the vision and threw my concentration into that exact moment, freeze framing my mind like pressing a pause button. I could actually make out the words on the form. A delivery address.

I felt the pull of hypoglycemia when I came out of the vision but not as badly as I’d expected. Somehow I had managed not to throw too much of my energy into the reading. Maybe it was the booze…I quickly wrote down the address on the piece of paper.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this back at the office?” I said.

The Inspectre laughed with all the force that his size held and clapped his arm around me. “What? And have you miss out on the departmental tradition of drowning your sorrows?”

“We’ve got to move on this,” I said as I stumbled my way out from behind the table and attempted to stand. I was drunker than I thought, and I reached for my chair to steady myself, missing it completely. Connor and the Inspectre caught me and eased me back into my seat.

“Haven’t you listened to your Inspectre?” Connor said with a laugh. “Evil is lazy. It likes to sleep in, kid. I think this can wait until morning. Besides, we need to strategize.”

I wasn’t sure if strategize was a euphemism for drink till I couldn’t see straight, but with my mood improved, I was willing to give it a try. I had the feeling that the next few days were going to be a bitch, and I hoped I could store up my liquid courage like a camel getting ready to head out into the desert.