Read Online Deader Still by Anton Strout - Free Book Online

issue, son?” he asked.
    Of course it was going to be an issue. “No, sir.”
    “Good,” the Inspectre said, returning to his usual self. He began rummaging through one of the file folders on his desk. “I need you to keep the Order’s eye on things in this investigation, Simon, until the Enchancellors are ready to make a move. I’ll try to hurry along the process, but you can well imagine how long that might take.”
    After my three months of paperwork settling the case of the ghost of Irene Blatt and the whole Metropolitan Museum of Art debacle that came with it, I imagined it might take roughly an eon or two to light a fire under the right people in the Department. At the moment, though, I was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe I could talk to Davidson to speed things up downtown. That was, if Connor didn’t kill me for being put in charge of him on this.
    The Inspectre looked lost in thought as he went through the file in front of him. I realized he had moved on from our conversation.
    I backed toward the door, showing myself out. Just as I was about to close it gently behind me, the Inspectre spoke up again.
    “Oh, my boy,” he said, looking up from his paperwork.
    I pushed the door back open.
    “Sir?”
    The Inspectre raised his hand and stroked his handlebar mustache. “I think we should step up your combat training to meet Fraternal Order levels, you know, with all this vampiric activity going on. For now, I want to see you every day for Unorthodox Fighting Techniques. I’ll see to it personally, of course, so put aside some time starting later today, won’t you?”
    A ball of dread filled my stomach, but I nodded. More training most likely meant more danger in my near future, and that never filled me with the warm fuzzies. I gave a weak smile and closed the Inspectre’s door.
    I headed for the stairs, wondering how much I couldn’t tell Connor while moving forward with all this. If a scrub like me tried to pull rank on a mentor like him, I suspected he wouldn’t take it well, even if passing the Oubliette meant I was technically now his equal in the Department.
     

5
    Fate, it seemed, had cut me some slack. When I returned to my desk, Connor wasn’t at his, so it looked like I was momentarily spared figuring out how to implement my new orders. Tension in my shoulders, which I hadn’t even realized was there, melted away, and I dropped into my seat feeling exhausted.
    The rest of the office had returned to normal, and the buzz of the hive activity was soothing to my ears. I hated being in this position. It was one thing to have been chosen for the Fraternal Order—that was beyond the scope of the work Connor and I did together. Holding sway over Connor in an official capacity after only six months with Other Division, though, would be an entirely different situation.
    For now I made the decision to keep Connor in the dark. Maybe I could handle the situation so that he never realized I was in charge. I was new to the art of deception, and the guilt was already eating at me. To compensate, I started thinking of ways to make it up to him.
    Then it hit me: his brother. When we had first started testing my power of psychometry, a beat-up Spider-Man PEZ Dispenser led to the tale of how his brother had vanished one summer at Cape Cod back when they were kids. Unfortunately, any follow-up had been pushed aside when the craziness with cultist-rights leader Faisal Bane and occult bookstore owner turned paranormal drug czar Cyrus Mandalay ensued.
    But now I finally had a chance to get back on the ball with helping Connor, even if it was to ease my own guilty conscience. No time like the present for starting on the brother stuff.
    I glanced around the office before standing up and heading over to Connor’s side of the partners desk. It was marginally neater than mine. Instead of three-foot-high stacks of casework, he had only one-foot-high stacks. I could only aspire to such streamlined paper-stacking