Irene floated along with an unnatural, ghostly grace. But she took care to avoid tables, chairs, and other people as if she were still alive. We moved like a procession of geriatric zombies. I smirked at the image it conjured in my head. If shehad been a zombie, at least she’d be something I had read up on in the departmental pamphletShufflers amp;Sham-blers.

Her body flickered as if she had a loose bulb inside her.

“You okay, Irene?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. Her voice came out as if she were off in a faraway dream. “Just troubled a bit. I want to follow your friend here, but…I’m not sure why. Strange.” She tried to move her head to look at me, but her eyes couldn’t turn away from Connor. “It’s that intoxicating scent, isn’t it?”

I stopped. Surely this was coercion at it basest level. “Connor…”

My partner stopped and turned.

“Kid, it’s okay,” Connor said in an effort to soothe both of us. “Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

As we passed through the black velvet curtains at the back of the shop, Irene gasped. The ordinary confines of the coffeehouse gave way to a majestic, old movie theater that embodied days of glory gone by. In the soft glow of the movie’s projector, I could make out the muted gold leaf fleur-de-lis hidden on the wall amid the decorative architecture. I was especially taken with the ornate chandelier that glittered in the darkness high overhead. What stories it would tell if I ever got my psychometric mitts on it.

We headed down the right-hand aisle. The theater was enchanting, but not in a paranormal way. It always gave me the impression that something magical would happen if only I were to fall back into one of the red velvety cushions of the Lovecraft’s hundred seats. But that was the point of old theaters-to weave a spell, preparing a journey beyond these four walls. Up on the screen, Clark Gable was noisily chomping a carrot as he sat on a fence talking to Claudette Colbert.

Irene craned her head about the theater. She was taken in by the majesty of it all. At the end of the aisle, Connor stopped opposite a large wooden door markedH.P. and produced a ring of keys. He sorted out a plastic keycard and waved it in front of an electronic plate to the door’s left. The latch clicked softly and Connor pushed the door open, gesturing for Irene to enter.

“Welcome to the world of weird,” Connor said.

6

Holding the door for a woman who could just as easily walk through it was a nice touch on Connor’s part. With five years on the job, Connor did have many of the finer points down when it came to helping the deceased cross over. Keeping me alive on a daily basis? That was a different matter.

He waited for Irene to pass through the doorway before he spoke.

“The dead have heap-big issues,” he told me in the worst Native American accent he could muster. He was a movie buff and always doing accents or impressions. Almost all of them were impossible to figure out. In his regular voice, he continued, “Sometimes the simple gestures we associate with being human can get an investigator through even the most difficult of spirit-handling situations. Think of the soul as shell-shocked when it’s torn from the world of the living. Spirits who can’t get past that tend to linger with the confusion of it all. That’s when it can grow restless and a haunting might commence. I’ll get reports from family members who say that they’ve started seeing dead ole’ Uncle Lou sitting on the can in the upstairs bathroom. Stuff like that.”

Although I had hoped to catch up on the paperwork threatening to take over my desk, Irene had suddenly become our “heap-big” issue du jour-which meant that I would have to table two zombie infestations and an investigation of a Shambler sighting. The Department of Extraordinary Affairs was probably going to be a big shock to Irene, and that would pretty much fill up a good part of our workday.

Irene looked overwhelmed by the change of pace from the mesmerizing tranquility of the theater to the red-tape office environment that spread out before her. Dozens of desks, cubicles, and a throng of pencil pushers cluttered the busy aisles of our unlikeliest of office spaces. The stucco walls gave the lengthy main room a warm, golden glow, reminiscent of California’s grand hotels from the early days of Hollywood. Irene spotted the only significant difference between those hotels and our main office at the D.E.A.-an assortment of arcane symbols carved deeply into a vast portion of the wall.

“What on earth are those?” Irene asked. Her eyes were wide with wonder, everything remaining of her humanity exaggerated to cartoonish proportions.

“Standard ritualistic markings, ma’am,” Connor said politely as he led her down the main aisle. “‘All operations involving the use or potential use of supernatural powers must be properly warded, glyphed, and otherwise protected by our Division of Greater amp; Lesser Arcana.’”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means,” she muttered absently, too busy drinking in the flurry of activity around her.

“Allow me,” I said. I wasn’t sure how much I was allowed to tell her, but I figured Connor would stop me if I overstepped my bounds.

“This,” I continued, “is the heart of our organization, the Department of Extraordinary Affairs. We’re mostly a hush-hush offshoot of the Mayor’s Office that deals with paranormal matters in the Tri-State Area.” I pointed to an endless row of doors along the far wall. “See those? We’re divided up into several divisions…”

“Too many divisions if you ask me,” Connor added. “Greater and Lesser Arcana, Haunts-General, Things That Go Bump in the Night…the list goes on and on.”

“And which are you?” Irene asked, turning to me.

“Connor and I work for Other Division,” I said, “which basically means we pick up cases that don’t pigeonhole neatly into the rest of the divisions, or that we pick up their slack when the casework builds up. I only know a handful of the divisions by name, but the Enchancellors seem to come up with two or three new ones every time I turn around.”

“What’s an Enchancellor?” Irene asked. She reminded me of a little kid with all her questions, but I realized to an outsider, it must all seem overwhelming.

“They’re like an overseeing committee for the D.E.A. They monitor the whole of what’s going on, assigning new divisions at will while overseeing the rest.”

“Sounds confusing,” she said. I nodded. “So you’re a part of the government then?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “We’re official, but they don’t really acknowledge us.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Look around you. Are most government offices hidden behind a hipster coffee shop-slash-movie house? Remember that guy on the television before?”

It was Irene’s turn to nod.

“David Davidson. He’s our liaison to the Mayor’s Office. The fact is that the bulk of citizens in Manhattan-and more importantly to him, the registered voters-are simply not ready to cope with the notion that The Big Apple’s government deals in the supernatural. ‘Living Voters are Happy Voters!’ is his motto. Besides, most residents turn a blind eye to it anyway. It’s New York City. Weird shit happens.”

“And people just ignore it?” she said, fascinated.

“Mostly,” I said. “Even though it’s right under their noses. Most occurrences end up being reported in the daily New York rags. Urban Bigfoot in Central Park, alien abductions on the Great Lawn…”

Before I could finish my diatribe on the finer points of half-assed journalism, I sensed watchful eyes upon me. I scanned the room only to find Thaddeus Wesker-Matrixy sunglasses forever hiding his eyes-looking in our general direction while he verbally bitchslapped a team of people from his division.

“So Wesker’s in charge of both Greaterand Lesser Arcana now?” I asked.