I was both warmed by the discovery and ashamed by my behavior. Only when someone nearby spoke up did I snap out of it.

“Lost?” Connor asked, half joking and half suspicious. I looked up and there he was, standing in the main aisle by our desks, still in his trench coat.

“Umm, I was looking for a requisition form for getting myself a new cell phone,” I lied, patting his stacks of casework as if I had only been giving a cursory look at what was visible. “What with the old one melting in the Oubliette . . . I thought you might have a form.”

Connor shrugged. “Not sure, kid. I’d check with the supply room. I think they have a twenty-pager you have to fill out, one of the kinds that still uses carbon paper, so your fingers should be good and purple by the time you’re done. And remember to press down firmly. I think it’s a 21-10, if I remember correctly. And you’ll have to get Jane’s signature on it as well.”

“Jane?” I said, startled. “What for?”

As if we were two sumo wrestlers sizing each other up, Connor territorially circled to his side of the desk and I went back to mine.

“Well,” Connor said, slipping off his coat and sitting down, “technically, she’s the official offending witch for melting your cell phone, and the Department likes to keep records on that sort of thing.”

Even though Jane had been taken under Wesker’s wing in Greater & Lesser Arcana, I hadn’t really thought of her as a witch. Until she had turned my phone into a smoldering mess, I hadn’t even known she had the ability to do such a thing. Now I knew differently. She was clearly dabbling in something powerful.

“Where’d you run off to?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.

Connor grabbed about an inch of paperwork from the top of the pile in his in-box. He winced in faux pain and dropped the paperwork on his desk, flexing his hand.

He sighed and said, “Couple of Faisal’s old followers were brought in and some of the White Stripes needed a hand getting them down to booking. Got a little rough.”

I was shocked to hear the mention of Faisal Bane. “You mean the Sectarians are still operating?” I asked. “I had hoped we’d put them out of business.”

Connor laughed and looked up at me.

“Cultists don’t just go away because their public funding does, kid. The Department will be chasing down Sectarians long after you and I are both gone; that’s for sure.”

I stood at my desk, feeling somewhat defeated.

“So any victory we gain will always be undermined by a second, third, or even fourth wave of evil washing over this city. It never ends.”

“Pretty much,” Connor said. “We’d be out of a day job if it did.”

What it really meant was that the piles of paperwork sitting on my desk would just keep growing with each and every encounter.

I decided to get out of there. If I went down to Supply, got the forms, and then headed over to Tome, Sweet Tome for Jane’s signature, I could at least start the requisitioning process for my new phone. With a day as shit-filled as this one, I’d take the small victories wherever I could get them.

And then, of course, there were the vampires to find . . .

6

The guys down in Supply were thrilled for once I was only coming for a phone requisition and not for the usual assortment of odd equipment requests I had made over the past several months. Once I had the form in hand, I headed to the Upper West Side to Tome, Sweet Tome. After the day I’d had—almost dying in the Oubliette, working the convention show floor, confronting a shipful of bodies, everything back at the office—seeing Jane would be a welcome relief.

Or so I thought. The front section of the store was unattended except for a few kids checking out the child-friendly section. Happy painted wizards and witches on the wall seemed to follow me with their eyes as I looked around the front of the store. I knew Jane had been doing a lot of exploratory work back in the Black Stacks, so I weaved my way through the shelves and teetering piles of books until I found the Stacks. As I approached the copper caged area, I could hear Jane’s voice. She was laughing. It was good to hear a little happiness for a change, and my mood brightened.

Until I actually saw her.

I had learned to be cautious when entering the Stacks, so I pushed the gate open all the way and entered slowly. Many of the books here had a mind all their own, but luckily none of them came flying off the shelves to attack me like they had when we chased Cyrus through here months ago. I found Jane two rows in—with Wesker. She was poring over a book with a smile on her face while Wesker looked over her shoulder, leaning too close for my liking and touching the small of her back. My heart always leapt when I saw her long blond hair, her beautiful features, and, of course, the low riders she was wearing, but not this time. I cleared my throat and the two of them turned in unison. Wesker, I noticed, dropped his hand from her back in a heartbeat. Jane’s eyes lit up and she snapped the book shut before running over to me. Her ponytail bobbed as she ran, and she barreled into me with such force that her hair flipped up on top of my head when she hugged me. I hugged her back, relishing the affection despite my discomfort.

“Simon,” she said. “You’re okay!”

“I told you he was alive,” Wesker said, sounding disappointed. He looked at me. “Could you please not hug the help?”

“I’m here on official business,” I said. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the form. “Jane has to sign off on whatever she did that melted my phone earlier today. They can’t replace it until I have all the signatures.”

“Oh, by all means,” Wesker said, losing all traces of the good humor he had been in before I had interrupted his alone time with Jane. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Jane grabbed the form and smoothed it out. She pulled a pen out from behind her ear and leaned up against the nearest bookcase.

“Oh!” she said. “I hear congratulations are in order on passing the Oubliette.”

“Only on a technicality,” Wesker added.

I looked at him and said, “If the damn thing hadn’t been tampered with . . .”

“I bet that’s why they passed you,” Jane said. “Improvising under real danger like that!”

“Not everyone who voted on it was in agreement,” Wesker added. “Calling Jane was cheating.”

“Was not,” I said.

“I wish I knew exactly what I did over the phone,” Jane said, taking a moment to sign the form I had brought.

“Yes,” Wesker added. “So do I. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Since when are you a technomancer? You’re not authorized to be doing Greater Arcana yet.”

“Don’t you have some children to scare?” I asked.

“Watch it,” he said. “I still have seniority over you.”

Unlike at the convention center, I didn’t have Connor or the Inspectre here to back my bravado just now. Plus, Jane still had to answer him, so it was in my best interest to not sound too much like a smart-ass.

“I wasn’t being snarky, sir,” I lied. It was getting easier after almost being caught rummaging through Connor’s desk. “I just thought I saw some of the kids in the Young Adult section acting suspiciously, and since no one’s up front, God knows what they’re up to . . .”

Wesker didn’t look like he believed me fully, but I knew he wouldn’t abide any potential shoplifting under his watch. He excused himself from the Stacks and headed off toward the front of the store.

Jane pushed me up against one of the bookshelves and kissed me. I kissed her back with equal fervor until I became self-conscious. We were, after all, making out in a roomful of evil—or at least enchanted—books, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. I pulled away, though it pained me to do so.