I expected the Inspectre to try to reason with me, to quell my nerves or tell me to stop acting like such a child, possibly even a no-nonsense chiding.

“Well,” he said. He put down his towel and grinned. “There’s rash and then there’s rash, isn’t there?”

I cocked my head. “I don’t think I follow you, sir.”

“Well,” he said, “there are distinctions in the details, aren’t there? There is stupid rash and there is noble rash. Both can make you dead, I suppose, but one at least stands a chance of causing great heroics, yes? For instance, and this is all hypothetical, mind you . . . If I were in a position where I had a chance to take down something as dangerous as a vampire before the local government could even get through all the red tape, some might think it incredibly foolish of me to act upon that.”

I nodded. “Connor’s always telling me to keep an even head about things,” I said, “to not let my emotions get in the way, and to think clearly. But now I’ve got to worry about putting him in harm’s way as well.”

“Yes, well, Connor’s right in one sense when he talks about absolute clearheadedness. That is what works for Connor.” He poured himself a glass of water and began drinking. He leaned over, drawing conspiratorially close.

“You and I are men of action, Simon. So are the rest of the F.O.G.gies. Most people don’t understand that. Most people never will. Sometimes all we have to go with are our emotions. That may be the one thing that gives us an edge, the one thing that saves us all in the battle between good and evil, especially in the face of bureaucracy.”

I swallowed hard. I felt the pressure of failing coming on once again. I had vampires to deal with. The Inspectre clapped me on the back.

“Don’t worry yourself about it too much,” he said cheerfully. “If you die, at least you’ll die spectacularly. That’s the mark of a true hero.” He clapped me on the back. “Same time tomorrow?”

I nodded, thinking, And the day after and the day after . . . until I either become the most expert vampire slayer since Buffy or die trying.

8

I cleaned myself up after my training session and headed back down to the main floor. With the graveyard shift arriving, the offices were dead and of course Supply was closed, so after making a quick copy of the form I’d had Jane sign, I slid it under their door. Then I headed back out through the movie theater and into the coffee shop up front. With its bare brick walls, classic movie posters, and big, comfy, secondhand chairs, I thought it would be the perfect place to brood. I had seen many a dark literary writer gravitate to this place with their laptops, and once I had my coffee, I navigated through a sea of them until I found an unoccupied large purple chair to curl up in. I set my coffee down on a table in the center of a few other chairs, one of them occupied by Godfrey Candella. He was furiously writing away in one of his notebooks.

“You know, a laptop would be faster,” I said.

Godfrey looked up from his writing.

“Excuse me?” he said, somewhat distracted.

“A laptop,” I repeated. I gestured toward his pen and notebook. “It would be faster.”

“Ah,” he said, and his face lit up, “but would it be as reliable?” He held up his notebook like he was displaying it on QVC. “The Moleskine notebook is a near-legendary form of record keeping, used by great minds for well over two centuries. Hemingway, Picasso, even Van Gogh . . .”

“My apologies,” I said, cutting off his little nerdgasm on the history of notebooks. I raised my coffee mug in salute. He did the same and we drank in silence for a moment, but it didn’t last long. Godfrey started flipping back through his notebook until he found whatever he was looking for.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few follow-up questions about what happened earlier today?” he asked. “The incident involving the Oubliette? I just wanted to clarify a few things.”

I sighed. Maybe helping Godfrey clarify his historical documents would help me with my own, or at the very least provide some form of distraction. Besides, I liked Godfrey, despite the quiet loneliness that radiated from him—or maybe because of it. I knew a thing or two about loneliness.

“Go ahead,” I said, settling back in my chair. “Shoot.”

“Great. Thanks.” Godfrey smiled and looked down at his notes. “So, earlier the Inspectre mentioned something about the Oubliette and you . . . ? Unfortunately, Director Wesker yelled about it so much at the time, I kind of missed what exactly happened.”

“It’s a wonder we ever get anything done around here with Wesker shouting,” I said. I couldn’t shake the image of his hand resting against Jane’s lower back. I tried to push it out of my mind by telling Godfrey Candella all the details I could remember about the incident at the Javits Center. It seemed to help. When I finished, I was no longer thinking about Jane and Wesker together, but instead about being swallowed up by a sea of rats and then being knee-deep in rat goo. Believe it or not, the nostalgia of being knee-deep in rat goo was a mental step-up.

Godfrey wrote frantically to keep up, and about a minute after I stopped speaking, he finally looked up. He pulled the pen out of his hand and flexed his fingers.

“So,” he said, “you think it was sabotage?”

I nodded.

“If you had to make a guess,” he continued, “who do you think tried to kill you?”

He said it so earnestly, I laughed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and then thought about it. “Well, I’ve only been here half a year, so I haven’t had a ton of time to make that many enemies, I hope.” I thought for a moment. “I’d say the Sectarians, for a start. But their leader is locked up in jail.”

“The Sectarians,” he said. Godfrey’s eyes rolled up into his head as if he were a computer accessing some archived file. “Oh, right. That whole pincushioning their leader to the wall of the Met thing . . .”

Yeah,” I said, “that.” I couldn’t help but have a little bitterness in my tone.

“Did I say something wrong?” Godfrey said. He looked genuinely concerned that he might have somehow offended me. He worried the notebook back and forth in his hands.

I shook my head.

“I just thought things would be different; that’s all,” I said.

“Different how?” he asked, looking enrapt.

“I don’t want to trouble you with any of this,” I said, starting to stand.

“No, please,” he said. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were eager like a starving man coveting someone’s sandwich.

I sat back down.

“After that night at the museum,” I said, “when you caught me just outside on the steps almost immediately after it went down . . .”

Godfrey nodded. He tapped the side of his temple. “I remember.”

I was sure the Computer Who Wore Horn-Rims did. I continued.

“I was on cloud nine . . . cloud ten, even. Everyone was patting me on the back, congratulating me. I had been in hog heaven with all that attention, plus with Jane on my arm. The Fraternal Order had just taken me in . . .”

I couldn’t put words to it.

“You’re lamenting your success,” Godfrey offered.

“That’s exactly it,” I exclaimed, almost physically relieved to hear him say it.

“I hear that a lot, actually,” he said.

“Really?”

Godfrey nodded. “A lot of agents bring it up when they’re recounting stuff for the Gauntlet. Let me guess. Right now you’re experiencing a bout of depression, especially after the day you’ve had . . .”

“Yes,” I said. It was invigorating to get this kind of validation. “I spent three months after the whole Met incident doing the paperwork on it. Three months. And then I have days where I almost die on an hourly basis and everything goes wrong around here. Then I have to file a twenty-page form to get a new cell phone from Supply. With all these swings between the mundane and the fantastical, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”