He hesitated, but something in my face or voice must have told him that I wouldn’t leave until he checked. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed out.
“Hall of Records,” he said. He watched me with a strange look in his eye. I couldn’t decide if he felt sorry for me or he thought I’d lost my marbles. Probably a little of both.
“This is J. B. Bennett, Area Fourteen supervisor. Can you verify the death of one Patrick Walker in Chicago last night?”
I leaned forward in my chair, gripping the seat with my hands. J.B.’s face changed as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. In about three seconds he looked thunderous, an expression I was very familiar with.
“What the hell do you mean he died last night? He was an Agent, for chrissakes! I should have been notified so I could activate a new one! I want to talk to your supervisor, young lady.”
“J.B.,” I said, flapping my hands to get his attention. “We don’t have time for this.”
He held up a finger to shush me. “Well, you tell him to contact me as soon as he’s done.”
He slammed down the phone. “Just what in the hell happened last night? That little ditz in the Hall of Records told me that Patrick’s file shows his death but not his choice. I don’t know who they’re hiring down there these days. Faeries, probably. Flaky little things. Lord knows they’re better than the gnomes, but flash something shiny in front of them and they lose all sense of focus ...”
J.B. continued to rant while I absorbed his words. Patrick’s file showed his death but not his choice. My mother’s file had shown her death but not her choice. That monster . . . Just what had it done to their souls?
“J.B.,” I said. “Focus. We have a big problem here.”
“Yes, we do. Someone needs to take those Record Keepers in hand.”
“Fuck the records.”
He looked astonished, like I had just sworn in church. J.B. loves nothing if not order. Then he recalled that he was supposed to be the boss.
“Listen, Black, your attitude is way out of line ...”
“I’m trying to tell you about a killer monster and you’re worried about my attitude. Why do you always worry about the stuff that doesn’t matter?”
“What matters more than the official reprimand that I’m going to write up on you as soon as you leave this office?” he asked, his eyes as cold as ice.
“Patrick’s file shows his death but not his choice.”
“So? Some idiot in Records didn’t enter the information.”
“No,” I said slowly. I thought of the sound that I’d heard beneath the overpass as the monster stood over Patrick’s body. A kind of sucking sound. I thought of the odd records that showed two deaths with no choices. “That thing that I saw last night . . . I think it ate his soul.”
“There’s no such thing as a soul-eating monster, Madeline,” J.B. said with the long-suffering tone of someone speaking to a moron.
“You’re an Agent,” I said, matching my tone to his. “You know that the world isn’t what it seems to be. You’ve seen vampires and werewolves and faeries and ghosts. You have wings! Why is it so unbelievable that there is a monster out there eating souls?”
“Because there aren’t any records of such a creature. Because all those other creatures you mention have had their souls collected by an Agent at death.” He had returned to his normal smug look, the one that made me want to punch him in the face.
“What if this creature doesn’t have a soul itself, and that’s why we have no record of it?” I didn’t really know where I was going with this. It sounded crazy and illogical to me, too, but I had seen the monster. I knew it had done something horrible to Patrick, to my mother. Maybe it hadn’t sucked out their souls, but it had done
I didn’t want to be alone in this. As infuriating as J.B. was, at least he had some authority and resources that I didn’t have. He could help me—if he wanted to.
“Look, Black. I know you and Walker were close and that you will miss him terribly. Heck, I’ll miss him. Despite his screwup this week, Patrick was an excellent Agent. But,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms behind his head, “whatever the circumstances of his death are, they’re none of your business. Your business is to collect souls and file your paperwork. End of discussion.”
“You know what, J.B.?” I said, my temper flaring. “You’re pathetic. There’s a freaking monster out there eating your Agents’ souls and all you’re worried about is another report. Well, I hope you don’t think it or any other piece of paper is going to get you that promotion that you are so desperately seeking. Everyone, including upper management, thinks you’re a giant pain in the ass.”
J.B.’s face had lost all color by the end of my little monologue. “Get out,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Gladly.” I stormed out of his office, knocking over a chair as I went. It was immature but doing it made me feel better.
I fumed all the way home. It was absolutely typical J.B. to care more about reports than people. And while he was being a total ass, my chances of getting
I really wanted a crack at those records. There might be other cases like Patrick’s and my mother’s, cases of an Agent who died with no records showing his choice. Information like that might give me a clue of how to find this creature.
There was a monster running loose but I had no idea what it was, no idea how it chose its victims and nobody to help me. I was a soul collector and a recipe writer. I’d never conducted an investigation of any kind and I didn’t want to fumble around trying to find answers while this thing chewed through the population.
As soon as I flew through the dining room window, Beezle clambered in behind me.
“What is it?” I said. “You look more out of sorts than usual.”
“That person was here,” Beezle said darkly.
“What person?” I said, going to the answering machine to check for messages.
“Angeloscuro,” he spat.
I turned to look at Beezle, my finger hovering over the PLAY button on the machine. “That’s quite a lot of venom for a man you barely know.”
“I know enough,” he said.
Something in his tone made me wary. “What do you know? You told me that there was nothing special about him when he first arrived.”
“No, I didn’t say that,” Beezle said.
“Yes, you did. I asked you if you’d scoped him out for me and you didn’t tell me anything.”
“I told you he was a handsome devil,” Beezle responded, crossing his arms over his chest.
“A fact that I figured out within three seconds of laying eyes on him. So what if he’s handsome? You have some objection to a handsome man living downstairs?”
Beezle clamped his jaw shut and closed his eyes.
“Whatever,” I said, hitting the PLAY button on the machine. There were two messages, one from Charlie telling me that Gabriel’s references had checked out. That was fast. Really fast. I hadn’t expected him to get back to me until tomorrow at least.
The second message was from Gabriel, asking if his application had been accepted. Even when tempered by the coldness of a digital machine, the sound of his voice made me shiver.
Beezle’s prejudices and my own mixed feelings notwithstanding, I knew I was going to accept Gabriel as a tenant. Frankly, I needed the money and no other potential client had returned with a deposit in all the time the apartment had been advertised. I chalked up my misgivings to nervousness about being attracted to him.
Attraction was not something I had a lot of experience with. I spent so much time alone as an Agent, rarely mixing with non-Agents, and I never dated. The job just wasn’t conducive to a normal social life. How do you explain to your date that you have to leave the movie for fifteen minutes as the hero is about to rescue the damsel because you have to pick up a soul that just had a heart attack while driving on Lower Wacker?
I called Charlie back, thanked him and promised to pay his bill as soon as I received it. Then I called Gabriel. He had a cell number listed on his application and he picked up after the first ring.
