Dead to Me (39 page)

“Irene?” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”

The form of her face nodded in response.

“How did you know it was me…?” I asked. The lighting was poor, I was shrouded in black, and what little showed of my face was shadowed by the traditional Zorro hat.

Her image grew more distinct in the mist and somehow she forced a smile.

“I would always know you, Simon,” she said, and there was kindness in her voice. The barest definition of fingers formed and the wisps of smoke brushed at my face. “You have an energy, an aura that’s wholly yours. Everyone does.”

This was a much different Irene than the one that had attacked me in my apartment. Connor wasn’t kidding when he told me about the rampant mood swings a degrading spirit could go through.

I chanced another peek toward the far end of the room. My eyes had finally adjusted to the light, and I could see the technicians unpacking hundreds of tiny clay jars next to the contraption. I could only assume it was a processing machine. Just then I noticed the wooden fish sat on top of it in a giant frame. I don’t know how I had missed it before—the damn thing was pulsing with a dull magical glow. There was no question that the totemic power of the Surrealist fish fueled the device. Faisal had made clear that it was the fish that gave the Ghostsniffing ectoplasm its extra kick. In the center of the processing contraption, a ghostly figure strained against invisible bonds that held him spread out across one of the wooden circles. I turned back to Irene.

“We can save our reunion for later,” I whispered. “I’ve got to get you out of here now. You’re on the menu tonight.”

I had to free her, freeall of them.

I set about the task of putting the lids back on the casks beneath the swirl of spirits. As I moved down the row, I could hear Irene keening softly over the general wailing of the other spirits in the cloud.

“I’m sorry, Simon,” she said, her voice rising. “You must think me a monster after our last encounter. I simply don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Shh. You’re just becoming more and more emotional due to your condition. It’s not your fault. Connor explained it all to me. Now it all makes sense. You and the sudden rise of ghosts turning up with memory loss…all of you were being mystically rounded up before you could cross over,harvested to be used in their sick twisted scheme. Some of you were apparently harder for them to rein in than they planned for.”

I was having trouble with the casks. The second of the wooden lids wouldn’t fit. I stripped my gloves off for maximum dexterity and wrestled it into place. Eventually it slid in, but only after I thumped softly on the top. I looked at the workers, but there was no sign of reaction from the far end of the room.

“When Faisal’s mediums captured me,” Irene said, “they told me what sort of person I had been in life. All the horrible things I had done…”

“None of that matters anymore, Irene. None of it. Who you were before, that’s all gone now, burned away. The spirit I first met, the person you are now, that’s the best part of you. That’s the part that needs to keep in control if I’m going to help you.”

Phantom hands caressed me as some of the smoke cleared and the restless spirits broke free of their confinement. I tried not to flinch at their cold touch, but they were making it hard to focus on what I was doing. Once again, my hair was in mortal danger, but I didn’t even care. There were at least ten more casks to cover, and it was only a matter of time until I was discovered. I wasn’t sure if I’d have to take care of them all, but suddenly I had bigger problems to think about.

The answer was only one more cask away. As I fit the next lid into place, the booming chuckle of Cyrus Mandalay sounded from behind me.

“Avast, matey,” he said in a mock pirate voice. He cautiously stepped toward me. “I should have expected some heroics tonight. Leave a roomful of ghostly victims, and just wait for someone to try something. The question is, Zorro, who are you and how did you get in?”

“Well,Cyrus ,” I said. I swung around with a flourish of my cape. “You can find out who I am if you can unmask me.”

I pulled the sword from my belt and hoped to heaven that the darkness helped it appear less plastic.

“I see you know me by name,” he said and smiled. Even in the half-light of the room, I could see the gleam of his sharklike teeth. That was a sight I didn’t miss from before he had gone into hiding. Back then I had actually thought he was a decent, albeit intimidating, guy. He had even had that section of the store for kids! It flashed in my head momentarily and it hit me. One image had always stood out in that children’s mural—the Daliesque turtle wizard melting a clock with his wand, an obvious sign of his allegiance to any Surrealist Undergrounders seeking him out—and I hadn’t put it together until now…

There was no time to beat myself up for making the connection so late in the game. I had pulled my sword and now Cyrus pulled a sword of his own, a cutlass, and I could tell by the metallic sound of it unsheathing that it was real.

“Be careful,” Irene whispered from behind me. I stepped forward in the hopes of keeping Cyrus the pirate away from the few casks I had sealed and he took the opportunity to rush me. He was unnaturally fast, and with one stroke he cleaved my pathetic plastic sword in half. I threw the remaining stump at him ineffectually, and in return Cyrus kicked me square in the chest. I felt something crack inside as I propelled backward, but I barely had time to register it. I spun myself to see where I was falling and braced for the impact.

Smashing through glass in the movies always looked effortless. The hero would run at it, leap in the air, and the glass would shatter on impact into a million pieces as he flew through it. I, however, stumbled forward toward an unavoidable collision with one of the museum’s display cases. When I hit it, I felt another crunch inside my chest before the glass itself finally gave way.

I crumpled to the side of the case to avoid as much contact as I could. I was less concerned about getting lacerations, more about making contact with any of the antiques inside it. I was duly concerned for both their safety and the safety of my mind should anything so historically powerful come into contact with me.

The sound of the museum’s alarm kicked in. I rolled over just in time to see Cyrus standing directly over me with his sword in readiness, and I had only a split second to make a decision. I could either sit there preparing for the cool sensation of air hitting the center of my brain as Cyrus cleaved me in two, or I could risk contact with one of the artifacts to defend myself.

I chose the latter, even though my brain and blood sugar would hate me in the morning. It was the one option that would allow me to evenhave a next morning. I reached blindly into the broken case to my right, and grabbed the first object my hand landed on. Fortune was on my side, it seemed, and I was thankful as I pulled a large shield from it. That was the best object I could hope for, really, but its historical significance was too powerful and my mind slipped into a series of visions as I struggled to control my powers.

It was 1934 and a handsome philanthropist was handing the shield over to the museum’s collection. The shield was shaped like a reverse tear-drop and was damascened in gold and silver. The director of antiquities thanked him for his most generous contribution. Time bent further into the shield’s past.

Now it was the fifteen hundreds, and I was a man working diligently on the shield between fits of coughing. He was slowly dying from the large quantities of silver dust than had accumulated in his lungs over his short lifetime. The images carved into this shield would be the culmination of his life’s work. Time bent again.

This time I was another man, a French king no less, suiting up to do battle against the threat across the English Channel. I felt pure awe when I realized I was Henry the Second, and watched as he strapped the shield to his arm as the final touch. I felt the weight of his people, of his kingdom, and felt his conviction that with God on his side, Henry would prove victorious.

Disoriented, but feeling somehow strengthened by my last psychometric episode, I came out of the vision and found myself curled under the shield, weary from the transference of power, but somehow fending off Cyrus’s wild swings. Chaos had broken out all around us. Much of the crowd from the temple area had pushed their way into the makeshift Ghostsniffing production area, and I could see members of Shadower making a dash for the casks while Connor barked instructions at them. The Inspectre, despite being surrounded, was holding his own and swinging the hubcap on the end of his scarf in a circle around him in an effort to keep the crowd at bay. We were seriously outnumbered. In my weakened condition, the shield I was turtled under was getting heavier and heavier.

I scrabbled to my knees and then my feet. I was quite impressed that I had continued to keep Cyrus at bay even though he had gone wild-eyed in pirate mode.

“Simon!” Jane cried. I turned my head toward the sound of her voice. She had ditched the mask and was struggling with a mob of her own at the far end of the room. She pushed them away and balled one of her hands inside the other and swung with all her might at one of the display cases, causing glass to fly everywhere. I winced in sympathy pains as she did it. I was surprised how quickly everything had escalated and even more surprised when I saw Jane grab a sword from the case and toss it toward me. I moved the shield firmly between me and Cyrus and grabbed for the sword, no longer caring what touching it might do. I had just been Henry the Second, for God’s sake. What did I have to fear?

I caught the sword at the same time Cyrus rushed me. His sizable frame drove me back across the floor, but before anything else could happen, I shifted into another psychometric vision. Already I could tell things were different—having been King for even a brief moment and bearing the weight of an entire kingdom on my shoulders somehow made the drain on my powers feel like less of a burden.

In my vision it was the sixteen hundreds. There were letters on a desk before me, all addressed to a Juan Martinez, renowned for his working of Toledo steel. All of Spain, all of Europe, demanded his craftsmanship. But he had merely been the blade master on this sword.

Time slipped and I became the sword’s hilt maker, a crafter of bronze-gilt, paste jewels, and pearls. None of these visions felt particularly helpful, although the kingly burden I had felt seconds earlier lingered. Before I could give it another thought, I was pushed forward through time once again.

The next vision came on stronger, and was far more recent. I was one of the night watchmen for this wing of the museum. The case Jane had just smashed was whole in the vision, and the watchman took a quick peek around to make sure no one was looking before removing the sword. He had handled this sword before. He moonlighted as a stage actor. But most importantly, he had stage combat training. As him, my limbs were full of the physical memory of that training. I realized as I came out of the vision that my body had retained it.

When I came out of the vision, I felt strangely, miserably drained. Then I noticed warmth running down the right side of my chest. Cyrus’s cutlass was digging against the exposed whiteness of my ribs. Maybe it was the shock of seeing that, or the adrenaline, or simply the fact that I might die, but the watchman’s training kicked in. I pushed Cyrus’s blade away using an effortless enveloping technique and then assumed a defensive posture.

A thought occurred to me. I didn’t have to fight Cyrus to beat him. I was only fighting to keep him from killing me, and with that in mind, I started to back my way toward Jane. I chanced a look toward the swirl of spirits and was relieved to see that they were dispersing in greater numbers as Shadower team finished covering the last of the casks.

“Hello, Marilyn,” I said to Jane. Her Monroe dress was a mess from the struggle and covered in spattered blood, but it still worked on her.

“Hola, Señor Zorro,”she said. The costumed fray was still in full swing around us.

I pushed away one of the many Dalís attacking her while keeping Cyrus at bay, but more baddies pressed into the room. They didn’t seem deterred by the continuing sound of the alarm going off. It would be only a matter of time before we were overtaken. Despite our valiant efforts, things had gotten more extraordinary than the Department of Extraordinary Affairs was capable of handling.

Several cultists had finally disarmed the Inspectre and were shoving him around the room. Some of the Shadowers were still holding their own, and Connor was standing in the remaining swirls of mist, shouting. The deceased and crossing over were his domain, and I imagined he was working overtime in that department right now. Despite Connor’s efforts, though, three cultists grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground.

Feeling helpless, hopeless, I did my best to parry the incoming attacks. With one arm I countered every strike and with the other I kept Jane safely behind the shield. It was really only a matter of time before Cyrus wore me down, though. If it weren’t for the adrenaline rush, my body would have already collapsed from the energy expenditure of the visions, not to mention my blood loss. With the repeated blows of Cyrus’s sword, however, that rush was waning and the odds seemed insurmountable. Jane was doing her best to help hold our shield in place, but she looked exhausted.

My eyes caught a whirl of activity from within the spirits. They rose in a column above the casks, breaking free from the last of their restraints. They now rose wraithlike, swirling high overhead.

The sound of exploding glass rang out as every display case in the room shattered simultaneously, shards of glass flying everywhere. Luckily, the shield kept most of it from harming us. Then I watched in awe as the contents of every case sprang to life.

The released spirits began manifesting themselves in the same way Irene had done when she turned my bedroom into a whirlwind of emotional destruction. Full suits of armor broke free of their supports inside the cases. Each of them lurched off menacingly into the crowd, grabbing for the nearest weapon they could, and started singling out the Surrealists and cultists.

Even with all the danger around me, and my exposed ribs, I couldn’t help but be amused. Suits of armor lurched past me, some with the perkiest codpieces I had ever seen, intent on clearing a path through our enemies with mace, sword, or pole arm in hand.

Most majestic were the four horsemen in the center of the room, whose steeds charged off into the costumed crowd. Their lances knocked Dalí after Dalí aside and I felt sudden hope that there might be a chance for us to get out of this alive after all.

One of the swirling spirits spun with breakneck speed around Cyrus like an ethereal twister and suddenly shot itself straight into him. He convulsed as a spasm wracked his whole body, and he struggled for control.

“Simon,” Cyrus said, but it was Irene’s voice. She sounded strained as she fought him in the effort for possession. “Go…while I can control him.”

I could tell Cyrus was struggling hard, fighting her for control of his own body, but it was no use. Irene was full of fury from her captivity and was far stronger than him…for now. She forced his hand to open and the cutlass clattered harmlessly to the ground.