Paperwork, I thought. I’ll take that paperwork and shove it up your . . .
I took a deep breath to clear my head. No use letting him make me angry.
“Patrick is dead, J.B., and I need a pass to get into the Hall of Records.” I hoped that I looked contrite and harmless instead of annoyed and murderous, which was how I generally felt in J.B.’s presence.
“You know you don’t have the authorization to go poking around in there. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Patrick? You know, Patrick Walker? My friend, one of the Agents under your supervision? He was murdered by some big scary thing last night at Ravenswood and Grace. I want to find out what choice he made. If he’s wandering the Earth, I need to talk to him about the monster that killed him.”
He stared at me dumbly. “Are you taking drugs, Black?”
“What?”
“Walker’s not dead.”
“Yeah, he is. And you should know about this, because an Agent would have gone to collect his soul. And there should have been the activation of the next closest relative in his bloodline.”
“But none of that happened, Black. I don’t have any paperwork here; ergo, Walker is not dead.” He said this with the ringing finality of a true believer at a tent revival.
“J.B.,” I said, striving to put a note of patience in my voice when I wanted to shake his complacent self silly, “I saw his body. I saw said big f**king scary thing that killed him. It almost killed me. And I want to know what happened to his soul.”
J.B. gaped at me. “Did you have a bad dream last night or something?”
“No!” I shouted, getting frustrated. “It happened, J.B. Just the way I told you. And this monster—whatever it is—it was stalking Patrick. He knew it was coming after him. He called me to ask for help. And . . . J.B., I’m pretty sure that this is the thing that killed my mother.”
I’d never seen J.B. look uncertain before. It softened his face, loosened the tension creases around his eyes. “Black, your mother . . . That’s ...”
“Just check, won’t you? You can find out in a few minutes if Patrick’s dead or not,” I pleaded.
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?”