Dead Waters - Anton Strout [65]
“Second of all,” Godfrey said, and then fell silent for a minute. “There is no second of all. Just me down here. So, if you need something . . .”
“Just point me in the direction of bridges and I’ll get off your back.”
Godfrey sat down at his desk and leaned back. He folded his hands across his chest. “Let me guess,” he said. “The Hell Gate Bridge.”
“Good guess,” I said, impressed. “And correct. You know it?”
“Not too well,” he said, “but yeah. With a name like that, we get a couple of requests every few months on it from agents.”
“I bet,” I said. “Well, listen. We found a menagerie of lingering ghosts out that way. I thought it might be a Hell Mouth or something. You know, an actual gate to hell.”
Godfrey smiled and waggled a finger at me. “You’ve been watching too many Buffy reruns.”
“Only for fighting techniques,” I said. “I swear.”
“Don’t worry,” Godfrey said. “It’s not a Hell Mouth.”
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure,” he said, getting up. He headed for his door. “It’s named from the Dutch hellegat, which means . . .”
“ ‘Bright passage,’ I know.”
Godfrey stopped and looked at me. “Impressive.”
“Some NYU students told me,” I said. “Don’t worry. You’re in no danger of losing your spot as head nerd around here. I just need to know about the bridge and a general who may be connected to it.”
“Follow me,” Godfrey said and started walking. “You said there were ghosts out there?”
“Yeah, literally hundreds of them.”
“Interesting,” Godfrey said. He headed off toward a section filled with large empty tables surrounded by banks of old wooden drawers.
“How’s Jane?” he asked as we walked over to one of the drawers. “I haven’t seen her since they announced the cuts a few weeks back. Is she. . . ?” Godfrey couldn’t even finish his question.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s still here.”
“Good, good,” he said, but he looked a little distracted.
“What about that girl you were seeing?” I asked. “The one who helped take down that bookwyrm . . . ?”
“Chloe,” he reminded me. “She, like all the rest of my staff, is on a reduced schedule. She helps out with some of the work I’ve been bringing home on the side, but I can’t show her preferential treatment, now, can I?”
“Look at the plus side—at least your girlfriend isn’t infected with a mutant strain of sea slime from some aquatic she-bitch.”
Godfrey looked up from the drawer he had pulled open. “That’s a strange plus side,” he said. “What does that even mean?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That’s the more personal reason I came down here.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few shots Allorah had taken of the mark on Jane’s back. “I was wondering if you could look into this for me. This symbol is bonded onto Jane’s skin and I need to know what it is.” I recapped the drama of the water woman diving through my girlfriend and the strange mark she had left on Jane. When I was done, Godfrey let out a long, slow breath.
Godfrey looked it over. “Doesn’t seem familiar,” he said, slipping it into the inside pocket of his coat. “Sorry. I hadn’t even heard about the incident yet. It’s probably in my backlog of case files that are slowly taking over my entire office. I’ll look into it. I just thought you were talking about your drawer incident.”
My face went flush. “God! Does everyone here know about that?”
“We have to take our gossip where we can get it around here,” Godfrey said, suddenly unwilling to catch my eye. He turned back to the set of drawers, closed the one he was looking in, and ran his hands farther down the case.
“Do you have a section on coping with parapsychological misadventures?” I asked. “Maybe that would help me out.”
“Nope,” Godfrey said, stopping his hand on the handle of another drawer. “Sorry.” Godfrey pulled the drawer open and lifted out an oversized binder the size of a small suitcase. He laid it on the nearest table and flipped through it until I saw a familiar-looking sight—the Hell Gate Bridge. I slammed my hand down on the page to stop him.
“That’s the one,” I said, recognizing the two stone towers at either end. “You know, it looks