Dead Waters - Anton Strout [66]
“It should,” Godfrey said. “It’s the base design for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.”
“That’s where I’ve seen it before,” I said. “I was starting to wonder if I was having déjà vu or some kind of past-life regression.”
Godfrey looked up at me, his face serious. “Sure, we can look into past lives as a possibility.”
“No, I’m good,” I said. “I have enough trouble living the life I have, thanks, let alone needing to start worrying how I’ve screwed things up in past ones.”
Godfrey nodded, and then went back to the schematics. He checked a few notes written in the margins alongside the drawing. “The Department has sent several teams out there to investigate it for an actual hell gate over the years, to insure the bridge was safe. Nothing paranormal has been reported there.”
“Does that mean that something not paranormal has been reported? One of the spirits talked about a General Slocum. Maybe he was a commander back in the day?”
“Slocum isn’t a ‘he,’ ” Godfrey said.
“No?”
Godfrey shook his head. “No,” he continued. “It’s a boat, so it’s technically a ‘she.’ A passenger ship, to be exact.”
Godfrey ran his finger down the side of the schematic until they came to rest on a set of reference numbers that didn’t make a lick of sense to me. He looked off toward one of the other aisles and hurried off.
“Follow me,” he said, almost as an afterthought. The head archivist was in his own little zone now. I ran after him as he headed off down an aisle that had books from floor to ceiling on either side.
While a bit of claustrophobia set in, Godfrey stopped, stood on his tiptoes to reach a book high above him, and came down with it. He flipped it open and started looking through it. I stood there in silence, waiting, letting my mind wander back to some of my personal issues, namely my situation with Jane.
“So, things are going good with Chloe?” I asked. “Other than being cut by the budget?”
Godfrey took his head out of the book and smiled. It was the first time he had truly looked neither pissed off nor businesslike the entire time I had been down here.
“Excellent,” he said.
“Have you two had the ‘drawer’ conversation yet as well?”
“Oh, she has more than a drawer,” he said. “I gave her half of my space. Gave up a good percent of my closet as well.”
“So soon?” I asked. “Weren’t you the one dating a supermodel just a few short months ago?”
“Actually, a string of them,” he said with a blush of red spreading over his face. “Was on a bit of a lucky streak, I guess.”
I bit my tongue. Half the Department knew about Godfrey’s streak. . . an almost preternatural ability that was like a luck field radiating from him. We had been instructed to never talk about it directly with him, and I still felt horrible for using him once for this ability when I tracked down the cultist Cyrus Mandalay. “You poor guy,” I said. “Dating models. Rough life.”
“Actually,” he said. “It was.”
“How so?” I asked, not quite believing what I was hearing out of him. The worst I could imagine from dating a string of supermodels was that my body would cramp up from a lifetime of pleasurable delights.
“I’m not going to whine about dating a bunch of gorgeous women,” Godfrey said, “but look at me. I’m pasty white, I wear glasses. I have a hard time relaxing or cutting loose. I get worried that my tie isn’t always straight. I’m a poster child for book nerdery.”
“You’re being a bit hard on yourself, don’t you think?”
“That wasn’t my point,” he said, continuing. “I’m just saying that I know how lucky I was that these out-of-my-league women seemed fascinated with me for a while. I relished it, but to be honest—and I don’t mean to stereotype them—it was all a little vacuous. Chloe, on the other hand, she’s the right mix for me. The perfect mix, I should say. I know how fortunate I am to have her in my life. I don’t want to screw that up.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I said.
“It is that simple,” Godfrey said. He turned back to his book, flipping through the pages once again. “The question should be why isn’t it simple for you?”
“I don