Dead Waters Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Praise for the Simon Canderous novels

  DEAD MATTER

  “Strout’s good-hearted, bat-carrying hero is once again faced with extraordinary peril from both bureaucratic paperwork and things that go bump in the night. His skillful blending of the creepy and the wacky gives his series an original appeal. Don’t miss out!”

  —Romantic Times (top pick)

  “Unusual urban fantasy . . . highly entertaining.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Strout’s . . . great sense of humor, combined with vivid characters, a complex mystery, and plenty of danger, makes for a fantastic read. Urban fantasy fans should not miss this exciting series.”

  —SciFiChick.com

  DEADER STILL

  “Such a fast-paced, engaging, entertaining book that the pages seemed to fly by far too quickly. Take the New York of Men in Black and Ghostbusters, inject the same pop-culture awareness and irreverence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Middleman, toss in a little Thomas Crown Affair, shake and stir, and you’ve got something fairly close to this book.”

  —The Green Man Review

  “It has a Men in Black flavor mixed with NYPD Blue’s more gritty realism . . . if you think of the detectives as working the night shift in the Twilight Zone. It’s a book (and a protagonist) that is going places, and those who enjoy something fresh in urban fantasy will enjoy what they find. Strongly recommended.”

  —SFRevu

  “A refreshing, exciting urban fantasy with elements of romance and horror that will appeal to fans of Jim Butcher.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “A fun read . . . The pace moves right along, running poor Simon a little ragged in the process, but providing plenty of action. If you liked Dead to Me, it’s a safe bet you’ll like this one even more.”

  —Jim C. Hines, author of Red Hood’s Revenge

  “A fun, interesting, and witty read. It is something a little different, with a male protagonist, tongue-in-cheek attitude, and interesting mystery.”

  —Urban Fantasy Land

  “It has a little bit of everything for the paranormal junkie . . . unique from a lot of the urban fantasy genre. This is a fantastic series.”

  —Bitten by Books (5 tombstones)

  “Nice touches . . . There is a lot to like here.”

  —VOYA

  “Clever, well-paced, and attention-grabbing.”

  —Errant Dreams

  DEAD TO ME

  “Simon Canderous is a reformed thief and a psychometrist. By turns despondent over his luck with the ladies (not always living) and his struggle with the hierarchy of his mysterious department (not always truthful), Simon’s life veers from crisis to crisis. Following Simon’s adventures is like being the pinball in an especially antic game, but it’s well worth the wear and tear.”

  —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead in the Family

  “Part Ghostbusters, part Men in Black, Strout’s debut is both dark and funny, with quirky characters, an eminently likable protagonist, and the comfortable, familiar voice of a close friend. His mix of (mostly) secret bureaucratic bickering and offbeat action shows New York like we’ve never seen it before. Make room on the shelf, ’cause you’re going to want to keep this one!”

  —Rachel Vincent, New York Times bestselling author of Alpha

  “Urban fantasy with a wink and a nod. Anton Strout has written a good-hearted send-up of the urban fantasy genre. Dead to Me is a genuinely fun book with a fresh and firmly tongue-in-cheek take on the idea of paranormal police. The laughs are frequent as are the wry smiles. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next.”

  —Kelly McCullough, author of SpellCrash

  “Written with equal parts humor and horror. Strout creates an engaging character . . . clever, fast paced, and a refreshing change in the genre of urban fantasy.”

  —SFRevu

  “In much the same vein as Mark Del Franco’s Unquiet Dreams or John Levitt’s Dog Days, Strout’s urban fantasy debut features plenty of self-deprecating humor, problematic special powers, and a quick pace, with the added twist of overwhelming government bureaucracy. Strout’s inventive story line raises the genre’s bar with his collection of oddly mismatched, entertaining characters and not-so-secret organizations.”

  —Monsters and Critics

  “Imagine if Harry Dresden or Angel had to work in a poorly run office, dealing with office politics and red tape. It’s a great debut.”

  —CHUD.com

  “A wickedly weird debut from a writer who makes being dead sexier than it’s ever been before. And who doesn’t love a debonair, divination-having, ghost-seducing, cultist-abusing detective in New York? Imagine Law & Order but with hot ghostly chicks, rampaging bookcases, and a laugh track.”

  —Carolyn Turgeon, author of Mermaid

  “A strong debut. . . Seeing the world through Simon’s eyes is a funny, quirky, and occasionally scary experience. Strout’s world will be well worth revisiting.”

  —Romantic Times

  Ace Books by Anton Strout

  DEAD TO ME

  DEADER STILL

  DEAD MATTER

  DEAD WATERS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEAD WATERS

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace
mass-market edition / March 2011

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47722-9

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my grandparents

  Ray & Edna Van Valkenburg,

  who have supported me all along

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Welcome to book four in the Simon Canderous series, dear readers. Thanks for dropping by once again. Glad you made it through the zombie-filled streets.

  It takes a village to bring a book to fruition. . . a haunted, creepy, fog-filled village. It’s time to thank some of those villagers personally for ushering Dead Waters into existence, including: everyone at Penguin Group, most notably the creepy crawlies who inhabit paperback sales; my editor, Jessica Wade, beater-upper of bad writing whenever it rears its ugly head in my manuscript; production editor Michelle Kasper and copy editor Valle Hansen; Annette Fiore DeFex, Judith Murello, and Don Sipley, for an action-packed jacket, complete with gargoyle and Simon’s trusty retractable bat; Erica Colon and her crack team of ad/promo people; Jodi Rosoff and my publicist, Rosanne Romanello, who parade me out from time to time to interact with the public; my agent, Kristine Dahl, and Laura Neely, at ICM, who keep track of the kind of details that make my head all ’splodey; the Dorks of the Round Table—authors Jeanine Cummins and Carolyn Turgeon; the League of Reluctant Adults, for continued support and stocking of the bar; glamazon Lisa Trevethan, for her eye in all things beta; Jennifer Snyder, webmistress of UndeadApproved.com, the unofficial fan site that knows more about me than me; my family; and last but certainly not least, my wife, Orly, who puts up with long hours of me ignoring her while I bring these books to you. She has the patience of a saint and my undying love. Now, let’s see what shenanigans the gang down at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs is up to this time, shall we?

  You consider me the young apprentice. . .

  —The Police

  It is imperative that all departments register the next of kin for any and all incoming apprenti and interns, as well as make sure they have signed their insurance waivers.

  —Memo to the general field force of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs

  1

  I wanted to be home. I wanted to be in my nice comfy bed in my nice swank SoHo apartment with my beautiful girlfriend, Jane, at my side, not dressed up in my three-quarter-length leather coat, sporting my trusty Indiana Jones-style satchel. I certainly didn’t want to be using the retractable metal bat hanging from my belt as we answered a late-night haunting emergency in an antiques store at the Gibson-Case Center on Columbus Circle. Sadly, it was a rare day when I got what I really wanted.

  The motif of the store was that of an old-world warehouse, maybe New York dock houses circa 1900. The interior was massive, blocked off here and there with partial walls that broke the space up into a cluttered maze of furniture.

  Jane let out a quiet whistle. “I feel like I stepped out of time,” she said.

  I nodded in agreement. “It looks like the gathered treasure hoard of a secret Time Police.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at me, continuing off into the darker depths of the store. Her long blond hair was still half-crazed looking from the warm September winds that had whipped at it along Central Park West. “Is that an actual division of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs?”

  I grinned. “I love that in our line of work, that is a serious question, but no,” I said. “I think maybe I caught it from an episode of Doctor Who.” I had hoped for a little laughter out of her, but all I could get was a weak smile. “You know, nothing good comes from skulking through a closed-up shop in the middle of the night,” I whispered. “Especially if it’s a favor to someone.”

  “Especially if that someone is undead,” she said. “Still, it could be worse.”

  I stopped skulking along for a minute and looked at her in the low, dull red cast down from distant EXIT lights. “How? How could it be worse?”

  “Technically we’re not on the clock with the Department of Extraordinary Affairs tonight, right? So, as you said—this is a favor. Doesn’t count as work, so . . .”

  I smiled, despite the creepiness of our surroundings. “No paperwork,” I said. “I won’t have to spend half my night documenting this. Score one for us.”

  Jane nodded, clapping, but I grabbed at her hands, stopping her. The sound echoed out in the silent stillness of the store for a moment before dying completely.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  I looked around the store. “Antiques,” I said, cringing a little. “Why did it have to be antiques?”

  Jane squeezed my hand. “You going to be okay?”

  I nodded. “I understand your concern, hon, but I’ll be fine.”

  Jane didn’t look convinced. “It’s just that. . . I know how your psychometry gets. I don’t want it triggering while we’re taking care of whatever is haunting this place.”

  “I know,” I said, putting my nerves aside. “I’m like a kid in a candy store, except that kid would be less likely to go hypoglycemic.” New and simple objects could trigger my psychometry, but every damned thing in here had so much history bound to it. If I used my power to read the past on any of this collection of goods, its richness would drain my blood sugar in no time.

  “I can catch you if you pass out,” Jane said with a smile.

  Despite my trepidation in the still spookiness of the store, her words calmed me. I let go of her hands, pulled out a pair of gloves that helped dampen my powers, and slipped them on before starting off through the maze once again. “Although,” I said, looking at some of the pieces, “I’m not sure I want to control my powers. The quality of this stuff really speaks to the ex-thief in me. It makes me want to—what’s the word?—re-thief.”

  “Focus, hon,” Jane said. She reached inside my knee-length leather coat and pulled back the left flap of it, revealing the holster at my side. She pulled out the foot-long metal cylinder and handed it to me. “Here, this should help.”

  The weight of my retractable bat felt good in my hand. I clicked the safety off it by hitting Jane’s initials on its keypad—JCF for Jane Clayton-Forrester—and it sprung to its full lethal length. There was power in holding it.

  We continued creeping along as quietly as we could. The navigation was hard going but it became easier to see as a faint glow rose beyond a long bank of armoires up ahead. Jane stopped in her tracks as she rounded the corner, using one of her hands to steady herself against the closet. “Whoa,” she said, her eyes widening.

  I hurried ahead through a clutch of tables to join her and looked for myself. The store opened up into an empty circle in the middle of the cavernous space with an old-fashioned barber’s chair at the center of it. The black leather of its seat had intricate waves of color, the type of flame details you usually saw on a hot rod, not a chair. That wasn’t what had Jane’s attention or mine now. Floating unsupported at least fifteen feet above it was a swirling mass of intricately arranged lamps. The bulk of the structure was made up mostly of Tiffany-style lamps of every shape and size, their bulbs burning softly.

  “Take notes,” I whispered. “For instance. . . lamps should not float in the air like that.”

  “Ya think?” Jane asked. “No offense, but I think that floating lamps fall more into my job expertise in Greater and Lesser Arcana Division.”

  “Maybe,” I said, �
�but Aidan Christos called me in for this favor, so I’m gonna handle them.”

  I told myself I was being chivalrous, not sexist, but truth was I couldn’t live with myself if I put Jane in harm’s way. Sometimes it was a good thing to pull what little sway my seniority in the Department gave me over her.

  The semisolid form of a girl in her early twenties, roughly my age, faded into the chair at the center of the circle. Her long black hair was shagged out in a hipster mess and Jackie O sunglasses covered half of her face. She wore an ink-stained wifebeater that left her collarbones exposed, giving her an Iggy Pop look of emaciation. Her arms were covered in tattoos and one of her legs was irreverently slung over the left arm of the chair. Low-cut hiphugger jeans and heavy black biker boots completed her look. Not bad-looking for a hipster ghost. She didn’t move from the chair but cocked her head back and forth from side to side like some strange and curious bird.

  “Jeremy?” she said, craning her neck forward. “Is that you, Jer?”

  The floating mishmash of lamps overhead hitched in their circular pattern, several of them rattling against one another like glass teeth clacking together. A few colored panes of Tiffany glass came free and rained down onto the shop’s floor.

  I collapsed my bat down and slipped it back into its holster at my side. It didn’t really feel like the right approach for dealing with a transparent biker chick. Instead, I advanced into the open circle and approached the chair.

  At the sound of my footsteps, the woman tensed and stood up. She peered through her sunglasses in my direction as I approached. “Jeremy?” she asked once again. “I’ve missed you.” She gave a warm smile and the circle of lamps overhead rose to a steady glow and sped up in their swirling circular pattern.