So much for staying incognito.
I pushed my key into the ignition but didn’t start the car. Instead, I stared at my cell phone, feeling the gnawing need to call Alex, to make things right.
But what would I say? I couldn’t come clean about Sampson just yet. And I couldn’t tell him that I’d never meant to hurt him when I was with Will.
I quashed down the guilt, the need, the unease that I felt. I need to help Sampson, I told myself. I can make things right with Alex when this is through.
It was late Saturday afternoon so cars clogging the city streets were mainly the out-of-state kind that slowed in front of every big building and changed lanes repeatedly. Two carloads of people in I HEART SF sweatshirts rolled down their windows to take cell phone pictures of my car, what they undoubtedly believed was one of those wacky SF artist’s statements.
I was overwhelmingly happy to turn into the police station parking lot, where my car was quite at ease amongst the other criminal junkers. Once parked, I raced into the station, doing my best to keep my eyes on my shoes and look as unassuming as possible. I hopped into the elevator, typed in my weekend code—the Underworld Detection Agency is strictly a Monday through Friday gig—and gripped a lock of my hair, twisting it furiously over my finger. It was the one nervous tic I had yet to break.
The doors slid open at the Agency and I poked me head out. “Hello?” I asked. “Anyone here?”
When no one—and nothing—answered me, I took a tentative step out, doing my best to stay in the darkness. Deserted and bathed in yellow emergency lights, the office looked like any other office waiting room, but tonight there was something eerie about it, as though every creature, every feared legend and boogeyman, were lurking in the darkened corners, jaws at the ready, just waiting to attack. The silence was overwhelming, oppressive, and the heavy beating of my heart seemed to echo in the darkness, ricocheting off every dim wall.
I steeled myself against my nervous twitter and slipped down the main hallway, taking the stairs to the absolute bowels of the building—and possibly of the earth.
There was a file room down there—it was a spot where paper files went to die and where Vlad and Kale would make out when they thought no one would notice.
I pushed open the door and was greeted with the scent of mildew and general age. The room was enormous and impossibly black; it seemed to swallow up the meager sliver of yellow light from my flashlight. I stepped into the room, hearing the ground creak under my feet, a drip in an overhead pipe. I was acutely aware of my breathing and everything in my body was on high alert as I pushed the door closed behind me. I couldn’t shut it all the way, feeling as though the click of the door and the shadowed depths of the room would swallow me whole.
Though—or possibly since—the UDA has been around in various iterations since the medieval times, our filing system was woefully behind and every bit of paranormal information ever produced seemed to be housed here. Also, no one was ever able to agree on how to create a copasetic filing system with the paper documents, stone tablets, and the occasional indenture carved into human bone. Hence, our file room was part business typical, part Halloween superstore.
The file area for werewolves was near the very back of the room and blanketed by two inches of dust. I set my flashlight on a nearby box, doing my best to angle the light in a useful direction. While there were entire walls dedicated to the documents and records for vampires and a growing catalog for newly turned zombies, the werewolf corner seemed woefully miniscule—nothing but two metal filing cabinets and a lopsided stack of books that looked garage-sale ready. I wrinkled my nose and very delicately yanked on the metal drawer pull of the first cabinet. Four feet of mashed-together manila folders sprung out and I finger walked through, looking for the most recent and the vilest.