The Mall of Cthulhu Read Free

without really knowing why, he tucked it into the pocket of his ocean-blue apron instead.
     

Two
     
    Laura looked up from the ATM receipts to the grainy video on her computer screen. Was that Whitey? Some old guy in a baseball cap and sunglasses withdrawing four hundred dollars in Boca Raton. Well, he might well be a fugitive gangster. Or else he was just an old guy with bad fashion sense in Florida.
    She rubbed her eyes and stood up. She looked over the tops of white cubicles bathed in cold fluorescent light, over the identical heads of all her co-workers, to the one sliver of window visible from her cubicle. She could see that it was a sunny day outside, and for a brief moment, she thought she should just feign illness, go get on her bike and enjoy the sunshine, maybe in the Arboretum. Or maybe she should just quit, just say the hell with it, and see if Ted could get her a barista job where at least she would never have to think about old people at Florida ATMs again.
    Suddenly, McManus' doughy, florid face was peering over the top of her cubicle. "Find something, Harker?"
    Startled, Laura said, "Uh, no sir. I mean, well, more of the same."
    "Well, Harker, I don't know what kind of song and dance the recruiters at your top-five law school gave you, but the real business of law enforcement is often boring as shit."
    "Yes sir."
    "There's no shortcut, you know. They caught Capone by combing through his books. You think that was fun?"
    Laura wanted to tell him that she'd seen that movie, that she didn't need any lectures about Eliot Freaking Ness, and that this office would have caught Whitey ages ago if people inside the office hadn't tipped him off. Instead she said, "I'm sure it wasn't, sir."
    "Goddamn right it wasn't. There are no shortcuts in this work. Even if you're brilliant and female and get out of paying the dues other people have to pay."
    What, exactly, was she supposed to say to that? She figured McManus was trying to bait her, and, unable to think of a safe response, she said nothing.
    "Well. Back to work, then."
    "Yes sir." She watched as McManus walked away, then carefully pressed her hand against the slate-blue carpeting on the cubicle wall and flipped him the bird.
    Sighing, Laura sat back down and looked at the clock at the bottom of the screen. Shit! It was already ten, and she still had so much more work to do. There was no way she was going to make it to Queequeg's to see Ted this morning. On the other hand, she could really use the caffeine if she was going to be staring at grainy video for eight more hours. Maybe she could get Ted to deliver.
    As she dialed Ted's cell phone, Laura realized this was at least partly a passive-aggressive move. Maybe he wouldn't show up. Then she could just drink bad coffee from the lounge and she wouldn't have to see him. She felt guilty—as much as Ted needed her, which was very much indeed, and as tiresome as this got, she had certainly needed him when she had been captured by Camilla's hypnotic gaze, when she'd been powerless in the face of evil. She owed Ted not only her life, but very likely her soul as well, because if it weren't for him, she would have signed right on for the bloodsucking, and the day sleeping, and instead of being a cog in the machinery of law enforcement, she'd be an abomination, enduring the soulless eternity of the undead.
    Except, sitting here in a cubicle with slate-blue fabric walls under flickering fluorescent lights, it was very hard to believe in the undead. It just seemed impossible that a world as mundane as the one she inhabited also contained unholy murderous creatures of the night. Still, there were living humans every bit as evil as the undead, horrible sociopaths who terrorized and tortured and killed people. She'd joined the FBI in hopes of chasing them down, of being a strong woman who didn't need some skinny male nerd to rescue her, of being a woman who helped make the world safe for the living.
    Instead, she was looking for