Page 26

“Well, you’re still the smartest guy I’ve ever met.”

“Merci.”

He stands aside and lets me look into his microscope. All I see is black sludge with tiny dots spinning into and around each other.

“I mean it,” I tell him. “I don’t know if I could make it two hundred years and stay sane.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Vidocq says.

“Are you ever going to tell me how it happened?”

He goes back to the microscope and carefully removes the slide.

“It’s a long and not very pretty story.”

“My favorite kind.”

While he’s pouring the milk back into the flask, I reach for my coffee, but bump into his shoulder. The slide slips from his hand onto the worktable. Most soaks into the wood, but a black drop slops onto the side of the plate with bacon. When the strip of bacon comes in contact with another strip, it stiffens and flips into the air, convulsing when it lands, like a fish dying in the bottom of a boat. Each time the bacon touches another strip, that strip starts writhing and twisting too.

Vidocq slams a bell jar on top of the plate, trapping the meat circus underneath.

I look at him.

“Ever seen that before?”

“No. Never. It’s fascinating.”

“This is truly one of the most goddamned things I’ve ever seen. What do we do with the little bastards?”

“We wait and see what happens.”

“What if they don’t stop? What if we just invented immortal bacon?”

“One mystery at a time, my friend.”

“We can’t exactly Google ‘disposing of zombie thrash pork.’”

Vidocq puts his hands on a pile of old books next to the medical cabinet.

“This is my Google. I’ll find an answer for you. Don’t worry.”

“I know you will. But it’s going to lead to trouble. I can tell.”

He nods. “Profound mysteries have a way of leading to yet more mysteries.”

The bacon strips make little tinking sounds when they hit the glass dome.

“What do we do now?”

“Normally, it would be lovely to have you stay and chat, but you should go,” he says. “I have a lot of reading to do.”

“You sure you’re safe with that stuff around? Maybe I should take it and ditch it in the ocean or something.”

“You’ll do no such thing. It’s not often an old sorcerer gets to explore angelic puzzles. Leave this here with me. I’ll be fine.”

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Abbot. He wants me to come over tonight. So much for “Take the weekend, Stark.”

“Okay. But call me if things get any weirder. In fact, call me no matter what. If these bastards are still hopping around tonight, I want to know about it.”