Dead Matter Read Online Free PDF

voice mail, Simon,” she protested, turning away with a flip of her ponytail. She wouldn’t look at me. Instead she pretended to busy herself smoothing her short black skirt over her long, lean legs. “We haven’t been actually out in weeks.”
    I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off with her finger pointing in my face.
    “Taco Night does not count as ‘out,’ Simon. Especially when it starts off with a monster.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, flipping my phone shut and sliding it into the inside pocket of my leather half trench, “but duty calls. Even more so when it’s Inspectre Quimbley on the phone. It’s another graveyard call coming in. I have to check it out.”
    Jane let out a sigh. Her adorable mouth puffed out into a full-on pout. She was playful, but I could tell she was still tweaked by the interruption.
    “What if it had been Director Wesker calling?” I continued. “Are you telling me you would have ignored your boss?”
    “Fine,” she said. She looked a little mischievous. “But you owe me.” She ran her finger down the front of my shirt.
    “I know,” I conceded, trying to switch my mind from date mode to business mode. Her finger tracing its way down my body in the back of the cab wasn’t helping. I looked out the window and tapped on the partition between us and the driver. “Pull over here, please. Just through the light on the left.”
    Jane leaned her head over to look out the window. “The Financial District?”
    “Great for date night, I know,” I said. I slid a twenty through the window to the driver and got out of the cab before offering my hand to Jane. She took it despite being a little perturbed and let me help her out. To our right was the Port Authority station that now stood where the World Trade Center once had, but neither Jane nor I dared walk toward it. No one from the Department of Extraordinary Affairs went down to Ground Zero these days.
    I turned to look at the building nearby as Jane grabbed her purse out of the cab. Trinity Church loomed dark and quiet in front of me, but it wasn’t the church itself I was here about. What I was looking for lay just inside the enormous wrought-iron fence that surrounded the church. I was looking at one of the oldest graveyards in the city and from within it, I could already make out a tornado of ghostly figures swarming up through the air. I felt like I was watching something straight out of The Haunted Mansion . I slid back the side of my coat, and pulled my retractable bat free.
    “Drive away,” I told the cabbie. I flicked the switch on the side of my bat, causing it to shikt out to its full length. “Terribly fast.”
    The cabbie looked to my bat and then took a look at the swirl of ghostly activity coming from just beyond the graveyard gates. He stepped on the gas and the cab screeched away, its door pulling free from Jane’s hand, slamming shut.
    With all the Wall Street day traders and office jockeys in the area gone this time of night, it was as quiet as a crypt everywhere except, oddly, the series of crypts and graves before us. Jane flexed her hand and turned to check out the graveyard spectacle.
    “Lovely,” she said. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
    I forced a smile. “Nothing but the best for you.”
    The two of us stepped forward, looking up at the dark gates of the churchyard. The ironwork rose up at least fifteen feet. Jagged spikes peaked each of the bars that formed the barrier.
    “Up and over?” Jane suggested.
    I shook my head. “I’m thinking we find a better way in. These are high enough and pointy enough that I’m not comfortable with the idea of trying to climb over them. At least not without giving myself an interesting piercing in the process.”
    “Might be hot,” Jane said, giving me a wicked grin.
    I gave an uncomfortable one back. “Or disfiguring.”
    Rather than get into the finer points of damaging my junk, I shut my mouth, crossed the sidewalk, and edged