Death's Excellent Vacation - By Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner Page 0,44

for a few weeks. So I’m asking you to help me do my job.”

“You may rest assured that my facts are in order.”

“With respect, I can’t take it on faith. I need a source.”

“I am the source.”

“But how do you know it’s right?”

“It just is.” He closed the folder and stared at me for a long moment. “Per aspera ad astra,” he said, walking away.

I recognized that one. Through hardship to the stars.

PALGRAVE began weaving a single unverifiable fact into every page of his work. Again and again I went to him asking for sources. Each time he looked me square in the face and said, “It just is.” The red check marks continued to bloom in the margins of his copy, creating a logjam in the production chain. The burden of breaking the jam rested entirely with me.

One day Peter Albamarle appeared in the doorway of my office. It was rare to see him moving among the drones, so I had a pretty good idea of what was coming. “I understand you and Thaddeus have been at odds,” he said.

I looked at his face and knew my job was on the line. My first job. The job that was supposed to be my entrée into big-time journalism. “Not at all, Mr. Albamarle,” I said.

He folded his hands. “Thaddeus . . . can be something of a challenge,” he said slowly.

“I’m sure we’ll iron this out. I’m still learning the lay of the land.”

“Perhaps.” Albemarle stepped into my office and closed the door. This can’t be good, I thought. “It’s no reflection on you,” he said, “but not everyone is cut out for this job. If you like, we can reassign you to Imagination Station and pass Thaddeus off to a more seasoned researcher.”

Imagination Station. The kiddie series. The Siberia of LifeSpan Books. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” I said.

“It’s not a reflection on you,” Albamarle repeated. “Thaddeus takes a certain pleasure in being difficult. This office is his entire world. He has never once in thirteen years taken a vacation. Not once. I’ve tried to speak with him, but . . .” He raised his palms and shrugged.

“I understand,” I said. Actually, I had no clue, but I understood that he was prepared to throw me under the bus.

“It’s just—it’s just that if you can’t resolve your issues, we won’t be able to meet the drop date. That’s ten days from now.”

“So I have to find a source for each of the red checks in Mr. Palgrave’s work.”

Albamarle gave a tight nod. “Exactly,” he said.

“Without his cooperation.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Somewhere among all the tens of thousands of books and references we have available on the Civil War.” I flipped the pages of the book I was holding. “A needle in a haystack—only the haystack is the Library of Congress.”

Albamarle had the decency to look abashed. “I’m afraid that’s the situation precisely,” he said.

AND the strange thing was, I began to think I could do it. I wanted to prove to Palgrave that I could take whatever he threw at me. It became my only goal in life to erase every single red check. I came in early to get first crack at the 128 volumes of The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. I dipped into the memoirs of officers and enlisted men—Company Aytch by Sam Watkins and Following the Greek Cross by Thomas Worcester Hyde. I made a special study of Major General John D. Sedgwick, the highest-ranking Union casualty of the war, who fell to a sharpshooter’s bullet at Spotsylvania. His last words: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”

Brian and Kate watched with mounting horror. “You can’t learn everything there is to know about the Civil War in ten days,” Brian told me. “It takes three weeks, minimum.” But I wouldn’t be deterred. I began refusing to go out for lunch, preferring to stay at my desk with a tuna and avocado pita pocket, skimming through regimental histories. If a call of nature pulled me away from my desk, I hummed “I Cannot Mind My Wheel, Mother” on my way down the hall. After five days, I had erased seven check marks. By the eighth day only three remained. And by the last day I had whittled the list down to a single red check mark—the one that had started it all. Worm castles.

On the night before my deadline, Brian and Kate returned to the office after dinner and found me dozing over