Chapter 33

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As I sat at my computer desk in The Room, working at putting something resembling a plan together, I realized something rather unusual; I was feeling stressed.

The largely theoretical time limit on this job was really starting to play havoc with my nerves, and my multiple failed attempts to stop Stevie, or even slow him down for that matter, weren't helping matters any. My understanding of the world had been fragmented and scattered to the four winds these past few days, and I hadn't even had a chance to sit back and attempt to put things back together in a way that made even a small iota of sense. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd worked out, an activity which I've realized over the years plays an important part in the successful management of my stress levels. Top it all off with working non-stop through the night and into the morning, something I knew I'd pay a harsh penalty for later, all to try and piece together a plan to deal with supernatural weirdness I only half-understood in the first place? Well, let's just say that I wasn't exactly the happiest of campers right at that particular moment.

I finished off the last of my coffee with a gulp, then got up to brew yet another cup, probably my sixth or so. Thank goodness for Jamaican Blue Mountain, which was the only thing that was making this all-nighter bearable. Freshly roasted, ground, and brewed... right there in my kitchen. And if you can't taste the difference roasting your own coffee beans makes, you should probably just stop drinking coffee altogether. Trust me.

Actually, I realized that I probably needed to stop drinking quite so much coffee as well. While it was currently doing a good job of keeping me awake, the accompanying jittery feeling wasn't something I needed at this point. True, there were a whole host of things I didn't really need at this point, but at least coffee consumption was something I could control.

Control. I pushed the button on my coffee maker and stood there in my kitchen, pondering the word.

That was the crux of the whole problem, really. Any time I attempted to exert any sort of control over any aspect of this job something unexpected or impossible would happen, and I'd find myself beating a hasty retreat to someplace safe. What I needed was a situation where I couldn't lose the kind of control I needed to put an end to this whole thing. And that meant building contingency plans into contingency plans, accounting for every possibility that could arise.

Difficult thing to achieve when your quarry can do the impossible.

My coffee maker shut itself off with a quiet whirr and beeped softly, letting me know that my fresh cup of work juice was ready. I picked up my mug and took a quick sip, then headed back to my computer desk.

"Mrowr?" Myrrh murmured, regarding me inquisitively from the section of couch he'd claimed as his own this morning.

"Oh hush, you," I said, walking past him and into The Room. "I'll figure out something eventually."

Hey, say something often enough and sometimes you end up believing it yourself....

Sitting down at my desk with a quiet sigh, I put my coffee to one side and leafed through the four pages of pier locations I'd printed.

I wasn't making a whole lot of progress on this. I knew roughly where I wanted everything to go down, enough to narrow it down to three possible locations. The refrigerated shipping container was a bit of a question-mark though. For starters, it wasn't exactly the sort of thing you just went down to the docks and forked over a bunch of cash to acquire. A few cursory searches on the internet led me to discover that the whole thing would probably cost no more than a few thousand dollars. But then again, I had some pretty specific requirements. None of my contacts had gotten back to me about it yet, but then it was still pretty early in the morning.

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