Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

leads, and at this point it’s pretty much a dead investigation.”
    Given what I’d seen in Lace’s apartment, that wording was appropriate. “So let me guess: The guy who lived in 701 is gone.”
So pretty I just had to eat him
.
    The man from Records nodded. “That’s right, 701. Jesus Delanzo, age twenty-seven. Photographer.” He looked up at me, and when I didn’t say anything, he continued, “Apartment 702 was occupied by Angela Dreyfus, age thirty-four. Broker.”
    “Where does she live now?”
    He frowned. “We don’t exactly have an address for her. Just a post office box in Brooklyn, and a cell phone that doesn’t answer.”
    “Rather anonymous, don’t you think?” the Shrink said.
    “And her friends and family don’t think it’s weird she lives in a post office box?” I asked.
    “We don’t know,” the Records guy said. “If they’re worried, they haven’t filed with the NYPD.”
    I frowned, but the Records guy kept going. “A couple lived in the other apartment—703. Patricia and Joseph Moore, both age twenty-eight. And guess what: Their mail forwards to the same post office box as Angela Dreyfus’s, and they have the same phone number.” He leaned back, crossed his legs, and smiled, rather pleased to have put such a juicy coincidence on my plate.
    But his last words hadn’t even gotten through to me yet. Something else was really wrong.
    “That’s only three apartments. What about 704?”
    He raised an eyebrow, looked down at his printouts, and shrugged. “Unoccupied.”
    “Unoccupied?” I turned to the Shrink. “But that’s where Morgan lived. Her junk mail is still showing up there.”
    The Records guy nodded. “The post office doesn’t forward junk mail.”
    “But why don’t you have a record of her?”
    He leafed through his folder as he shook his head. “Because the landlord never filed an occupancy form for that apartment. Maybe they were letting her live there for free.”
    “For
free
? Fat chance,” I said. “That’s a three-grand-a-month apartment.”
    “Actually, more like thirty-five hundred,” the Records guy corrected.
    “Ouch,” I said.
    “The rent is not the most unsettling thing about that building, Cal,” the Shrink said. “There was something else Records didn’t notice until you prompted them to look.”
    The guy glanced sheepishly down at his papers. “It’s not anything we usually flag for investigation. But it is … odd.” He shuffled papers and unrolled a large set of blueprints across his knees. “The building plans show an oversize foundation, much deeper and more elaborate than one would expect.”
    “A foundation?” I said. “You mean, the part that’s
underground
?”
    He nodded. “They didn’t have the air rights to put up a tall building, because it would block views of the river. So they decided to make some extra space below. There are several subbasements descending into the granite bedrock, spreading out wider than the building overhead. Room for a two-floor health club, supposedly.”
    “Health club in the basement.” I shrugged. “Not surprising in a ritzy place like that.”
    The Shrink drew herself up. “Unfortunately, this health club is not in a particularly healthy location. They excavated too close to the PATH tunnel, an area where the island is very … porous. That tunnel was only finished in 1908. Not everything stirred up by the intrusion has settled yet.”
    “Not settled yet?” I said. “After a hundred years?”
    The Shrink steepled her fingers. “The big things down there awaken slowly, Kid. And they settle slowly, too.”
    I swallowed. Every old city in the world has a Night Watch of some kind, and they all get nervous when the citizens start digging. The asphalt is there for a very good reason—to put something solid between you and the things that live underneath.
    “It’s possible that this excavation has opened the lower environs,” the Shrink said, “allowing something old to bubble