Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel by Mike Mignola Christopher Golden

did not want to offend him, but she walked slightly apart from him, the smell of oil and the occasional puff of steam from his nostrils making her decidedly uneasy. A glance at his back showed strange protrusions beneath his clothes, just below his shoulder blades. She did not know how it was possible, but there was no other conclusion: Mr. Church had some kind of mechanism inside of him.
    Is that how he has lived so long? she wondered. Only then did she realize how completely she had begun to believe him.
    Mr. Church led them to an ornate door. Intricate, gold-filigreed fleur-de-lis had been carved into its wooden panels, and a pair of frosted glass windowpanes allowed for a nearly opaque glimpse of what lay beyond. Joe opened the door to reveal a metal gate, beyond which she saw the internal workings of an old elevator. He pushed the gate aside and held it while Molly and Mr. Church boarded. The big man closed and latched the gate, then worked a lever that brought the elevator lurching to life. It rattled as they began to ascend.
    “Tell me, Molly,” Mr. Church said. “Joe and I—and several Water Rats in my frequent employ—have spent a great deal of time over the years observing the comings and goings of Felix Orlov. Once upon a time he ranged far afield from his theater, visiting clients and associates. But in the time since you have become a part of his household—”
    “I’m not, really,” she contended. “I have my own apartment. I’m his assistant.”
    “Very well,” the old detective said as the elevator slowly ground its way upward. “Since you have been his assistant, Orlov the Conjuror has left his theater with diminishing frequency.”
    “He almost never goes out,” Molly agreed.
    “Almost,” Joe said, running his thumbs beneath his suspenders. “He goes to that cemetery in Brooklyn Heights about every month.”
    Molly frowned. It disturbed her to know that these people had been watching her and Felix for so long that they knew about Felix’s comings and goings from the building. Much of Brooklyn was underwater, and all that remained of Brooklyn Heights was a seven-hundred-acre cemetery. The area above the waterline had once included a park and a small neighborhood, but during the plague that came even before the flooding, the homes on the outskirts of the cemetery had been seized by eminent domain and razed in order to make room for the plague dead. The way Felix told it, the homeowners had been more than happy to go, knowing so many plague victims would be buried nearby. Others were buried in the cemetery from time to time before the city shut it down—madmen and suicides, mostly.
    “We know he goes to Brooklyn Heights to visit his mother’s grave,” Mr. Church said as the elevator began to slow, shaking more ominously, pulley cables crying out in protest. “Have you ever noticed significant changes in his behavior?”
    The elevator rattled to a halt. Joe snapped the lever into the off position and unlatched the metal mesh gate, hauling it open.
    “Maybe he’s gone somewhere and come back acting a little differently?” Joe said, his gruff voice so different from Mr. Church’s cultured, melodious tones.
    Molly stiffened. “Differently how?”
    Joe had stepped off the elevator, and she’d been about to follow, but now he and Mr. Church were studying her intently.
    “What is it?” Mr. Church asked. “Something’s just occurred to you.”
    “I don’t think it’s anything, really.”
    “Maybe he comes back excited, like he’s got a secret,” Joe said.
    “The cemetery—” Molly began.
    Mr. Church shook his head, stepping off the elevator accompanied by the smell of oil and the muffled clank of mechanics. “We’ve been to his mother’s grave.”
    “I don’t think it’s only his mother’s grave he visits,” Molly said softly, feeling somehow as if she were betraying her best and only friend.
    Now they were both outside the elevator, staring in at her. She felt