When it came to working for New York City’s favorite underfunded supersecret paranormal investigation agency-known as the Department of Extraordinary Affairs-high-stakes decision making was par for the course. People lived or died when it came down to fighting ghosts, cultists… even the occasional chupacabra. My personal stress from handling the caseload of Other Division meant I barely kept my sanity as it was, but right now I was facing the hardest decision of my life. “Choose, Simon,” my ex-cultist-turned-girlfriend Jane said in a stern tone.

“I… I can’t.”

“For God’s sake,” she said, giving me a gentle swat to my arm. “It’s cheese. How hard can it be to pick a cheese?”

I turned away from the assortment of cheeses in the display cooler in front of me to look at her. Jane wore jeans and a tight black T-shirt with a cartoon-ghost corpse on it that read CASPER WASN’T SO FRIENDLY. Her normally big blue Bambi eyes were narrowed at me in mock disgust, the rounded contour of her face looking a little sharper since her long blond hair was pulled back from her face into a ponytail. In the background behind her the rest of my local supermarket went about its own business, but the look Jane was giving me made it feel like she was shining a spotlight on me.

I turned back to the display. “Clearly you don’t understand Taco Night, then,” I said. “We could go for the Mexican blend, which seems like an obvious choice. But! We also have pepper jack, which in my opinion gives the tacos a hot, zesty flavor.”

Jane reached past me, grabbed a packet of the Mexican blend, and threw it in her basket. “I cannot believe we’re discussing this,” she said. “Can’t you use your psychometry to divine which cheese to pick?”