Page 19 of Devils and the Dead
“Go on, Hades. Are you remodeling the welcome area? If so, I have a few suggestions.”
“Not at this time, but I always welcome suggestions.” I didn’t, but she didn’t have to know they’d go right in the trash. “Actually I wanted to ask you about reaping. Hypothetically, if a necromancer were to summon a soul from…oh, say hell. Would you be able to sense it? Could you go forth and reap that soul? Technically, that person should not be among the living.”
“Hypothetically?”
I felt the weight of the reaper’s stare right through the hood. “Hypothetically.”
“If a necromancer were to perform a resurrection, then the person is no longer dead, and there is no soul to reap. We do not reap living souls.”
A resurrection. The dead necromancers I’d spoken to had claimed such a thing was next to impossible, a one in a billion chance of success even with the most dedicated, knowledgeable practitioner. But why would the necromancer call forth a over a dozen souls, resurrect only one, then return the others? It didn’t make sense. It seemed far more likely that either the necromancer died in the process of returning the souls, leaving one behind, or one soul had stubbornly remained.
“How about a zombie?” I asked. “Not a resurrection, but a soul brought back into a dead body?”
“Well, that is a different matter.” The reaper held up a bony finger. “Such a thing would be either a terrible mistake by a newbie, or a deliberate act by a seasoned necromancer who should be punishing souls in the third circle of hell. Zombies usually have only a tiny portion of their soul, easily returned once the undead has served its purpose. Calling forth an entire soul and trapping it in a corpse is truly demonic behavior in the extreme.”
I agreed, but I wasn’t particularly concerned about the ethics or the morality of the spell caster. It was not my job to judge. It really wasn’t my job to go tracking down a lost soul either, but here I was.
“But if that did happen, would you be able to reap the soul and return it to the appropriate afterlife?” I asked.
“The body is dead,” she mused. “I do believe I would be able to reap the soul. But it wouldn’t show up on my list. The body died quite a while before and the soul had already been reaped once, so such a thing would slip through the system unnoticed. We would not receive the call to reap such a soul.”
The good news was if I could find the missing soul, then I could point it out to the reapers and Bluochol or one of her associates could bring it home. But I still needed to find the missing soul, and in a world with over seven billion humans, that would be quite a task.
I thanked the reaper for her time, and ascended to the world of the living, to a place where two roads converged and deals were made. This would be my last stop of the day, then I’d write my reports, grab something to eat, and take another look at those plans for the new Cliffs of Despair.
A man stepped from the shadow of an old oak tree at the spot where the two roads joined. He was handsome by human standards, with golden blond hair and bright blue eyes, but he was not a human.
This was a crossroads demon.
“Greetings, Xavier,” I called out.
He grinned and strode forward, hand extended. “Hades! What the devil are you doing here? I thought you’d be nose-deep in the plans for the sixth circle redesign. Or that Cliffs of Despair job. Satan knows we should have modified those eons ago.”
“I should be working on both those projects,” I told him. “But instead I’ve been given a side job that has nothing to do with architecture.”
Xavier grunted. “That’s the way things go in hell. Bureaucracy. Paperwork. A job comes up that no one wants, and they just randomly assign it, as if they drew a name out of a hat.”
“Truer words have never been spoken.” I waved a hand and two chairs appeared at the corner of the crossroads, in the grassy shade of the oak tree. “Let’s sit. I’ve been on my feet for what feels like a century.”
The crossroads demon and I walked to the chairs and made ourselves comfortable. I took a second to admire the beauty of this world. The sun came from behind a cloud, brightening the grass and the pavement. Wind rustled the red and gold leaves of the oak. Fall was truly a beautiful time of year. It was a season of transition, and I loved transition. Birth. Death. Change was a glorious thing.
“This project I’ve been assigned,” I finally spoke up. “It involves necromancy and I find myself at a loss. I’ve spoken to the dead necromancers in hell and none of them seem to be able to help me. I’ve spoken to a reaper. Now I find myself needing to locate a living necromancer to hopefully be able to finish this stupid project and get back to my real job.”
“I know a necromancer,” Xavier announced cheerfully.
I pivoted to face him. “You do?” After all the dead ends I’d hit today, had I finally found a lead?
“Sure. Glenda’s sister. Honestly I’ve never met a necromancer before her. They’re kind of rare. Still, she isn’t at all what I’d been picturing when I thought necromancer. I’d expected some hook-nosed guy with beady eyes and gnarled hands, sitting by a pile of bones. Babylon is a really pretty woman with red hair and dark eyes. She’s a lot of fun, too. Total riot at Sunday night dinners.”
“A woman.” I frowned, because all the necromancers I’d spoken to so far had been men. Witches were usually women, but on occasion there was a man with witch magic. I guess the same could be true of necromancers, with a woman born with the talent. But male witches usually had minimal powers. A female necromancer with minimal powers wouldn’t be able to cast the level of spell that removed all those souls.
“I’m pretty sure she’s a woman, but I didn’t exactly check,” Xavier drawled. “Glenda would frown on that sort of thing even if Babylon wasn’t her sister.”
This Babylon might not be the necromancer I was searching for, but surely they all knew each other. With such a rare magical art, I would expect necromancers would socialize to share experiences and information. Maybe they all got together once every other year at a small convention. Maybe they had an online chat group.
Either way, I had to meet this necromancer.
“Do you mind introducing me?” I asked, thinking that if Xavier facilitated my meeting her, she might be more open to talking about her magic and other practitioners she knew.
