Page 10 of Devils and the Dead
Ducha, a hyena shifter, was dressed in an impeccable navy pantsuit. She sat across from Marcus, a panther shifter, who was our town prosecutor, and my eldest sister’s ex-boyfriend. The two shifters worked together, but there was enough icy tension coming off the hyena to power the diner’s walk-in fridge. I waved at the rat shifter, Officer Watts, who was dousing his omelet in ketchup, and nodded to our resident chimera, Emma.
Sliding into a booth, I took a look at the menu and placed my order with my waitress, Willow, a sylph who’d gone to school with me.
“Can Nash pop out of the kitchen if he’s got a few minutes to take a break?” I asked her.
“Sure.” She bobbed slightly, her magic suspending her a few inches above the ground. “We’re starting to slow down from the rush anyway.”
Nash actually brought my food out to me—fluffy, golden pancakes with sliced strawberries and powdered sugar on top. I ignored the butter and syrup and got in a mouthful before he could slide into the booth opposite me.
Heaven. Pure heaven. The only thing better was Glenda’s cooking.
“I’ve got a reaper question I’m hoping you can help me with,” I told him, taking another quick bite of pancake.
“Ask away.” Nash smiled and I thought, not for the first time, how lucky my sister was. He was so darned nice. And darned easy on the eyes as well. Many of my sisters liked the edgy guys, or life-of-the-party funny guys. In my opinion, Ophelia had snagged the best of them. Kind. Loving. Considerate. Patient and even tempered. Slim with lean muscle and a cute butt that I was willing to bet looked even better without those pants.
I was a butt girl. So sue me.
I know, I know. Hard to believe that a necromancer with fire-engine-red hair and a zombie roommate would be attracted to this sort of man. Bring on the nerdy guy! The beta dude! Others could keep their alpha assholes for themselves. Me? I liked the men who’d do anything for me,andbe genuine nice guys as well.
Which, looking back, made me wonder what the hell I’d been doing with Cameron. Jerk. Butt-wipe. Douche Canoe.
Yeah. No. I wasn’t going to think about Cameron today. Nope, I was going to think about these amazing pancakes, the ghosts on Savior Mountain, and how to resurrect Maude. Not some jerk who’d ghosted right when I’d thought I’d found the perfect guy.
Pushing thoughts of my disaster of a last relationship away, I got back to why I was here.
“So, here’s my question. When you separate a soul from a body and send it to the afterlife, does it ever come back? Or somehow not make it to the afterlife?” I asked as I cut another bite of pancake and pushed it around on my plate.
Nash leaned back in the booth, not one ounce of suspicion on his face. “There is a transition, a journey. If the journey is interrupted, then the soulcouldremain here as a spirit.”
“Interrupted? Like they’re on their way to heaven, and something happens?”
He shrugged. “It’s rare, but the psychopomp that leads them may become untethered from the soul. Usually they’re picked up again with only a very short delay. Either another psychopomp grabs them, or a reaper finds them and sends them off once more.”
“But what if that didn’t happen?” I asked.
“They’ll sometimes hover around where they became untethered, or return either to their body or a familiar location from their life. They’ll be a ghost until they’re found and sent off once more. Some spirits choose not to move on, no matter how hard I urge them, but most are eager to head to the afterlife. And, of course, those destined for hell don’t have much of a choice. Hell’s minions will seek them out if they don’t appear at the gates soon after their demise. A contract is a contract, after all.”
“Some return to the body?” I poked again at my pancakes. “Do any of those become zombies?”
“Not without help. Only a necromancer can cause the dead to rise. A soul that returns to its body soon realizes that they’ve died and leaves. They may haunt the graveyard and the spot where they are buried, but there’s no sense in hanging around inside a decomposing, inanimate body.”
I ate a few more bites of pancake, working up the nerve to ask my next question.
“Do you know any necromancers?”
“Besides you?” he smiled. “No. Necromancers are very rare, and I’m sure you can understand why they may not want to hang around reapers who are duty bound to take the souls they may be trying to resurrect.”
“Animation doesn’t require a soul,” I reminded him.
“No, and the zombies necromancers create use no more than an echo or shadow of the soul. I may not have known them, but I’ve heard of ones who can pull souls from the afterlife and use them to give their zombies intelligence and sentience. Those necromancers have the power to resurrect, which is something heaven and hell both frown upon.”
His words caused that pancake to sit like a lump in my stomach.
“I don’t know how to do that. I’ve never had a teacher. None of our ancestors’s spell books have anything to do with necromancy. I’m on my own here, and sometimes that means I don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s hard. If I…screw up, then there’s no one to turn to for advice.”
He reached out and patted my hand. “Do you want me to ask around, Babylon? Ask some of the other reapers if they know of any living necromancers who I could put you in touch with?”
I nodded. “I need help, Nash. My sisters don’t understand what I do. No one understands what I do. You’re probably the only one I know who sorta does.” I took a deep breath, then went on. “I did something. I did it for the right reasons, and I tried to fix things, but nothing I do seems to be working. I need help. All the people I’d normally go to for help can’t assist me. And they’d probably be horrified and wigged out at what I’ve done.”
