With no other way to pay for a bus back home, I figure I might as well drop the dead lady’s head at an old buddy’s place. But I’m simmering as I walk, my hands in my pockets and a sour look on my face that I only spot as I pass by store windows and the occasional puddle. That money took me weeks to put together, and silver doesn’t come easy when you’ve really only got one way of making it, and that one way turns out to be just a little bit suicidal. But I’m rambling. If I really wanted to, I’d work a few blocks away from my apartment in that Druid’s herb and potions store.

  But that’s the easy way out of this mess, and I’m all about making life difficult for myself.

  As I walk down the street, I’m bumped into by people in a hurry to get to wherever it is that they need to. It’s like everyone and their mother is in a rush to get out of the streets. Don’t blame them. There are Monsters here, you know, and even worse than that, Anomalies. But that’s only if you’re really unlucky. Judging by how my night is going so far, I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of bumping into one and getting dragged into the sewers through a grate.

  But I guess there is some kind of beauty in the rush of this city, even this late at night, because nobody even notices the woman’s head on my hip, or the bruises and cuts on my face. Downtown Mayland isn’t a cozy place to be. The factories make it stuffy and the air reeks of smoke, you’ll probably even find someone you once knew dead in an alleyway, and nobody will care, and you won’t have the cash to spend on buying a Mage Bureau investigator to figure out what happened, so hey, you’ve just gotta keep going and say a silent prayer for them, and then some guy will creep up behind you and try to steal the sword right out of your scabbard, and then there you go trying to fight him, whilst his friends rob the corpse behind you for their magic and gold and… Fuck me. I kick a trash can over for the sake of it, making it spill out most of its garbage onto the sidewalk. Why’d you die, Aster?

  Why the fuck did you just die?

  I stop on the sidewalk and sigh to the sky, blowing air at the lazily drifting clouds. I keep expecting to feel exhausted or angry (alright, angrier), but all I’ve got is this weird feeling in my gut. This odd sense of desperation.

  Like I’m drowning standing up, clawing at the air, getting nowhere fast. It’s just been one thing after another recently. One mess and then the next. One funeral, two funerals, three and that’s just bad luck. I massage the back of my neck and keep walking, because I don’t really have an option to stop and think and feel bad, either.

  I’m alive, right? No point getting all worked up over dying.

  Whatever. I don’t even know who to start with. People have it out for me because of what I do, but this isn’t some safe haven training ground where a Mage can kill docile, drugged-up Monsters (according to the tabloids, at least), like the kids in the richer, cleaner, better-smelling parts of New Salem like doing in their free time. It’s here, on the streets, where a dozen gangs and smaller, unofficial guilds can very easily put a bunch of guys together so they can ransack my apartment. Maybe it’s just bad luck. Really, really bad luck. If it was a warning, then it was a pretty shitty warning at that, because I don’t know who did it, and they didn’t leave me much to work with either.

  “What do you think?” I say under my breath to the dead lady as I keep walking. “Just live like that now?”

  Gods know I can’t tell the Elf landlady without her turning her nose up at me and saying it was my fault. I know what kind of person she is, or better yet Elf—the repairs are gonna come out of my pocket, which are empty.

  But the dead lady is busy being dead, so I take her silence as confirmation that I might as well keep it going. One foot in front of the other and blah, blah, blah. The ‘mancer I know lives down an alleyway inside of a shop you’ve got to know about to find, and that’s exactly where my feet take me. I pass women who squeeze their breasts together, Monster and human alike, as well as twinked out of their minds Pixies on fairy dust scratching and itching and licking their glowing purple fingernails for any remnants of the powder. They ask for bits of bronze so they can get a bump, smacking their dry lips together, eyes ablaze with hunger. I ignore them and keep going down the alley until I find several short steps and a metal door with the plaque card: 1-800-Necromancer on it. I bang against it, one hand still in my pocket, and wait for an answer. He better be in tonight. I step back and look up.

  His apartment light is out, which usually means he’s in. Sure enough, the door opens a minute later.

  Sable squints and blinks several times, trying to adjust to the soft ambient neon purple light in the alley. He’s wearing a doctor’s coat, loose Hawaiian shirt, slacks, and no shoes. His hair is a blonde mess that falls around his face, smelling like he hasn’t washed it (or himself) in days. He smells like the dead, to be frank. “Kacey?” he asks, looking me up and down and pokes my shoulder. “Holy Gods, you’re actually alive. Word was that you died.”

  I shrug one shoulder. “Or you could be talking to my ghost right now.”

  His smile falters. After rummaging through his pockets, he pops a pill, then blinks harder, the fog in his eyes clearing and the shadow over his face fading away. He touches my shoulder again, then sighs with relief. “For a second there, I almost thought you were dead, K. How’s it cooking, kid? You look like shit. No offence, though.”

  “None taken,” I mutter. “Mind if I come in? Have a client I need help with.” I pat the head on my hip.

  He pushes open the door and waves me inside. “I presume I should just add it to your tab?”

  “You know me too well,” I say, untying her from my belt and handing her to the receptionist lady who practically runs this place. She’s thin and, I think, dead, but she always smiles, never says anything, and sits behind a computer all day long staring at the pictures it cycles through until someone calls the place. I follow her into a small room down a short, dark hallway and through a doorway separated from the hallway by multicolored beads. I fold my arms and watch the woman place the head on a table and clean it, just like any normal mortician would.

  Except we’re getting ready to raise her from the dead. Besides, nobody has funeral money.

  Not me, at least.

  Sable stands beside me, hands in his pockets as he smokes a cigarette. He offers me a pull, and I take it from him, dragging the thing until it’s almost down to its end. He glances at me, then drops the butt inside his pocket as he fishes for another. “Mind telling me where you found her?” he asks me, as Sally—according to the Hi, my name is! badge on her nurse outfit says—angles the cold white light above her closer to the dead woman’s throat, snipping away at bits of serrated flesh and veins and arteries, making it even. Then Sally starts sewing her up as best as she can, humming a song quietly under her breath, too. “Because she doesn’t look like she’s very dead.”

  “Found her outside my place,” I say, leaning against the wall. “Bits and pieces of her body all over the alleyway like she’s some kind of jigsaw puzzle, dude. It was gnarly. Whatever attacked her did a number on her.”

  “No kidding,” Sable mutters, as Sally gets a pair of rusted scissors out from a drawer beside the operating table and begins snipping away at the woman’s dangly red esophagus. “But you’re not the hero kind, usually, so why even bother helping her for free? I don’t think I remember a single time when Kacey Summers did charity.”

  I snort. “I am very much the hero kind. I’m a North American Mage Guild quality hero, Sab.”

  He looks at me, tired eyes saying a lot more than his words ever could.

  Yeah, well, not all heroes look like Alexandria Thorne.

  “My place got smashed up,” I tell him. “I found a trace of magic all over the fire escape and inside my apartment, too. If anyone saw what happened to it, then she’s probably as good of a guess as any to what did.”

  “Ah,” he says, then pauses. “Dudette, am I missing something, or isn’t this a little much just for your—”

  “If I came in here and threw Greek fire all over the place, would you be happy?”

  “Well, no. That would suck, and I haven’t been paying insurance, but it’s just a shitty old office space. This place isn’t actually my home. I can probably buy that van I’ve always wanted and go mobile. Do house calls, too.”

  A travelling Necromancer. Now that’s a new market.

  “So?” I ask him.

  “So don’t you think this might be a little much, just for your little old apartment?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Yeah, but it’s my fucking place,” I say to him, voice filled with venom. Sally pauses and looks at me, her dead grey eyes, pale face, and the red-haired wig Sable put on her today falling in strands over her face. Those tiny scissors are still tightly held in her blood-covered fingers, steady and calm. I force myself to relax. “I just don’t like when people ruin my stuff. Beat me up. Fight me. I’ll even gamble my sword with you in some back alley casino. Just don’t go into my house, ruin everything, and leave. That’s just not how I work. You don’t mess with my home.”

  Sable stays silent, leaving the conversation dead in the air, like the stink of it from the wall of cadavers he keeps on ice. When Sally finishes, she stands back after wiping the table down and placing the head inside of a small ceramic bowl. What, you expected something fancy? A new body she can use? That’s for paying customers only, and right now, I’m kinda broke, and the head I brought with me doesn’t have her wallet with her right now.

  So instead of having a metal disc or additional skin to cauterize her throat, she gets the hot end of a stove top oven that burns her skin black and all the dangly bleeding bits darker colors until her head stops leaking red. Sally does the honors, and only when the room reeks of burnt beef does she carefully put the head in the bowl.

  And then it begins.

  For a moment, the room remains silent as Sally hands Sable a thick leather tome. He sets it down on the table beside the head, flicks through the pages, muttering some kind of rock song to himself we can hear from the bar across the street, then he pauses, reads quietly off a page, then looks at the head. Sable takes a deep breath, then draws some kind of rune on the woman’s forehead with his own blood, and then with hers, dipping his finger inside the bowl and swirling it around until it's a frothing black pool of steaming liquids. I cover my ears for this part, because listening to Death Speak is a one way trip to the looney bin. Sable says it’s almost like talking backwards, except with a lot more cursing, damnation, bartering of souls, and a wager with whatever demon wants to eat the person’s soul sooner than you can buy it back. I don’t really understand it. Necromancy always freaks me out.

  Don’t look at me that way. You would be freaked out, too, if you just watched a head start shrieking.

  I wince, and Sable stops chanting. He shuts the leather bound tome and slaps the woman with the back of his hand. She shuts up, pants, and looks around frantically. I slowly lower my hands and watch her watch me, too.

  “What…What the…Where—”

  “Sal,” Sable says. He’s handed a syringe filled with a clear liquid. He stabs it into her throat and squeezes it inside of her, despite her wailing of what he’s just put inside of her. “There we go. That should stop the rotting.” He turns to me and gives me a thumbs up. “I’ll give you two some privacy. I’m not getting caught up in a murder case. Sally, load up Creature Mania. I’m feeling a high score in the air tonight! And grab some water for Kacey. The girl looks like she’s either gonna vomit on my floor or pass out.” With that, he pats my shoulder and leaves with Sally.

  I let the sound of their footsteps recede down the hallway, the beads shushing behind me. I stare at the lady and she does the same, her mouth open and deep purple lipstick smeared all over her face. She’s stunningly hot, but in a tragic kind of way, and not just because she’s dead. Smudged mascara amidst the coils of blonde make her look like an ornament in some Bloodsucker’s antique store. I clear my throat and figure I should probably get started.

  “Uh,” I say, walking to the table. “Hey there. I know this is pretty sudden, but I need your help.”

  “Did he say murder?!” She starts panting again, then looks down at the bowl she’s inside and the shallow pool of blood collecting around her throat. “Oh my Gods. OhmyGods. OhmyGods! Where the fuck is my body!”

  It’s very apt timing to hear Sally and Sable start playing video games from the little lobby area behind me right now, but I do my best to comfort her, which is to pat her head. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Okay, it’s not fine. I found you in bits and pieces outside of my apartment building. Someone left you inside of a dumpster and I found you, so…”

  “So what!” she says shrilly. “I’m gonna be a head for the rest of my life? What do you mean dumpster!”

  “We’ve got a twenty percent discount on month-old cadavers for first time customers! Installments, too. Not for premium bodies, so if you want some magic to come with that, you’re gonna have to pay a little extra up front,” Sable shouts from down the hallway. “Feel free to check ‘em out. Bronze members get plastic surgery!”

  I wave him off and lean against the table, facing her. “Don’t listen to him. I once saw him bring a Gremlin back to life and put it inside his cousin’s necro-shop just so they could get shut down for health reasons. He just wants cash, but I did you a solid, so consider this a free get out of death free card, cool? The reason I brought you here was to bring you back to life, because dying in a dumpster, naked, sucks for a way to go. I needed your help.”

  She slowly stops breathing hard, then looks at me strangely. “You look familiar.”

  “You can make out my face underneath the black eye and scars?” I ask, laughing dryly.

  She doesn’t laugh. Just frowns. “I…I can’t really remember where I’ve seen you before.”

  “It happens sometimes,” I say to her. “Sable—the ‘mancer trying to sell you a body—says that people who just came back to life get brain fog as your brain tries to put itself back together. No oxygen, brain damage, all of that is getting fixed. I think. I dropped out of school this year and wasn’t great with Introduction to Necromancy.”

  She remains silent for a moment as her eyebrows slowly screw together. “So you needed my help? Why?”

  “Because there was magic around your body that snaked into my apartment, which had gotten smashed up and vandalized. I’m trying to look for whoever did it, and you’re kinda the only eye witness I can currently find.”

  “Magic? Around my body?” she says. “But…I’m not a Mage. I’m allergic to the stuff.”

  So someone else left it there, I think, nibbling on my thumbnail. That just makes it harder. A Vampire’s scent would have tainted the magic, turning it into this worse-smelling odor I would have picked up in seconds. Not a Gremlin or even an Orc or Ogre. This was a Mage. Someone with magic potent enough for it to linger around her corpse maybe days after she had been killed. Or maybe I had just missed them leaving by a couple of minutes.

  For all I know, I could have walked past the guy on my way home and didn’t even notice.

  “Do you remember anyone that might have hated you?” I ask. “Some kinda grudge that got you iced?”

  She thinks for a second, then I guess tries to shake her head, which ends with her swishing around in the bowl of blood and spilling it over the sides. Her wounds have stopped bleeding by now. “I…I can’t remember. Fuck, my head feels like it’s being spun around on a top. Are you sure we’ve never met before? You look oddly familiar.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, nearly peeling off the band-aid across it. “I get that a lot, but unless you’ve seen a flier for a bounty hunter with piss poor rates fluttering around in the subway, then you’ve got the wrong—”

  The woman sneezes, sucking blood back up her throat and dousing me in a spray of red.

  I stay still, my eyes shut. She quietly swears and apologizes.

  Relax. So I relax. Using my shirt to wipe my face, I keep it there for a second, counting to ten, then back down to negative ten, before I lower it and give the chick a warm smile. “It happens,” I say. “Name’s Kacey.”

  “Jane,” she says softly. “Gods, I’m really sorry that I can’t be any help, but this is, like, a lot right now. I can’t think straight. It hurts, but I haven’t got a body that hurts. I feel scared, but I don’t know why, and it’s not just being like this, it’s something…something else. Fuck.” She shuts her eyes, squeezing them tight. “Gods, Jane, get your head together and think for once. I can’t even remember what my second name is. Gods, you freaking idiot.”

  “Hey, hey,” I say. “It’s fine. When you remember what you saw, we’ll figure out what happened to my place. For now, you’re coming with me, ‘cause the rest of you is probably being eaten by some weird homeless Werewolf. I’ll show you around, maybe ask if anyone’s seen you before, then we figure out what happened to my place, ‘kay?”

  Jane slowly opens her eyes. They’re bright blue, so stunning they’re almost unnatural underneath the pale white surgical light above us. “I don’t understand…Why would you help me? I could have broken in there. Maybe I’m the person you’re looking for.” She moans and shuts her eyes again. “What did you do this time you clutz?”

  I lift her out of the bowl and gently shake her. She opens her eyes once more, and let’s make sure she keeps them open this time. “The second you remember who you are is the second I figure out what happened to my place. I don’t see a reason why I shouldn’t help you, anyway. Death by rotting in a dumpster doesn’t roll off the tongue for the good old gravestone, so whaddya say, Jane? I help you, and you help me. We’d be a freaking dream team, too.”

  The head in my hands stares at me, and I’m quickly noticing that Jane’s eyebrows are constantly stuck in this certain position that carves worry around her eyes, like she’s permanently seconds away from messing up again.

  But I know all about messing up, and you kinda can’t kick someone when they’re down.

  It’s also kinda hard to do that when she doesn’t have any legs to sweep out from underneath her.

  “Okay,” she says quietly. Then she moves in my hands, which I think is her trying to nod. “I can do that.”

  “Yeah?” I say, grinning.

  “Yeah,” she says, nodding again, which is something I’m gonna have to get used to.

  Sable swishes aside the beads behind me, then frowns. “Guess that’s a no on the body replacement?”

  I pat his shoulder on my way out. “As soon as I find the bastards who did this, I’ll pay you back.”

  “That’s what you said last time,” he mutters.

  Let’s hope there’s a next time. Because whoever killed Jane still has their magic coiling around her. I can see it if I concentrate, and watch as it soaks into her flesh and runs through her ears and nose and throat. Someone that powerful is a threat to me, especially if it’s another Mage. I don’t kill humans, I kill Monsters. This’ll be new.

  And a part of me is already dreading it, because unless you haven’t caught on, I can’t use magic that well.

  So…good luck to me.