his personality back, but it didn’t matter in the end. He wanted me to prove to Justine that he wasn’t alive; I could do that.
I used what Nicky had started calling my command voice and said, “Thomas Warrington, come to me!” I held out my hand.
Justine shivered and held on to his arm. “Don’t do it, Tom, don’t go.”
He frowned at her and then at me. “I seem to have a choice, Miss Blake.”
I shook my head. “If I’m nice about it, you have some choice, but I don’t have to be nice.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that, Miss Blake.”
“I know you don’t.”
Justine wrapped herself around him, hugging him tight, making him look down at her. “She may have raised you from the grave, but something else happened when we kissed for the first time. You get warmer every time I touch you.”
“Romantic wishful thinking, Justine,” I said.
She turned and looked at me, eyes a little wild. “No, no, it’s not. His skin gets warmer every time we kiss, or hold hands. I’m not making it up.” She went up on tiptoe and offered her lips to him.
He hesitated, looking at me. I nodded, and only then did he bend down to her. I didn’t think he was a zombie looking for permission, but just Warrington wondering if it was still all right, with my magic creeping over their skin, because I knew he felt it, and her reaction let me know that Justine was feeling some touch of it.
They kissed and I looked with power, not my eyes. Energy flared between them so that his glow went from a pale, almost invisible shine to a flare of scarlet. When they parted from the kiss his energy stayed brighter, and so did hers. It was as if she gained power from it, too, but then maybe we always do from love, or even lust. If we didn’t gain shared energy it wouldn’t be so addictive.
She turned to me. “See, see, he’s more alive every time.”
I couldn’t even argue with her, because I’d seen it. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“We love each other! How can that not matter?” She walked toward me, and the moment she let go of his hand his energy faded again. Whatever was happening between them was temporary.
“Take his hand again,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“Take her hand in yours, Tom.”
He reached out and did what I asked, but again I didn’t think it was because he was obeying me; he wanted to touch her. His energy sparked again, not as much as it had when they kissed, but it was there. He was gaining something from her.
“Let go of her hand and shake hands with Mr. MacDougal.”
He hesitated, but let Justine go and reached out to the other man. MacDougal hesitated, too, but shook hands with him. Warrington’s energy brightened, not as much as it had with Justine, but it was there, a little boost. That was very interesting and totally shouldn’t have been happening. Zombies didn’t care if you touched them, but then normal zombies didn’t care about anything; they just obeyed orders, or answered questions when asked. Whatever kind Warrington was, it was something different, maybe something new. I wondered if anyone else had raised a zombie that gained energy from human contact. I knew a few animators in the business that I trusted enough to ask, but that was for another night. Tonight had enough weird without borrowing.
“You can stop shaking hands; thank you both.”
“See, see, you thanked them both, even you think Tom is a person.”
I looked at the woman and understood some of the demand on her face, in the tension of her body, her hands caught somewhere between fists and claws ready to scratch. I wondered if she even knew that she was getting ready for a fight; probably not. Fight-or-flight can affect people oddly, if they’re not used to the reaction.
“He is the most alive zombie I’ve ever raised,” I said, but my voice was still calm and unemotional. It was a headspace similar to the one I’d used in college when I was getting my biology degree and doing my senior project. You record what your test subjects do; you don’t anthropomorphize them. I was looking at them all with a dispassionate distance that was part of the scientific mind-set, and a little bit sociopathic, but then what is either but a lack of emotional projection? One is so you can record events without editorializing, so the