without repercussions.”
“It may have been your spell, but it was my zombie.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You tried to use death magic against me. I’m a necromancer, you can’t use death magic against me. But you especially can’t use death magic against me that’s fueled from my own power.”
“What are you talking about, your power?”
“Those were my zombie’s bones on the damn wall.”
“That zombie was a flesh-eating zombie—they have no master. They belong to no one.”
“This one belonged to me, because I raised him from the dead. He was mine and something you did to the bones is killing the woman he loved. Do you even care that you’ve almost orphaned a little boy? Do you give a damn about anything besides personal power?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. I did not cast a spell to harm anyone.”
“You harmed me and tried to harm Anita with that bag of bones of yours,” Zerbrowski said.
“You were attacking me. I was merely defending myself.”
“Tell it to the judge,” I said.
“I did nothing wrong!”
“Like I said, tell it to the judge.”
“I did nothing wrong. I’ll be out on bail before you finish the paperwork.” Normally he’d be right, and his knowing that meant I was betting he had a record.
“If I were a regular cop, you’d be right, but I’m not, remember?”
“No, I’m human. You can’t execute me like I was some undead or half man.”
“Watch the half-man comments,” Nicky said.
“You’re a human sorcerer that stole body parts to perform death magic that almost killed an innocent woman. The magical malfeasance law was created just for humans like you,” I said.
“No, no, you can’t do this to me, I’m human. You only kill monsters.”
“If you think you’re not a monster, you need to get your third eye checked.”
* * *
—
Robbie Curtis got a warrant of execution issued for him, but I wasn’t allowed to be the instrument of justice. I was too personally involved, so another of my fellow marshals got to do the honors. Fine with me, as long as he can’t hurt anyone else ever again.
Justine Henderson is out of the hospital and home with her parents and baby. She’s hoping to get a place of her own in a few months. I wish her well and hope that she finds someone to love the way she loved Thomas. I hate the idea of her pining for him forever.
I took the bones to the crematorium and watched them go in the oven. I leaned against the wall and read a book until they were turned to ash, no chance of getting the ol’ switcheroo this time. I dumped the ashes in different bodies of running water. That is finally the last anyone will ever hear from Thomas Warrington. Jean-Claude and I have talked more about how my zombie could have gotten a version of the ardeur, but we don’t know why it happened, and if I don’t know why, then I don’t know how to keep it from happening again. He turned into a flesh-eating zombie because he’d been a cannibal in real life. It wasn’t in any written history on him, he literally took the secret to the grave, so no fault of mine technically. But what really bothers me is that the loving, charismatic zombie was so full of my version of the ardeur that he made himself and Justine fall in love with each other. The zombie was alive enough to get a human woman pregnant with a perfectly normal baby, as if he had been real. That was impossible, even I wasn’t that good, but the baby was happy and normal and a strong argument that maybe I was that good, which scared the hell out of me. I raised the undead, I did not do resurrection, no one did, but Thomas Warrington had been close. I didn’t know why he’d been so . . . human. I didn’t know why any of it had happened, which made my skin run cold if I thought too hard about it. But one problem at a time, right? We saved the girl and killed the evil sorcerer, and my breaking his finger was deemed reasonable use of force. All’s well that ends well, until next time.