“Then why do it that way?” Peasblossom asked. “Sounds like a good way to get yourself killed by your own zombie.”
“There’s a theory that if you use someone else’s life force instead of your own, you’ll live longer. Necromancers use their own life force to raise the dead, and if you’re a successful necromancer, you raise the dead faster than your life force can recover. We die young, and not all of us accept that.” She grabbed a pen out of the cup on my desk and used it to tap her chin. “The reputation for necromancers turning evil is sadly well-earned. None of us knows what we’re truly capable of until we’re faced with our own mortality.” She dropped the pen on the desk. “Anyway, I’m not supposed to work in an official capacity until after the trial. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Why—” I cut myself off as I realized Poppy wasn’t alone.
A young man stood in the doorway, unmoving. He was a couple of inches short of six foot, with sallow red skin and short, dark brown hair. Bandages covered his left eye and most of his nose, and his lip was swollen around a deep cut filled with dried blood. Sunglasses perched on his face despite the fact that the sun was already setting, and they sat crooked on his face due to the bandages. He was dressed all in black, including a clingy black fishnet shirt that was completely inappropriate for the cold weather.
Poppy noticed where my attention had gone. “Oh, right, introductions. Shade, this is Alex. Alex Walker. We met the other night. He’s the reason I came to see you.”
“Why is he wearing sunglasses at night?” Peasblossom demanded.
“The darkness is welcoming to all,” Alex responded, his soft voice a deep monotone that was somehow both disturbing and soothing.
Peasblossom smacked her forehead. “Oh, great, he’s an emu.”
“Emo,” I corrected her. “And don’t be rude.” I folded my hands on my desk. “How can I help?”
Poppy patted the chair beside her, indicating for Alex to sit next to her. “So two days ago, I’m working a cemetery, when Jenkins goes nuts and charges something on the other side of a bunch of trees.”
As she spoke, she slid her backpack over her shoulder to land in her lap, and I found myself staring directly at the small skull of Poppy’s dead terrier, Jenkins. Jenkins, when animated, was a remarkably spry little terrier, all things considered, and I’d personally witnessed him dragging a zombie back to its grave when things got a little out of hand.
“I chase after him and I see a zombie coming after Alex here.” Poppy jerked her thumb over her shoulder at Alex, who, despite her invitation to sit, still haunted my doorway like an imposing Halloween decoration. “I run over to help, and when I’m laying the zombie back in its grave, I notice this.”
I frowned as she pulled something out of her pocket. “A lock of hair?”
“A lock ofAlex’shair,” Poppy said seriously. “Whoever raised that zombie sent it after him specifically.”
I glanced at Alex and shifted uncomfortably in my seat.“Forgive me, but isn’t it also possible that Alex used his own hair to raise the zombie and it got out of control?”
“I don’t call the dead,” Alex said in the same monotone as before. “The dead call for me.”
“I see.” I looked at Poppy.
“It wasn’t him,” she said firmly. “Jenkins caught someone’s scent near the grave, but when we tried to follow it, he lost it in the parking lot—probably because whoever it was drove away. Someone raised that zombie and sent it after Alex. I need your help to find out who.” She glanced down at my name plaque. “That’s what you do now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it is. All right, then, Alex, do you have any idea why someone might want to hurt you?” I pulled a legal pad from the side of my desk to center it in front of me with one hand and grabbed the pen Poppy had dropped with the other.
“I have a vengeful spirit,” Alex responded. “And I help those who need it.”
I looked at Poppy.
“Alex has a calling,” Poppy said, scooting forward in her seat. “He helps people get revenge.”
I frowned. “What kind of revenge?”
Poppy waved her hands, making the chains hanging from her leather jacket jingle. “Nothing serious. It’s more—”
“Petty?” Peasblossom suggested, leaning over my arm.
“Well…yes.” Poppy grinned. “Alex is a college student over in Zanesville. When he hears about someone behaving badly, he helps their victims get a little revenge.”
“Behaving badly?” I repeated.
“Yeah. Alex is an engineering and philosophy double major, so he’s pretty good at rigging traps and cameras and that sort of thing. For example, there was a woman who was constantlyparking in her coworker’s assigned space. Alex made a little device that he attached to the nameplate in front of the space and connected to her car’s electronics. Whenever she tried to park there, the device would set off her car alarm.”
Alex’s mouth quirked up in the corner. “Thieves deserve to have their faces bared to the world they victimize.”
“I see.” I tapped the pen on the legal pad. “All right, then I’d say the first logical place to start is the people you most recently…taught a lesson to.” I pushed the legal pad across the desk toward Alex and laid the pen on top. “I need a list of, say, the ten most recent people you sought vengeance on.”
