The man pauses, looks over at us, then glances around the room at the woman who is busy working on a computer, the man who is sorting things in the corner, and the man who led us into this room.
“Mickey, are you bringing victims back to life to do your work again?” Riley asks.
The man named Mickey quickly looks around like he can somehow disguise the fact that everyone in the room other than the three of us are reanimated dead. “No! These… are… new hires.” He’s a smaller man with curly hair that currently falls messily around his face. He’s giving us an innocent look, but something about it tells me he’s not as innocent as he’s pretending to be. He looks to be in his mid-thirties; possibly around Riley’s age.
“Honey, I don’t know who you’re trying to fool but look at me, it’s clear I died in the seventies,” the woman at the computer says as she gestures at her hair. “I got your dating profile all set up. I added DTF to it in big letters because you really need to get laid. Maybe you’ll be less… you if you get laid. Like everyone in this room died a horrible death, and still, I think we all feel most sad for you.”
“So he’s a necromancer,” I say in Shaarunen.
“Yes, and a very talented one too. He can heal their wounds and make them look like they’re still alive. The guy with the hole in his head is probably one of the bodies he’s supposed to be examining… which is why he isn’t healed up. But Mickey could heal him if he wanted.Just don’t ever tell him I said he’s talented.”
“Understood.”
Riley turns to Mickey and asks incredulously, “You’re resurrecting the dead to make you dating profiles?”
“Scott, I thought I told you to lock the door!” Mickey complains.
“But I know Riley is your friend, and you have so few…livingfriends that you really should spend more time with them,” Scott says.
“You really should,” the woman agrees. “You’re just so pitiful.”
Mickey groans and slumps down into a chair. “I just want to nap. And they keep tossing all of these bodies at me. ‘Mickey, find out how this person died,’ and ‘Mickey, you have to actually examine the body,’ oh, and ‘Mickey, you can’t just reanimate a medical examiner to do the job for you.’ Joke’s on you, Lieutenant, I did just that.” He waves to the quiet guy studiously staring at some charts in the corner.
Riley seems to assess the situation. “You… are the medical examiner… are you not? Like… isn’t that your job? To examine dead bodies?”
Mickey sighs loudly and then sets his head on the table. “Tommy, figure out how that bloke died.”
“Right away, sir!”
“I thought about helping,” Scott, who opened the door for us, says.
“Looks like… you’re missing…” I trail off since the man probably already knows he’s missing half his ear and… a part of his head.
Mickey perks up. “He speaks!”
“He’s… learned questionable English,” Riley says.
“I heard you taught him using your erotica,” Mickey teases with a grin.
Riley glowers at the man as Kit’s nose starts twitching. Mickey, noticing it, opens up a bag of mini cookies which heholds out, and Kit ditches Riley in a heartbeat to sit on Mickey’s lap and nibble on a cookie.
“I heard you were the one who found Torin,” Riley says.
“I was! I thought he was dead and he looked to be in really good condition, so I was going to… call it in.” Mickey sighs. “I really wanted to use him to finish some chores around the house. Look at those muscles. He could have tiled my whole bathroom floor without breaking a sweat.”
“You can still use him for chores,” Riley offers.
“He’s a god! You can’t make a god do chores!”
“I sure can, and I’m not going to bat an eye. I was going to teach him how to do laundry today. My plan is to end up having to do nothing while he does everything.”
“He’s a god! I’m all for making others do things for me, but I think I draw the line at ‘god washing my underwear.’”
“Eh, he likes it,” Riley says.
I smirk at him. “If you give me a treat, I’ll do anything you want, you sexy beast.”
Riley’s excitement over making me his maid seems to drop as he scowls at me over that one.
