Page 39 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Two undead stumbled into the gap. A man in a torn hoodie. A woman in a stained skirt. Their eyes were wrong, cloudy, but their heads snapped toward movement with predator focus.

Faith didn’t hesitate.

She lunged, slammed the first nail down through the undead man’s pant leg into the pavement with a quick hammer strike. The sound rang out, metal biting concrete.

The corpse shrieked, a wet, furious sound.

Faith drove a second nail through the other leg.

The undead dropped to its knees, pinned, thrashing, hands clawing at the ground.

Faith pivoted, fast, and did the same to the undead woman, anchoring her by the ankles. The woman snapped her jaws, trying to bite Faith’s boot.

Faith kicked her back and drove another nail in, pinning the hem of the skirt to the ground.

The undead’s movements became frantic, but limited. Like angry dogs on leashes.

Mina’s crew filmed, eyes huge, faces pale, but their cameras stayed steady. I hated that part of me admired their focus. I hated it more that their focus was on this.

Mina leaned toward her mic pack friend, voice loud enough to carry into the camera. “Okay, see, these are the actors. We had them in restraints for safety because we were doing stunt work. We didn’t know people would panic.”

Eve’s mouth tightened. “Mina.”

Mina kept going. “We’re going to show behind the scenes in a second. Everybody breathe. It’s not an outbreak. It’s a very unfortunate misunderstanding.”

Delia moved into the crowd line, voice soft, compelling, threading suggestion through Mina’s words. “A misunderstanding. A stunt. A student film. A scary costume.”

Some mundanes blinked, their expressions shifting. Confusion replacing horror. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.

Now it was my turn.

I stepped into the gap, close enough that I could smell the rot, the damp earth, the copper tang of old blood. My stomach did a slow roll.

I lifted my hands, palms angled toward the pinned undead.

Necromancy was not like healing. Healing felt like warmth and light, a steady pull toward balance. Necromancy felt like cold water poured down your spine. It felt like reaching into a room you shouldn’t enter and touching something that remembered being alive.

I reached anyway.

The dead threads were there. I could sense them, faint, frayed, tied to muscle and bone. The spark that shouldn’t exist in a corpse flickered like a candle in the wind.

I tried to take hold of it.

Tried to pull the movement into my control, like guiding a puppet by its strings.

For a heartbeat, it worked.

The undead man’s thrashing slowed. Its head turned toward Mina’s camera, jaw slack, eyes blank.

Mina’s grin widened. “Yes. Perfect. Look at that. That’s acting.”

Then the tether hit me.

A tug, not on the corpse, but on my grip.

Like someone on the other end had noticed I’d touched their toy and decided to yank it away.

Pain flared behind my eyes.