Crimson Death
Page 145

   “I think we all are,” Dev said.
   “It’s nothing personal. My ma is a big one for finding sin in people.”
   “Nolan’s mother didn’t like me much either. She doesn’t hold with folks that work with the Fey,” Flannery said.
   He grinned at me, his teeth strong and so white that I was beginning to think he’d had them bleached, which didn’t fit with his messy hair, which couldn’t seem to decide if it was wavy or curly, and he kept running his hands through it and trying to push it back away from his ears. It was longer than regulation for any army or police force I was familiar with, but the rest of him screamed someone who had been in a uniform most of his adult life. I wondered if the longer hair was an effort to look less like a uniformed officer; if so, he’d been in Nolan’s unit awhile.
   “What’s wrong with working with the Fey?” Dev asked.
   “My ma doesn’t like anything that makes a person stand out as different,” Nolan said.
   “Because she’s hiding her differences?” I asked.
   He nodded.
   “I asked to meet her,” Flannery said. “There are so few native wolves left in Ireland, I wanted to meet Captain Nolan’s family.”
   “Ma was right mad when she figured out he was a Fairy Doctor.”
   “She got more worried when she found out I had never married.”
   Nolan laughed. “She was torn between fixing you up with a local girl and keeping the Fey away from her friends.”
   “So she’d want all of us to be married?” Nathaniel asked.
   “Oh yes.”
   “Could you tell she was a wolf when you met her?” Jake asked.
   Flannery shook his head. “I could tell there was something Fey about her, but not what.”
   “Is it Fey to be an Irish wolf?” I asked.
   “It’s why they don’t like any of the wolves that cut off their tails. They love their own deformities, but they would see it as a betrayal of their heritage,” Nolan said.
   “Your tail was not a deformity,” Flannery said.
   “You tell that to the other lads in school and their families,” Nolan said.
   We were all quiet for a few minutes as the truck whirred along the road.
   “Being different is always hard,” I said. “You know that vampire that tried to use me as a human sacrifice?”
   “I remember the story,” Flannery said.
   “His friend was a necromancer, too. They approached me initially to combine our powers and help heal the vampire.”
   “Ah, well I’m sorry for that, but I assure you that I only want to do positive magic. Human sacrifice does not qualify as positive magic.”
   “Is that what they call it now?” Jake asked.
   “Call what?” he asked him.
   “Is it positive magic instead of white magic now?”
   “Yes, actually that is the new, more politically correct phrase.”
   “I guess black magic being bad and white magic being good doesn’t match the new social justice climate,” I said.
   “The last necromancer we dealt with felt like her magic should wither the grass as she walked,” Flannery said, and that memory stole the smile from his face and made his eyes look haunted. It was the kind of look that combat gave you, or working violent crimes too long. You were haunted not by real ghosts, but by the ghosts of memory. Real ghosts were sort of boring, and not really a problem if you ignored them and didn’t feed them power by paying attention to them. The ghosts of the past didn’t go away because you ignored them.
   “Some of the people with my psychic ability give the rest of us a bad name.”
   He looked startled. “You think it’s a psychic ability?”
   “Yeah.”
   “But you do magical rituals to raise the dead. If it were purely a psychic ability, there’d be no ritual needed.”
   I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally said, “I raised my first zombie spontaneously when I was a child. I didn’t do a damn bit of ritual for it.”
   “Who was it?” he asked.
   “What, not who. It was my dog. She came home and crawled into bed with me. I thought she was alive again, at first.”
   “That should make your power metaphysical, not mystical, but . . .” And it was his turn to hesitate, as if he were trying to pick his words more carefully.
   “But what?” I asked.
   “Maybe you are a psychic just like a natural witch, but I’ve never known a necromancer who didn’t need magic ritual to raise the dead.”
   “I’m a special little snowflake,” I said.
   “Maybe, or maybe you’re the kind of necromancer that the legends tell about.”
   “What legends?”
   Nolan said, “Please, Blake, don’t play stupid.”
   “Yeah, yeah, raise an army of the dead and conquer the world. Legends and myths say that witch kings and voodoo queens keep trying it, and keep failing at it.”
   “I saw some of the films from Colorado last year,” Flannery said.
   “You raised an army of the dead,” Nolan said.
   “Only to combat the one that the bad guy had already raised,” I said.
   “But you still raised all the dead for miles around the city of Boulder, Colorado,” Flannery said.
   I shrugged, not sure what to say.
   “That is legendary magic, Blake,” Flannery said.
   “Do I blush and say Aw shucks?”
   “If the land and the gentle folk like you, Blake, then that’s good enough for me.”
   Nolan said, “Flannery is my expert on magic, so if he likes you, then that’s good enough for me, too.”
   “When did you fight this other necromancer?” Jake asked.
   “Just a few months ago. I’d never seen anything like it, until I saw the videos from Colorado and what Blake did there.”
   “Was she human?” Jake asked. “The necromancer, I mean.”
   Flannery nodded. “As far as we could tell, yes.”
   “You’ve thought of something,” Nolan said.
   Jake smiled and looked so friendly, so open. “Anita fought a vampire that could raise zombies just last year, and you fought a human necromancer within the same year. I just find that an interesting coincidence.”