Page 2

Hindley snaps his fingers in front of my face. “What’s wrong with you? Let’s do this.”

I shake myself a little. “Yeah. Where’s his tattoo?”

“On his hip.”

Hindley kneels beside the corpse. All the hair and most of the skin are burned off, and everything’s crispy black and raw red, but I can see the bullet hole in his skull.

Somebody shot him and then burned him. The house kept him mostly intact, like Hindley said, but it let the flames chew at him, making my job harder.

With the help of a relative, like one of the Coosaw Lockwoods, Hindley could probably manage to drag this guy’s soul back out of the Vague.

But the client would wake up in a disintegrating body.

We’re talking the worst kind of zombie-revenant shit—organs barely functional, skin sloughing off, a body so desperate for nutrients that its natural hunger morphs into something way worse.

That’s where I come in. I don’t just bring people back from the dead—I can restore the bodies to like-new condition. The Lockwoods used to have that gift too, way back, but it’s faded over the generations. Which is why Buckland felt like he’d struck gold when he found me.

Hindley may hold the tattoos for all our clients, but I’m his meal ticket.

Without me, he’d never get the juicy post-resurrection payout that’s included in every contract.

And I need the connections he has to the supernatural world, at least for now, until I figure out a way to get some of my own clients.

Much as I hate it, Hindley’s right—he and I depend on each other to survive. The brewery does a half-decent business, considering we both suck at marketing, but the way Hindley spends money, there’s no way we could live on that income alone.

Steeling myself, I kneel beside Hindley. He drags down the remnants of the guy’s pants at the hip, and the fabric pretty much disintegrates into ash, exposing a swath of discolored skin and a tattoo of a cross-shaped Celtic knot, smudged-looking but still distinguishable.

Hindley yanks his hunting knife out of its sheath on his belt. He’s a big hunter, Hindley. Hunts for the hell of it, and most of the meat goes to waste. Me, I’m damn good with a gun, better than he knows, but I don’t hunt. I’m a meat eater, sure, but I can’t stomach killing animals myself.

After carving a thin line in the top of his forearm, Heathcliff dampens his fingers with the blood, then lifts his shirt and claps one hand over a tattoo on his ribs.

He places his other hand over the dead man’s tattoo.

The twin marks will serve as his guide, allowing him to locate this guy’s soul in the Vague and pull it back into the body.

The dead guy’s tattoo starts to glow red, the light leaking between Hindley’s fingers.

“You ready?” he asks.

I nod, angling my body so I can place one hand over each of his.

This is gonna hurt. It always hurts worse when someone else is siphoning my power through themselves.

When I’m performing a resurrection on my own, it’s better.

Not that I’ve had the chance to do it on my own very often.

The Lockwoods don’t usually trust me with the names or tattoos of their clients.

I don’t remember when I first learned to perform a resurrection.

But I must have known something before I came to the Lockwoods because I healed and resurrected that piece of roadkill.

Of course, animals are easier to revive.

They’re part of nature, so there’s no need for a tattoo or a link of any kind.

I can just pull some energy from the nature around me, condense it, and put it into the animal while I’m reviving it.

Simple. Sure, a few plants might die, maybe a tree or a bush, but the toll isn’t too high.

People are not animals…not exactly. They have immortal, individual souls.

As much as I wish that weren’t true, there’s no way around it.

I don’t like to think about what that means, afterlife-wise.

All I know is, you gotta have a link of some kind to the person you’re trying to resurrect—like an address to where the soul’s located.

Otherwise you’ll never find them in the Vague.

I’ve been into the Vague a few times. It’s confusing, but not as scary as some might think.

The tattoo’s like a line, leading me to the soul I need, and as long as I follow it, I’ll find the right person.

Then I just have to pull ’em in, like a fisherman reeling in his catch.

Problem is, the longer you wait, the farther away the soul gets, until eventually the line dissolves and you can’t find them at all.

This time, I won’t be going into the Vague myself. My job is to give Hindley the fuel he needs to do this. It’s his consciousness heading into that other place.

“Mors aperit ianuam,” mutters Hindley, butchering the pronunciation as usual…and he closes his eyes.

A raw, choking, mind-numbing pain rushes through my body as Hindley sucks power out of me and into himself. It feels like having my heart vacuumed right out of my chest cavity, like having every vein and nerve ending zapped with electricity all at once. Worst thing I’ve ever endured.

“Shitbag’s already way out there in the Vague,” Hindley mutters. “These fuckers never make it easy. Once I grab him, you do your thing.”

I clench my teeth and hiss through the pain. That’s the only acknowledgment he’s going to get.

The inside of my nose is burning unbearably, crinkling like it’s being singed with flames, sending hot spikes of pain up into my sinuses. The sensation of my heart being compacted and suctioned through my ribs increases until I can’t stay quiet. A groan grates through my clamped jaws.

“Shut up,” snaps Hindley. “I’ve almost got him.”

A white flash of pain blots out my vision, blazes in my brain like a searing supernova. “Oh fuck,” I gasp. “Fuck, I can’t…”

“Don’t you dare let go!” Hindley barks. “I got him. I got him. Once we reset this guy, that’s a nice fat payout. You’ll get your cut, too.”

The agony I’m enduring isn’t worth a measly ten percent. There’s a slick metal taste coating my tongue, acidic bile inching up my throat, shudders wracking my body. Wrong, wrong, something is wrong . This isn’t normal, isn’t right. This one shouldn’t be allowed to come back…

“He’s back in the body,” shouts Hindley. “Do it, Heathcliff.”

I can feel the shape of the soul now. In my mind, it’s an oily thing with needlelike claws and a hissing maw, clinging desperately to the inside of the body. There’s something real messed up about this one.

“Not sure about him, Hindley,” I protest. “Feels wrong this time.”

“Set him right, or I swear I’ll cut off your balls and serve ’em to you with sauce on a pile of fucking spaghetti!”

Don’t do it. This is wrong, wrong, wrong…

But I have spent years telling that voice inside me to shut the hell up. Years working for the family that calls me theirs, doing what they want. When Hindley yells at me again, I silence my inner voice, and I obey.

I bend my will to the job. I heal the charred flesh, repair the organs, recreate the torn skin.

The drain on my energy is enormous, a flood of power gushing from my body into the corpse of the client.

A roar of sheer anguish bursts out of me as my own vitality feeds into the damaged body. Makes it whole.

When it’s done, I can barely see. Blurred vision happens sometimes, especially with the worst cases. Should clear up in a bit. I peel my clammy, shaking hands away from Hindley’s, and I collapse onto the floor.

It’ll take hours for my energy to return to normal levels. But at least I’m conscious. Sometimes I pass out.

I lie there for a while, waiting for my vision to clear, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock. Eventually Hindley starts pacing the room, muttering.

As the pain-fog lifts from my brain, I start to understand why he’s worried. Our guy should be up and talking by now.

Stiffly, I manage to sit up. The moment I do, Hindley lunges over and smacks me.

“The fuck?” I exclaim.

“You did it wrong,” he snaps. “The guy isn’t waking up.”

I blink at the body on the floor. The client looks good. There’s even a tinge of healthy color in his cheeks. But he’s still unconscious.

I run my tongue around inside my mouth, tasting the coppery essence of blood. “I did everything right.”

“He’s supposed to be awake, and he’s not . You know what a sleeping guy can’t do? He can’t pay what he fucking owes us!” Hindley kicks the sofa furiously, then yelps and grabs his foot, swearing again.

“I got nothing left, okay?” I rub my forehead. “He’ll wake up sometime. They all do. We just gotta be patient.”

“And what are we gonna do while we’re waiting on Sleeping Beauty to join us?” A vein in Hindley’s forehead bulges with rage.

“We could bring him back home, put him in the spare room, wait for him to come around.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“If he doesn’t…once I’ve recovered, I’ll take another look, see if I missed something. I can’t do anything else right now, man. It’ll kill me. I need food, then rest.”

Another thing about resurrecting corpses—leaves me with a hell of an appetite.

Hindley seems as if he might argue, but then he stares at me long and hard. I must look like shit because he grumbles something and then nods. “Fine. We take him back with us. But the second you got your energy back, I want him awake and paid up, got it?”

Slowly I climb to my feet, gripping the back of the sofa to steady myself. “Sure, boss. Whatever you say.”