Marvin had been dead for six minutes when he sat up, wheezed like a accordion being warmed up for a performance, and scrabbled futilely at the air with both hands for several seconds. Jasmine, who had been going through his pockets and tsking at the amount of blood leaking from his cut throat, screamed and slammed face-first into the door in her efforts to get away from him.
“Chill, sis,” said Franklyn. He gestured at Marvin who lowered his hands and stared vacantly into the middle distance.
Jasmine turned and looked at the resurrected corpse and placed a hand theatrically over her heart; the leather cuirass she was wearing easily prevented her from feeling it beating despite the deep gouges in it. The cuirass was rough underneath her fingers and her words to Franklyn were almost as rough.
“You woke him back up, you moron? What did you go and do that for? And why didn’t you warn me first?!” Her voice rose from a deep growl to a shrill shriek as she asked each question.
“Forensics, sis,” said Franklyn. He knelt down next to the satchel he’d brought with him. It was pale brown leather and roughly square and looked like it might have been used to haul vinyl around in the days when record players were still a thing. He unstrapped it and pulled out a large picture book with bright images of dogs playing on beaches and children building sandcastles.
“Foreign what?” Jasmine’s tone had settled on snarl now and she frowned, wishing that Franklyn would look at her and appreciate her annoyance. The guy was good at his job but he was lousy at the interpersonal stuff and had missed her flirting with him three times now. She was starting to think he’d have to go. Mages weren’t all that hard to come by, after all, and not that expensive either.
“Forensics.” Franklyn held the book up in front of Marvin and asked, “What do you see?”
“He can’t answer you! You cut his bloody throat.” As if to prove her point Marvin coughed alarmingly and blood spattered over his jeans. Then a deep voice that sounded nothing like him at all resounded around them.
“A beach. Two dogs are playing.”
Franklyn turned the page. “And what do you see now?”
Jasmine watched transfixed as Franklyn repeated this three more times. With the fifth question and picture Marvin suddenly went limp again and slumped to the floor. He looked dead again; but then he’d looked pretty dead the first time too.
“What. The. Hell?” Jasmine put her hands on her hips. She hated it when she did that as it reminded her of her mother and her ‘little snits’ but sometimes the way she’d been brought up beat out her efforts to be more cultured.
“They have forensic necromancers,” said Franklyn. “They just bring them in when they find the body and they wake them up and ask them who did it. Easiest criminal investigation ever if you don’t manage to surprise the victim completely. And even if you did the chatty corpse often provides enough detail to tell the police where to look for better evidence. So this messes with them; the corpse only goes back one life, as it were. When they try asking this one for answers they’re going to think they’re hearing all about his summer holiday. And they only get one stab at it too, as the next time they wake it up it’ll only remember being questioned by them.”
“What?” Jasmine vaguely remembered hearing something about the police force here being good, but the idea of resurrecting the dead to act as a witness to their own murder made her skin crawl. “They can do that? That’s legal? I mean, you’re doing it, so it’s probably not legal, right?”
Franklyn gave her a look that she thought might be adoration, but his voice sounded a little condescending. “I do things that are legal all the time,” he said, letting a little unnecessary emphasis fall on his last three words. “I only do the illegal things when they’re necessary.”
“Fine,” she said, waving a hand. “Can I finish going through his pockets now? Only there’s a key to a garage in here somewhere, and you didn’t think to ask him about it, did you?” She grinned, feeling like she’d won a point.
“Key’s over there on the desk,” said Franklyn, pointing. “It’s labelled; Marvin was a neat freak I think. So you can stop putting your fingerprints all over the body and I’ll get it cleaned off. I’ve got a dinky little spell that cleans up everything from fingerprints to cat hair.”
“Cat hair?”
Franklyn pulled a small hessian sack from his satchel. “Yep,” he said. “No reason for any cat hair to be here; Marvin’s never liked animals and there are none in the neighbour houses. So that’s going to be a clue for the police to confuse them a little more.”
Jasmine picked the key up off the desk. It was on a ring with a little green fob next to it; the fob had been written on. “Garage 109,” she said out loud. “He was very organised.” She looked up at Franklyn. “A bit like you,” she said contemplatively.
“Don’t,” said Franklyn, standing up. “At leas—“
There was a bright white flash of actinic light and Jasmine, who had fired her tiny, sleeve-holstered, pistol at him, blinked. Everything seemed to be staying white instead of returning back to normal and she felt oddly like she was floating. She relaxed a little, feeling like she could just lean back and not have to worry about anything….
“And you’re back,” said Franklyn. She blinked again, or tried to. Now her eyes didn’t seem to want to work and she felt like she’d been rubbed with something very rough and very hot. Burning sandpaper, maybe. It kept on going and she tried to scream, but her mouth didn’t seem to want to obey her.
“You tried to shoot me,” said Franklyn. He was watching her cautiously and it was as though she had a lot more mental clarity all of a sudden. She could see the dislike on his face and the wariness in his movements and thoughts. He was suspicious of her. “You failed, because it never occurred to you I’d be shielded, though I can’t imagine why you didn’t think of that. Surely if you’re going to betray someone you’d expect them to betray you too.”
That sounded like a question and she felt compelled to answer it. “You’re too stupid to expect betrayal,” she said, though her mouth didn’t respond as well as she’d have liked and her words sounded a little muddy and slurred to her. “You were too stupid to see me flirting with you.”
“Was I?” Franklyn laughed, but it was another question and she felt compelled to answer again.
“Three times,” she said, deciding that he didn’t deserve a full answer.
“I can’t believe you thought that was flirting,” said Franklyn. He shook his head, and produced the picture book. She stared at it, though she was unable to move her eyes anywhere else, while she wondered about why he was showing her that. He must have noticed, because he lowered the book briefly.
“You’re dead,” he said quietly. “You attempted to shoot me and the ward deflected the bullet and it struck you in the head. So… this is our last goodbye and me making sure that you don’t get to tell anyone about the garage or what I’m collecting from there -- without you now. So,” and he held the book back up, “what do you see?”
