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Chapter 1

It was St Patrick&039;s Day, and the only green I earing was a button that read, "Pinch ht with a green blouse on, but I&039;d gotten blood all over it from a beheaded chicken Larry Kirkland, zo, had dropped the decapitated bird It did the little headless chicken dance and sprayed both of us with blood I finally caught the da, but the blouse was ruined

I had to run horey suit jacket that had been in the car I put it back on over a black blouse, black skirt, dark hose, and black pu black to work, but if I had to be at the office at seven o&039;clock without any sleep at all, he would just have to live with it

I huddled overit as black as I could s it It wasn&039;t helping lossy blowups spread across my desktop The first picture was of a hill that had been scraped open, probably by a bulldozer A skeletal hand reached out of the raw earth The next photo showed that so the splintered coffin and bones to one side of the coffin A new body The bulldozer had been brought in again It had plowed up the red earth and found a boneyard Bones studded the earth like scattered flowers

One skull spread its unhinged jaws in a silent screa to the skull The dark, stained cloth wrapped around the corpse was the remnants of a dress I spotted at least three femurs next to the upper half of a skull Unless the corpse had had three legs, ere looking at a real ruesome sort of way The color loss was a little rapher There was probably an art gallery in New York that would hang the das and serve cheese and hile people walked around saying, "Powerful, don&039;t you think? Very powerful"

They were powerful, and sad

There was nothing but the photos No explanation Bert had said to come to his office after I&039;d looked at the Yeah, I believed that The Easter Bunny is a friend of athered the pictures up, slipped the up in the other hand, and went for the door

There was no one at the desk Craig had gone hoht There was a two-hour space of time when the office was unmanned That Bert had called me into the office ere the only ones there bothered me a lot Why the secrecy?

Bert&039;s office door was open He sat behind his desk, drinking coffee, shuffling solanced up, smiled, and motioned me closer The smile bothered

His thousand-dollar suit frarey eyes sparkled with good cheer His eyes are the color of dirtyglass, so sparkling is a real effort His snow-blond hair had been freshly buzzed The creas so short I could see scalp

"Have a seat, Anita"

I tossed the envelope on his desk and sat down "What are you up to, Bert?" His smile widened He usually didn&039;t waste the smile on anybody but clients He certainly didn&039;t waste it on me "You looked at the pictures?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"Could you raise them from the dead?"

I frowned at him and sipped my coffee "How old are they?"

"You couldn&039;t tell from the pictures?"

"In person I could tell you, but not just from pictures Answer the question"

"Around two hundred years"

I just stared at him "Most animators couldn&039;t raise a zombie that old without a human sacrifice"

"But you can," he said

"Yeah I didn&039;t see any headstones in the pictures Do we have any names?"

"Why?"

I shook my head He&039;d been the boss for five years, started the company when it was just hi the dead "How can you hang around a bunch of zombie-raisers for this many years and know so little about e do?"

The s to fade from his eyes "Why do you need names?"

"You use narave"

"Without a name you can&039;t raise them?"

"Theoretically, no," I said

"But you can do it," he said I didn&039;t like how sure he was

"Yeah, I can do it John can probably do it, too"

He shook his head "They don&039;t want John"

I finished the last of my coffee "Who&039;s they?"

"Beadle, Beadle, Stirling, and Lowenstein"

"A law fira on"

"Beadle, Beadle, Stirling, and Lowenstein have so a very plush resort in the mountains near Branson A very exclusive resort A place where the wealthy country stars that don&039;t own a house in the area can go to get away from the crowds Millions of dollars are at stake"

"What&039;s the old cemetery have to do with it?"

"The land they&039;re building on was in dispute between two families The courts decided the Kellys owned the land, and they were paid a great deal of money The Bouvier family claimed it was their land and there was a family plot on it to prove it No one could find the cemetery"

Ah "They found it," I said

"They found an old cemetery, but not necessarily the Bouvier family plot"

"So they want to raise the dead and ask who they are?"

"Exactly"

I shrugged "I can raise a couple of the corpses in the coffins Ask who they are What happens if their last name is Bouvier?"

"They have to buy the land a second time They think some of the corpses are Bouviers That&039;s why they want all the bodies raised"

I raised "

He shook his head, looking pleased "Can you do it?"

"I don&039;t know Giveon his desk and took the pictures back "Bert, they&039;ve screwed this six ways to Sunday It&039;s a rave, thanks to the bulldozers The bones are all ether I&039;ve only read about one case of anyone raising a zo a specific person They had a name" I shook my head "Without a na to try?"

I spread the pictures over the desk, staring at them The top half of a skull had turned upside down like a boo finger bones attached by so dry and desiccated that must once had been human tissue lay next to it Bones, bones everywhere but not a name to speak

Could I do it? I honestly didn&039;t know Did I want to try? Yeah I did

"I&039;d be willing to try"

"Wonderful"

"Raising the to take weeks, even if I can do it With John&039;s help it would be quicker"

"It will cost the," Bert said

"There&039;s no other way to do it"

"You raised the Davidsons&039; entire fa Great-Grandpa You weren&039;t even supposed to raise him You can raise more than one at a time"

I shookoff They wanted to raise three fa it in one shot"

"You raised ten family members, Anita They only asked for three"

"So?"

"So can you raise the entire ceht?"

"You&039;re crazy," I said

"Can you do it?"

I opened my mouth to say no, and closed it I had raised an entire cemetery once Not all of them had been two centuries old, but some of them had been older, nearly three hundred And I raised them all Of course, I had two hu story how I ended up with two people dying inside a circle of power Self-defense, but the ic didn&039;t care Death is death

Could I do it? "I really don&039;t know, Bert"

"That&039;s not a no," he said He had an eager, anticipatory look on his face

"They must have offered you a bundle ofon the project"

"We&039;re what?"

"They sent this package to us, the Resurrection Company in California and the Essential Spark in New Orleans"

"They prefer ¨¦lan Vital to the English translation," I said Frankly, it soundedfirets it?"

"That was their plan," Bert said

He looked entirely too satisfied with himself "What?" I asked

"Let me play it back to you," he said "There are what, three animators in the entire country that could raise a zombie that old without a human sacrifice? You and John are two of the Phillipa Freestone of Resurrection in this"

"Probably," I said

He nodded "Okay Could Phillipa raise without a na that John could Maybe she could"

"Could either she or John raise from the mass bones, not the ones in the coffin?"

That stopped me "I don&039;t know"

"Would either of theraveyard?" He was staring atthis too much," I said

"Just answer the question, Anita"

"I know John couldn&039;t do it I don&039;t think Phillipa is as good as John, so no, they couldn&039;t do it"

"I&039;hed "Up the bid?"

"Nobody else can do it Nobody but you They tried treating this like any other construction proble to be any other bids, now are there?"

"Probably not," I said

"Then I&039; to take them to the cleaners," he said with a sreedy son of a bitch"

"You get a share of the fee, you know"

"I know" We looked at each other "What if I try and can&039;t raise theht?"

"You&039;ll still be able to raise them all eventually, won&039;t you?"

"Probably" I stood, picking up"But I wouldn&039;t spend the check until after I&039;ve done it I&039;et so If they accept our terms, they&039;ll fly you up in a private helicopter"

"Helicopter--you know I hate to fly"

"For this much money you&039;ll fly"

"Great"

"Be ready to go at a moment&039;s notice"

"Don&039;t push it, Bert" I hesitated at the door "Let me take Larry with me"

"Why? If John can&039;t do it, then Larry certainly can&039;t"

I shrugged "Maybe not, but there are ways to co If I can&039;t do it alone, et a boost frohtful "Why not take John? Coive his poillingly to me You think he&039;d do that?"