He shook like he meant business, good, solid. "Lieutenant Nicols, and my condolences on having to deal with..." He hesitated.

I finished the sentence for him, "... that crazy bitch. I believe that is the phrase you're searching for."

He nodded. "That is the phrase. I sympathize with a widow and children getting the money that is due them," he said, "but she makes it awful hard to sympathize with her personally."

"I've noticed that," I said, smiling.

He laughed and reached into his jacket for a pack of cigarettes. "Mind?"

"Not out here in the open, I guess. Besides, you've earned it, dealing with our wonderful Mrs. Bennington."

He tapped the cigarette out with one of those expert movements that longtime smokers use. "If Gordon Bennington rises from the grave and says he offed himself, she is going to go ballistic, Ms. Blake. I'm not allowed to shoot her, but I'm not sure what else I'm going to be able to do with her."

"Maybe her lawyers can sit on her. I think there's enough of them to hold her down."

He put the cig between his lips, still talking. "They've been fu... freaking useless, too afraid of losing their fee."

"Fucking useless, Lt. Fucking useless is the phrase you're searching for."

He laughed again, hard enough that he had to take the cigarette out of his mouth. "Fucking useless, yeah, that's the phrase." He put the cig between his lips again and took out one of those big metal lighters that you don't see much anymore. The flame flared orangey red, as he cupped his hands around it automatically, even though there was no wind. When the end of his cig was glowing bright, he snapped the lighter shut and slid it back into his pocket, then took the cig out of his mouth and blew a long line of smoke.

I took an involuntary step back to avoid the smoke, but we were outdoors and Mrs. Bennington was enough to drive anyone to smoke. Or would that be drink?

"Can you call in more men?"

"They won't be allowed to shoot her either," Nicols said.

I smiled. "No, but maybe they can form a wall of flesh and keep her from hurting anyone."

"I could probably get another uniform, maybe two, but that's it. She's got connections with the top brass because she's got money, and may end up having a lot more after tonight. But she's also been fucking unpleasant." He seemed to relish saying the F-word almost as much as smoking the cigarette, as if he'd had to watch his language around the grieving widow, and it had hurt.

"Her political clout getting a little tarnished?" I asked.

"The papers plastered her decking Conroy all over the front page. The powers that be are worried that this is going to turn into a mess, and they don't want the mess to land on them."

"So they're distancing themselves in case she does something even more unfortunate," I said.

He took a deep, deep pull off the cig, holding it almost like someone smoking a joint, then let the smoke trickle out of his mouth and nose as he answered me, "Distancing, that's one word for it."

"Bailing, jumping ship, abandoning ship..."

He was laughing again, and he hadn't finished blowing out all the smoke, so he choked just a little, but didn't seem to mind. "I don't know if you're really this amusing or if I just needed a laugh."

"It's stress," I said, "most people don't find me funny at all."

He gave me a look sort of sideways out of surprisingly pale eyes. I was betting they were blue in sunlight. "I heard that about you, that you were a pain in the ass, and rub a lot of people the wrong way."

I shrugged. "A girl does what she can."

He smiled. "But the same people that said you could be a pain in the ass had no trouble working a case with you. Fact is, Ms. Blake," he threw the cigarette on the ground, "most said they'd take you as backup over a lot of cops they could name."

I didn't know what to say to that. There is no higher praise between policemen than that they'd let you back them up in a life or death situation.

"You're going to make me blush, Lt. Nicols." I didn't look at him as I said it.

He seemed to be gazing down at the still-smoldering cigarette on the white gravel. "Zerbrowski over at RPIT says that you don't blush much."

"Zerbrowski is a cheerfully lecherous shit," I said.

He chuckled, a deep roll of laughter, and stomped out his cigarette, so that even that small glow was lost in the dark. "That he is, that he is. You ever met his wife?"

"I've met Katie."

"Ever wonder how Zerbrowski managed to nab her?"

"Every damn time I see her," I said.

He sighed. "I'll call for another squad car, try for two uniforms. Let's get this done and get the hell away from these people."

"Let's," I said.

He went to make the call. I went to fetch my zombie-raising equipment. Since one of my main tools is a machete bigger than my forearm, I'd left it in the car. It tends to scare people. I would try very hard tonight not to scare the bodyguards, or the nice policemen. I was pretty sure there was nothing I could do to scare Mrs. Bennington. I was also pretty sure there was nothing I could do to make her happy with me.

My zombie-raising equipment was in a gray Nike gym bag. Some animators have elaborate cases. I've even seen one who had a little suitcase that turned into a table like a magician's or a street vendor's. Me, I made sure everything was packed tight so nothing got broken or scratched up, but other than that, I didn't see the point to being fancier than you needed to be. If people wanted a show they could go down to the Circus of the Damned and watch zombies crawl from the grave with actors pretending to be terrified of them. I wasn't an entertainer, I was an animator, and this was work.

I turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted zombies raised at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I'd told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the partygoers, that'd be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties.

I'd been trained to use an ointment spread over face, hands, heart. The smell of rosemary, like breathing in a Christmas tree, still held a great nostalgia for me, but I didn't use the ointment anymore. I'd raised the dead in emergencies without it, more than once, so it got me to thinking. Some believed it helped the spirits enter you, so the powers that be could use you to raise the dead. Most, in America anyway, believed that the scent and touch of the herbal mixture enhanced your psychic abilities, or helped open them so they'd work at all. I never seemed to have any trouble raising the dead. My psychic abilities were always on line for animating. So I still carried the ointment, just in case, but I didn't use it much anymore.

The three things I did still need for animating were steel, fresh blood, and salt. Though the salt actually was to put the zombie back in the grave once we were finished with it. I'd cut my paraphernalia to the absolute minimum, and recently, I'd cut it down even more. And I mean that "cut" part literally.

My left hand was covered in little bandages. I was using the clear ones, so I didn't look like a tan version of the mummy's hand. There were larger bandages on my left forearm. All the wounds were self-inflicted, and it was beginning to piss me off.

I had been learning how to control my growing psychic powers by studying with Marianne, who had been a psychic when I met her, but had become a witch. She was Wiccan now. Not all witches are Wiccan, and if Marianne had been another flavor of witch, I wouldn't have had to cut myself up. Marianne, as my teacher, shared some of my karmic debt, or so her group-read coven-believed. The fact that I killed an animal every time I raised the dead, three, four times a night, almost every night, had made her coven rant, rave, scream, and basically lose it. Blood magic is black magic to a Wiccan. Taking a life for magical purposes, any life, even a chicken's, is very black magic.