Patricia Briggs - Strange Brew

Detective Prieto unsettled me, too. He was about my father's age, stern and possessed of one stony expression as far as I could tell. He didn't like me, and he didn't like what he was doing. He gave me the paperwork, I read and signed, and he checked all my credentials again before leaving the room to stand in the viewing area.

I pulled the sheet back on the corpse, and there, lying pale and still in front of me, was Andrew Toland.

He looked damn good, for having been born in 1843, and especially since he'd died in 1875. By rights, I should have been looking at a skeleton, not a fresh corpse—like last time we'd been through this, another witch had produced a copy from his genetic template. It was known as a homunculus, in the trade. How such things were made was a closely guarded secret, although I knew the body would contain some kind of tissue or bone from the original corpse to hold the link. I wouldn't have known how to begin to conduct that kind of operation, but then again, the witch who'd made the mortal clay couldn't have breathed life into it, either.

Specialists.

I'd been here before, in this very room, with Andrew. One year ago, almost to the day—my first disposable. I'd been nervous, and excited, and thrilled at the prospect of meeting the man who'd made history. I hadn't been prepared, then, for the idea that I would like him.

And that I would mourn him when it was time to let go.

I didn't want to do this. It had hurt too much, been too intimate. I wanted to walk away from all of it… but if I did, someone else would be standing here within the hour. Someone like Lottie, who would turn something wonderful into something horrible.

I had no choice.

Andrew Toland looked peaceful, frozen at that moment of death. He no longer had the wounds that had killed him; the last witch had repaired that as part of the reconstruction. He was just… dead. All I had to do was bring him back.

And once again, I had to wonder: Why him ? Lottie had wanted him, specifically. It could just have been her one-two punch of hating me and wanting the prestige of running a disposable, but I couldn't believe that. There were easier ways to hurt me, and Andrew Toland was nobody she'd want to mess with. She knew his story, just as I did.

Andrew had lived a hard, interesting life, and he'd earned himself a reputation, in his thirty-two short years, of being one of the toughest men of a rough-and-ready period of American history. A resurrection witch, like me, he'd gone down fighting during one of the worst zombie wars ever conducted in the Southwest. From time to time, a resurrectionist goes bad, and when that happens, the results are massively dangerous. Get three or four of the bad ones together, and you have the makings of an unstoppable army of the dead.

Andrew Toland had gone up against that, and earned himself a broken neck. Then, by prior agreement with his friends, he'd had himself resurrected to fight again.

He'd won. Most of his allies had been taken out, and in the end he'd carried on by himself—a gritty two-week campaign of attrition against the toughest opponents imaginable. And even when his resurrection witch had been killed in the last critical moments, he'd still managed to stay alive long enough to take out the enemy. It had been unheard of then, and it was still without parallel, and in the textbooks apprentices studied, he was an entire chapter all his own.

You just don't get badder-assed than that.

I knew Prieto was watching, and the last thing I needed was to lose my objectivity at a time like this. I put all my feelings away in a lockbox, bent down, and opened Andrew Toland's death-filmed eyes.

I parted his clay-cold lips and poured in the first, massive dose of the potion. It pooled in his mouth, liquid silver, and then I performed the part that nobody else could do.

I kissed him, very gently, on the lips and completed the last step of the preset spell. I felt a line of power spooling out of me, traveling through the dark and connecting, with a jolting snap of power, with the spirit of Andrew Toland.

The last time I'd done this, Andrew's power and strength had overwhelmed me. This time, they felt oddly soothing. Like being folded in warmth and light.

Andrew swallowed, coughed, and blinked. His skin remained pasty white for a few seconds. The cataracts on his eyes faded first, fainter with each blink, and then his skin took on color.

He wasn't back, but he was breathing.

I took his hands and poured more power into him, raw and wild. It was sweaty work, bringing back the dead, and it required me to be vulnerable in ways most witches weren't willing to attempt. I had to touch his soul, and let him touch mine. I had to not just taste death, but to drink it down—accept it as a lover.

He gasped when I made contact, and the shine in his eyes shifted from mere existence to real life. Real consciousness.

I heard the first slow thud of his heartbeat, then the second. Then the rhythm falling into place.

And despite all the drugs cushioning his fall, I saw the agony hit him—I felt it, too, dim but strong, through our link, and had to breathe deeply to control the pain. He didn't scream. Some did, but not Andrew; he hadn't screamed when I'd revived him last year, either. His hands tightened on mine, brutally strong, and I tried not to wince. It'll pass , I told myself. Breathe. Breathe, dammit.

I was doing fine until he met my eyes, and he whispered, "Holly. Wasn't it finished? Didn't we get him?"

Holy hell. He remembers.

For a frozen second I couldn't think what to say, but training came back to me in a rush. Establish control. Guide the dialogue .

"Andrew," I said, and my voice was low and gentle and soothing, entirely steady. "Andrew Toland. Do you hear me?"

He nodded. He hadn't blinked since focusing on me.

"I need you to sit up now," I said. "Can you do that?"

He could, and he did. He swung his legs over the edge of the cold morgue table and came upright, and I stopped him long enough to adjust the sheet over his lap. I wasn't usually so fussy, but Andrew had thrown me off; I couldn't see him as a tool. He was a man, a living, vital man .

He hadn't looked away at all from my face. There was something very unusual about him. I'd brought back hundreds of dead, and I couldn't think of a single one who'd begun the process with a question like that. It takes time for the personality to reassert itself, for memories to come clear.

He had been crystal-clear from the moment our souls had touched.

"Holly, you must tell me the truth," Andrew said. "Did we kill that bastard?"

How could he possibly remember who I was ? I'd had one other soul I'd brought back twice, the CEO of a major corporation who'd forgotten to pass along the passwords to some vital corporate accounts. I'd had to do it twice because the board of directors wanted to be sure they had everything from him, and that man, young and fit as he'd been, hadn't recognized me at all. Hadn't remembered a thing from one resurrection to the next.

"Holly!" His tone was sharp with concern. He was concerned. About me . I came back from about a thousand miles away and realized that he was frowning, totally focused on me. "Can you hear me?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out a strained, strangled gasp. "Yes," I managed to say. "I hear you, Andrew. We stopped him."

"Then I expect there's a tale to be told about why I'm back here." He released me from his stare to turn it on the room around us. "Well, this place don't get any prettier."

He remembered that, too? Unbelievable. "How do you feel?"

"Feel?" His gaze came back to me, electric and warm, and his lips curved into a smile. "Alive would say it fine. But I'm not alive, I know that. You've brought me back again. Why?"