Some time after the bridge incident.

~Lionel

The mental health awareness seminar was mandatory, especially for me as a consultant, and I hated it. I would have called in sick, except I’d done that once, and the result had been a fun one-on-one session with the department psychologist Dr. Call-Me-Frank Albert.

I was not going to do that again.

At the station, in our murder unit, I usually grabbed whatever desk was available. I was pretty low maintenance that way, seeing as how I didn’t need talismans or really much of anything to work my magic.

Christine—Detective Rice—had apologized for the lack of office space when I had started here, but all I needed for this part of the job was a relatively quiet work environment that allowed me to get all my reports in order so as to make sure that there were no hiccups at the trial stage.

I looked at the wall clock. Half an hour to the seminar, and I had no more reports to write. All my necromancy for the construction site murders had been documented, same as my findings, and I had double-checked everything. I had even gone over all the stomach-turning crime scene photos again. Those were worse than the scene had been, perhaps because they were so well lit.

Either way, revisiting that night of the raisings and imagining what the bodies would have smelled like without the rain to wash at least some of it away gave me an idea.

Jazani had taken the desk next to mine. She was typing away, whistling quietly.

I leaned over to get her attention, and she stopped, turned to look at me. “Sorry, was I being too loud?”

I shook my head. “Nah. Just, you know. We have that mental health seminar in a bit.”

And Detective Jazani…looked excited. “I know! I love that they give us this during work hours. Oh, did you hear? We’re getting a new psychologist too. Dr. Albert retired.”

“Huh.” Detective Jazani was not going to aid and abet me skipping the seminar. “I mean, he was old.”

She nodded. “I didn’t get half his jokes.”

“He joked with you?”

She stuffed a piece of gum into her mouth. “He didn’t with you?”

I frowned. “He always made me introduce myself for every new seminar. Anyway, I was thinking about heading downstairs to the cafeteria to grab some coffee before it starts.”

Jazani nodded. “I’ll watch your stuff, Hawkes. I know you coffee addicts get all squirrelly if you don’t get your fix.”

Well, rude. And not what I had been hoping for. I’d not had a real plan, but maybe if she’d come with me and I had the opportunity to mention I wasn’t feeling well, then leaving the seminar early because I wasn’t feeling well wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.

“Okay,” I said, dread tightening around me like a noose.

If there was a new psychologist, they’d make me introduce myself again. They’d make a stupid comment about my necromancy again.

I headed toward the elevator, my feet moving on autopilot while I was trying to figure out any excuse, anything at all. I barely noticed the station around me on my way from the elevator to the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was largely empty. Lunch was over, and it was early to grab a snack. Not that I wanted food. I had taken my time with the crime scene photos, and then my report had been extra-detailed about what the victims had been able to tell us about their murder.

I sighed, tried focusing on the task at hand: escaping from the shrink seminar.

Maybe being late would work, then lying about not finding the room?

“They always use the same room though, fuckers. And they always send out those fucking email reminders too.” Mine had come fifteen minutes ago, the snap of a rubber band against my wrist.

“What fuckers? Do you owe someone else money?”

I very nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the Devil’s smooth voice from right behind me.

I spun. “The hell?”

He looked pleased. “It’s Lucy, actually.”

I felt myself go as red as the beetroot chips that were piled in a basket next to me. The chips were the cafeteria staff’s most recent attempt to offer balanced meals. No one needed them as a color comparison, no one.

“I know your fucking name, Lucifer!” I immediately lowered my voice when one of the lunch ladies looked over to see what the commotion was. “Why the fuck are you here?”

And the Devil his own damn self looked at me with big blue eyes. They were dry as a camel’s ass, but he whined as if he were about to cry.

“Oh, please call me Lucy. Something terrible happened. A human stole the hubcaps off my car, and I came here to tell the police. It’s what you do. Why else would I be here, at the police station?” He looked around. “The culinary offerings don’t seem particularly enticing.”

I snorted. “Oh, sorry we don’t have, I don’t know, caviar and cream laid out for your visit.”

And the Devil fucking licked his lips, his eyes narrowing.

“You know, if you ever wanted to raise something other than humans, say, sharks or megalodons reconstituted from the teeth they left behind, I’d happily provide you with an aquarium to house them in. I hear watching fish can have a calming effect on people.”

“Why the fuck would I want to raise extinct fucking sharks that can swallow me hole?”

Also, had he said reconstitute? From a tooth? I used magic to bridge the gap of tissue loss or damage and speech sometimes, but if there was a way around that…but no. This was an immortal with access to immortal magic, and I wasn’t going to get tangled up with him by asking a follow-up.

“Because it’s fun, Nelly.”

“Dead fish are fun to you?”

He shrugged. “Not really. I thought you might enjoy them. Or there is always the natural history museum. Have you been?”

Hubcaps. I distinctly remembered the conversation starting out near the theme of hubcaps. Why the fuck was he checking to see if I had done all the touristy basics?

“It’s where elementary school children go for class trips, and they are noisy.”

“Hmm. Well, I heard something about a special anatomical collection they are showcasing. No minors allowed.” He licked his lips again. “You are no minor, Nelly.”

Anatomical collections were bad, really bad. There were too few necromancers to have a very standardized curriculum for us, but the Collegium was one of the few institutions for the study of magic that kept their own dedicated jars stuffed with bits and pieces of the dead for us to work on.

I had thrown up so much when working with those specimens. I remembered one in particular, half a face in a jar, and I could already feel the bile.

The devil bent down. “You look pale all of a sudden.” His eyes flickered with excitement even as I tried thinking of anything but food or dead things. “Are you perhaps feeling sick?”

I couldn’t help myself. I giggled like a schoolgirl on a trip to the museum of natural history.

Lucifer made some kind of dark, primordial noise. “You sound like you’re sick. You should lie down, Nelly. Let me help you.”

I took a quick step away from him and grabbed a bag of beetroot chips on a whim.

“I’m good. Look at the time. I really need to go. I have a seminar to get to, a work thing, you know. Good luck with your tires.”

“Hubcaps.”

“Whatever.”

I paid for the chips and a black coffee, then hightailed it out of there. It was possible I’d been thinking about this the wrong way. Why pretend to be sick when all I need to throw up where the new shrink could see was a fond memory of my days at the Collegium when I had a half-face blink at me through the hazy formaldehyde it had been kept in for decades?

My resolve died when Christine told everyone it was time to go and “meet the new doc.” I’d have been fine with the embarrassment, but Christine was a good boss who tolerated no necromancer jokes in the unit.

With a sigh, I dropped the beetroot chips in the trash and followed everyone to How-To-Talk-About-Your-Feelings class. The necromancy really was the easiest part of my job.

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