The white tent gave the forensics crew an environment to work in that was both sheltered from the elements and from the cameras waiting to catch a glimpse of whatever horror had been unearthed here in the marshes.

I was a necromancer and not squeamish, but I did associate the white canvas with human remains in various stages of decomposition, with the smell of decay, with the sights of bodies meant to be whole having been taken apart.

Yet at the same time, I could help the victims help us in stopping whoever had done this to them, plus, I didn’t know that anyone had been chopped up here. For all I knew, it was something simple that had killed them like a bullet to the brain.

Christine pointed right at the white tent. “We found body parts, similar to the one in the morgue. Our people aren’t quite sure it’s the same guy though, whether our morgue case was an early victim, or whether someone else is responsible for these. I’m keeping an open mind for now. See what you got to work with and what you can give us.”

Fuck me thrice. It was dismemberment. I really didn’t like that kind of thing. I’d stopped eating meat since I first used my necromancy, so the way parts too often looked like a well-hung cut of meat with bone peeking out should not have made my stomach twist into knots, but it always did. I was really, really glad Christine had called me before I’d gotten a chance to even consider breakfast.

“Will do,” I said.

I concentrated on keeping my breathing even, just in case what I saw once I got inside the tent made me heave. Breathing through my mouth helped. Usually.

“Would it be okay if I observe?” Mitch asked, aiming a wide smile at me. His curious brown eyes matched his smile.

“I—of course. I’m not sure it’ll be all that exciting, but you’re welcome to watch.”

Christine rolled her eyes. “Hawkes, you are embarrassing yourself. Go inside the tent and do your damn job. I have murders to solve.”

Yes, Christine definitely had gotten less sleep than I had. Before I could apologize or say anything else, an officer in big rubber boots walked up to her.

“We found another bag,” she told Christine.

“Excellent.” The sarcasm was strong in Christine’s tone. “Hawkes needs all the bits he can get.” She shooed me toward the tent flap before following the officer to the ominous bag.

With Mister Sexy Detective still smiling his curious smile, I straightened before I walked into the tent.

“What a time to start working homicide,” I said, mentally congratulating myself on this not half bad conversation starter. Then I saw a severed and partially rotted foot and staggered a few steps to the side.

“Hey, careful there,” Sexy Mitch said and caught me by the arm. “Are you okay? Was that a psychic thing?”

I cleared my throat and straightened. The crime scene tech working on the table with the foot and a few other parts looked up from her work. Her suit and mask hid her expression, but she seemed anything but happy about seeing me.

She pointed to the dispensers on a rolling table to my left. “Masks, gloves.”

I started toward the gloves and masks. Sexy Mitch had steadied me all this time, and I would have been blushing if the foot hadn’t drained all the color from my face.

“I’m not psychic,” I told Mitch. “That’s a different thing. I’m just not a huge fan of the decomposition smell.”

The tech snorted and shook her head, but thankfully, she kept her mouth shut. I watched as she used her tweezers to pick out something from a severed thigh, then put it in a clear plastic container and labeled it. Her hands were dead steady. I could barely look at where she’d put those tweezers.

Mitch nodded, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, see the slightest indication of mocking in his eyes.

“I’m still getting used to that myself. Had to deal with some vile situations in vice, but a field of dismembered corpses is quite a first day event.” His eyes took on a darker tint. “So’s meeting a necromancer.”

That actually got me to blush a little bit, and I held my breath when Sexy Mitch walked toward me and reached around me to get to the gloves and masks. He was taller than me and broader.

I liked the broadness especially, and to distract myself from the foot, I allowed myself a small fantasy of him just leaning in and pulling my mask down before pressing his lips against mine and dipping his curious tongue into my mouth.

Luckily, I remembered where I was and why I was here before I could moan out load or do anything embarrassing. I had to determine the provenance of body parts, and because my life sucked, they were none of them fresh.

I approached the tech who had pointed me to the gloves and masks. “Do you have… Is there a head?”

She pointed behind her. “Simon has one, and there’s another two bags we haven’t opened yet. Once you’re done with that, you can help us match what belongs to which victim.”

Oh, great. Use the necromancer instead of forensics to solve the people parts puzzle. The CSI crew loved me for being fast at that, and I hated them for making me do it.

I gave the tech I’d probably worked with before a nod and walked over to Simon, whom I did remember. A few cases ago, he’d tried hitting on Christine. She’d told him she was flattered but also ace, thank you very much.

He’d taken that in stride, had apologized and offered to buy her an apology smoothie on top of that. She’d told him that would be inappropriate, and so Simon and I had ended up having coffee at the cafeteria.

Simon threw me a peace sign for a greeting, which I wasn’t sure was appropriate, but by then, I was having a hard time concentrating on keeping myself from dry heaving. Gods, the smell was bad. The sight of the parts arranged for examination was worse.

“Is it admissible in court when you assess the number of victims by matching the parts with magic?” Mitch asked, and I was glad for the distraction.

“Since I’m Collegium certified, it is. All the evidence I help gather is.” I stepped up to Simon’s work area, just another table that would need a good cleaning after this.

He had more parts than the other tech did. I tried not to look too closely at any, only at the head. One eye was gone, and the other was that sort of boiled egg white, the pupil more a dark shade than anything that reminded me of a living person.

The skin was severely rotted in some places, and I saw the yellowish white of bone poke through, whiter than the teeth, which were stained and broken. I wasn’t even sure whether this was a man’s or a woman’s head.

“Lionel is great,” Simon said. “Much faster than waiting for DNA, and the way he can give you a time and cause of death…”

Simon made a chef’s kiss gesture. It was nice knowing he appreciated me, but yuck. Plus, there were more things about me that one could appreciate. At least I hoped Detective Sexy Mitch would think so.

“I’m just here to do my job,” I told Simon, and given that I was all for getting this done and leaving the tent asap, I went straight to the raising.

Some necromancers were very particular, and they need a lot of stuff to guide and funnel their magic. Like other magic users, they needed talismans, and using those to focus their magic was the best way for them to work.

I didn’t. My necromantic power was vast, and I could say that without any boasting. In terms of magical strength, I was on par with any mage, except I did necromancy and not much else.

It had taken me time to learn control, especially early on. When I had dead cats show up at the orphanage without me ever consciously raising them, I didn’t mind that the Collegium granted me early admission.

With all the kitty corpses following me home each day from school, I’d been pretty sure that any chance of adoption had gone out of the window anyway. The Collegium at least had offered permanence while I learned to control my magic and eventually use it.

And they had taught me control as well as the will to do what needed doing, even in the face of…parts. To find out if the head had anything to tell, all I had to do was raise my hands above it and dip into my power, let it flow from me to the corpse. The dead tissue immediately twitched to life.

“This is just so cool,” Simon said.

I had to agree in so far as using my power felt good. The circumstances were simply not cool at all.

“Speak. What’s your name?”

What my magic did was get the nervous system and the brain to work again past its sell-by date. People had a certain weight of essence to them, a resonance corresponding to what they had done and experienced while they had been alive in the world.

That essence was more karma than the metaphysical idea of a soul, but religions and people not aware of magical science liked to conflate the two and accused necromancers of pulling said imaginary soul back into a cadaver. It would have been easier if the soul existed, because experiencing death would not have hurt it. Dying did degrade the stuff I worked with, in this case, a lot.

The head moved their jaw and lips, but I could feel a struggle there, some trauma making it impossible to relate personal information. I changed tack.

“What do you recall of your death?” I asked, and next to me, Sexy Mitch drew in breath as if this were the most thrilling thing he’d ever seen.

The head made a sound. Calling it a groan would have been too kind.

“Daaark,” it said. The voice was androgynous and thoroughly eerie. Voices could be bolstered with essence and magic, and I tried that, using more of my power to make the head resonate with the essence of the person. “Cold and dark. Tiles,” the head said. “I was being punished, but I did nothing.” It made a wailing sound, and what remained of its lips trembled. “I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, nothing. Tell her I love her. I love her, love her, love her—”

I dropped my hands, and the head stilled. “That’s all there is.”

The head was too far gone, and as was often the case, the essence wanted to connect more to the people left behind rather than the terrible events right before the death. The living were the strongest connection the dead person still had to life, so that was only natural.

“Wow,” Mitch said. “That was quite something. What does it feel like from your end?”

That took me aback because it wasn’t a question I often got. I didn’t even really consider answering truthfully. “I don’t feel much of anything. I concentrate. It requires a lot of concentration.”

Mitch nodded, and that was that.

The truth I had always refused to share with anyone was that raising felt good. I loved letting my power flow through me and give life back to something that had lost it.

No, I didn’t like the violence and the personal tragedies, I wasn’t a monster. But the dead had once held a place in this world, and when I got to focus on that and call their essence forth, there was something sublime about having it respond. Once we figured out who this was—who this had been and whom they still loved in death—we could tell that person. We could give them a little more than just remains to put in a coffin and bury.

“You wanna go check out the other bags or mix and match first?” Simon asked.

Oh, what exciting choices. “I’ll help you sort the victims first.”

The bags would keep, and the longer the pieces of this vileness were covered, the better.

Except of course I wanted the root cause of this death and suffering uncovered. I simply would have been nice to have had breakfast before doing that.