Free Necromancer's Revenge by Emma Faragher

The bright yellow lights on the floor ringed the crime scene.
To pass , I should have had to provide my
iris scan at the very least. Generally, a full DNA sample was
needed for non-police. But I wasn’t giving out either, which I had
made abundantly clear to Captain Jessica Talehari when she asked me
to do this job. No DNA, no record of my presence at all. I was a
ghost and I liked it that way. Ali followed close enough behind me
that most people wouldn’t even notice her so she almost got to
ghost through with me.
    We got a few
sidelong glances as Jessica rushed my teenage accomplice and me
past the checkpoints. The small grey tent they’d erected to hide
the body from the public looked drab next to the white of the
floor, even in the dark. They’d turned off the heating to this part
of the street as well. Dead bodies don’t smell so good on heated
floors. Or so I’d been told. My sense of smell was terrible.
    There was only
one other officer in the tent and I could see from the set of his
shoulders that he wasn’t going to leave us with the dead man.
Ignoring him, I started to walk around the body. My normal senses
are dulled, I can barely smell anything and my sight is terrible. I
used them for other things and in the drab tent the dead man shone.
A bright, diffuse light emanating from him, blaring at my
power.
    Jessica was
having a hushed conversation with the other officer as I bent down
closer to the dead man. He seemed to have been in his mid-thirties.
Although his hair had gone prematurely grey, and his skin had
wrinkled around his gaunt frame, making him look far older. Bulky
clothes hid the rest of him. Old and stale, they screamed of the
destitute poor. He was just unlucky to have found his way to the
main streets before he died. Else he might have been laid to rest
in peace.
    “Are we going
to get started here or would you prefer I pay my debt another
time?” I asked Jessica. In all honesty it was my mother’s debt. I
hadn’t bothered to ask what Jessica had done for her, but I’d been
informed that should she ever ask for a favour I was honour bound
to give it. My mother had thought honour was the greatest of all
virtues, no matter what one had to do to keep it. Although, by all
accounts, it wasn’t the hugest of favours I could do for Jessica,
but it also wasn’t the first favour I’d done. The police officer
had gotten the most from her past good deeds.
    Jessica looked
briefly to the other officer before answering. “He won’t leave us
in the tent alone. Despite the fact that I am his superior.” The
last she ground out from between clenched teeth. Jessica had an air
about her that told people not to argue. Her hair was fully grey
and pulled back severely from her face. All her lines looked stern,
as if she spent a great deal of time scowling at people. The other
officer, a man who looked to be in his twenties from the aura
surrounding him, was brave to face her head on.
    “Perhaps the
officer can keep numb on the subject then?” I allowed a small
thread of power to whisper through my voice as I spoke. It wouldn’t
show up in the recordings, in fact I should be all but invisible to
the cameras the officer wore. Jessica had already removed as many
of hers as she could. Hiding my friend was harder; Jessica had told
people she was a witness. Or a consultant, I couldn’t remember
which. She’d show up on the recordings but this case wasn’t big
enough to warrant anyone actually checking them.
    “I cannot allow
you to mess with the crime scene,” the young officer stated.
    “We do not
intend to mess with the crime scene; we are here to find out what
killed this man here,” I responded. This time without the threat of
magic. It was far too draining to keep it up. It would be better to
leave and catch up with the man in the morgue. Yet, it was so very
much harder to bring back someone who’d been through an autopsy,
and Ali was my only available donor.
    “Why are you
here?” he asked. I