After the ghost had left, Norman just sat at the kitchen table in silence. His hands still shook a bit from the adrenaline. The reality of what he had just done hadn’t really hit him until it was all over with, he had actually summoned a ghost, not once but twice.

What the hell had he been thinking?

No, he knew what he had been thinking. It was progress, the first major progress towards his goal of creating the undead. Sure he had the spell that let him relive the last moments of someone or something that died – he really needed to come up with a good name for that spell – but that was a half step to true necromancy at best.

Summoning a spirit of the dead was like a three-quarter step. Norman considered that more soul magic than actual necromancy since he didn’t have any actual control over the spirit. If he had been able to control the specter he would have been jumping around in jubilation.

The marks on his neck were proof that he still had a long way to go before he reached that goal.

Speaking of, he unwrapped the blankets and towels, that he had been wearing this entire time, and let them drop to the floor. His clothing underneath was practically soaked from sweat, and not all of that was from being overdressed. While the ghost had seemed amenable the second time around, he had been a nervous wreck the entire time, he just chose to hide that from the ghost.

Norman was about to go clean himself up and get a change of clothes when his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number so he just swiped it away.

Before he even set his phone down, the number called again. Norman picked up this time. “Hello?”

“This Norman?”

“Um… yes?”

“The Boss told me to call this number if we had another cold one.”

It took a moment for Norman to figure out what the man was saying. “You mean-“

“Yeah. Are you at home so I can bring it by?”

Norman glanced toward the front door – still sporting the damage from last time – and imagined what Toby would do if another SUV came by.

“Can I meet you somewhere? I got nosy neighbors.”

The man rattled off an address and Norman let him know he could be there in thirty minutes.

He could have probably biked to the address in fifteen but Norman really wanted to clean up first.

Norman quickly dressed, then grabbed a bottle of magic dust, his apron, and his old notebook since he hadn’t had time to put anything into the new grimoire. He wasn’t going to let the opportunity to experiment on another body pass him up.

The bike skidded to a stop and Norman dismounted as he arrived at a nondescript warehouse. It had taken Norman more than thirty minutes to find the stupid place. He forgot how hard it was to navigate to places he had never been to without GPS.

The only reason he knew this was the right warehouse was that the number on the building matched and an annoyed-looking guy, smoking a cigarette, was leaning against a nondescript white van – that practically screamed child abductor – near the entrance.

If Norman had to describe the man he would describe him as roguish. But not the good-looking kind, more the if-you-meet-him-in-a-back-alley-alone-he-will-stab-you-in-the-back kind. If the man didn’t also work for Mr. Sin, Norman would have kept on riding.

The lean man had a mop of greasy black hair and a pencil-thin beard but he didn’t have any of the outward signs that marked him as a physical classer. Not that that meant anything. There were many varying types of physical classers. Norman just liked to lump them all into one group because it made it easier than saying, ‘oh this one’s a dexterity classer, and this one’s a perception one.’ Who needed the extra work?

“You’re late.” The man tossed his cigarette on the ground and used his shoe to put it out. “Let's get this done, Mr. Sin needs to know who offed this guy.”

“And you are?” Norman asked.

“Not here to chat,” the man replied curtly. Then he turned and headed for the door.

Norman didn’t miss the leather vest the man was wearing. It had large patches on the back that read ‘Black Mountain Patrol’ at the top and ‘Colorado’ across the bottom. Those weren’t the only patches on his vest but Norman didn’t catch what the ones on the front of the man’s vest read.

As the man opened the door, he was hit by a wracking cough that made Norman wince. Once the coughing stopped, the man pulled out another cigarette and lit it.

Norman thought about saying something about smoking being bad for you but decided that would be extremely hypocritical of him.

The man waved him over to a table set against the far wall. “There it is, hurry up so I can go.”

The inside of the warehouse wasn’t all that big, maybe twenty-five feet. It was more like a garage with the only thing inside being a folding plastic picnic table with a dead man draped across it in the far corner.

Norman left the smoker skulking by the closed overhead door as he hurried over to the body on the table. Norman didn’t want to be here any longer than he had to either but he was still excited about this opportunity. He was so focused on what he might be able to learn from the corpse that he didn’t even hear the third person enter the building.

***

Eugene had been hidden across the street, watching his target and waiting. Eventually, they entered the building. He grunted quietly and walked across the street, looking around to make sure there was nobody around to spot him. Not that he expected anyone in this part of town. It wasn’t known as the nicest neighborhood even before the fall and now it was outside the wall.

He wasn’t the most inconspicuous person around, his bulging muscles and distinctive tattoos made him easy to spot in a crowd. Not that that mattered here.

Eugene twisted the handle on the door, finding it wasn’t even locked. He shook his head at the rookie mistake as he pushed it open and stepped inside. A man near the door spun toward him and reached for a weapon but relaxed when he saw Eugene.

“Geez, Eugene, ya scared me half to death. What are you doing here?”

The man was clearly nervous.

Instead of answering right away, Eugene reached into a vest of his own and produced a small bottle with black liquid inside. He slapped it against the smoker's chest, eliciting a grunt and pushing him back a step.

“Oof, what was that for?”

“Sorry, I forget my strength sometimes. Boss said to give that to ya. Said it’ll fix up your cough. I was driving by when I saw your van so figured I could finish up early. Whatcha doing out here anyway?”

The man ignored Eugene’s question as he dubiously eyed the black liquid. With a reluctant grunt, he unscrewed the cap. “Bottoms up.”

As the greasy-haired man slugged down the liquid, Eugene glanced at the other man in the room. The man seemed oblivious to his presence. Still, Eugene waited until he was otherwise engaged in whatever he was doing before making a move. The boss had confirmed that the necromancer would go rigid and stare off into nothingness for the entire time his spell was active. The boss had timed it at five minutes which gave Eugene a good timeframe to work in.

As soon as Eugene saw the man lock up, he activated the countdown timer on his phone. While that was happening, the smoker was doubled over, hacking violently as his body tried to expel a thick black sludge from his mouth.

The smell hit Eugene and he grimaced. Eugene never understood the appeal of smoking. It just made you stink and left everything you owned covered in a nasty brown tar. Now drinking he could get behind. But Eugene wasn’t here to condemn the man for his poor choices. Well… at least not that poor choice.

The smoking man stood again and breathed deeply. “Holy shit, it actually fucking worked, I can breathe again.”

“Good, it worked. But I gotta make sure.”

“Huh?” the other man asked dumbly before Eugene stabbed him in the gut with an eight-inch blade.

The man reacted quickly to the change of circumstances by pulling his gun out. He got off one shot before Eugene wrapped his hand in a crushing grip. The man’s hand was ground to paste under Eugene’s impressive strength causing him to drop the gun. The man’s wounds started healing as soon as Eugene released him. That didn’t stop the fool from squealing like a stuck pig though.

“Huh!” Eugene exclaimed. “Better than the boss expected.”

The man had fallen to the ground, cradling his broken hand and trying to stem the blood from a wound on his gut that had already closed.

Eugene figured he had enough information on the efficacy of the necromancer's new brew so he picked up the man and stabbed his knife through his heart where he left the blade buried. Eugene then released the man who frantically tried to pull the blade out of his chest. But Eugene had buried it between two ribs and the notch at the end of the blade was preventing the man from pulling it back out since his ribs had healed the damage already.

The man’s struggles slowed and he eventually fell over and stopped moving. Eugene checked his phone, he still had a few minutes left before the necromancer finished so he just stood there and watched. When his timer read one minute, Eugene twisted the knife and pulled it free from the body. He wiped the blood off on the corpse’s clothing and tucked the knife back in his sheath.

For the last minute, Eugene watched to make sure the man didn’t heal from this latest wound. Then his timer went off. He silenced it and turned his attention toward the Necromancer.

***

Norman stumbled back, blinking in confusion for a moment as he processed the information he had learned from the corpse. Then he spun towards the door, expecting to see the same man that had killed this man, coming to do the same to him. But the smoker was lying on the ground in a growing pool of blood. In his place was one of those meat mountains that had accompanied Mr. Sin to his home that night.

The man motioned for him to come over with one meaty finger.

Norman tried to swallow but his throat was suddenly very dry. Seeing as there was no place to hide, he slowly made his way over, trying to look unaffected by the fresh body.

The man plucked an empty bottle off the ground and tossed it to Norman.

“It works, the boss wants you to make this version exclusively.”

“Uh?” Norman looked at the body, the dead body.

“Oh, him, don’t worry about him, he was a problem that needed to be taken care of. He became the perfect person to test your new concoction on.” The man fished a roll of cash out of his pocket and tossed it to Norman. “I know it’s not as much as last time, but this wasn’t actually a sanctioned… reading?”

“Um… I guess you could call it that,” Norman mumbled.

The man shrugged and Norman swore he heard boulders rubbing together from the motion, “Anyway, the guy wanted to lure you here to kill ya and I took care of it. So make sure to thank Mr. Sin the next time ya see him. Well, I gotta go. If anyone other than the bartender calls you, to assist like this again, call this number.” The wall of muscle handed Norman a business card that looked positively tiny in his ginormous hand.

Norman stood there, with the card in hand, as the bulky man left. The card just had a number and a name on it ‘Eugene’. Norman assumed the block of muscle was Eugene.

Now that he was alone, Norman glanced down at the dead body. He didn’t feel an ounce of pity for the guy’s demise. The man had lured him here to kill him. He monologued as much during the last moments of the other man’s life and that was only confirmed again by Eugene.

“What kind of messed up person uses another man’s death to explain to their next victim how they are going to kill them? That’s just fucked up.”

This is exactly why Norman didn’t want to get involved with criminals. He was acutely aware of how close he had come to dying just now and didn’t need that sort of stress in his life. Norman pushed those feelings to the side for later, or maybe never as he opened his notebook to add a note.

The potion works.

Norman would add more notes later but for now, he had an opportunity he hadn’t had since losing his job, a fresh corpse.

His first instinct was to raise the body as a protector but Norman quickly discounted that as an option… for now. He didn’t know if the undead would be loyal to him, and he didn’t want a repeat of the ghost incident. He also hadn’t taken a look at any of his spells to see if they would work to raise the dead.

Norman flipped through his notebook until he came to a page that faintly tickled his mind.

“Hmm, It just might work.” It wasn’t an ideal use of the corpses but it was better than nothing.

It would take a bit of work to set it up though. Thankfully, Norman came prepared.

Norman looked outside but both the van and Eugene were gone. Perfect. While he worked for Mr. Sin, it didn’t mean he wanted all of his secrets out in the open.

He opened his little bag and pulled out the same kitchen knife that he had used for raccoon hunting, it still had a bit of dirt on it even. It was sorta poetic. A dirty knife for a dirty piece of shit.

The hardest part was trying to decide where best to start. He decided to start at the leg, there was more room. Rolling the corpse onto its back, Norman tentatively jabbed the knife into the skin. The blade was dull but with enough effort, Norman pushed it through the skin. There was a spurt of blood from the wound that sprayed across his apron. Norman ignored the blood as he sliced away the skin and muscle to get at the femur.

After getting a large enough area clear, Norman pulled out his notebook again and studied the symbols that needed to be carved into the bone. Norman found this particular spell on some old chat forum before the apocalypse. It was for one of those games where you rolled dice and had character cards. Essentially a knock-off of Dungeons and Dragons.

Norman thought the symbols looked cool and was going to get them tattooed onto him when he turned eighteen. Obviously, that never happened, Norman found the printout when he was digging through his things and tossed it into his notebook just in case.

It seemed like that had been a good idea. As he examined the spell, Norman’s mind was telling him the spell would work as is. The spell had a name but Norman ignored that since it was no guarantee that’s what the spell would do. Thankfully he had two corpses and a basic set of instructions on how to prepare the spell.

As he carved the symbols into the bone, the blood seemed to stick in the grooves made by his pocket knife, making the symbols stand out among the off-white bone. Norman then cut off the man’s pinky tip and carved one symbol into the end of the tiny bone. The spell said he could have used any bone for this part but he didn’t think carrying a skull or arm bone around would be very subtle.

He sprinkled both of the bones with some of the magic powder and the blood seemed to glow with an inner fire. Norman took a calming breath and touched the pinky bone to the leg bone to activate the magic.

There was a flash of red light followed by an awful squelching sound as the entire body started imploding into itself. Blood flowed up and into the body from the pool around the corpse, being sucked in like a vacuum cleaner was being used on it. The muscles stretched and deformed, ligaments snapping as they were torn free from their bindings. Then came the bones. They snapped, sounding like gunshots in the empty warehouse as every bit of the body was sucked into the femur that Norman had carved the symbols into.

Norman had expected something weird to happen, but he hadn’t expected this.

The femur pulsed darkly as the remains of the body were sucked into it before it too started to be sucked into the tiny bone Norman was holding. The tiny bone began to heat up and burn, acrid smoke coiling away from it as it blackened in Norman’s hand. Norman’s fingertips started to burn slightly, but he held on, alternating between hands.

He would need to remember to wear gloves in the future.

The process finished and Norman bounced the blackened and cracked bone between his hands to avoid burning himself as it cooled. The once off-white bone was now charred black except for a softly pulsing symbol that pulsed a bloody red color.

Norman was careful not to drop the bone. From the description on the page, the spell would activate if the bone shattered. Norman wrapped the tiny bone in a bit of cloth, ripped from what remained on the ground after the corpse was subsumed for the spell, before sticking it in an empty breath-mint box.

It gave Norman a perverse bit of pleasure to use the body of someone that wanted him dead in this way. But Norman wasn’t done, he walked over to the other body and repeated the steps. This would let him know if multiple spells could be used on one corpse or not.

The spell activated, although Norman hadn’t taken into account the age of the corpse. As the body split apart, it released the built-up gasses stored inside. By the time the spell was complete, Norman had emptied his breakfast at least a few times on the nearby floor. But he managed to hold onto the bone.

“Ugh. Alright,” he said, wiping his mouth and holding the blackened bone up, “time to test you out.”