She turned to me. “See, see, he’s more alive every time.”
I couldn’t even argue with her, because I’d seen it. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“We love each other! How can that not matter?” She walked toward me, and the moment she let go of his hand his energy faded again. Whatever was happening between them was temporary.
“Take his hand again,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“Take her hand in yours, Tom.”
He reached out and did what I asked, but again I didn’t think it was because he was obeying me; he wanted to touch her. His energy sparked again, not as much as it had when they kissed, but it was there. He was gaining something from her.
“Let go of her hand and shake hands with Mr. MacDougal.”
He hesitated, but let Justine go and reached out to the other man. MacDougal hesitated, too, but shook hands with him. Warrington’s energy brightened, not as much as it had with Justine, but it was there, a little boost. That was very interesting and totally shouldn’t have been happening. Zombies didn’t care if you touched them, but then normal zombies didn’t care about anything; they just obeyed orders, or answered questions when asked. Whatever kind Warrington was, it was something different, maybe something new. I wondered if anyone else had raised a zombie that gained energy from human contact. I knew a few animators in the business that I trusted enough to ask, but that was for another night. Tonight had enough weird without borrowing.
“You can stop shaking hands; thank you both.”
“See, see, you thanked them both, even you think Tom is a person.”
I looked at the woman and understood some of the demand on her face, in the tension of her body, her hands caught somewhere between fists and claws ready to scratch. I wondered if she even knew that she was getting ready for a fight; probably not. Fight-or-flight can affect people oddly, if they’re not used to the reaction.
“He is the most alive zombie I’ve ever raised,” I said, but my voice was still calm and unemotional. It was a headspace similar to the one I’d used in college when I was getting my biology degree and doing my senior project. You record what your test subjects do; you don’t anthropomorphize them. I was looking at them all with a dispassionate distance that was part of the scientific mind-set, and a little bit sociopathic, but then what is either but a lack of emotional projection? One is so you can record events without editorializing, so the data is as pure as possible, and the other is so you stay sane while the bad things happen.
“He’s a man, not a zombie!” she yelled at me.
We’d taken long enough that some of the other history lovers had come out to stand near MacDougal. “What’s going on?” they asked. “Why is Justine upset?”
I could answer that last one, because I was about to be the villain in her tragic love affair. To be fair I was also the fairy godmother who had used magic to make her wish come true, but magic is like a gun sometimes, neither good nor bad, but capable of doing both.
“Thomas Warrington, come to me,” I said, and held out my hand again.
He started moving toward me immediately, but there was no tug along the line that bound us. I could feel my power in him, as if even if he tried to run away I’d still be able to track him without the GPS on his ankle.
Justine grabbed his arm. “No!”
Bob told the others, “Blake is going to put Tom back in the ground tonight.”
One of the other women said, “We paid to have him until tomorrow night for questioning.”
MacDougal said, “It’s all right, Iris; Ms. Blake and I have discussed things and circumstances have changed.”
“Is it because Justine and he are boning?” one of the younger guys asked. The rest of the group immediately turned on him with looks that said, Way to overshare.
One issue at a time. “Come to me.” He did what I wanted and finally touched my hand. God, he was warm. Zombies weren’t supposed to have body heat like this; they just weren’t.
“You can’t take him away, you can’t!” Justine grabbed his other hand while I was still touching him. The energy spiked, but this time I wasn’t just seeing it from a distance. It ran through me from the hand touching him, and thrilled through my body like a rush of electricity and power. It upped my energy just like it had Warrington’s. I realized I could gain energy through him the way a vampire does from a human servant, or in my case a vampire servant to my necromancer. When the servant fed, you gained energy. It had begun as a way for vampires to travel long distances without having to take blood and be discovered on the ship, train, or however they were traveling. The servants ate, and that was enough energy to keep the vampires going until they could feed on blood.
Warrington looked at me and said, “What is that? What is happening?”
I didn’t really want to explain out loud. I’d discuss it with Manny in private, but not here with strangers who were probably not going to like me very much by the end of the night. Justine swayed on her feet, and I realized that once I knew I could feed on her energy I’d opened the channel wider and was drinking her down faster through my zombie.
I let go of him, and Justine fainted. He had to catch her, or she’d have hit the parking lot hard. “What’s wrong with her?” her friends asked.
Warrington looked at me as he held her in his arms like a child, or a romance heroine. “What have you done?”