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The Department's Resident Dead Expert

Chapter 1

Sponsored by Asbeoth

by Draconicon

Jaceb leaned against the wrought-iron gate of the cemetery, the mole gazing over the small park that the graveyard had been put in. Trees sprouted around graves that had been laid between the roots, and familiar stones, either polished and glistening or cracked and crumbling, waited for him further on. He tightened his grip around one of the iron poles in the gate for a moment, gathering his strength before walking in.

He'd chosen to wait for sunset and the last half-hour before the cemetery would be closed to the public before making his visit. Nobody else walked among the stones, nor did they wander the stone paths between them. The mole was alone and felt safer that way, even as his brown robes dragged along his legs and the dirt path, displacing fallen leaves. The soft crunch reminded him of a promise for the future, and he shook his head as he realized that another year had almost passed already since it had been given.

With one hand in his pocket and the other outstretched, the mole tapped one stone after another, names drawn up by touch as much as anything else. Jeremy. Nadia. Sylvia. Nathan. Takir. Stephany. Each a name that had probably been forgotten by everyone but those that had laid them to rest, and possibly even by them. Probably forgotten because it hurt too much to remember. Some, though, had been brought here from elsewhere, and had no-one but him to remember them.

Jaceb rounded the big tree in the middle of the park, finding the stone that he'd come to see. The black marble shone against the setting sun as he knelt before it, gathering his robes up around his knees. His legs were bare beneath it, and the grass was prickly, but that was fine. He honestly preferred a little pain when he was here; it helped ground him against what waited.

"Hi again..."

He rested his hand on the top of the rounded stone, curling his fingers around it as the little pins and prickles arrived as they always did. They came with little words, little touches that were...so desperate, so grasping, as if they could pull him through the stone and into the earth with them. Jaceb teared up behind his glasses.

"N-n-not y-yet...n-not y-yet...I'm sorry, b-but n-not y-y-yet..."

The prickling feeling turned into a yawning gulf of sadness, only to be patched with a sheet of false hope so blatant that it would have made a more convincing ghostly bedsheet. Jaceb laughed quietly.

"Th-thank y-you...for understanding."

The ghosts beneath the grave - for that was what they were, so many ghosts, so many little remnants that were laid to rest here when they should have been laid to rest so many worlds away - did what they could, as they always did. Little hugs, little touches, little squeezes to remind him that they remembered him, and that they missed him.

Maybe they were sorry for him, too. Jaceb was sorry for himself, half the time.

He took off his glasses, wiping them clean before putting them back on. He saw himself in the reflection off the polished stone. A chubby mole in his thirties with slightly chubby cheeks, glasses so thick that they were at risk of sliding off his nose under their own weight, a small belly and big hips that were made slightly less obvious with his long, baggy robe. Something else from somewhere else, that, and something that drew more eyes than he probably should risk in this place.

But it was one of the few things that he had left, and so, he held onto it as tightly as he could. It had survived so many places, so many horrors - even Hell - and it felt wrong to leave it behind because it was no longer convenient.

He dragged himself out of that, sidling closer to the stone. He rested his forehead against it, and the voices of the ghosts beneath, the voices of the children, whispered to him.

"I'm here...I'm here...t-talk w-w-with me...I'll listen..."

And they did. They shouted, and like he had done ever since his first death, he listened to them and lost himself in the noise, only speaking when they needed a response. They'd been silenced in life; they should never feel like they were voiceless in death.

The more they spoke, the more that Jaceb fell into the sound of their ghostly voices, all but floating among them. He closed his eyes against the stone as he listened, letting the outside world fade away. All of his attention, save for that little bit that was needed to keep his heart beating, was given to them, the forgotten, the abandoned, the -

He shut that line of thought down before it could get to that. He remembered that. They didn't have to. They had forgotten, and it was the only mercy that the children had been granted. He would not remind them.

And so, he drifted, falling and rising and falling again among their voices. They had so much to tell him, so many memories that they revisited since they couldn't actually go anywhere. The ghosts were bound to the tomb and what was buried beneath, and so they could only revisit the past. They remembered the games they used to play. They remembered the times that they ran through the crowded cobblestone streets of their homeworld. They remembered the times that they had climbed up churches and laughed at the priests before running off.

Most of all, they remembered how things used to be before it went wrong, and that was what they wanted to talk about most. Jaceb felt every memory like a needle through his skin, but listened anyway, because nobody else would.

"T-tell me again," he whispered. "Again."

And they did, happier than ever going through their old stories, as innocent of what came after as anyone could be.

Jaceb smiled as he felt their happiness, holding onto that as much as he did the prickling feelings in his legs from the sharp grass. It was his way back, but until the time came, he'd stay with them.

Then, someone touched him.

Jaceb sat bolt-upright, his eyes wide and his heart ready to leap from his chest as the voices of the dead disappeared. The hand on his shoulder had him pinned in place, unable to rise, unable to roll, unable to do anything but keep staring straight ahead. Another hand was reaching for his wrists, pulling them behind his back.

"Sir, you're under arrest," a male voice said.

"W-wait, I - w-what is g-g-going on? I -"

"You are under arrest," the stranger said, and Jaceb almost screamed as his hands were pulled behind his back. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you -"

He had heard the spiel on television a hundred times, but he'd never thought that he'd hear it himself. The soft click of a pair of handcuffs wrapping around his wrists told him that this was real and not some horrible segment of his imagination or the reliving of a horrible moment by one of the wandering ghosts of the graveyard. It was real. It was real.

The police officer dragged him to his feet, but Jaceb was so shocked that he just hung limp. He hadn't fainted; if anything, he was so hyper-aware that it was a miracle that he hadn't exploded. He was panting for breath, his eyes wild, and as he sagged backwards, he had a brief glance of the officer that had arrested him. A shaggy sort of sheepdog loomed over him, thick in the shoulders with bangs that worked with sunglasses to keep his eyes invisible. The dog's partner stepped forward, a hyena that grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back to his feet.

"Get moving."

They pushed him forward and he tumbled straight for the ground. The impact nearly made him lose all control, but he didn't. Not there. Not in this world.

Hold tight...hold tight...hold tight...

"What's wrong with this asshole?" the dog growled.

"He's probably on something. Get him in the car and we'll sort it out at the station," the hyena said.

The station. He was arrested. But why?

He couldn't make himself speak up, couldn't struggle, couldn't wiggle. He wasn't alone as he was taken away; the ghosts of the dead followed him. There, a little Dalmatian girl that had been gunned down in a school shooting, who he visited with a picnic basket like she said her parents used to bring for their outings. There, a pigeon teenager that had been dead in an alley, alone, never claimed, whose burial he had paid for. There, an eel that had washed up on the shores of the city just last summer, dead over a year, unrecognizable in life but terrified of the dark in death, who carried the shade of a candle that Jaceb had left just last week.

They followed him, invisible to all but him. For what else would follow a necromancer?

#

Jaceb couldn't help but review his life as he was left in the interrogation room. To be fair, it wasn't much of a life, so the review went quickly as he wondered how he'd gotten here and tried not to, quite literally, explode. How did you summarize a life that was effectively several hundred years old at that point down to just a few sentences? Well...

He remembered being born into a well-off family that wanted him to be a priest, but he'd become a scholar instead. He'd studied everything he could get his hands on, even cheated by learning necromancy to talk to the dead experts of the world, and had come to prefer them to the scarier, more demanding living. Then he'd found a dead body, a dead child, killed after being hit one too many times, and without thinking, brought it back. It became a habit until the church found out, and then -

He stopped himself as he always had. Suffice to say, he and the children found themselves in Hell. Quite literally, bound and sentenced to it. One who would become a friend found them many years later, and pulled them free, and Jaceb had taken the spirits with him, carrying them in his possession throughout various worlds before finally settling -

The mole hunched his shoulders, shivering. No, no, no. Reviewing that was bad. That little skill he'd learned to scare people off - of literally exploding out of his skin and then putting himself back together when they were gone - did not work here. They just filmed it and took souvenirs. The last time he tried it, he'd been short half a leg before he managed to get all the pieces back. They'd probably do worse here.

"Nnngh...nnnngh..."

Resisting the urge to curl into a ball and knowing it would only make things look worse, Jaceb made himself look up. The metal table bolted to the floor was the only piece of furniture in the interrogation room besides the chairs, and he was reflected back at himself by the mirrored glass at the far side of the room. He looked dirty, like some homeless crazy man in the brown robe that had started looking more like some giant, stitched-together paper bag with its age, wear and tear, and limitations of being rain-washed only. Jaceb looked down again, not liking the look of himself in there.

"What...wh-what do you w-want from me?" he whispered. "I didn't do...anything..."

There was no immediate answer, and Jaceb lowered his head again, focusing on breathing and keeping his skin tight. He could feel the tension in his bones, those long-learned defensive instincts begging him to just jump out of his skin and scare the bejesus out of everyone so that they would leave him alone. All it would take was one little push, and he'd be right out of his skin. He could already feel a little rip at the back of his neck, a small tear that would have been bloody as hell if he'd been anything but what he was, and -

No, no, no!

He clenched his hands into fists as he lowered his head to the table, barely resisting the urge to bang his head against the metal to make it all stop. Just stop. Just shut up. Just stop thinking.

The door finally clicked open, and he looked up slowly. It was the hyena first, then the sheepdog, the latter holding a file and glaring down his muzzle. The mole lowered his head again, whimpering.

"Please...at...at least t-tell me...w-what's going on..."

"Drop the scared act. We know what you did," the dog said.

"I don't!"

"You raped and killed a little girl."

Jaceb whipped his head up, eyes widening behind his glasses. They were - no, no, not again. Not again. Not like the church. Not again.

"Who?" he whispered.

"Why don't you tell us, hmm?" the sheepdog said, sitting down on the other side of the table. "Or maybe there's more than one, and you want to confess."

"I didn't k-kill...or hurt...or anything...I didn't..."

"Is that so? You're in the graveyard often enough. Killers love to come back, if they're not sociopaths."

Not this. Not this again. Not this wrongness. Jaceb shook his head as he sat up.

"W-who?"

"A calico kitten, named Alice." The hyena crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall. "Does that name ring a bell?"

It did and didn't at the same time. He knew at least four Alices that were buried at the graveyard. Jaceb cocked his head to the side.

"I...I know...more th-than one."

"Calico. Nine years old?" the hyena asked. Jaceb shook his head. "Really? I don't know that I believe that."

"I know I don't," her partner said, shaking his head. "Look here. I don't know who else you killed, but you've been at the graveyard nearly every day for the past two weeks. More than that, you've been seen wandering the parks. I don't know if you're some vagrant passing through, but parents have been calling in for weeks, saying that there's some mole pedo staring at their kids."

"I wasn't -"

"We have video proof that you were there."

Jaceb groaned. He hadn't been looking at the kids. He'd been looking at the ghosts that he'd been able to take from the graveyard to the playgrounds, to the parks, to the different parts of the city to see things again. He'd been watching them have fun. It wasn't - he hadn't -

It was all going wrong again and everything felt so tight and -

He felt the slight pop at the back of his neck and barely managed to cover it in time. He held his hand flush against the back of his neck as he shook his head.

"Please. It's n-not me. I didn't do anything. Please...y-you have to b-b-believe me."

"We don't have to -"

"Finlay, a word?" the hyena asked.

The sheepdog turned, and the hyena leaned in, whispering. Not completely silently, though, and Jaceb - so used to hearing even the slightest whisper of the dead - could still hear her.

"We don't have anything but him visiting the graveyard. He might be telling the truth."

"What, and you think all that peeping at the park is innocent?"

"He's not all there. I'm just saying, it might be better to keep our options open."

"He's visited the grave six times."

Six times. Then he would have seen her, but he didn't remember a calico named Alice. Three of the other Alices weren't the right age, either, ranging from 15 to 23. But...

There had been one. One that had been the right age, but rather than being a calico, she'd been completely white-furred. It hadn't been quite right, either, almost like there were spots of other colors beneath the white, but -

"W-wait," Jaceb said. The cops looked up. "Th-this Alice...w-w-was s-she....did s-she dye her fur? White?"

"...Did she?" Finlay asked.

"Yeah, actually," the hyena admitted. "The coroner made a note of how much of a bitch to return it to natural colors it was. The parents requested it, actually."

"Then you did know her." Finlay nodded. "Why did you kill her?"

"I-I didn't."

"Stop. Lying."

"I'm n-not lying," Jaceb said, shaking his head and feeling the bones ready to pop. If he didn't calm down soon, his skull was going to rip right through the top of his head and the rest of his skeleton would follow. "I - I just -"

SLAM!

The sheepdog was on his feet, hands on the table, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. The words themselves were no longer distinct, and Jaceb barely heard them. Somehow, the roaring storm of rage was enough to refocus him, enough to drag him back from the fear. This was something that he could deal with. This rage at him - just at him - was something that he had faced a few hundred thousand times.

When you were a necromancer, you could take being ripped apart. After all, you learned how to rip yourself apart so you could put yourself back together, and anyone else doing it never hurt as bad. If someone else wanted to be mad at him, that he could take. It was better, easier, than worrying about someone else.

But before it could go further, before the sheepdog could lay hands on him, the hyena grabbed hold of the other officer and almost threw him out the door. She turned back to the mole, held up a finger to indicate that she'd be right back, and left, leaving the mole alone once more.

Jaceb breathed out as he looked down at the table. The anger had, oddly enough, been enough to get rid of the fear. He pressed his hand to the back of his neck, feeling the rip around the bone, and even the bone itself. The odd feeling of pressure on something that was never supposed to see the light of day was both familiar, disconcerting, and just a little reassuring. It meant that he had mostly succeeded in holding himself together, and he would take that. He would take that and be very happy about it.

As he gently nudged it into place and did his best to ignore the feeling of grinding bone - only partially successfully - he looked down at the table again. A small fly had been squashed into the metal, its guts pushed out and its wings crumpled. It was gone.

Such a waste.

Perhaps it was the need to do something and not feel as helpless. Perhaps it was stupidity. Perhaps it was his own anger at Finlay's stupid anger targeted at something that didn't deserve it. Whatever the reason was, he reached out and hovered one finger over the fly, and as he did, he called on his magic.

The spirit of the fly hadn't gone far, and there was still a little rope that was gradually fading leading out from the body. He seized it and pulled, and the spirit at the other end came as it was called. Jaceb whispered, the words meaning nothing, but they were an invitation to come back, to slide back into the body. Already, the rest of the magic was knitting up what was left behind, calling the chitin to come together, the wings to unwrinkle. The spirit was happy enough to go back in, too dumb to realize that it had entirely died, and just happy for a protective body once it had the realization that it didn't actually have one anymore.

As the spirit put its skin back on, taking wing, he looked up to find the hyena staring at him. Jaceb's eyes went wide behind his glasses, and he pulled his hands back to his side of the table.

"...How did you..."

"It w-was n-n-n-nothing," he stuttered, shaking his head. "Just s-stunned."

"Bullshit."

She'd seen. Oh god, she'd seen. What were the rules for magic here? He almost never saw it, and seldom used it. Just around the graves, and he hadn't seen other necromancers. Was it even something that existed here? He'd only just arrived a few months ago, and -

"Are you..."

"..."

The hyena shut the door behind her, walking up to the table and sitting down. She leaned forward, her tight uniform looking tighter, and her eyes were...

They were glowing, he realized. Glowing bright in the way of someone that had just seen something that they believed impossible. So many times he'd seen that, either in the scholars in his past or in some child that had seen impossible things that were more dreamlike than real. Was it so impossible here?

"Was that...magic?" she whispered.

"..."

"Did you just bring that fly back to life?"

Was there any point in denying it? Jaceb blushed and nodded.

"Holy...holy...you can do that? What - what was that? There's a name for death magic in fantasy, right? What's it called? N-something."

"N-necromancy," Jaceb whispered.

"That's what it's called. Necromancy. Fuck. I - god." The hyena covered her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Give me a second. This...this is a lot to take in."

Well, he wasn't dead, so that was a step up from how things tended to go when someone found out that he had that kind of magic. Most people were convinced that he was some sort of devil spawn as soon as death magic came up, despite the fact that raising someone from the dead was one of the least impressive things that you could do with it. Considering what else was possible, Jaceb considered raising someone from the dead to be not only a generally bad idea - at least, without taking into account the various variables, as he had obviously failed to do here - but something that risked disrupting things.

It was one thing to do it for those that had been robbed of life and those that wanted to return. That had always been his rule in the past, but even that could get out of hand. Doing it without thought, just raising people because you could, or worse, for...for other purposes...

He shivered as a chill ran down his spine, and he pulled himself in a bit tighter, curling up in a little ball on the chair with his knees to his chest. He desperately searched for a distraction, and found it in the hyena in front of him.

She was, to put it bluntly, bigger and stronger than him, and with those fangs, scarier. She had a bristly pelt of brown, spotted black fur that showed through the gaps around her wrists and the top of her uniform, and even sitting down, not even sitting straight, she loomed over him. Her ears were constantly twitching, almost like a nervous tic, and it was hard not to look down, considering that she was...

No, no, he wasn't going to start thinking of those thoughts. Just because she had the body that might inspire those thoughts didn't mean that the mole needed to think of her that way. Particularly since she'd probably punt him through the mirrored glass if he did. He shook his head, looking down and away.

Finally, the hyena got herself under control. She sat up properly and offered her hand.

"Let's start over. I'm Aisha."

"...Jaceb."

"Good to meet you. Now...was that...really what we were saying it was?"

He nodded.

"Is that how you..."

"I...met Alice...th-that w-w-way, yes."

"Right. And...that's it?"

"Th-that's it."

"Uh-huh."

"It's the t-truth."

"Could you tell us who killed her?"

"..."

"Jaceb, it's the only way that you're going to clear your name. Do you think that you could -"

"Do y-you..." He swallowed. "Do you...like t-t-t-" He gritted his teeth, whimpering as he slapped himself. Stupid, stupid stutter. "Do you...like to...talk about...dying?"

"...What do you mean?"

"Do you...like...to...talk...about...dying?" If he took it one word at a time, he could just about manage it. Hated it, felt stupid, felt bad, but had to try and get it out. "They...don't...remember. Not...unless...I...ask...them."

"Look. I understand, this isn't easy, but -"

"It. Is. Torture. For them."

"Is that a no?"

"..."

Jaceb leaned into his hands, already feeling the shakes coming back. He had spent years - decades - who knew how long keeping that memory away from those that he'd buried beneath the tree, and more, away from the other spirits in the cemetery. Some few remembered how they died, holding onto it with the same desperation of a homeless man clinging to the last shreds of his dignity. He talked freely with them about it, because it caused them no pain. The ones that died and forgot? They did not need to be reminded. It felt wrong to even consider it.

As he hugged himself, shivering and shaking, Aisha stood up. He expected her to leave, or threaten him, but instead, she walked around the table and grabbed his hand. Instead of forcing him up, she pulled him a bit closer and -

And he found himself resting on her chest. He didn't know what was going on, but she had him in her arms, and she was petting his head.

"That's it. That's it. Just calm down. Just calm down."

She was talking to him as if he were a child, he realized. Why? He was -

Oh.

Oh.

The way that he shook, that accusation of vagrancy earlier, and everything else from Finlay that had come up. They thought that he was either on something or was crazy, and that was why they were tiptoeing around things the way that they were. Even though the hyena was better than the sheepdog, she probably still thought that he had something seriously wrong with him. Magic notwithstanding, she probably thought that he was nuts and needed to be handled and bribed with careful touches.

He didn't know whether to hate her or thank her for that.

And yet, she was still holding him, and that intimacy with the living, while certainly not comfortable, wasn't quite...unpleasant, either. He shifted in embarrassment while being held against her chest, trying not to think about the softness getting ground against his face or the way that he had to press his thighs together to hide a little reaction beneath his robe.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Again, it was the sort of thing that left him feeling weird. He could hear the slight condescension and worry that came with someone talking to a crazy person rather than someone genuinely worried for a friend, but that was to be expected. More than that, though, there was that condescension again. He shook his head.

"N-no."

"What do you need?"

"N-not...n-not b-b-b-be here."

"...Hang on."

#

It took about a half hour, but he was in Aisha's cop car and they were heading somewhere else in the city. They'd stopped at a burger joint, and Finlay had radioed in no fewer than six times to make sure that nothing had happened, but they weren't in the police station any longer, and that was enough for Jaceb. The mole kept glancing out the window, seeing if he could guess where they were going, but there was no clear sign of just what was waiting for him.

Were they going back to the cemetery? He didn't know what that would do, but he knew that he couldn't just say 'Hey, Alice, who killed you after raping you?' That would hurt her. And when you died, you should be done with getting hurt.

He curled up in a ball just at the thought of it, only for Aisha to reach over and force him to put his legs back on the floor. The mole shook his head.

"Sorry."

"Just don't want shoe prints on my seats."

"W-where are w-w-we g-going?"

"My place."

"...Why?"

"A. You need a shower. B. It's somewhere different that I can keep an eye on you. C." She turned to look at him. "I want to talk without someone else listening in later."

Jaceb nodded, trying to keep his legs stretched out rather than pulling them up again with only some moderate success. Aisha only had to push him to keep his legs down twice before she pulled up outside of her apartment building. She pulled the car up to the sidewalk and cut the engine, and he looked out the window at the four-story building before she gave him a nudge.

"Come on. Get a move on."

"W-what floor?"

"Top one."

Lots of stairs, then. He got out and followed the hyena, reminded again about the way that she towered over him by a good foot of height. Keeping his head down, he just walked.

Four flights of stairs later, he groaned as he dragged himself to her front door. She pulled it open and waited for him to step inside, then followed after. They left their shoes at the door at her insistence, then walked to the living room. He let her seat him on the couch, pulling his legs up and crossing them in the lotus to get a little more comfortable. She allowed that, shaking her head as she sat beside him.

"You're not going to do anything...you know, necromantic around here, are you?" she asked.

"N-no."

"Good. Good." She shook her head. "God. Real magic. I never thought that'd happen."

"It isn't..."

"What, you - oh, don't tell me there's more like you?"

Jaceb shrugged. He hadn't been there very long, but he hadn't seen anyone else using necromancy, or any other kind of magic, for that matter. Maybe he was the only one.

Now, that was a terrifying thought.

Aisha shook her head, shifting on the touch so that she had one foot on the floor and the other tucked under her thigh. She rested one hand on his shoulder and pulled him closer, looking him right in the eye.

"Jaceb. I want you to tell me. What would it take to get you to find out what happened to Alice?"

"..."

"It's important. This is...this is a serious case. A child was murdered, raped and murdered, and if it wasn't you -"

"It w-wasn't."

"Then we need to find who did it. And the longer we wait, the bigger the chance that they'll either get away or they'll do it again. So, what will it take?"

Gods. What was he going to say? He couldn't just say no. She was right; the longer that they went without finding anything, the more that the trail would go cold. And if he didn't ask, Alice might actually forget, and that would lead to further problems. Or they'd find a way to make him ask, and then not give him the chance to help her afterward with the hell of memory settling upon her.

Yet, at the same time, Aisha was almost frenzied. For all that her voice was quiet, he could see the glint in her eye, and he could see that she was all but desperate for the chance to see what his magic could do. Did they need his help? Or...or was this just an act, something to get him to expose himself in a more dramatic way?

He had to see if she was serious. He had to ask for something to make sure that she wasn't just playing with him.

"I...Let me...have...um..."

"...Are you...are you asking me to...sleep with you to get you to..."

He knew it. She wasn't actually trying to get him to help. He'd had to pick something big, and that was obviously -

"Oh, that's easy."

"...W-what?"

"Take it off, Jaceb. Let's get this done."

The End

Summary: Jaceb's been in this world for a short time, but has already linked with the dead. Unfortunately, his behavior has gotten some of the cops rather...curious.

Tags: No Sex, Mole, Hyena, Sheepdog, Size Difference, Humiliation, Police, Series, Murder Suspect, Necromancer, Dead People, Ghosts,