“You think I know all this because I reported Salvador for abuse and malfeasance years ago?”

“That and our new agent Larry Kirkland says that if anyone knows how this is being done, it would be you. He says you’re the most powerful animator he’s ever met, and that you may know more about the undead than anyone alive today.”

“I bet that’s not how he said the last part,” I said.

She fidgeted in her chair. “I’m trying to keep it friendly after I had my little meltdown, Marshal Blake.”

“What did Agent Kirkland actually say?”

“Anita,” Zerbrowski said.

I looked at him.

“Let it go; Larry complimented your abilities, just let it go.”

I didn’t want to, because I was betting Larry had said something that implied my expertise came from being way more friendly with the undead than his God-fearing faith would allow him to be. Once Larry and I had been friends, hell, I’d trained him to raise the dead, but we’d stopped being friends when I stopped taking the morgue kills he felt morally bad about. Morgue executions were vampires chained to reinforced metal gurneys, holy objects all around, and the only legally accepted method of execution was a stake through the heart, then decapitation in most states. Have you ever tried to pound a hardened wooden stake through a piece of bone-in ham? Try it sometime; it’s not easy. Now imagine the “pig” is still alive and begging for its life. I’d had far too many morgue kills where they pressured me into killing the vamp after dark when it was awake, so that they didn’t have to risk it breaking free before dawn and hurting more people. Ah, for the idealism of youth when you believe every piece of crap someone tells you. I’d requested permission to use a shotgun at close range as a more humane method of execution, but had been refused, because silver-coated ammo is expensive and I could damage the very expensive reinforced gurneys that the vampires were chained to. Finally, I’d stopped doing morgue kills altogether when I realized most of the vampires chained to the tables for staking hadn’t ever hurt anyone. “Three strikes and you’re out” for vampires used to mean if you were convicted of three crimes of any kind, you got executed. Larry and I had been involved in the case that had helped give vampires a chance to go to jail for misdemeanors instead of just being killed. Good outcome, but that case had been a turning point in our friendship. After that he was like a born-again vegan who saw all meat as murder, and I was the carnivore.

“Okay, Zerbrowski, okay.”

He smiled and patted my hand. “Thanks.”

“What did you thank her for?” Brent asked.

“Listening to me,” Zerbrowski said.

“Blake does have a reputation for not listening to people,” Manning said.

I gave her a not entirely friendly look. “I’ve mellowed.”

She gave a little smile and shook her head. “Haven’t we all.”

I nodded. “You either mellow or find a new career.”

“Isn’t that the truth?”

Three of us nodded; Brent hadn’t been on the job long enough to understand. I felt all veteran-y.

“I can tell you how Dominga Salvador said she was doing it, but I never saw it done personally. She had two zombies like the ones in your videos; one was almost perfect and could have passed for human, but the other one was like you’re describing, more decayed. Both of them looked out of their eyes. They were in there just like this one is.”

“Our experts say it’s theoretically possible for someone trained in voodoo to capture the soul at death and keep it in a jar or other magical container, but they don’t know anyone who’s actually done it. It’s all ‘my great-great-grandfather’s uncle’s brother did it,’ or knew someone who had done it. We’ve followed up every rumor of a bad-ass voodoo priest or priestess, and they were either fake for the tourists, or law-abiding citizens who were horrified that their religion had been corrupted.”

“What did they say about putting the soul back in the body after death?” I asked.

“There are ways to steal a piece of someone’s soul and get some control over them, though it’s a bad idea. It’s some kind of karma balance thing; just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should,” Manning said.

“There are repercussions to dabbling too far in the blacker side of the arts of any magical path,” I said.

She gave me those hard, straight cop eyes. I was betting she was hell in an interrogation room as the bad cop. “Some witches say that blood sacrifice of any kind is pretty black, and that you must have racked up some serious negative karma yourself, Blake.”

“Yeah, I’ve talked to some of the witches who believe that. They’re either the Christian witches who are okay with being second-class citizens in their own religion as long as they play by very strict Church rules, or fluffy-bunny Wiccans, or another more New Age flavor of witches.”

“I know Wiccan is a modern word for witchcraft as a religion, but what’s a fluffy-bunny Wiccan?” Brent asked.

“Fluffy-bunny neopagans seem to believe that there’s no such thing as bad energy or evil magic; as long as they don’t mess with it, it won’t mess with them. It’s the equivalent of civilians who think that nothing bad will happen to them as long as they don’t go into the wrong neighborhood or hang out with dangerous people. Neither group wants to believe that evil lurks in good neighborhoods, too, and predators of all kinds hunt the good with the bad folk sometimes.”

“Most civilians need to believe that to feel safe,” Brent said.

“Yeah, but believing it too completely gets them hurt, or worse,” I said.

“So you’re saying the fluffy-bunny witches believe the blood sacrifice opens you up to the bad stuff, and as long as they don’t do it, they’re safe?” Brent asked.

I nodded.

“Safe from what?” he asked.

“It’s the metaphysical equivalent of bad guys. I’ve seen some of the fluffy bunnies do major magic without enough magical protection and just believe that the innate goodness of the universe will protect them.”

“I don’t understand,” Brent said.

“It’s like a couple wearing mink and diamonds driving their brand-new Jaguar through the ghetto and thinking that nothing bad will happen to them, because they’re good people.”

“In a perfect world they’d be right,” Manning said.

“We don’t live in a perfect world,” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Zerbrowski said.

“One voodoo priest who was in his eighties said that there were no spells to accomplish what had been done to the poor women.”

“I’m not a follower of vaudun, which is what a lot of their faith prefer to call it instead of voodoo, but I’d say the priest is right. My knowledge of their faith is limited, but Dominga Salvador said she’d invented this method, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Well, either someone else figured it out, or she shared the secret before she vanished,” Manning said.

“Apparently,” I said.

“Can I ask a question that isn’t directly on topic?” Brent asked.