“Wow, drama,” she remarked dully and without looking up from the dated magazine she’d pulled off the nearby shelf. It wasn’t really a surprise. These were our typical clientele afterall. People who lived happy lives and had trusting spouses and family members didn’t typically need to come back. Or maybe they did, but no one still breathing needed anything from them–except for the rare chance to see them one last time. But usually, people in these situations had enough respect to let their loved ones remain at peace. “You need new reading material, Brax. I think I’ve seen this one like five million times.”

“Hyperbole much?” Mind readers are simultaneously the most dramatic and least enthusiastic people I’ve ever come across. Maybe because they are privy to everyone’s most personal thoughts that they have to find entertainment in the most banal places. Rainy can make a minor hiccup seem like a life-shattering event. Sit her in front of a corpse, however, and she was bored to tears. “Anyway, there’s no time for reading. We’ve got to get this guy up and running now. His timer is about to exceed the danger zone.”

“Da…”

“Don’t say it!” I cut in. If I let her get away with one Archer quote, I would be hearing them all night. The show was just one of Rainey’s obsessions.

“Spoil my fun,” she pouted, but jumped off the spare exam table where she’d been sitting to help me. Rainey liked to have her fun, but she was definitely reliable. “Ok, you pull. I’ll push,” and she took hold of the back of the exam table where our client was resting.

The seance room was really just another medical area, but we had adorned it over the years with loads of candles in all shapes, sizes, and colors as well as numerous pagan oddities. Some of the items actually had significance for the ritual, but most of them were just for show. People didn’t want to think about their doctor raising the dead. They’d rather believe the necromancer they hired was a specimen of the underground and privy to all sorts of dark magics. So, the scene had to be set – pointless or not.

The truth was resurrections had never been considered the best of magics, and I regularly had to relocate when the local witches got word of me. Of course, their brand of hexes weren’t considered “dark” or “bad” because they were just using those spells out of necessity. Say what you want but black magic is black magic. Whether any of us were damned, was yet to be determined.

We brought the exam table to the center of the room and carefully deposited the body onto the pentagram on the floor. The client’s head faced the top of the star, and his legs fell between the two bottom points. Again, this didn’t really matter, but when putting on a show, it’s important to sell every last detail.