“This might be more than you bargained for,” Jeremy warned her. “Did you get a notice about the cholera on the plane? That appears to be connected. And the reason I called you last night was to say that these zombies aren’t as easy to kill as we thought. This might not be the sort of thing you want to get involved in.”

She managed a smile. “Because I have a bad habit of needing rescue every time I do get involved?”

“There is that,” Clay muttered.

Jaime waved me off before I could jump in. “Clay’s right. My track record sucks. I always end up playing damsel-in-distress.”

“No,” Jeremy said. “You’ve had some bad luck, but only because your skills made you a target.”

“And the bad guys love to pick on the defenseless necromancer. This time, though, I swear I won’t get kidnapped or possessed.”

The corners of Jeremy’s mouth twitched. “All right, then. If you’re sure you want to-”

“I do.”

“Then I’d welcome the help.”

Antonio, Nick and I chimed in with our agreement, but Jaime’s gaze swept past us to Clay.

“Long as you’re here, you might as well stay,” he said. “Hang around and do your stuff until we can use you.”

“What Clay means is-” I began.

“Exactly what he said,” she said. “If Clayton says I can stay, I feel almost welcome. Now, let’s talk about zombies.”

“Controlled zombies,” she said after I finished. “Don’t ask me how that’s possible, but that has to be the answer. Remember I said I’d make some calls? Well, I didn’t find out much that seemed helpful at the time, but I did learn a few things about controlled dimensional zombies. Like ones controlled by a necromancer, they can’t be killed until that control is severed. Instead of just staying alive, though, they disintegrate, and their soul returns to the dimensional holding tank. If the door’s still open…”

“They walk back out.”

“Logically, these shouldn’t be controlled zombies. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…It would also explain why that one at the truck stop was so quick to follow you.”

“His controller sent him after me,” I said.

“Right. The controller must want the letter back, and he’s convinced the zombies that getting it will benefit them.”

“Would they need that incentive?” Jeremy said.

“It would help. Zombies have to do what their controller says, but they do a better job when properly motivated.”

“Like any worker,” Antonio said.

Jaime smiled. “Exactly. They still have conscious will, if not free will.”

I pushed off the end of the bed and crossed the room to stretch my legs…and get another peach. “But we’re back to the originalproblem with the controller theory. The portal was created a hundred and twenty years ago. To still be alive, that sorcerer would need to have found the secret to immortality, which, unless I’m mistaken, is unlikely to the point of impossible.”

“Could something like that be passed on generationally?” Jeremy asked.

“Like ‘I hereby bequeath control of my zombies to my son’?” She paused. “I suppose it’s possible.”

I nodded. “If so, then it would also make sense to pass on the portal itself…or the device that contains it.”

“Patrick Shanahan?” Clay said.

Jeremy nodded, and explained who Shanahan was.

“Shanahan could be it,” Jaime said. “If his grandfather commissioned the theft, it could have been to get his own portal back.”

“It would be more likely to be a great-grandfather,” Jeremy mused. “Or even great-great, given the timing.”

“Maybe he was Jack the Ripper,” Nick said. “The great-grandfather.”

I waved my half-eaten peach at him. “So he created the portal, with the zombies, and sent it to the police, knowing it would go into the files. Then, if the police started getting close, he could just release his zombies-”

“Who could destroy the evidence,” Jaime said. “The ultimate inside job.”

“Only the police never did get close, so he emigrates to Canada. At some point, his son or grandson, Theodore Shanahan, hires a local thief to get the letter back.”

“Yes,” Jeremy said. “It makes sense, but there are too many-”

“Creative jumps and leaps of faith,” I finished. “I know. Regardless of how the portal could have been created, Patrick Shanahan is the best, if not the only possible, zombie controller.”

“If there is a controller,” Clay said. “But no harm hunting the guy down.”

“That part you don’t mind,” I said, grinning as I gave him half my handful of blueberries. “Let’s just hope he hasn’t hightailed it to parts unknown.”

“Can’t,” Jaime said. “When the zombies are resurrected at the portal, they return to him. Like homing pigeons. So the controller has to stay close by.”

“There’s our plan, then,” I said. “We find one of the zombies, then kill him, and someone waits at the portal to follow him back to his controller.”

Rats

KILL A ZOMBIE, THEN FOLLOW HIM OR HER BACK TO THE controller. Sounded simple enough. Or it would be, once we found a zombie to kill.

Jeremy decided we’d wait until nightfall, then return to the warehouse district where we’d found Rose. She’d obviously been comfortable there, so she might return. Even if we couldn’t find a zombie, we were pretty sure one would eventually find me.