"Why?" he asked.
I laid the machete down beside the jar of ointment. "Because each grave had rites performed that would tie the dead individual to the grave, so that if you call it you have a better chance of getting an individual to answer."
"Answer?"
"Rise from the dead."
He nodded. He laid a wicked curved blade on the ground. It looked like a freaking scimitar.
"Where did you get that?"
He dipped his head, and I would have bet he was blushing. Just couldn't see it by moonlight.
"Guy at college."
"Where'd he get it?"
Larry looked at me, surprise plain on his face. "I don't know. Is something wrong with it?"
I shook my head. "Just a little fancy for beheading chickens and slitting a few goats open."
"It felt good in my hand." He shrugged. "Besides, it looks cool." He grinned at me.
I shook my head, but I let it go. Did I really need a machete to behead a few chickens, no, but the occasional cow, yeah.
Why, you may ask, didn't we have a cow tonight? No one would sell Bayard one. He had the brilliant idea of telling the farmers why he wanted the cow. The God-fearing folk would sell their cows to be eaten, but not for raising zombies. Prejudiced bastards.
"The youngest of the dead here are two hundred years old, right?" Larry asked.
"Right," I said.
"We're going to raise a minimum of three of these corpses in good enough condition for them to answer questions."
"That's the plan," I said.
"Can we do that?"
I smiled at him. "That's the plan."
His eyes widened. "Damn, you don't know if we can do it either, do you?" His voice had dropped to an amazed whisper.
"We raise three zombies a night every night routinely. We're just doing them back to back."
"We don't raise two-hundred-year-old zombies routinely."
"True, but the theory's the same."
"Theory?" He shook his head. "I know we're in trouble when you start talking about theories. Can we do this?"
The honest answer was no, but the thing that dictated more than anything else what you could raise and what you couldn't was confidence. Believing you could do it. So... I was tempted to lie. But I didn't. Truth between Larry and me.
"I think we can do it."
"But you don't know for sure," he said.
"No."
"Geez, Anita."
"Don't get rattled on me. We can do this."
"But you aren't sure."
"I'm not sure we'll survive the plane ride home, but I'm still getting on the plane."
"Was that supposed to be comforting?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"It wasn't," he said.
"Sorry, but this is as good as it gets. You want certainty, be an accountant."
"I'm not good at math."
"Me either."
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Alright, boss, how do we combine powers?"
I told him.
"Neat." He didn't look nervous anymore. He looked eager. Larry may have wanted to be a vampire executioner, but he was an animator. It wasn't a career choice, it was a gift, or a curse. No one could teach you to raise the dead unless you had the power in your blood. Genetics is a wonderful thing: brown eyes, curly hair, zombie raising.
"Whose ointment you want to use?" Larry asked.
"Mine." I'd given Larry the recipe for the ointment and told him which ingredients you couldn't mess with, like the graveyard mold, but there was room for experimentation. Every animator had their own special recipe. You never knew what Larry's ointment would smell like. For sharing powers you used the same ointment, so we were using mine.
For all I knew, we didn't have to use the same ointment, but I'd only shared my powers three times. Twice with the man who trained me as an animator. Each time we'd used the same ointment. I had acted as a focus all three times. Which meant I was in charge. Where I liked to be, right?
"Could I act as a focus?" Larry asked. "Not this time, but later?"
"If this comes up again, we'll try it," I said. Truth was, I didn't know if Larry had the power to be a focus. Manny, who taught me, couldn't do it. Very few animators could act as a focus. Those who could were mistrusted by the rest, and most wouldn't play with us. We would literally share our powers. A lot of animators wouldn't be willing to do that. There is a theory that you could permanently steal another's magic. But I don't buy it. Raising the dead isn't like a magic charm that someone can take with them, and leave you without. Animating is built into the cells of our bodies. It's part of us. You can't steal that.
I opened the ointment, and the spring air suddenly smelled like Christmas trees. I used a lot of rosemary.