“Talk to me, Maggie. We were lovers. Friends. Partners.”

“That last one is the only one that matters.” She blew on her coffee, and sipped it cautiously. “I wanted our business. All of it. I was tired of being the junior partner, especially when I did most of the work. But you had the name, and the reputation, and the contacts. I didn’t see why I should have to go on sharing my money with you. I was the brains in our partnership, and you were only the muscle. You can always hire muscle. And… I was bored with you. Our affair was fun, and it got me the partnership I wanted; but, Larry darling, while you might have been adequate in bed, you were just so damned dull out of it.

“I couldn’t split up the business. I needed the cachet your name brings. And I couldn’t simply have you killed, because under the terms of your will, your ex would inherit your half of the business. And I really didn’t see why I should have to go to all the trouble and expense of buying her out.

“So I got out my old books and put together a neat little package of poisons and voodoo magics. As a zombie under my control, you would have made and signed a new will, leaving everything to me. Then I’d dispose of your body. But clearly I didn’t put enough sugar in your coffee. Or maybe you saw something in my face, at the last. Either way, that damned secret wand of yours let you escape. To a safe house I didn’t even know we had anymore. You have no idea how surprised I was when you rang me three days later.

“Why didn’t you remember? The poison, the spells, the trauma? Or maybe you just didn’t want to believe your old sweetie could have a mind of her own and the guts to go after what she wanted.”

“So why point me at Max?” I said numbly.

“To use up what time you’ve got left. And there was always the chance you’d take each other out and leave the field even more open for me.”

“How could you do this? I loved you, Maggie!”

“That’s sweet, Larry. But a girl’s got to live.”

She put aside her coffee, stood up, and looked down at me. Frowning slightly, as though considering a necessary but distasteful task. “But it’s not too late to put things right. I made you what you are, and I can unmake you.” She pulled a silver dagger out of her sleeve. The leaf-shaped blade was covered with runes and sigils. “Just lie back and accept it, Larry. You don’t want to go on as you are, do you? I’ll cut the consciousness right out of you, then you won’t care anymore. You’ll sign the necessary papers like a good little zombie, and I’ll put your body to rest. It’s been fun, Larry. Don’t spoil it.”

She came at me with the dagger while she was still talking, expecting to catch me off guard. I activated my wand, and time crashed to a halt. She hung over me, suspended in midair. I studied her for a moment; and then it was the easiest thing in the world to take the dagger away from her and slide it slowly into her heart. I let time start up again. She fell forward into my arms, and I held her while she died, because I had loved her once.

I didn’t want to kill her, even after everything she’d done and planned to do. But when a man’s partner kills him, he’s supposed to do something about it.

– 

So here I am. Dead, but not departed. My body seems to have stabilized. No more maggots. Presumably the wand interacting with the voodoo magics. I never really understood that stuff. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got, but then, who does? Maybe I’ll have new business cards made up. Larry Oblivion, deceased detective. The postmortem private eye. I still have my work. And I need to do some good, to balance out all the bad I did while I was alive. The hereafter’s a lot closer than it used to be.

Even when you’re dead, there’s no rest for the wicked.

Lovely by JOHN STRALEY

It was a piece of good luck. Gunk had been hungry when he came upon the dead thing sprawled under the wharf. It was opened up, with its insides showing to the air, a fine scent rising from the blue-grey bowels, where the last thing it ate would be waiting to be eaten again.

Gunk had spent the morning looking around, singing a soft tune to himself. Humming helped make his eyes sharper, Gunk was convinced of that. In fact, he thought he always heard a little chime each time he found a lovely piece of meat. He had no idea if the sound was actually in the air, like the sound of rocks falling down a slope, or inside himself, like the rumbling of his guts, but he was sure that there was a sound associated with finding a sparkling piece of meat.

At first the insides of any animal seem shiny. This is what had caught Gunk’s eye as he had been standing on the lip of a Dumpster back behind the fish plant. It was the sparkling of fat along the red incision. It appeared like a gem back in the darkness under the wharf, and he heard his mysterious little chime. This was a summer kill, no doubt about that. In winter, fresh blood on the snow was an impossible scarlet, not nearly the same as the spilled blood of a grey-green summer. Blood in winter was a hunger red. This summer kill showed more fat, white fat… and the blood was more a greasy shadow on the rocks, with hardly any color at all.

The dead thing was tucked back up under the shadow of the dock, where the pearls of water were all drippy and bright, plunking down into the ocean. The dead thing hadn’t been there an hour ago, Gunk was certain, because as hungry as he had been he would surely have seen it.

Gunk hadn’t heard any loud noises. None of the other real creatures had startled or risen up from their places. Gunk was beginning to worry about the body. He had heard stories of real creatures eating things and getting sick. Sick enough to die. And it was suspected that it was from eating these unlucky dead things. He walked around, looking at it from every angle he could. All big animals looked awkward after death, but humans looked even worse, as if they had fallen down and broken apart on the inside. Finally, Gunk spread his wings a bit and hopped on the top of the human near where its eyeholes were still open.

The eyeholes looked too good, and he started in on them, taking short hard jabs with his beak to get to the tasty juice and the really lovely hard muscle behind. He didn’t care if it was unlucky; some opportunities just had to be taken.

A human being came stumbling up the rocks. This one was alive, and very fat. He seemed to be almost as happy as Gunk to find the dead thing.

“Hey! Hey! Get back!” Gunk said to him, but of course this clumsy walker ignored him.

“Goddamn it, Harry,” the fat man said to the dead thing. “You are going to get us in a bunch of trouble.” This man ran his hands all around the dead thing as if he were looking for something good to eat. He seemed agitated, and for a minute the raven became concerned that he was going to take the tasty dead thing away.

“I know you have it here. Come on, old son, too late to be keeping secrets from me now,” the fat one said. Then he jerked his hand out and held something up in front of his flat ugly face. Green leaves, all the same shape and size. The man’s eyes opened wide, and for a moment Gunk thought he was going to eat the leaves, which would be very strange.

“Hey! Hey! Hey! Take those things away if you want! Just get the hell away from my dead thing!” Gunk said, but the fat man ignored him.

“Shut up! Shoo!” the ugly one said.

“Hey, hey, hey… cut that out!” Gunk yelled back.

Gunk wanted a few minutes alone with the dead thing. He wanted to get some of the fat under the skin and some of the lovely-smelling food cooked down in the intestines before he called the rest of the real creatures over. The only thing worse than not finding food was wasting it by letting it sit too long and letting some other nasty animal get to it. The real creatures would make the best use of the dead thing. It upset him that this human being was trying to get rid of him.