“They still will if we climb out of them pine packages and go on our merry way.” Gemma turned in Barnabus’s arms enough to face the others. “My father always said a corpse ain’t fully dead until the last nail goes in the coffin.”

“So we nail you in. Load you into hearses,” Fletcher said.

She shook her head. “A hearse that don’t go to a churchyard would rig the jig. They’d know it weren’t real.”

“Resurrectionists’ve been known to cut corners,” Fletcher said. “Do they ever resurrect a body before it’s in the ground?”

Gemma watched Fletcher with both interest and growing worry. “I’ve been on a few jobs where a corpse was pulled from the coffin while still in the hearse. Saves the trouble of digging later. Of course, the driver has to be in on the plot as it ain’t a quiet undertaking.”

“Does the hearse have to be equipped in a special way to resurrect in it while its moving?” Fletcher asked.

Gemma nodded. “It ain’t a simple thing.”

“But it can be done?” Fletcher pressed.

Barnabus was beginning to understand the idea tossing around in Fletcher’s mind. “You want Gemma to sort out how to resurrect me after staging my death?”

“Close,” Fletcher said. “Resurrect both of you. In moving hearses. Without being caught out. And all before arriving at the churchyard.”

She’d gone pale. “The Kincaids know it’s possible to resurrect in a hearse. It’d have to be done in a way that they’d think it were impossible.”

“You’d have to plan a resurrection that even the Kincaid brothers themselves don’t think can be done,” Barnabus said.

“Is that all? Generations of resurrectionists’ knowledge spilled into those four ears, and I have to fool them? Simple as apples, that.”

“If you decide it can’t be done,” Fletcher said, “we’ll think of something else. But they ain’t going to stop looking for you unless they’re full certain there ain’t no one to look for.”

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Gemma’d been running from the resurrectionist trade for years. She’d sworn she’d never connect herself to it again. Yet there she were, trying to formulate a way to out-resurrect the most skilled grave robbers in all of London.

“It’d have to be something that’d seem entirely impossible.” She picked at the humble meal she and Baz had made for themselves. Fletcher and Stone had left, leaving her to plan something that couldn’t be done. “They can resurrect in a moving hearse. All they need’s a long enough jaunt to the churchyard and room enough for moving about. Loading our coffins into hearses ain’t enough to toss the Kincaids off the scent.”

“Do we choose a shorter route, then?” Baz asked.