He paced the churchyard, eyes constantly surveying the expanse of it, the crumbled remains of the nearby church, the tall, flowing grass, the quiet of this all-but-abandoned corner of the world. The glow would come. It must.

“Can you not encourage the corpse-lights?” Palmer pressed. “Agitate the soil or some such thing.”

“They don’t come because you demand it.” The resurrectionist picked at his fingernails with the point of a sinister blade. “It needs the right timing and a new body.”

“So resurrect one,” Palmer shot back. “It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“I’m here for a body, yes. The freshest ones fetch the best price.”

The freshest ones also, it seemed, produced the most light. “Where is the body you’ve come to harvest?”

He could see no newly turned-over dirt, no grave newly dug and filled. Indeed, not a thing in this churchyard appeared to have changed in decades, perhaps centuries. Had he been duped? How dare the man!

Palmer bristled. “I cannot see these lights if you’ve not brought me to a place where you mean to ply your trade.”

“I mean to ply it, never you fear.” Moonlight played upon the man’s ghastly features. “I’m not one for wasting m’time.”

“Neither am I. So point me to this body you’ve come for.”

With a look of pity not unlike the one Palmer had seen in the dissecting room but this time filled with a stomach-turning dose of amusement, the resurrectionist smiled at him. “The freshest ones fetch the best price.”

It was long after whispered in the College of Physicians that a young doctor by the name of Palmer had driven himself mad in pursuit of an unanswerable question. He had abandoned his patients, his home, and his faculties. In the end, he had disappeared. That was offered as a warning to his fellow men of medicine not to allow the inexplicable to become inescapable.

Dear reader, remember: Though this tale be cautionary, at its heart are two truths. The first, that lights have indeed been known to appear in all the places where our Dr. Palmer pursued and encountered them. The second, and far more important is this: Some questions are best left unanswered.

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The smell of flowers was almost overwhelming. The coffin, though, was surprisingly comfortable. Gemma was able to lie perfectly still while breathing lightly and shallowly beneath the crinoline cage that was hidden by a light blanket and a layer of flowers.

As no one had yet cried out in shock or dropped dead with fright, she figured Baz was managing to keep still as well. Conversations bounced around. Words of remembrance were offered. Gemma didn’t know how many of Baz’s friends knew he weren’t actually dead and how many believed they had lost someone they cared about. In the end, it didn’t really matter. He’d be dead to them either way.