The shade didn’t hesitate. “No.”
There was more than one sputter of dismay behind me, and even Tamara muttered something questioning how a shade could lie. Shades had no egos. They couldn’t lie, or even obfuscate the truth. Ask the right question, get a good, honest answer, at least to the best of the shade’s recollection. While Remy’s soul had been inside his body, he had never been inside that bank. After his soul was evicted . . .
“He’s not lying. He was already dead.” Yup, definitely a broken record. “Remy, what was the date and time of the last thing you remember?”
“November nineteenth. It must about been about seven forty-five because I arrived at the meeting right after seven.”
John glanced back through his notebook. “That would be the night before the bank heist.”
“And it would be consistent with the state of rigor during my initial observations at the scene,” Tamara said.
Jenson made a sound that was particularly growl-like. “So we are actually saying that the people who were walking, talking, and waving guns around were already dead at the time? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“If the shoe fits,” Briar said, and turned back toward me. “You said ghosts were piloting these corpses. Ghosts are just souls, right? How come the body didn’t start recording again when the foreign soul was inserted?”
I might have gaped at her for a moment. Not only because it was a good question, but also because she understood enough about grave magic to ask it. That was high-level grave theory she was using to reach those questions. And I didn’t have a good answer.
I probed at the body with my magic, searching for anything unusual. Memories were stored in every cell of the body, so it wasn’t like I could search for particular ones, but I tried to let my magic seek around for anything that didn’t feel connected to the shade I’d raised. There was nothing. Remy’s body and shade felt typical, strong even.
I shook my head, indicating that I didn’t know the answers to Briar’s questions. She sighed.
“We need more details about the man, the place, and the job,” she said.
I turned back to the shade. “What kind of study did you volunteer to join?”
“It focused on human interaction with the spirit world. I was being paid to see if an experimental spell could allow me to see into the other side and talk to ghosts.”
Well, he’d certainly gotten to see into the other side.
“Who was running this study?” Briar asked, and I repeated the question for Remy’s shade.
“His name is Dr. Marcus Hadisty.”
All the detective and investigator types in the room were suddenly busy scribbling in notebooks. The chill of the grave was already seeping deeper into me, making me cold to the bone, and I hadn’t even finished the first interview yet. I could guess the next series of questions, so I moved on.
“What did he look like?”
“Older. Graying hair. Very professor-like.”
Well, that was generic. I pressed for more details. “How old?”
“I don’t know. My parents’ age? Maybe older. At least forty.”
Remy was only a handful of years younger than me, but he still apparently looked at everyone over thirty as old. That wasn’t going to help us much.
“How did you meet Dr. Hadisty?”
“I saw a flyer on campus looking for volunteers for his study. It claimed it would pay two hundred for no more than two hours of time. The last study I joined paid only fifty dollars. I’m saving to buy a ring for Taylor, so I watch out for quick ways to make a little cash.”
Something inside me twisted painfully. I always hated when shades said something hopeful for the future. Not that shades hoped for anything anymore. They had no emotions, no feelings. He was saving for a ring. The shade said the sentence as a simple fact, but I imagined the living man would have been a bundle of joy and nerves when discussing the ring and his plans.
“How did he contact Dr. Hadisty?” John asked when I followed my own train of thought a little too long without asking the next question. I repeated his words to the shade.
“The flyer had a quickchat number. I contacted it and he sent me a questionnaire to fill out and the first set of waivers to sign.”
Murmurs from the room on that one. Quickchat left no trace of the conversation once the session was logged off.
“You didn’t think it was odd this doctor was using quickchat?” That somewhat sarcasm-laced question was Jenson’s. We had a . . . strained relationship. I almost didn’t repeat it, as it would require the shade to make a judgment call, which he’d only be able to do if he’d considered it while alive, but I didn’t want to get accused of prejudice or ignoring a line of questioning.
“Quickchat is common on campus. It was unusual for it to be used for something official, but the questionnaire and waiver weren’t dissimilar from other studies I’d participated in, and the offered money was good.”
“Did you agree to meet as soon as you answered the questions?” I asked.
“No, he contacted me a few days later, via the quickchat app, and let me know I’d been approved as a candidate for the study. We agreed to meet the following evening.”
Which brought us back to the nineteenth. “Where did you meet?”
“An old funeral home. He claimed the place was haunted and it would be an ideal location to find ghosts.”
“Name, location?” John asked, looking up from the notebook he was furiously scribbling in.
It wasn’t a funeral home I’d heard of before, but then I didn’t have much cause to visit them. Cemeteries I would have known, but not funeral homes.
Questions kept coming. I shivered, dutifully repeating them. With five people interjecting lines of inquiry, the interview seemed to drag out. Remy described the ritual proceeding his death in detail—or as many details as he could. He wasn’t a witch and had no spellcasting training, so he hadn’t been paying much attention to Hadisty’s circle. He thought there might have been some sort of markings on the floor but was uncertain what they were. He either couldn’t understand or hadn’t listened enough to remember what words Hadisty had been saying before handing him something to drink. I was pretty sure Remy was the least observant person I’d ever encountered. That, or he’d shown up to the study to get paid and hadn’t cared about anything but the money promised.
Tamara quizzed Remy in great detail about the liquid he drank. She wanted to know any impressions about viscosity, smell, and taste. If he’d felt any immediate change, tingling, or numbness while drinking it. His answers didn’t seem particularly helpful. She’d run a toxicity screen on all the bodies since their cause of death was unknown, but the preliminary results had all been negative. She was still waiting on the more in-depth panel.
Finally no one had any more questions.