"Where would you like me to begin?" I asked, with perfect courtesy. I had been raised well, until my parents started using drugs.

Clyde Nunley smirked at his students. "Why, this one would be fine," he said, gesturing to the grave to his right. Of course, there was no mound, probably hadn't been in a hundred and seventy years. The headstone was indecipherable, at least to my unaided eyes. If I bent down with a flashlight, maybe I could read it. But they didn't care about that part of it; they wanted to know what I would say about the cause of death.

The faint tremor, the vibration I'd been feeling since I'd neared the cemetery, increased in frequency as I stepped onto the grave. I'd been feeling the hum in the air even before I'd passed through the rusted gate, and now it increased in intensity, vibrating just below the surface of my skin. It was like getting closer and closer to a hive of bees.

I shut my eyes, because it was easier to concentrate that way. The bones were directly underneath me, waiting for me. I sent that extra sense down into the ground under my feet, and the knowledge entered me with the familiarity of a lover.

"Cart fell on him," I said. "This is a man, I think in his thirties. Ephraim? Something like that? His leg was crushed, and he went into shock. He bled out."

There was a long silence. I opened my eyes. The professor had stopped smirking. The students were busily making notations on their clipboards. One girl's eyes were wide as she looked at me.

"All right," said Dr. Clyde Nunley, his voice suddenly a lot less scornful. "Let's try another one."

Gotcha, I thought.

The next grave was Ephraim's wife. The bones didn't tell me that; I deduced her identity from the similar headstone positioned side by side with Ephraim's.