"Who?"
"Your spook. Does he have a name?"
"Probably. I call him Chuck."
"So Chuck presumably asked you for a favor. You couldn't do it. He's making your life hell. You need to banish him. Which is why you shouldn't let them ask in the first place."
"It was more of a demand, really. But I have been trying to listen more often, help with little things like passing on messages."
"Uh-huh. How's that working out for you? Or I guess that—" She jabbed her pizza slice at the burning vervain. "—answers my question. About Chuck, though. What does he want?"
I took a beer and sat on the sofa. "He and his cousin died in a car accident. They were interred in the family mausoleum. He wants me to open his cousin's casket."
"And..."
"There is no 'and.' Apparently, as a servant to the afterlife, it's not my place to question the will of the dead."
"Asshole." She chugged half her beer. "If he's got a mausoleum, that means he's got money—or his family does. I bet there's something valuable in that casket, and jerkwad is just too stupid to realize it won't do him any good, being dead. So, if we did find something, we'd need to keep it."
"No, I'd give it back to his family."
"Shit. Jeremy's finally rubbing off on you, huh?"
"There's no treasure in that casket."
"Then why does he want you to open it? Aren't you curious?"
I wasn't. Another necromancer lesson: Never stop to question. There are too many opportunities. Like the residual in Savannah's house—a woman forever watching out the window. I should wonder what she's looking for, why it was so emotionally powerful that the image of it is seared forever within those walls. But necromancers can't afford idle curiosity. They'll go mad chasing questions whose answers don't really matter. That doesn't keep me from feeling like I should be curious, though. "It is odd ..." I said finally.