"And we can't bring in a constable to collect," said John, "without risking that one of them might recognize you and throw you back in that jail you escaped from."
"I was thinking mostly of how little I want to say the sentence 'this mentally incapable senior citizen refuses to pay for the unnecessary funeral we've extorted out of him,'" I said, "but yes, your concern is a valid one as well."
"So let's make sure it works," said Mary.
"The funeral?" I asked.
"The magic duel," said Mary. "It wouldn't be the first time we'd rigged a funeral to fool an old man."
"I offer my humble assistance," said John, and fanned his arms dramatically. "With the power of words!"
"I like this idea," I said, ignoring him. "If we make him think he's had a successful magic duel, he'll be a happy customer, and happy customers pay."
"Then we have to talk to the necromancer," said John.
"You mean Mr. Tolliver," I said. "I don't want to call him a necromancer behind his back if he's really just a poor old man living next door to a madman."
"I hope he is a necromancer," said John. "I've never met one."
"It would make our job easier, too," said Mary.
"Fooling two men instead of one?" I asked. "What's easier about that?"
"We can stage a much more convincing duel if both men are participating," said Mary. "Otherwise we're stuck presenting one man with a duel and the other with a normal funeral, and that sounds impossible."
"Good point," I said. "Let's go meet Mr. Tolliver."
Chapter Three
"Who comes to darken the doorstep of a necromancer?" Mr. Tolliver's voice sounded feebly from behind his front door, and I nodded.
"Well," I whispered, "that answers that question."
"Stop whispering," Tolliver demanded, "or I'll haunt you all with the spirits of a thousand restless dead!" The door was still closed tightly.
"Good afternoon!" said John, to the door. "My name is John Keats, and these are my associates, Oliver Beard and Mary Shelley. We represent the Spilsbury and Beard Mortuary, and at this time we're afraid that we bear some bad news—"
"You're afraid that you bear it, or you actually bear it?" asked Tolliver.
"I think what he means to say that it saddens us to be bearing it," I said, but before I could continue he interrupted with another angry tirade.
"If it makes you so sad then why would I want you to give it to me?" asked Tolliver. "I have enough of darkness in my own life—do you even know what it's like to be the earthly husk of an ancient evil? The horrors I have to put up with on a daily basis? Come inside and smell this chamber pot, why don't you, and then tell me why I need so much more sadness in my life than I already have!" The chain rattled, and the locks began to jiggle on the door.
"I think what he means," I began again, and then the door opened and I become quite unable to say anything, so noxious was the smell that assaulted us. Mr. Tolliver, short and bony and quite devoid of trousers, thrust his chamber pot toward us, and it was all I could do not to retch in the bushes.
"There!" shouted Tolliver. "Is that the natural odor you'd expect from a mortal’s bowels? I've got death itself inside of me, and hell and all its angels manufacturing new terrors every night!"
"I think what he means," said Mary, taking over my twice-aborted sentence as John and I gasped for air, "is that the news makes us sad, but might very well make you quite happy indeed." Her nose, given her profession as a grave robber, was much more accustomed to foul stenches, though I could see that even she was gripping the porch handrail with a fierce desperation. She steeled herself and continued. "We have to discuss the recent death of one of your neighbors, Mr. Daniel Crow."
Tolliver pulled back the chamber pot and glared at her. "Crow's dead?"
"I'm afraid he is," I said. He seemed just as delusional as Crow himself, so there was no reason not to propagate the ridiculous story. "He died rather suddenly in his sleep last night, and we thought that you, as a necromancer, might . . . " I wasn't sure how to finish the sentence without insulting him. Should I suggest that we knew he had hated Mr. Crow? Should I go even further, suggesting that we knew Tolliver had 'killed' him? That seemed like too much, so after a painful moment of indecision, I decided on: ". . . that you might be pleased about the advent of more death into the world."
"Pleased?" he asked. "Of course I'm pleased, I'm the one that killed him!"
"You really just put it all right out there, don't you?" I said. "No secrets with Mr. Tolliver."
"I didn't mean to kill him," said Tolliver. "I had intended to make him a thrall, bound to my insidious will, but apparently things have gone wrong."
"How is it possible that they both tell the same story?" I whispered to Mary. "Did they confer at midnight? Is this all an elaborate jest on a mortuary? Who does that?"
"Mr. Tolliver," said John, "you have no idea how pleased we are to hear that. A mortuary, as you might imagine, already has more bodies than we could possibly find a use for. If you're interested in this one, you're more than welcome to it."
"Excellent," said Mr. Tolliver. "Bring it here, and I shall raise it immediately!"
"It's not that simple," I said, shocked as much by John's brazen statement as by Tolliver's. I tried to stay on top of the situation, hoping when I
