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resolve weakened as I climbed the concrete stairs from the basement to the main floor. Leaving behind the comfort of the morgue, I passed the office suite I’d ignored since the election. My predecessor had procured a fancy section of the first floor. There were gilt letters on the glass door. It belonged to a career politician—someone confident, unafraid, and powerful. I felt none of those things, especially not while clutching my phone like a talisman to ward off danger and insanity.
    The higher I rose, the more cops I saw.
    Police stations made me nervous. I avoided the cops’ curious glances as I threaded my way through their desks. In no time, I found myself standing in front of the chief’s office door.
    Everybody knew Chief Stan Krupski because he was an avid fisherman and a collector of classic cars. He was a politician’s politician—handsome and charismatic. People toldme he was a pretty good cop, even though he and my predecessor had conspired to make their lives more comfortable. I knew he didn’t like me much. He’d called me a blue-haired freak when we first met, but I figured it was still my duty to inform him that there was a corpse wandering around town. In case, I don’t know, they needed to put out an APB for a gutted guy carrying his liver.
    Okay. Keep the nervous laughter to a minimum, Alex.
That was going to be the hard part: telling.
    I had trust issues with the truth.
    Sensing me hovering nervously on the threshold of his office, the chief looked up. Stan was in his forties, but still looked boyish. If it wasn’t for the salt in his pepper hair, he could pass for a guy half his age, easy. The only thing wrong with him as far as I was concerned was his fondness for Texas-style gigantic belt buckles. I found them disconcerting because they drew my eye to his crotch. Of course, he stood up to usher me inside. I focused on his face, which was currently smiling, but I could see it falter around the edges.
    “Something wrong, Connor?”
    “You could say so, sir.” I didn’t know him well enough to call him by his first name, and was not nearly cool enough to get away with “Chief.” Technically, he was my colleague, not my boss, since he worked for the city and I for the county. I shouldn’t be deferring to him, but I didn’t know who else to go to with something like this.
    He leaned over and shut the door, before propelling me into one of the uncomfortable chairs he kept in front of his desk. “You’d better tell me what’s going on,” he said.
    I gaped for a moment as I tried to decide how to broach the subject. How did you explain something like this without sounding insane?
    A little laugh escaped before I could stifle it. If I knew how to talk about magical goings-on without sounding insane, I would never have spent time in a locked psych ward and Valentine wouldn’t have gone to prison.
    I opted for just blurting out the truth. “The corpse is gone. He got up and walked out. With his liver.”
    Stan leaned against the edge of his desk, so I couldn’t help but blink stupidly at the gaudy silver buckle. Seriously? A steer’s head? At least it wasn’t a skull. I couldn’t take anything vaguely spooky right now. I gripped the edges of the seat, like I was trying to literally hold on to reality.
    His arms crossed in front of his chest as he waited for me to say more. “You misplaced a corpse? Are you talking about Mrs. Finnegan?”
    “No,” I said, dragging my eyes away from the steer horns. “I should start at the beginning. Uh, you know Stone and Jones, right?”
    I was relieved to see him nod. I never knew at what point in the story people would stop believing me.
    “Okay, well, they brought this body in, some guy they said was…” I couldn’t say “necromancer,” it was just too weird. “…dead.”
    God, of course he was dead, Alex. You’re the damn coroner!
I looked up at the chief nervously, but he just nodded encouragingly.
    “Anyway, I was in the middle of