With one look, I could tell the senator was dead.
The knife sticking out of his chest was a pretty good indication.
I turned to Theresa, his chief of staff, who had shown me into his private office.
“Can you do anything?” Theresa asked, tone clipped, her puffy eyes the only indication she was affected by her boss’s murder. “I know you usually deal with natural causes.”
“Death is death. It’ll be messy, but it’s nothing I can’t handle,” I said confidently. (I answered phones as a congressional intern, so I’m pretty good at lying.)
I walked over to the senator, still in his wing-backed chair.
“You said this happened recently. Who knows about it?” I asked.
“The legislative aide who discovered him, me, and you,” Theresa said. “You were my first call.”
“Is the leg aide reliable?” I asked, eyeing the large bloodstain spreading across his chest. Ugh, I’d have to take his shirt off.
“She’ll keep quiet,” Theresa said.
I turned back to her. “You know the risks of what I do. You sure you want this?”
Theresa’s mouth thinned, and she nodded sharply. “The vote is tomorrow. This has to happen tonight.”
The senator was the deciding vote, which was likely why he had been murdered in the first place—but the why for me is never as important as the what. In this case, the what being “super stabbed.”
“Alrighty then,” I said, cracking my neck. “I’ll need a towel, a candle, and a red Gatorade. I work better when I’m hydrated.”
It’s not easy being the unofficial necromancer of the United States Congress. I have my actual job to deal with, on top of the occasional “my boss is dead” call. I’m a leg aide myself, so my hours are terrible even without late-night necromantic emergencies.
It might surprise people to know how many members of Congress are reanimated. Or not—these guys are all, like, a million years old, so perhaps it isn’t shocking that they’re constantly keeling over from heart attacks or whatever.
There’s always risks to the ritual. Sometimes people return wrong, and a nice, normal lawmaker is now a fire-breathing partisan. But those changes are easily overlooked: an ideological flip-flop based on political expediency is nearly indistinguishable from one caused by resurrection.
The senator wasn’t my first murder victim. Poisonings are pretty common in Congress, and I’m a bit of a specialist: I conducted my first successful resurrection when I was 13, for my brother’s best friend. (Overdoses are just poisonings by another name.) Still, violent deaths aren’t really my scene. I’ve only failed one resurrection—even I can’t figure out how to undo a gunshot wound to the head. I couldn’t salvage my brother’s brain, not when it was splattered across his bedroom wall.
I tipped the senator’s chair forward until he spilled onto the floor, planted my feet on either side of his body, and tugged the knife from his chest. I’m no expert, but this looked like the signature bowie knife of a certain fellow senator from Wyoming.
I sighed. Working in Congress really ruins your opinion of politics.
The senator sat bolt upright, breathing heavily.
“FUCK!” he yelled.
Theresa crouched beside him.
“Are you alright, Senator?” she asked.
I took a sip of my Gatorade and grimaced. The vending machine down the hall had been out of red, so I’d suffered with orange the whole ritual.
“Where the hell is my shirt?” the senator barked.
“We took it off. It was covered in blood,” I said. The senator’s eyes darted to me.
“Get a new one,” he ordered. I quirked an eyebrow—I wasn’t staff. (Well, not his staff.) Theresa stood hurriedly.
“I’ll grab you a clean shirt, Senator. Jeremy has an extra somewhere,” she said. The senator didn’t spare her a glance as she hustled out of the room.
“Who the hell is Jeremy?” he muttered.
“I’m pretty sure he’s your communications director,” I said.
The senator squinted. “I know who you are.”
“I’d hope so. I’m the one who brought you back,” I replied.
The senator rose to his feet, unsteadily. “That rat bastard. I’m gonna kill him,” he fumed. “Stabbing me over a goddamn vote!”
“The murderer—another senator?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“That rat bastard!”
“Well, please do not kill the rat bastard, because I’ll have to bring him back, and I’m a bit drained from raising you,” I said. I’m always crabby after a ritual.
“Right. Uh, thanks,” the senator said awkwardly, anger cut short.
I lifted my Gatorade bottle. “Just doing my civic duty,” I said.
Theresa bustled back in, bearing a wrinkled white shirt far too small for the senator’s paunchy physique. He pulled it on absently, only fastening the first five buttons, leaving the bulge of his stomach uncovered.
“Theresa, what do we owe her?” he barked.
“I can’t accept payment,” I sighed, thinking for the millionth time that I should get a private sector job—they pay their necromancers bank. (Yes, fine, I don’t have to be the unofficial necromancer of Congress. I’m an idealistic idiot who still thinks she can make a difference, okay?)
My eyes flitted to Theresa, looking at me expectantly. I could push for something in response. I had resurrected him without even my preferred flavor of Gatorade, for God’s sake.
“But—Senator Marchand’s legislation, on grants for mental health care and addiction treatment in schools. You could sign on as a sponsor?” I asked tentatively.
The senator looked at Theresa. She nodded back.
“Sure, why not,” he shrugged, sticking out his hand. I stifled my relief and took it.
“Well, thanks again, anyway,” he said brusquely, pumping my hand with a politician’s practiced ease.
“Just promise me you won’t kill the rat bastard tomorrow, okay?” I said.
The senator glowered. “What about the day after tomorrow?” he growled.
“Yeah, sure,” I sighed, but he had already lost interest.
“Okay, then,” the senator said, turning to Theresa. “Let’s do this goddamn vote.”
About the author:
Grace Brannan is a writer based in Washington, D.C.
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