Layard was taken aback. How wrong can you be, Harry? he said. Listen, I know you’ve been getting a hard time from the teeming dead, but you still have a few friends left!
You came in friendship?
I came to say thanks! For Trevor Jordan.
Harry shook his head. I don’t follow you.
To thank you for what you did for him. And to offer my help if there’s anything I can do for you.
The Necroscope began to make sense of it. Trevor was your friend and colleague, right? You and he were one of the best teams – one of the best partnerships – E-Branch ever had.
The best! said Layard. So when I died it was only natural I’d want to keep tabs on him, see how he made out. What I did best in life came even easier in death, and in life I’d been one hell of a locator. Which was pretty fortunate for me, else I’d have had a really dreary time of it. What, me? A vampire? The dead didn’t want to know me, Harry.
So locating people you’d known in life occupied a little of your time, eh?
A little of it? All of it! I mean, once you get over your fear of death – of being dead – it can pretty soon get boring! So I traced Trevor, and discovered that he was dead, too, and I would have spoken to him except the Great Majority did a job on me and blocked me out. There are some fine talents among the dead, Harry, and not a lot they can’t do if they’ve a mind. So they’d throw up a lot of deadspeak flak every time I tried to talk to anyone. Anyone, that is, except . . .
. . . Me?
Exactly! They’ll do their damnedest to mess us around, but they don’t mess with us! We want to talk to each other, that’s fine – just as long as we’re not trying to pervert one of them.
I see, Harry said. So the only way you could get to speak to Trevor was through me.
That’s right.
Except you’re too late and your deadspeak won’t work anyway – because Trevor is alive again. Which means you still can’t communicate direct but must use me as a go-between.
Complicated but, in a nutshell, correct.
Well, you picked the wrong time, Harry was half-apologetic. Try me when I’m awake.
I’ll do that. But in the meantime – maybe I can do you a favour, too.
Oh?
Harry, Layard said, I was one of the good guys a long time before I copped it. And even at the end I was still pretty much my own man. I was a creature of Janos’s making, ‘in thrall’ to him, yes, but given even the smallest chance I’d have taken him out if that were at all possible. It wasn’t possible – not for me, anyway – and so I died. But you’ll never know how glad I am that he got his, too. So as you said, I owe you one. Not one of the worst but a good one. Like . . . the talent of locating? How would you like to be a locator, Harry?
It would come in handy, certainly, the Necroscope answered. I already have deadspeak, telepathy, one or two other things. Being able to find someone or thing in a hurry would be a big bonus.
That’s what I thought. So maybe we can trade. You get my talent, and I get to talk to you now and then, plus a reintroduction to Trevor Jordan. I mean, you act as our go-between. Trevor would like that, I’m sure.
What will it entail? Harry became cautious.
Well, Layard offered a deadspeak shrug, I’m already in your mind – in contact, anyway – so I suppose you’ll just have to open up and let me look deeper inside. I mean, I know my own trick, the mechanism which makes me a locator, and if I can find a similar thing in you . . .
. . . And activate it?
Something like that.
And you want me to open up to you of my own free will, right?