I got owl blinks from most of them, like I'd startled them or overcomplicated their little heads. It's not a look you get from veteran cops very often. It didn't make me proud; more crap, how did I explain this?

'You believe in the soul?' Rickman asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'Do you believe in God?'

'Of course.'

'Then how can you ...' Al asked it.

I frowned at him. 'Finish your sentence.'

He shifted a little as if maybe my look and my request didn't match up, but he finished. 'Then how can you use black magic to raise the dead?'

'Oh, for pity's sake, don't you guys read the federal bulletins on religious differences between legal religious practices and illegal ones?'

Al flushed a little, and I didn't want to embarrass him. He was an ally and I would probably need them. Crap. 'Sorry, we're just a little podunk town sheriff department. We don't get all the federal updates.'

'Sorry, Al, I'm just a little tired of being accused of black magic and devil worshipping after Micah's aunt and uncle.'

'Geez, I'm sorry, Anita, really; they were horrible to you. I should have remembered that.'

'You mean Bertie and Jamie?' Gonzales asked.

'Yeah,' Al said.

'Talk to me later and I'll give you some stories that'll make her leave you alone.'

'That'd be great,' I said.

'Okay, I apologize again,' Al said, 'but if raising the dead isn't black magic, what is it?'

'Most people consider it vaudun, or voodoo, but since I'm still a card-carrying Episcopalian, it's not a religious ritual for me, it's just a ritual that helps me focus a natural ability with the dead.'

'Is that what it is to other zombie raisers?' Rickman asked.

I gave him a look. 'If I were a practitioner I'd accept voodoo priestess, but since I'm not, the term is animator, from the Latin "to bring life." I know the Boulder PD gets seminars on what's insulting and what's okay to say to various special groups, and animators are about as elite a group as we can get.'

'Elite, in what way?' Rickman asked.

'As in a specialized skill. There probably aren't two hundred people in the world who can raise the dead, at all. Of those, most can only raise the typical kind of zombies, slow, rotting corpses that can barely move like people; most can't even speak. Those of us who can raise the dead so they are able to answer questions with prompting are maybe fifty. If you want a zombie that is coherent enough to answer a lawyer's questions or say the last good-bye to loved ones, well, that narrows it down to maybe twenty-five, thirty. The only flesh-eating zombies I'm aware of have been raised by only the most powerful of us, maybe the top one percent of that. Someone who could raise multiple flesh-eating zombies like this is really rare. There are none in this state that I'm aware of.'

'So it would have to be someone from one of the major animating firms?' Rickman asked.

'I can't imagine anyone from the firms doing this kind of shit,' I said.

'Who else?' Rickman asked.

'There are good vaudun practitioners and not-so-bad ones. A really powerful one who had chosen to do dark magic could do it, but the only one left that I'm aware of is in New Orleans, and Papa Jim is eighty and a good guy from all accounts. There are powerful priests and priestesses, but that doesn't automatically mean they can raise the dead, no matter what the legends say about voodoo.'

'I thought all voodoo priests could make zombies if they were powerful enough,' Al said.

I shook my head. 'No, you can't just pray your way into the ability to raise the dead. It's a gift, like running a mile in under four minutes; practice makes you faster, but some stuff has to be genetic, inherent to you.'

'So you're saying that you couldn't do a spell evil enough to be given the ability to control the dead?' he asked.

I thought about that for a long minute. 'Honestly, I can't answer that. I don't do black magic or mess with the kind of stuff that bargains power for sacrifice or evil deeds.'

'Why does anyone do it?' Burke asked.

'Because they're too weak, or scared, or powerless on their own, and they want to be stronger, scary themselves, and feel powerful.'

'And you don't need any of that?' Rickman asked.

'Nope, do you?' I asked.

He looked surprised. 'No, but I'm just a detective. There's nothing the demonic could offer me.'

I laughed. 'Oh, Detective, there's a certain kind of evil that specializes in finding what a person wants most and pretending to offer it to them at a price.'

'Why do you say pretend?' Al asked.

'Because the demonic can only give you what God has created, or what someone else has; they can't help you create something new and fresh, because that's beyond them. They are a part of the creator's design, not part of the creating of it. They imitate, they bargain, they may know your darkest secret, or worst fear, but they can't create your fear, only exploit the one that's already there, and they can't make you do a damn thing, only know what you've already done and try to use it against you.'

'How do you know all this?' Rickman asked.

'One, I was raised a good little Catholic girl. Two, I've come up against the demonic a time or two.'

'You've fought demons?' Al said.

'Not the way you probably mean, but yeah.'

'And you won?' Rickman said, and he sounded skeptical.

'I'm here, and their victims survived, so yeah, I won.'

'Did you do an exorcism?' Burke asked.

'No, I've assisted a priest on one once; really don't want to do a traditional exorcism again.'

'Why not?'

I just looked at him. 'If you have to ask, you don't want to know.'

'So you help priests fight demons?' Rickman managed to be even more disdainful.

'No, I worked with one priest on one exorcism, but the Catholic Church has excommunicated all of us animators, so I can't help now.'