I sighed as I took a seat up front next to Devona. "Truer words were never spoken."
As soon as we were all seated the Frankenstein verman started the engine – which sounded remarkably smooth-running given the tram's ramshackle appearance – and we started rolling down the tunnel.
As we traveled we passed other vehicles of similar design, each driven by a Baron built verman and containing a variety of cargo. Sometimes passengers – often other vermen, but just as often members of other species – and sometimes wooden crates filled with unknown contents. The Underwalk was a bustling place, in its own way as busy as the streets above us. It was like an entirely different city existed beneath Nekropolis and I marveled anew at the size and complexity of the Dominari's organization.
"So what landed you in the hoosegow?" Scorch asked. Once we'd boarded the tram both she and Tavi assumed their human guises and now she looked like a teenage girl again, but she still had the demon's gruff attitude.
I told them all about my visit to the Nightspire, my interrogation by Quillion and what the First Adjudicator had shown me.
Devona was scowling long before I was finished and when I stopped speaking she continued scowling, lost in thought. Then she shook her head as if to clear it.
"First things first," she said. There was a duffle bag on the seat next to us and she reached over, opened it, and pulled out a smaller cloth bag. She opened the bag and removed a bracelet made of tiny bones from a lizard or maybe a rodent.
Good thing Gnasher isn't here to see this, I thought.
"I stopped by Papa Chatha's before we came to get you," Devona said.
She slipped the bracelet onto my broken wrist and within seconds I could feel the bones knitting themselves back together and I could feel my smashed nose resetting itself. After a couple minutes Devona removed the bracelet and put it back into the bag.
"That should do it," she said. "Papa placed a restorative spell on the bracelet to heal any damage you sustained in Tenebrus and he also added a preservative spell to make you look as fresh as possible." She leaned forward and examined my neck. "It even healed the seam on your neck where Victor Baron reattached your head. Excellent!" She leaned back, looking very pleased with herself.
I experimentally flexed my left hand but its coordination was still off. I guess there's only so much the magic of a voodoo priest can fix. Still, I wasn't complaining. Papa had more than done right by me.
"Let me guess: if I'm going to operate incognito, I need to look like a living man, so no tinge of gray to my skin, and no obvious injuries that apparently don't hurt me."
She nodded. "If we're going to attempt to clear your name, we're probably going to run into trouble."
I smiled. "Don't we always?"
She smiled back. "When we do – difficult as this may be for you – try to avoid getting beat up. And if you do get injured, pretend like it hurts. You're the only selfwilled zombie in the city, and you'll need to do everything you can to act like a living man if you want to avoid being recognized."
Sounds easy enough, right? After all, I'd spent almost four decades alive before becoming a zombie. But after being dead for several years, I wasn't sure that I could fake being alive. The big things I could do just fine. After all, I could still think and talk, but I move more stiffly than I did when I was alive and I don't notice small things like temperature changes and strong smells. Passing for one of the living wouldn't be easy.
Devona reached into the small bag again and this time pulled out a necklace made from dried chicken feet strung on braided strands of black hair – dead man's hair, I guessed. Before I could ask about it she placed the ugly thing around my neck and I felt a strange sensation of warmth pass through me briefly and then it was gone.
"What was that?"
"I knew that once we got you out of Tenebrus, Keket would search for you and the Adjudicators would probably get involved too. We need to conceal you from any tracking magic they might use so Papa created a charm that temporarily binds your spirit with that of one of the lower ranking Loa. It'll only last a few days, but during that time it will block the effects of any spell used against you. While you wear it you will be undetectable by magic and anyone who runs a magical scan on you will only detect the voodoo spirit's presence."
Having a security expert for a lover is a wonderful thing sometimes.
"What about scientific scans?" I asked.
"The charm won't affect those, but that sort of tech is rare in the city, so you should be safe enough."
"What about my scent?" I asked. There are any number of creatures in Nekropolis with enhanced senses – vampire and lykes chief among them. They'd be able to smell that I was a zombie.
Tavi was sitting behind us and he leaned forward to answer my question.
"Since you're now fresh your scent has only the vaguest hint of decay to it. Bloodborn have a somewhat similar scent so if you remain close to Devona you shouldn't arouse any suspicion."
Tavi was a lyke so I figured that his advice was sound.
"Looks like you've covered most of the bases," I said to Devona. "I can't be tracked by magic and for the most part I look and smell human again. Now all I need is a disguise."
"I've got that covered, too." She reached into the duffle bag and pulled out a black great coat with a double row of ivory buttons down the front. She thrust it at me. "Put it on."
As I donned the coat she pulled a large black hat out of the duffle. It was flattened a bit and she quickly reshaped it and plopped it on my head.
"There! Just the thing for an escaped convict on the run," she said.
She said this lightly, trying to make a joke of it, but for the first time I realized that I was a criminal now. I might have been sentenced to Tenebrus for a crime I hadn't committed but I had chosen to escape the prison. I'd rationalized my act by telling myself that I hadn't had a real trial, let alone a formal one, and the only way I could hope to clear my name was if I was free to investigate the theft of Lord Edrigu's bone flute by myself. And while both of those things might be true it was also true that I'd broken the law. I was used to bending the law in my line of work, and when I did, I always told myself that it was necessary to get the job done and that I was doing it to find some measure of justice for my clients. But this time I hadn't just bent a law – I'd shattered it, and I'd done so for myself and no one else. I was still trying to right a wrong, so that hadn't changed, but somehow that didn't help me feel any better.
The great coat fit well, and while it was a little too stylishly neo-noir for my tastes, I had to admit it looked kind of snazzy.
"This is nice," I told Devona. "Where did you get it?"
Bogdan answered instead. "It's just something I had hanging around in my closet, but I'm glad you like it, Matt."
Great. Not only was I an escaped criminal, I was going on the run wearing one of Bogdan's hand -me downs. This day just kept going from bad to worse.
At least now I understood why Devona had dyed her hair and changed her own outfit: to disguise herself as well. She and I were too recognizable as a couple around the city, especially in the Sprawl, where we lived and worked.
"Thanks for everything," I told her, sounding less than thrilled. "Looks like I'm all set."
She frowned then, looking at me as if trying to read my thoughts, though if she'd really been trying, I'd have felt her probing my mind.
What was my problem? I should've been grateful for Devona's preparations, and I suppose on one level I was, but I was also upset about them, though I wasn't sure why. I decided to chalk up my mixed feelings to stress. After all, I'd experienced more than my fair share lately and I told myself not to worry about it.