Page 52 of The Rut in the Road

“How—how do you summon a rat?” I asked Mason.

“Not a clue,” came his response. “I think by trying to… think really hard about drawing it to you. Trying to will it—the way you might wish for someone to do something.”

I focused on the rat, trying to imagine it looking at me.

And then I sucked in a sharp breath when it did.

“You want it to do that?” Mason asked me.

I nodded, my hands shaking, my stomach churning with a combination of awe and terror.

“You okay?” the big orc asked me.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back.

“You want to tell me what youweretrying to do?” he asked.

“This morning,” I told him. “Archie told me to find all the dead things in the building.”

“And you found a rat.”

“I didn’t,” I replied. “Spiders, bugs, flies, but no. No rats. Or mice. Or squirrels. Or anything big.”

Mason let out a thoughtful hum. “So where did you come from, then?” he asked, looking at the rat, which was watching me intently.

“You don’t seem concerned,” I said to Mason.

He snorted. “I’m not, since it seems to have been your doing. Now, if it had come from someone else, then I’d be worried.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“Because if it wasn’t you or Jackson—and I’d be worried if it were Jackson because I’d want to know what he was up to—then I’d really need to be concerned.”

“You wouldn’t assume Archie?” I asked.

Mason snorted. “You’d think so, except ghosts can’t raise the dead.”

I frowned at him. “Why not? Sylvia can set candles on fire, so why couldn’t Archie raise the dead?”

Mason grinned. “Because death magic requires life force,” he replied. “You can use other kinds of magic—so Sylvia can useher elemental magic on anything dead or alive, but Archie would have to borrow life from the living to be able to do anything necromantic.”

“And he couldn’t do that?” I asked.

“He might be able to, but I don’t think he would,” Mason replied. “And he wouldn’t be able to use it to raise a rat, even if he did.”

“But if he drew life energy from the living, then why couldn’t he use it on something else dead?” I asked.

Mason shrugged. “I don’t make the rules,” he replied. “But all the texts seem to agree that resurrection can only be performed by the living. Archie could probably do some damage if he borrowed life magic or, worse, if he possessed someone, but he still wouldn’t be able to perform a resurrection.”

I pondered this with a thoughtful hum of my own. The rat went back to cleaning its face. “So how do I—” I wasn’t sure how exactly to finish that statement.Un-resurrect?

“Release it back to rest?” Mason asked.

“Yes.” That sounded like a very polite way to put it. “Release it.” I looked back at the rat, which looked fairly content with its undead rat existence. “Is it?” I asked, then.

“Is what?” Mason asked.

“Releasing it,” I said. “It seems happy enough.”