Page 11 of Any More Questions for the Corpse?

“Ha, I’d already vetted Taran before Walters sent you and Des. I had a sniff about too. I didn’t find much of anything. Those trophies, though, they have some terrifying stories, I’m sure of it.”

“Did you find out he was sick? Des managed to get it out of Elaine as we were leaving.”

“No, they didn’t mention it,” Kosh said, nodding. “I’ll let Walters know about that one.”

Mal felt a certain satisfaction. Their little outing might actually have helped provide something useful. He had to admit that he didn’t get the information himself, but he had at least been helpful adjacent. That’s much better than disaster adjacent. It certainly couldn’t hurt Mal’s position in the Order. This false satisfaction vanished quickly with Kosh’s next words.

“Shall we crack on then?”

Ah, Mal thought. The real reason he was here. Mal nodded reluctantly and Kosh continued.

“As you might expect, I don’t have much in the way of a curriculum, so I wanted to use today to figure out where you’re at. We can kind of fudge it from there. Sound good?”

Mal let out an internal sigh of relief. There wouldn’t be any practical component to today’s lesson, and as such, very little likelihood of him having a panic attack.

“Yeah, that sounds good to me.”

“Excellent. So what have you been able to do thus far?”

Mal thought for a moment and wondered just how honest he should be. He’d never tried to explain this to anyone before; it felt a bit like having to describe something sensitive to a doctor. But like a doctor, Kosh had probably seen it all. If anyone was going to understand, it would be Kosh.

“So the obvious one,” Mal began, “my parents. I have vague flashbacks, but I’m not entirely sure what I did. Whatever it was, it scared them both senseless.”

“And you brought them both back?”

“Yeah, right after they … y’know.”

Kosh nodded and gave Mal a knowing, consoling smile.

“Since then I keep them topped up once a week. I don’t really know how that works or why the magic stops each week. Other than that, I haven’t done much. A few accidental zombies here and there; I revived my great aunt once because Mum wanted to know about some family recipe. And, y’know, I helped Walters with Murray.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you for that, I wasn’t feeling up to it that day. Nice to finally have someone who can cover my shift, as it were.”

“So, is that helpful?” Mal said, waiting for the doctor to give his verdict.

“Very helpful,” Kosh said. “I’m sure we can muddle along nicely from here. I’m by no means a master, but I know enough to fill in most of the gaps—or would you prefer to jump right into some practical exercises?”

Mal’s nervous fidgeting at the mention of “practical exercises” was obvious even to him.

“Some explanations then?” Kosh said, with a smile.

Mal nodded.

“So conventional wisdom splits death in two. There’s the act itself, the death of the body, and there’s the journey of the soul thereafter. But in the middle, for a split second, there’s a junction. A crossroads between life and death. Here is the focus of our magic: the soul and the body, and how they combine.”

Mal nodded listeningly.

“With Murray, you essentially brought the soul back to that juncture, and then rebooted the body so the soul could retake possession. That takes a lot of energy, hard to hold for long. What’s happening with your parents seems different. Whatever you did upon their—” Kosh waved his hand as if to skip over the word death.

Mal nodded appreciatively.

“—seems to have bound their souls here. Probably to an object of some kind. So what you describe as ‘topping them up’ is probably just your basic corpsal reanimation. Their souls do the rest for you. The fact it lasts a week without you being in their direct vicinity is quite an achievement. You should be proud.”

Kosh seemed very sincere with this last comment, and for the life of him Mal could not figure out why. It certainly didn’t feel like some great achievement. Mal couldn’t tell if being good at something terrible made him feel better or worse. What’s next, giving medals to people who are particularly good at murdering? Who would possibly think that is a good idea?

“I see you still have mixed feelings about your powers …” Kosh said, as if reading Mal’s mind.

“Is it that obvious?” Mal said, trying to flatten his demeanor.