Page 82 of Perfectly Perplexing Zombie

“Wendall.” My voice cracked and strained, but it was enough to catch his attention. When Wendall turned to face me, all the relief I’d been granted slipped away like water. Wendall had saved us, but the price…

The price was far too high.

ChapterThirty-One

Wendall

They were dying. No matter how much she hated it, Aurelia was killing them. Their screams echoed through my ears and tore a hole through my soul. All of them, powerful and gifted in their own rights, were little more than twitching ants lying on the floor. Pain was all they knew. It would be the last thing they felt before they were taken before their time.

Trinket’s shallow breaths were barely detectable. A small whimper echoed past her lips as she was stripped of her magic too. No one was spared, including me. My only saving grace was that it didn’t hurt. Muriel’s reanimation magic was rapidly ripped away. Staring at my arm, I saw my skin decay before my very eyes. The process that had slowly been depleting me sped up, and soon, I would be nothing but a rotting corpse.

My fate was inevitable. Theirs was not.

Aurelia’s amphora was just lying there, a couple of inches from the wall Trinket sent it flying into. Professor Stover wasn’t paying a bit of attention to me. I was the least dangerous one in the room. A human-turned-deteriorating-zombie. The only magic I had was what Muriel allowed me to borrow, and it was only enough to keep my body strapped together with duct tape and a little bit of magical glue.

I was nothing in Professor Stover’s eyes. I’d been nothing the day he wished for Aurelia to murder me, and I was still nothing.

If I was truly nothing, then that meant I had nothing to lose.

With Trinket cradled to my chest, I moved toward the amphora. With the loss of his magic, the roots Hamish had thrown up around Mr. Moony and Peaches crumbled to dust. Mr. Moony was on the ground, curled in on himself. He looked nearly human. Peaches was hunched over him, tears dripping onto the vampire’s face. Peaches’s wings fluttered madly, but no dust formed, and they didn’t lift him off the ground. He looked like a dull façade of the pixie he’d been.

I pushed away the tragic image and refocused on the amphora. Hesitating wouldn’t do me any good. I walked with purpose and bent over. I waited for the shock of protective power, but it didn’t come. My fingers touched the rough surface, and still, nothing.

Scooping it up, I held the simple pottery in my hand. It felt lighter than it should. Something that held the capacity to cause so much harm should be heavier. I squeezed it tight and said, “I wish Aurelia would stop draining everyone’s magic.”

The silence wasn’t immediate. Painful wails were slow to dissipate and left lingering whimpers in their wake. The skin along my fingers sloughed, attaching to the amphora like lichen.

“Wendall.” Aurelia was suddenly in front of me. Her eyes were wide, and she stared at the amphora in my hands with relief. “You’re able to touch it. How?”

I wasn’t sure and just shook my head. Little bits and pieces of my skin fell like ash as I moved. “I don’t know. I—” I had no idea what to say except, “Enough, Professor.”

Peaches’s continued tears pulled my gaze, and I repeated, “It’s enough. Aurelia, I wish for you to please give back the magic you’ve taken.”

Head tilted back, Aurelia closed her eyes and sighed with immense relief. That relief was echoed by nearly everyone in the room. Only that magic didn’t do anything to me. It was Muriel’s magic that had been taken, not mine, and so it returned to her. Instead of improving, I only worsened. When I heard Ray call my name, I turned, and I saw fear in his eyes for the first time.

I smiled, cracking my lips further. I wanted to apologize for leaving him before we’d truly had a chance to do much of anything. I wanted to go to him and thank him for everything he’d done and for making my second life better than any dream my mind could have conjured.

Professor Stover wouldn’t let me.

A shot rang out, followed by two more. Instinct made me drop Trinket, saving her from the following two that hit me square in the chest. The first ripped through my shoulder. I glanced down at the holes. There was no pain. No blood. There was nothing but torn, necrotic tissue, roughened around the edges and singed with the heat of the passing bullet.

Professor Stover’s crazed eyes glared at me through a haze of unkempt hair. With lips pulled back, he appeared halfway feral as he unloaded the remainder of his clip into me. The results were the same.

“Aurelia, I wish you would disarm Professor Stover.”

Unlike before, she didn’t ask me when I wanted him disarmed. She was by my side one minute and by his the next, with the warped gun in hand as she squeezed and twisted the metal into something unusable.

Professor Stover took a stumbling step back, the word “no” on repeat, as if that were the only two letters he remembered.

“Wendall,” Ray’s soft voice whispered across my dying flesh, dissipating even more pieces. “Sweet, precious, Wendall.” Ray slipped his fingers through my hair, and it easily pulled away from my head, lovingly wrapping around his fingers. He stared at the strands with slack sorrow.

I held out the amphora and said, “I’m not sure why, but I can touch it.”

Ray’s eyes traveled to my open palm, and his lips pulled into a sad grin. “It is because, even now, you do not truly wish harm on him.” Ray’s lips thinned, and his voice became clipped when he spoke of the professor. “You pity him, but you do not wish to harm him, not as I do.”

“No, I…” I wasn’t sure what to say.

Ray was right. I didn’t want to hurt Professor Stover. Even after everything he’d done to me and everyone else, I felt sorrier for him than anything. While I understood he’d brought this upon himself, I couldn’t imagine the life he’d been leading. I remembered the Arthur Stover who’d taken me under his wing, the one who’d been kind and discussed his research with enthusiasm. He was the man who’d asked me to be his teaching assistant and promised to help me get into graduate school. Maybe he hadn’t beengoodbefore he found Aurelia’s amphora, but he’d been good to me. I didn’t wish him harm. I just wanted him to stop. I wanted Professor Stover back the way he was. It was a wish I didn’t think even Aurelia was capable of.

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