A/N: Ooh, you will not believe how many loose ends this story has. However, they're all wiggling in anticipation of being worked into a pretty mystery tapestry!

Now, if I had to divide this storyline into parts, chapter 35 would be the end of part I. Thus proceeds part II, which will be followed (only, I hope) by part III. So … buckle up, guys. I'd say I will not be overtly surprised if Miss Tessa and I finish around the same time (after which I would chuckle weakly and lower my eyes and reach for something sharp …)

But rest assured, kids. I want to finish this epic with all of me, no matter what happens to the comic – which you and I both hope will be amusing and amazing us for months or even years to come.

Warnings: depressed unZombie, general sad, language, oh hey Lamont (:D), Awesome Conrad

To Wake the Dead

Sliced by slanting bars of afternoon yellow, Hanna lay on their couch where he had been placed hours and hours ago, sprawled form looking both too tiny and too heavy to be real.

His round face was turned into the deflated cushions as if nosing away into a dream, but his limp green fingers hung over the edge of the couch, oddly straight. Rigor mortis straight. His eyes were closed and his hair and skin suffered from the lack of blue glow – and in that still shadow, everything looked grey and dry. The gruesome thinness of his stitch-riddled limbs was impossible to ignore and, for the first time, the young man looked like what he was: a corpse.

More than anything, the collection of reality-corroded bones and loose skin looked as though it had never held such inestimable energy, and never would again.

The Detective, bent double in the chair he had brought in from the kitchen, pulled the dead air of the apartment into his aching chest. He pushed his hands over his unshaven face as the breath shuddered back out of him, leaving no change in his battered body or in Hanna. The void remained. Veser sat cross-legged on the floor, chin in his hands as he stared at an old tome laid cross-wise under the bars of light from the small windows. His abnormally large green eyes had long glossed over. The silence between them settled heavier and heavier over Hanna's limp body, as it had done for hours, until the older man suddenly spoke.

"It was your mother."

Veser looked up, but it was nothing more than a motion. There was no recognition in his expression, as if the nerves or wires behind his features had been severed.

The Detective bowed his head, hand clenching along the fresh bandages that he had let Veser strap over his arm after they got back to the apartment, just to stop the bleeding. The young man knew his way around butterfly bandages and it had distracted him for a moment, at least.

"Your mother. After you brought – summoned – her to the theater, I realized I'd been … seeing her in my dreams."

It seemed too passive a term to put to the violence the specter had enacted on him or the pure fury in her as she hunted him, but there was no mistaking her identity. When Lee Falun had possessed him, he had felt an overwhelming emotional spark: it felt like loving something to the point of obsession, and with it came images of the woman. Of Veser's mother. The same woman that was in his dreams.

"She's been in my head since …" It was difficult to measure his life when nights were often longer than days.

"She washed up on the docks on the second of October," Veser supplied from the floor, on the other end of the void. The older man's mouth thinned, thinking on how fast she had found him after being ripped from her body. It was also the morning after they fought the djinn.

"Around that time," he said quietly, and smoothed over the bandage with his fingers again, maybe seeking a twinge or spark of pain to ground him in his hollowed body. For the first time, the half-selkie's eyes were actually locked on him, so unnervingly like his fae mother's. After a beat, he spoke.

"You kill her?"

"No." It was all that came out. There was no spark of indignation or even surprise, just a factuality that matched the dull, gravelly tone of the question itself. The Detective slowly shook his head. "I was in the station that day. And with Hanna directly after."

"Just asking."

From the sound of it, it was the truth.

Veser knew that the older man hadn't killed his mother. It was shockingly obvious to the both of them that there was a bigger force behind both his mother and his father's murder, and that knowledge weighed them into silence again. It was so quiet that a turn of the tome's pages sounded like paper being ripped in half.

The half-selkie had stopped pretending to read a long time ago. However, even if it was a voodoo tome at his feet and Hanna remained unspeakably dead on the couch, the Detective couldn't fault him for it. He simply couldn't find the energy to try. The teen had lost so much in the space of an hour, and the hours since then had done nothing but slowly magnify the loss, releasing it like poison gas into all the normal areas of life – a life you were expected to continue with. What did you do only ten hours after realizing your father was dead and you didn't even know how to find his body?

The Detective felt drained even being peripheral to such loss, or channeling a small portion of it through his own battered body. He couldn't imagine being in the middle of it, at the piercing point.

"Hanna will tell you," he heard himself say. "He was with me."

Veser said nothing. Looking at the small zombie, the older man's only hope was that the losses wouldn't continue.

Surrounded once again with the dark stagnancy of the space they were in, the Detective forced himself to think back on the previous night and the way they had handled it. Everyone who had entered with a pulse had left with one, but the sum damage control of the séance seemed irrelevant or dismal considering how much danger everyone had been in without knowing it. That Veser had dragged innocents into it was of particular concern, but, black luck being with them, they had also chosen the right innocents.

Once everyone had regained their footing and the dust had settled, the sea-witch numbed away what he could of the singer, Jessica's, pains. She would be left with a sore back and a spotty memory. Before they could say anything to Toni – an apology so insufficient it was hardly worth the breath – she took her friend by the arm with an expression as haggard as it was understanding and said Don't worry. It's Jessica. She won't believe me no matter what I tell her.

She was an amazing soul, clearly more worried for Hanna and Veser and himself than anything, though this time she had every right to be furious at them. She had been possessed and never warned of the danger inherent in such a venture, but said nothing. There was even a stunned element in her expression and a new depth in her gaze that spoke of true acceptance – the kind you couldn't walk away from or even endure passively in your life. She would be all right. Perhaps even better than all right, given a new tool to cope.

They had prevented what deaths they could – tragic though it was, there had never been a way to locate Mr. Falun's captors or location even with the most wishful of hindsight – but the true remnants of the séance were flat on a deflated and holey couch. Moreover, the Detective refused to accept that he had survived the last twelve hours only to realize that there might be nothing to do about Hanna.

The two men had spent the day beside him. Exhausted, the Detective had literally blacked out after Veser saw to his injuries and only woke in the late afternoon, guilty and panicked, to find Hanna in the exact same state. A glassy stare from Veser summarized both the gap and their options.

Once again, the boundary hurt him: he just didn't know what to do. The zombie was like the worst of black boxes. Just a few months into admitting that magic was real, the Detective didn't have the slightest concept of what had been keeping Hanna animated, and if that something was being repressed or was just gone now. The thought – and the resulting inability to effect – was quietly terrifying.

If Hanna came back – when Hanna woke up – he would have to talk to his partner about teaching him magic, or about magic. Basic things. Just enough so he could help. Just enough so he could stop being useless, or at least stop another episode like the djinn circle.

But looking at him, the Detective realized that he had long become accustomed to this Hanna: green skin, luminous eyes, stitches and the faint smell of locked closets. Suddenly, his appearance was as alien as it was familiar. It seemed a curious color-set overlayed on what had once been a pink and breathing, living young man, and the Detective was forced to remember that Hanna had not always been like this – and waking him up was only the first step to giving him back what he'd lost, something he still intended to do in one way or another.

"When you said he could be brought back," the zombie's partner began hoarsely, reaching back into a dark dock warehouse in his memory. He looked down at the sea-witch, who had been nothing but an insulting young hoodlum then. "Were you telling the truth?"

"No," Veser answered after a moment. He let his head drop. "Hanna's dead. If there's any power that can bring him back, I've never heard of it. I just said that because I thought I'd get a tip out of it."

And I thought I'd never see you again was the unspoken addendum. It took him a moment to actually hear what Veser had said.

When he did, the Detective's eyes shut and the pain of it all had barely crashed up against the weakened wall of his heart, weighing his head into his hands, when there came a loud banging at the door of his apartment.

He looked up; hand slapped flat against his spell book, Veser looked like a spooked cat, oversized green eyes wide and shoulders high. The Detective didn't make any move to get up, which was just as well, as the door (unlocked: after so much rending spiritual danger he had forgotten about earthly precautions) was battered in a spare second later. After an unholy clatter and the noisy crinkle of plastic, a muffled fuckfuckfuckfuck burst into a far more audible string of curse-words as a leggy figure of argyle and gelled hair stumbled into the apartment, juggling two bulging bags in either hand.

The sea-witch and the Detective looked up almost uncomprehendingly as Conrad Achenleck kicked the door shut behind him with a massive sound of consternation, the effort sending him pitching into the wall and another clearly uncontrollable rant.

"Fuck, what happened to all of that bollocks about answering your phone when I call? Jesus Christ, do you have any idea what it takes to find this place? It's like a fucking bomb shelter! I was going to do a good deed and bring you poor bastards some food while you help that punk with the mouthful of knives, and look what that gets me! I swear to god, I had your little business card and everything but your office didn't show up on the map – haha, and why would it, Google doesn't believe in vampires either – so I had to find my way here by asking, Jesus no one does that anymore, and so I got lost and a hooker tried to kiss me and god damnit you are so lucky my leg isn't a ball of puss anymore. I'm doing the ex-cripple triathlon after this, my calves are going to be the size of fucking watermelons, or at least one of them –"

"Conrad."

The Detective's voice was so flat, so destroyed, that it brought Conrad to a complete halt as though a plug had been pulled: he froze, one white shoe in the living room, one in the hallway, his glasses askew on his beaked nose. Finally the coroner breathed out, cheeks pink, and ducked to swipe a bag-laden hand through his hair as he looked at the motionless zombie on the couch.

"Holy shit," he managed after a minute, brows knitting. He looked to the Detective, a what the hell happened to you expression flitting across his face. "I thought he couldn't sleep?"

There was no answer, which made one of the plastic bags drop from Conrad's reddened and twisted fingers and smack against the floor. The smell of curry spilled unnoticed into the cramped apartment, warm and out of place: from another world, almost, transplanted into that grey sphere. Shelving the other bag onto the kitchen table without looking, the coroner walked forward with only the slightest of limps.

"Is he sick?" he asked hesitantly, fingers knotting in front of his askew tie as he looked over the small zombie's heavily arranged limbs.

"He's broken. Or – " Veser pronounced – or, rather, slithered – an unrecognizable word, then shrugged himself double again. "Zombie equivalent of sick, I guess. He got possessed and I think that ... fucked with his motus. It's hard to see what to do in hoodoo, though. Most of the rites in here are for creating zombies or banishing them, not for restoring them. They're kinda disposable and don't have a very long shelf-life anyways."

Conrad had stared into nothingness through the explanation, nauseousness visibly mounting second by second, until Veser finished that sentence. It was as if the coroner had been slapped, ruffled form straightening as some kind of internal connection was made and he took in every possible visual cue in the living room all at once. Shooting the crouching sea-witch a look that said Hanna was clearly not disposable, Conrad didn't have time to think about how big of a mistake he'd made in getting wrapped up with these kooks when he turned on his heel, face afire, and went right back to the door.

"Where are you going?" the Detective forced out, half-rising. His hand was out as if to slow or stop him, a stunned look on his long face.

"If he's sick, he needs a fucking doctor."

Face grim, the coroner looked back to the couch and its tiny dead zombie – god forbid, his tiny dead friend – before ripping open the door.

"A real one."

Forty-five minutes and a harried disemboweling of his closet later, Conrad screeched up to a chipped span of parking-meter-less sidewalk and nearly ate that selfsame sidewalk as he heaved himself out of the car, breathing loud and heavy. Slapping the hood, he righted himself and ran-limped-skipped toward the mouth of an alleyway, which looked very bare-bones and shabby without the sinister tint of night to give it threat-rich ambiance. The coroner also didn't give himself time to think about how this wasn't at all how he had imagined returning to the skeevy third door on the right – which was under no circumstances – but pulled the heavy metal thing open and limped inside.

From the brilliance of a winter afternoon, his eyes had to adjust to the dim light that was nothing more than a yellow stain to the shabby concrete walls. For a moment, all he saw was the big, nearly beastly outline of a man standing behind the desk, one hand to his ear and the other clenched into the back of a swivel chair.

"— elaide, I know you're getting these. I wouldn't keep calling if I just wanted to get a drink, okay? I mean – god damn it. Look, I need to talk with you. Immediately. There's someone in town that – "

Three things happened in quick succession: the door shut, Conrad's eyes adjusted and the contractor – Lamont Toucey – stopped talking. The big man straightened and looked around, clearly annoyed, then did a double-take at the prissily dressed man stranded in his office doorway. The cell-phone dropped from his ear and he automatically punched the end-call button, his dark eyes wide.

"Sweater-vest?" he exclaimed.

"Sweater-vest?" Conrad repeated, not even hearing how high his voice swung as he stared in half-baked shock at the contractor. Lamont instantly sunk low, as if the near-shriek had punctured him, then breathed out thickly and looked to the side, expression torn.

"Uh, I mean. Shit." Lamont swallowed and seemed to get a grip on himself – or more accurately, the situation, which seemed to be on his under no circumstances list as well. He flipped his phone shut and stowed it in his khaki pocket, next trying for a forcibly neutral tone of voice. "You ... looking for Worth?"

"Lu — Worth. Yes. I know he sleeps here sometimes and I need to see him right now," Conrad insisted, loosening his coat collar from its sweaty cling. He could feel every bulging blood-cell of the flush in his neck, almost as pressing as his mission. "It's about Hanna."

"Whoss' about Hanna?"

Lamont's eyes went wide in a strangely immediate way, but Conrad's attention was on Luce, who was striding out of the back room and shrugging on his fur-trimmed coat with a hard look in his eye. For a moment, the fact that all three of them were in the room at the same time seemed like some sort of a meeting between previously rumored-to-exist people. The instant strangeness dissipated quickly enough, however, or Conrad just ignored it as he stepped forward, hands clamped tightly on the lapels of his wool peacoat.

"It's Hanna," he repeated stupidly. "You need to come and see him."

Luce's reaction was not at all expected. The stringy vampire just propped himself on Lamont's desk and leaned back, spider-like hand slipping into his coat to rummage for something.

"Y'ain't gettin' me back in yer lil' east-side dollhouse that easy. Know iss' hard sleepin' alone, but all the big boys do it. An' yannoe what happened ta the boy who cried wolf, doncha?"

"I – what?" Conrad somehow formed words, which was a remarkable feat, considering how wide his mouth was hanging open.

"Got 'imself eaten. … Shit. Guess that'd be rewardin' ya, then." The vampire squinted up at the water-stained ceiling for a minute, freed cigarette clamped between his fingers. He then tipped the death-stick at the coroner. "Point is, can't just be yer fucktoy, Peaches. Gotta do some work 'round here, else Monters'll gimme the boot. Or try ta. Y'keep bustin' my balls like this, though, you'll end up suckin' more outta me than I ever did outta you."

Lamont's eyebrows shot up to his delicately high hairline at fairly super-sonic speeds, mouth flattening – something Conrad saw just long enough to turn the fuck away from, becoming so painfully flustered and migrainey that he almost forgot why he was there.

"That's – not – not even – " Conrad blustered, chest catching. He was far too aware of the contractor's eyes on him, labeling him as a sex fiend who over-enjoyed the company of dead men, but finally rattled his head and pointed toward the exit of the office, all of his jittering ire and determination snapping his arm straight as a rod. "You. Hanna. That miserable apartment. Now."

"Fer the last time, m'busy."

"You're smoking a fucking cigarette!" Conrad burst out indignantly, and Luce nodded, flicking a lighter.

"M'busy smoking a fuckin' cigarette. Ain't seein' him." He bit his cigarette upwards to get the tip into the flame, a criminally bored look on his scruffy face, and nodded towards the heavy metal door. "If'ya hadn't noticed, there's a psycho out fer my hide and I don't fancy wanderin' around in the dark. Or gettin' meself fried 'fore he can do the honors of strippin' m'skin from m'bones an' makin' a suit ovvit. Sides, god knows the kid's already croaked, ain't much more kin happen to 'im."

"You are seeing him."

Luce opened his mouth as if to protest, or mock him for a piteous lack of variety in his attack, but Conrad had had enough. He stalked forward, feeling the furious red in his neck and ears, and took hold of the front of the vampire's coat, rattling him like the mulish fucker wasn't immortal and a smirking death-weapon and nearly strong enough to lift a car.

"For Christ's sake, you are Hanna's doctor — his real doctor – and even though he's dead, there is something seriously wrong with him. This isn't a ripped stitch or something solvable with ... with a liberal application of mothballs! He's double-dead."

For some reason, Conrad knew that was the one thing that would get Luce moving. If he knew it was something graver than a busted arm-stitch, he would help Hanna. The vampire had always helped him before and, whether motivated by pity or grudging love, that part of the undead prick would remain as long as Hanna had some manner of life to be threatened.

True to plan – and perhaps the only time he had been absolutely right about Luce – the vampire straightened, smoldering cigarette now sticking at an aggressive angle from his jumbled yellow teeth.

"What 'appened?" he growled, voice suddenly deep. Conrad let go of his coat-front and sucked in a breath like his were numbered.

"The – the stupid little punk with the teeth, the sea-wizard or whoever, he said that Hanna got possessed and now he's not moving. Really not moving, I mean, he can't even open his eyes – "

"Ghosts?" Luce fairly roared, making Conrad jump. Then he bared his needle fangs and was stalking past Conrad – towards the door – before the other man could move. Stunned, the coroner watched Luce pass him with a demented look in his eye and shove through the doorway, then, once the metal door fell shut again, he turned his bleached face to Lamont. A beat landed between them, awkward and off-key.

"Ghosts?" Conrad asked, arms stupendously limp at his sides.

"Hanna had a history with ghosts," Lamont said faintly, staring at the door without an ounce of assurance in his round face or lined eyes.

Conrad looked at Lamont looking at the door, then remembered seeing the wholly unimpressive cracked brick wall when he came in, meaning it had technically been daylight outside when he arrived and that didn't bode at all well for creatures of the night. Throat suddenly tight, he turned to chase after the undead and possibly suicidal idiot known as Luce, then tensed up as something clamped onto his arm.

It was Lamont Toucey, the supernatural contractor and mostly stranger. Bent halfway over his desk, the big man was looking at Conrad with the same expression as before, only now more hesitant and riddled with caged anxiety. His gaze was so intense, it verged on pleading. His lightly furred fingers held onto Conrad's arm gingerly as if afraid to truly clamp down – or commit to the motion itself.

"How is he?" the big man asked hoarsely. When the coroner only looked at him without recognition, Lamont swallowed audibly. "Hanna."

"He's dead," Conrad said starkly, and the fact settled between them like lead. He swallowed too, and inclined his head. "Otherwise, he's the happiest corpse I've ever seen. And I've seen a few."

They stood there like that for a moment. Then, after just one more moment, Lamont let go and nodded towards the doorway. Conrad left with a palpitating stride that became a run by the time he shoved his weight against the big metal door.

Out in the alleyway, he didn't know what he expected to see, but it all made a miserable kind of sense. Luce was clinging close to the alley wall, just outside the line of yellow sunlight that guillotined down the brick. Maybe it was just the sunlight's clammy reflection off the wall, but his skin looked strangely grey and wet, like he was sweating profusely in the freezing air. The vampire looked over when Conrad exited but his chin fell back to his chest immediately afterward, his voice no more than a growl.

"Pull the fuckin' car up."

Conrad looked at him like he was insane, because clearly he was.

"You got a car, don'cha, faggot? Boxy metal thing with four rubber doughnuts?" Luce demanded before the coroner could question that lack of sanity, sliding yet lower on the wall with an expression that bordered on nauseated. The undead doctor's voice was sharper now, but sharp and rough like shards of broken concrete; Conrad could actually hear the pressure put on him by the glare of the sun.

He didn't have time to tell him he was crazy. Truth was, Luce probably already knew, and Conrad really didn't want to get bitched at by a madman for wasting time when the bastard was already cooking himself.

"I ... listen, I have my coat back there, but even the backseat has windows."

Conrad was going to say that he also didn't want the scent of sizzling vampire flesh permanently trapped in his upholstery, but Worth silenced him by looping his coat over his head like some sort of fucked-up Eskimo and edging closer to the line of sunlight bronzing the crumbling bricks, then pointing beyond it.

"Trunk don't have windows," he said with a jerk of his head. When Conrad just stood in place, doing the math, Luce Worth twisted towards him. For a second, the filthy fur and stubble and the gunmetal concentration in his red eyes made him look raggedly wolf-like as he bared his teeth and hissed:

"So pull that fuckin' buggy up, Peaches. Doc Worth's gotta make a house-call."