Page 81 of The Darkest Art

I hear the words she’s saying but they don’t make any sense.

“But I’m not dead…”

“I know.” Now she’s breaking into a wide grin, one of relief, and her eyes grow wet with tears. “You’re not dead anymore. I went and brought you back.”

“That’s impossible,” I tell her.

“But it isn’t. Clearly.”

I close my eyes and try to make sense of it. Not only that I died, that I was fucking murdered, but that she brought me back. That’s a skill that…no one can do that. We can reach the dead, we can work with the dead and use the dead, but other than the Hollows, other than soulless animated bodies, we don’t bring back the dead, we don’t bring souls back into their bodies and everything goes back to normal. That’s never been possible, even though it’s something everyone at Mortis strives for.

I open my eyes. She’s still waiting for me to understand. I’m not sure I ever will.

“Resurrection,” I say absently. “You…you used necromancy to resurrect me.”

“Yes.”

“You did a resurrection.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not possible by Mortis doctrine.”

The tiniest hint of a smile flits across her lips. “No, it isn’t.”

Oh.

“It’s…because you’re a witch.”

“Yes.”

No wonder the witches were both so feared and revered, with the former overtaking the latter. Witches can do what the rest of us can’t, what the dark arts have been attempting since the dawn of time.

“The working would have been visible,” I say, feeling panic now. “Someone will have seen what you did, someone could have⁠—”

“Nobody saw. I did it in the Midnight Classroom with the door shut. No one in the Mortis knows I did it. In fact, no one in the Mortis knows you were dead. And we need to keep it that way.”

“But someone murdered me…how do you know I was murdered and I didn’t…it wasn’t an accident?”