Oldham's got taxis, but not taxidermists. Economy must be bad. All things considered, a hotel sounds great. My plan was to raise Petey from the dead, not split Petey in two in front of eye witnesses. In my hurried Departure of Shame, the guy with sunglasses watches as I stuff Petey's two halves in the trunk.

"Don't say anything," I say, as I manage to force the trunk closed.

Without a word, he returns my funeral invitation to me.

When Petey and I arrive at the hotel on the edge of town, the bellboy doesn't even blink. He finds me a luggage cart to pile Petey Part One and Part Two onto and exchanges some small talk with me on the way. When I mention I forgot my kit in the church, reception's even nice enough to send someone up with supplies.

What with being still fresh dismembered and hastily reattached with masking tape, it takes two hours before he wakes up. And of course, the first thing Petey does is scream my name. Then he rips the improvised talisman off his forehead. His sharpie mustache quivers on his upper lip.

"Right here," I say, hand held up. I'm perched on the ratty small chaise trying to make myself a little nest. Half-finished bags of cold fast food sit on the wobbly table in front of me.

"You messed up body retrieval!" Petey roars. He gestures to the patch-up job at his hips. He waves the talisman at me, which is a receipt I scribbled runes on the back of. "And my resurrection! I didn't bully you in school for you to raise me like some kind of Rank C rice-counting zombie!"

"Don't be racist. The only rice-counting ones are vampires." I scoff, watching him rip it into a million pieces and fling it at me. "We'll re-raise you when we go home if you really hate it. Here." I toss over a burger, a little guilty, because I remembered dead skin doesn't wash off permanent marker well. "Your favourite. Calm down and eat before you look into a mirror in the future."

Petey makes several aborted gestures before he sullenly unwraps his burger. He lifts the bun up. Then, he perks up. "You got me extra mayo?"

"You know it." I watch him wolf it all down, before I pick at the fries left on the ripped open fast food bag on the table. The TV, which has been chattering nonsense for about half an hour, is getting annoying. I reach for the remote and turn it off. "So, how do you want this to go down? Firearms, blunt trauma, strangulation, asphyxiation--"

"Sorry?" Petey looks up from the feast smeared across his jaw.

"Uh, method of vengeance?" At his blink, I elaborate. "I mean, I don't know if it was an accident or on purpose, or if it was an organization or one person, but I can't offer arson because I accidentally started a forest fire in northern Ontario, and you know how the Clan gets about undeclared--"

"Oh." Petey shrugs. "Reneg that. I don't care."

"Excuse me?"

"Reneg." Petey sucks ketchup from his fingers. "Let's not do anything. I just want to go home. My fingers are still stiff. Your talisman sucks."

"First of all, it was improv because you had to die muscular. Second, we're both from the same clan, right?" I stare at him. "The one with the whole Swear to Avenge Blood with Blood code kind of clan, right? It'd kind of kill the point if we went home after someone made it a point to kill you." And then everyone would find out that I'd messed up a perfectly good opportunity to raise the dead in a church. I would be a laughing stock in the community.

"Not everything is a political statement," Petey says, sage-like, like a donkey's butthole. "You'd understand it if you were killed once."

"Everything's a political statement, you ignorant goat." In one dramatic gesture, I slap the table. "I didn't take an overpriced carpool to get here just for you to waste it." This is so offensive. I'm telling on Petey when we get back. "You are staying in his hotel room and I am going to get to the bottom of who killed you and why."

"Huh," says Petey. "Well, okay."

"So who killed you and why?"

"For the record," Petey says, "I thought you were getting to the bottom of it."

"I am, getting to the bottom of it. Who killed you and why?"

Petey thinks about it. Makes a face. "You know, I don't know."

Right. How could I forget? Revived corpses don't remember about death. It's a body's natural mechanism to avoid post-mortem trauma.

"I'm heading out," I declare. "Do you want anything?"

"I'm going to sleep like the dead," Petey says.

"Hah," I laugh. "Hahah." Then I throw him a dirty look and slam the door shut behind me.

First thing's first: I need to see if cheekbones guy's still around. Even dragged halfway across town, stuffed in the trunk of a taxi cab, and revived using sketchy methods, Petey looked good. No way that's natural.