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British Isles. The body was a leathery, crumpled, shrunken thing, dressed in the ruins of a black suit, with a few strands of dark hair still stuck to the stretched skin of the skull. The eyes were partially shriveled. “Who were you, I wonder?” Ayres murmured.
    “We think that’s the mummy of John Wilkes Booth,” a tentative voice offered from the doorway.
    Ayres turned his head and regarded the newcomer, a balding, nervous-looking man holding a clipboard. “Who are you?”
    “Master Viscarro sent me to offer my assistance. I’m one of the researchers here.”
    Ayres laughed. “Viscarro sent you to make sure I didn’t fill my pockets with stolen loot, you mean. As if there’s anything of value here, apart from the mummy.”
    The man shrugged. “I just do as he says.”
    Ayres frowned. “Did you say John Wilkes Booth? Lincoln’s assassin?”
    The lackey nodded. “We don’t have proof, but that’s the mummy that was
exhibited
as the corpse of John Wilkes Booth in carnival sideshows. Whether it’s truly the assassin’s body, well, we haven’t done any tests to find out yet.”
    “I thought Booth was burned alive in a barn in Virginia by manhunters.” Ayres didn’t know much about the assassin, but he was fairly certain mummification didn’t enter into the story.
    “That’s the official account. Some years later, a man out west told his lawyer, a fellow named Finis L. Bates, that he was actually John Wilkes Booth, claiming the man killed in Virginia was part of a cover-up. The ‘real’ John Wilkes Booth died in Oklahoma in 1903. Bates claimed his body, had it mummified, and toured it around the country as the Booth mummy. He even wrote a book about Booth’s miraculous escape, to publicize the show. The mummy dropped out of sight, passed through various private collections, and ended up here years ago. As to whether the man was really John Wilkes Booth, or just a liar, or if the lawyer made up the whole thing, opinions vary.”
    Ayres grunted. “Should be easy enough to find out—dig up the body in Booth’s grave and test the DNA to see if it’s a match. Surely there are clumps of the assassin’s hair and flesh still preserved?”
    “Yes, and many have suggested such tests, but the family and the courts refuse to allow exhumation. The possibility that Booth escaped and eventually became this mummy…it’s a fringe idea. Most historians don’t take it seriously.”
    “Stranger things have happened,” Ayres mused. “Though more likely things happen far more often.” He knelt to look at the mummified corpse. “Whether you were an infamous assassin or not, you’re just dried meat and sinew now. I won’t hold it against you either way. Whether you were a king or a pauper in life, you’ll be my servant in death.”
    “Couldn’t you…summon up his spirit?” the lackey asked. “Find out if he’s really Booth?”
    Ayres shrugged. “I could, though it wouldn’t prove much. Spirits can lie as well as the living, and if he claimed to be Booth when he was alive, he might well make the same claim now, true or not. When I raise the spirit of a murder victim, they’re usually happy to tell the truth, if it means they’ll be avenged. Otherwise, the dead are no more trustworthy than you or I. Besides, I’m not here to satisfy your curiosity, only my own needs.” Ayres was well over a hundred years old, and though he could still get around all right, he got tired easily. The mummy would ease his burdens, and wrapped in a simple glamour, it could even pass for human. Ayres had had better luck with life extension than Viscarro, but magic could take you only so far without inflicting serious psychological damage. He could try to make himself immortal—he knew the rituals, and though the success rate was low, it wasn’t impossible—but true immortals all went insane eventually, and deep down he wondered if his Cotard delusion was the result of the steps he’d already taken to extend his