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conferences if he could, but Never spent much of his waking life trying to get him to come along, convinced that many of Jonah’s problems could be traced back to his reliable lack of sex. Conferences were a hotbed of that kind of extracurricular activity, particularly for revivers. Chill simply didn’t happen between revivers, and with everyone else, you would know who had chill and who did not.
    It was always handy, Never knew, to have Jonah around in an environment like that. While Never’s accent and near-constant grin drew in the occasional admirer, Jonah was way up on the scale. Not that Jonah was aware of it, paying little attention to how he looked or what clothes he wore. He’d get his black hair cut as rarely as he could, meaning it varied between extremely short and its current tousled look, but it suited him either way.
    It added up to a moth-to-the-flame effect that typically worked in Never’s favour; more than once Never had found himself talking to a gorgeous woman who’d come over to get introduced to Jonah, only to find that Jonah had lost the power of speech.
    This year, the International Forensic Revival Symposium was being held in Richmond, as a mark of respect for Sam Deering’s retirement. Jonah had agreed to give a presentation, but it had been more than a year since Never had been able to get him to go further afield. In the one encounter Never had managed to engineer at the time, the woman in question had turned out to be complicated: married, confused, and highly strung. It didn’t end well. Even so, Never thought it had been a success; that for one day at least, Jonah had pulled the broom out of his ass and relaxed.
    They gossiped like old women until ten, when Jonah made noises about work. True to his word, Never agreed that it was time to call it a night. They left, Jonah laughing and unaware that, for the first time in five days, Alice Decker was not in his thoughts at all.

4
    Wednesday morning was unusually quiet. Jonah found himself scything through his backlog of paperwork, after a solid night of sleep that had been welcome, if unexpected. His spirits were high – it had been seven days since the Decker revival, and the week-long tail Jennifer Early had insisted on was over.
    Things got busier that afternoon.
    Shortly after two, Sam leaned out of his door and called to the other side of the office, ‘Pru, you’re up. Traffic fatality outside Greensboro. Sort out your technician with Never and get there.’
    Pru Dryden was twenty-nine years old. Her small size and good looks always drew confused glances when people saw her for the first time, arriving on the scene like some kind of revival fairy. She stood up from her desk and walked over to Sam without enthusiasm. ‘Any details?’
    Sam handed her a printout of the request form. ‘Take a look.’
    A request had come in for an in-situ revival at a traffic incident: a white van swiping a family’s hatchback on a country road, sending it into a tree. The father, driving the car, had been killed; his wife was unconscious and critical, their two young sons injured but stable. In the van had been a man and his girlfriend, two rough pieces of work more concerned with the damage to their van. The man had been drinking, but their story had the girlfriend driving, the hatchback coming round a bend too far into their lane to avoid. Traffic fatalities were not routinely revived, but there were inconsistencies here and no other witnesses, and a clear suspicion that the girlfriend had not been driving as they claimed.
    The dead father’s testimony could resolve these issues. The severity of injury required a highly skilled reviver.
    Pru lowered her voice. ‘Boss, I have to be honest. I woke up with a migraine. I’m not feeling up to it.’
    Sam looked at her. ‘You’re the only person who has much of a chance, Pru. Do your best.’
    Pru trudged over to Never. He reached behind him and grabbed an orange plastic pack from a pile behind his