Necromancing the Stone (3 page)

“Haley? Please. She fed her Barbie to the cat.”

She grabbed at the marker, and I didn’t bother trying to play keep-away. Brid was faster on the draw. She tackled me, using her body weight to pin me down. I weighed more, but she knew what she was doing. You don’t grow up with four brothers and not learn how to wrestle people bigger than you. Besides, it wasn’t like I minded being pinned down. Torture, I know, but I was just going to have to suck it up and take it like a man.

Brid propped herself up on her elbows. “Nothing wrong with My Little Ponies, though.” With great care, she uncapped the lid. She studied the marker carefully before leaning down and drawing on my upper lip. I couldn’t see it, but I figured it out pretty quick. I was reasonably sure that I was now sporting a blue curlicue mustache and a tiny goatee. I reached up, pretending to feel the tip of my new mustache.

“Does it make me look debonair?”

With a mock-serious look, she said, “Very macho.”

I sighed. “Will this come off before dinner?” I had a sudden image of myself sitting down at the big table with blue facial hair. With the pack. And Brid’s whole family. No, thank you.

“Relax,” she said, licking her thumb, “it’s washable.” She wiped at it with her thumb and I dodged.

“Are you about to clean me with your spit?”

She cocked her head. “What? You squeamish? It’s not like you haven’t had my spit on you before.”

I frowned. “That’s different.”

“How?”

My frown became a scowl. She had a point. Not that I was going to tell her that. “It just is.”

Her face became thoughtful. She leaned forward, coming in for a kiss. Her lips were soft. She pulled back a fraction and gently bit my lip. A soft brush of lips and nose against my cheek, then a slow, long lick on my new blue goatee.

“Any issue with that?” she said quietly.

I had to clear my throat to get the words out. “Hell, no.”

Both of her eyebrows went up as she grinned. “So I win?”

I held up my hands. “You win. I crumble beneath your argumentative powers.”

“I was captain of my debate team.”

“I just bet you were. As long as you make sure you get it all off before dinner. Some of the pack appears to be immune to my considerable charms.” This was somewhat of an understatement. Most seemed to like me, but there was definitely a camp of holdouts in the Blackthorn pack. I couldn’t tell if it was because I was dating Brid and they were protective or if they simply didn’t like me. I wasn’t used to being instantly disliked. Until the whole necromancy thing, people either liked me or ignored me, with the occasional instant hater, but reactions were generally mild upon meeting me. That changes when you come out as a necromancer. People are immediately suspicious of you. I find it funny, usually, because I am not an imposing guy, but it was less funny now that it was interfering with my love life. I hadn’t had a love life in a while, and I wanted to keep it.

Brid reached down, her hand popping back into sight holding the rest of the markers. She pulled a different one out of the pack and waggled it in front of me. Red.

She popped the cap off with her thumb. The plastic clacked as it hit the floor.

“Wanna keep debating?” I could hear the cap as it rolled under something, probably never to be seen again. “Or would you rather have a long discussion about my family, which probably won’t be nearly as entertaining and definitely won’t entail as much making out?”

I rested my hands on her waist. That lump was back in my throat and took a minute to clear. “O Captain, my Captain.”

She drew a little heart on my neck, right over the pulse, and grinned.

3

HELLO DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND

Douglas woke up in between. He didn’t know what else to call it. Not limbo. Limbo implied true death or another plane. It also implied a religious bent that he just couldn’t quite put stock into. Religion had never done much for Douglas Montgomery.

No, he was still on the same plane, or at least close to it. Not quite dead enough to be a true ghost.

Which meant his fail-safe had worked.

There were two parts to death. The obvious one was the physical—the heart slowed and stopped. Synapses quit firing, blood came to a halt, and in general the body went through the complicated process of shutting down. But the physical shutdown wasn’t enough. You could keep someone physically alive with machines, but that didn’t qualify as fully
alive
. If they were missing that spark, that intangible thing that made people who they were, then they weren’t really with this world anymore. They had moved on, despite the desperate pumping and whirring of modern medicine’s machinery.

Alternatively, if you kept the spark going while the corporeal withered and fell away, then you weren’t completely dead either, which was precisely what he’d done. The idea had come to him from an old folktale his mother used to tell him about a giant who’d hid his heart away and so couldn’t be killed. Of course, hiding his heart wouldn’t work—that was pure nonsense—but the theory was sound. It had taken him a long time and a lot of work to do it, but he’d managed, and it had obviously been worth it.

Douglas wasn’t whole. He’d hidden his spark, a metaphysical version of life support, and all he had to do was get it back. Which meant he had to get his act together and sneak into his house to get it. Having the beginnings of a plan made him feel better. A mental list began to form. He loved lists. There was something so inexplicably
tidy
about them, even the intangible ones. His top desires, in a very particular order, were:

• Kill Brannoc, the interfering bastard, before he figured out what was going on. If anyone on the Council might get wind of Douglas’s partial resurrection, it was the ever-vigilant
taoiseach
. Brannoc’s death, in his opinion, was long overdue. Once he was out of the way, the pack and Council would flounder, so encompassed in their grief and the resulting chaos that he wouldn’t even hit their radar screens until too late.

• Get his spark back.

• Get his house back, his things, his
life
back.

• Then slaughter the miserable shit who had killed him and taken it all away. This he would do last, and he would enjoy every second in a way that he hadn’t enjoyed anything in decades. Pure pleasure.

Ruminating on this last idea, he began to wonder if physical torture was enough. Sam wasn’t a threat like Brannoc, despite the fact that he’d managed to come out the winner in their last altercation. As far as Douglas was concerned, Sam was the very definition of a fluke. He wouldn’t be so lucky next time. Perhaps he didn’t deserve a quick demise—surely a game of cat and mouse wasn’t uncalled for? Sam had seemed particularly put out that Douglas had killed his friend. Were his friends his weak point? Or perhaps people he held even more dear? He’d have to ask James how Sam felt about his family. Douglas smiled.

That settled, he came back to his more immediate state. He sat on a marble outcropping and examined his body. This bored him quickly. The vessel of his flesh wasn’t important, necessarily, and he couldn’t glean much from looking at it, aside from mundane facts like how he died and how long it had been rotting in this place. He already knew how he’d died, though he was loath to remember it. Stabbed in the throat by an ignorant pipsqueak. As for how long … six weeks, maybe longer? He supposed it made little difference.

He was much more interested in the sitting itself. Did he actually have enough presence to “sit” on this ledge, or was it just a construct of his mind? Did it matter? Yes, he decided, it did, but only in the sense of its implications. If he was in fact sitting, that suggested a certain amount of corporeal form. It meant that he could still have an effect on the world, body or no, if only in a minor way. After much consideration, he decided that he was, indeed, sitting, but not as fully as something completely alive. His action was a shadow of reality, but if he concentrated, the shadow filled and became almost full. It wasn’t the casual action of a living creature, but it was still an
action
.

To Douglas, this was very good news. A ghost he might have been, but an ineffectual spirit he was not.

He studied the slab underneath his feet. James had exquisite taste. He knew this, but sometimes it was good to give credit where it was due. He’d chosen well when he purchased the boy. Quite well indeed.

Douglas was currently in a mausoleum in a private cemetery, that much he knew. The rest he’d left up to James. Mausoleums weren’t common in this part of the country, but he’d felt that, should something happen, it would be easier to get out of one than if he’d been buried in the ground.

Douglas was nothing if not practical.

After a few false starts, he was able to put one foot in front of the other and walk, which was harder than it sounded. He couldn’t really feel anything, so it was like trying to walk with a fully numbed body. Difficult, but possible. He was able to leave the mausoleum, but he couldn’t go far. Walking that much made him tired. There was a lot of concentration involved, and he was still trying to get used to moving his spectral body around. So a few feet at first, then a bit farther afield once he got used to things. He was patient. Like all things, Douglas would master this new state. Then he would go down his little checklist. So much to do.

A new body would be nice, as well. Something less bloated and rank, a fresh new model. He rather liked the old one, but he couldn’t return to it as it was, since it was currently rotting a mere few feet from him. Without the benefits of the modern preservatives commonly used in burials, his shell was turning into a putrid mess. Perhaps he could rebuild it later—he was a necromancer, after all. If he did have to go through the hassle of getting a new body, he’d try to get one roughly the same size. He didn’t want to have his suits re-tailored. He was very picky about the cut.

But first he must contact James. Have him go through the books, find out what to do about the incorporeal situation, or at the very least discover how he could leave the cemetery. It would be quite difficult to extract a fiery vengeance from here. Perhaps he should have finished researching this project before. Moved it up the priority ladder. He of all people should have remembered that death often came unexpectedly. Douglas sighed and rested himself on a stone bench. He’d cheated death so long, he’d begun to think he was invincible. Hubris, thy name is Douglas.

Well, lesson learned. No point dwelling on it. Best to look to the future. He leaned back, resting some of his weight on his palms. Not so bad being half dead. The sun shone brightly down on his face as he closed his eyes. A breeze drifted in from the side, bringing the smell of trees and flowers. It was a fine day to be mostly alive. To be contemplating the future.

Douglas wondered how he should kill Brannoc and Sam—so many wonderful choices. Birds twittered around him, several different chattering voices claiming what was theirs. Birdcalls, a warm sun, and plans to be made. A fine day to be mostly alive, indeed.

4

OUR HOUSE, WAS OUR CASTLE AND OUR KEEP

After a dinner engineered to necessitate rolling instead of walking as a primary means of transport, I made my good-byes and headed for the door. I had one arm in my hoodie and was this close to freedom when I was stopped by a rather gruff voice. You know the voice—it’s the one men try to use in action movies. That gravelly, testosterone-laden whisper.

“You haven’t seen Brid around, have you?”

I turned around, still trying to put my other arm in my sleeve. The were wasn’t immediately familiar—I had to think for his name. Eric? He swaggered over, all sneer and machismo. I found myself backing up to give him room, and before I knew it, I was pushed against a wall of coats, their hanging pegs poking into me.

“She went that way,” I said, pointing and trying not to sound as uncomfortable as I felt. I don’t like people in my personal space, unfriendly male werewolves even less so. Though not as big, he reminded me a little of Michael, an emotionally rabid were who’d helped Douglas kidnap me.

“Is there something else I can help you with?” I asked, keeping a jovial tone.

He didn’t seem to hear my question. His nostrils flared and he leaned in, his chest only millimeters from mine. “You may have fooled the
taoiseach
, but you haven’t fooled me, and I’m not alone.”

“Huh?” I’m extremely witty when I’m confused.

“You smell like death and blood, and I don’t like it. You can keep up your friendly act now, but we all know that won’t last. It never does. In the end, what you are will win out.”

“What I am?” The problem with conversations like these is, when you don’t know what the person is talking about, it’s a little hard to argue against them.

“Necromancer,” he snarled.

“Werewolf,” I threw back. See? Rapier wit.

“Eric?” Bran must have come into the entryway, though I knew better than to take my eyes off Eric to see.

The young were leaned back, his threatening face changing into one of calm and good nature. “Yes, sir?”

“Why don’t you go see if the cook needs any help with the dishes?” Bran phrased it like a question, but we all knew it wasn’t.

“Of course, sir,” Eric said, all polite submissive tones, but his eyes weren’t so pleasant. He didn’t want to take that order—whether it was because he wasn’t done with me or because he didn’t like Bran, I wasn’t sure. Interesting. He stared at me for one long second, then turned and left.

“What was that about?” Bran asked.

“Just a friendly chat. You know me, always making friends.”

“Yes, I see. Are you aware that you have marker on your neck? Are you also aware that you have a similar hue to your tongue?” I don’t know why he whispered. When everyone in the immediate area has supersonic hearing, every whisper is a stage whisper. “And I couldn’t help but notice some similar colors on my baby sister.”