The Necromancer (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 3) (5 page)

“That’s… amazing.”

“Is it so hard to believe that I could have found this information? Wikipedia is pretty useful.”

“It’s not, I just…”

I didn’t believe it: all this from
Aaron
? Had he been abducted by some UFO up in Nevada and undergone some kind of alien experiment?

“You don’t have words,” he said.

“I don’t. I love it, though. I’m just trying to figure you out.”

“What’s there to figure out?” he asked, slipping a hand under the back of his head. We had unknowingly laid back onto the carpeted floor.

“You’re… different now.”

“I know.”

“And I like it.”

“Then you’ll like me asking you out to dinner.”

“I… yes, I would, actually.”

Aaron sat up straight. His body curved into a perfectly tight, muscular L-shape. “I don’t want to sneak around anymore,” he said. “No more fuckery. There’s been no one else since the first time we hooked up.”

I swallowed.

“No one,” he continued. “You’re the one I want, and I want the real thing with you. None of the bullshit we had before.”

I stared into his blue eyes, my own eyes as bright as the sun with wonder at the man I was seeing in front of me. Strong, rough, but gentle and caring.
Perfection.

I would have been some kind of dumbass to say no.

CHAPTER 5

I woke up the next morning, bright and early, to a warm, prickly sensation around my stomach. Of course, I hadn’t yet realized that Aaron was home and that he had spent the night with me. I was so used to being alone that waking up with someone next to me seemed strange, almost alien. But then my mind wrapped itself around the idea that Aaron was home and that meant…

When I glanced down along the length of my torso I saw him. Or, rather, I saw his hulking naked shoulders gleaming in the pale sunlight, his scruffy hair dropped low and tickling my belly, and his hands gently clasped around my thighs. I swallowed hard and went to speak, but Aaron sensed that I had roused from sleep and took it as invitation to take the breath out of my lungs with a quick jerk of his tongue toward the already warm and wet space between my legs.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had been woken up like this. Well, I could. It was the last time Aaron was here. But it had been so long that the connection between now and then was weak and distant, like something that happened years ago. Nevertheless, Aaron’s slow, careful movements ensured my body warmed and woke up singing bright songs of pleasure and desire.

Moments, and I was grabbing on to what hair I could find and bucking my hips against him, crying out to the Gods.

Aaron was done, I was done, and when I came back down from whatever cloud Aaron had just sent me to, my alarm clock signaled the start of the morning. If it had gone off a minute earlier I would have thrown it out the window.

“Good morning,” Aaron said, grinning from between my legs.

I pulled him up to me by the shoulders and smiled into his eyes. “Good morning,” I said.

“You sound rested.”

“Do I? I think I’m pretty out of breath.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah… I think I will be. So, what are you doing today?”

“I’m gonna head down to my uncle’s garage, get down to my first official day of work.”

“Nervous?”

“Nah. I love cars, remember? And he’s told me he has one in the back he’s been trying to build for a while but just hasn’t had the time. I’m gonna see if he can show it to me.”

“Do you know what kind of car it is?”

“No, but knowing my uncle it’ll probably be a muscle car like mine.”

“I can make you breakfast if you want, before you go?”

“Only if you’re making some for yourself.”

“Yeah, I think I will today. Kinda have to after what we just went through.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

I reached for his face with my hands, cupped it, and kissed him on the forehead. “Go and have a shower. I’ll get breakfast.”

Aaron smiled, pecked me lightly on the lips, and headed off—naked—into the bathroom. His shoulders weren’t the only thing you could bite into. Everything about Aaron was firm and rigid, and yet his ass still had a little jiggle to it. Curious, but nice.

I shook the thought away, slipped into my robe, and then headed downstairs into the kitchen to fix up a breakfast fit for an army. Steamy scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, granary toast and orange juice. The works. I didn’t normally cook as much, not for breakfast, but I had a little excess bacon and just loved making scrambled eggs. And I knew Aaron’s appetite had evolved into something monstrous since he had been gone.

Aaron joined me at the table a little later, after having changed into a pair of dark jeans, a grey shirt, and his leather jacket. I watched, wide eyed, as he wolfed down a number of rashers of bacon and a healthy serving of scrambled eggs all in silence. Meanwhile, I filled my plate with what was left; two rashers of bacon, a handful of scrambled eggs, and all four slices of granary toast. Didn’t he like toast?

When he was done Aaron stood up, wiped his mouth on a kitchen napkin, kissed me lightly on the lips and stole half a rasher of my bacon before heading for the door with a cheeky smile on his face.

“You’ll pay for that,” I said.

“Oh I know I will,” he said from the door.

The sound of his voice made me shudder with delight.
Pay with interest,
I thought.

“I’ll catch you later,” he said, “Tonight, maybe?”

“Tonight, yeah,” I said, smiling.

Aaron nodded and made his exit, and then I finished off what was left of my breakfast before settling down to check my emails and social media. I had set up my laptop to receive electronic correspondence sent to the bookstore so that I could answer emails from home. They didn’t come often, but some folks enjoyed not having to actually come down to the shop to ask after a title they wanted. I also found it easier to make an order if I had all the information stored on a neat spreadsheet instead of scribbled down on snippets of paper scattered around the store.

I was organized and efficient now, and I was sure the bookstore was benefiting from my close attention and care. Not that Eliza and I together ever did a bad job, but we distracted each other far too often. I loved her for it, though. I’ll never forget the great memories

A cold feather, running down my spine and arousing the skin around it, cut my thoughts short. My body stiffened and I took in a deep breath. Something was happening. I wasn’t sure what, or where the feeling was coming from, but somewhere—nearby—something was going on. The attic? No. My bedroom?

I stood up, turned around, and stared at the opening to my bedroom. The window was open and light was flooding in from the outside. Nothing about the ambiance or the atmosphere inside my house felt suffocating as it had done before.

Great
, I thought,
Just when I was starting to feel safe at home again
.

Only, I didn’t feel threatened. Whatever was going on wasn’t happening inside my house, and wasn’t a direct threat to me. That, at least, I took a little comfort in. So, barefoot, I made a tour of the house checking every nook and cranny, every door and window, until finally I came to the back door—unlocked it—and stepped outside.

There, right in my back yard, I found the source of my unease. I had to put a hand to my mouth and search for the door frame to steady myself because the world was starting to spin. An entire half of my back yard was dying. The grass was drying and decaying. The tree which offered me shade from the sun, was shedding instead of growing. Fresh leaves falling off it in throes, and part of the bark seemed to be turning black, withering and dying.

A cold easterly breeze was blowing, and on its back I could smell the rot and decay. And it made my stomach churn.

Then I saw it. The culprit. The
crow.
It was sitting on the tree, perched on a withered limb. Smug. It cawed, and my body tensed at the sound. My breathing quickened. Fire started to burn inside my chest, warming me. Consuming me.

Was this thing responsible for the deaths of the birds in town? Were they falling whenever it passed close to them? Was it a harbinger of death, or a reaper? I couldn’t tell. Not immediately. But as I readied my mind and soul to attack the thing with all of my might the bird cawed, and the sound gave me pause.

In my mind’s eye, the bird’s caws were intelligent. Directed. I hadn’t noticed it yesterday, but I noticed it now. The crow took flight and landed at my feet, only a few yards away. Another caw, and this time I received the message. It was… apologizing.
Caw.
And it wanted me to follow it.

Right now.

Was history repeating itself? Months ago, a big Raven was appearing to me, warning me of impending danger and leading me toward the clues that helped me solve the mystery of Lily’s death. But the Raven wasn’t real. It was Lily’s ghost showing itself to me in the only way it could. I sometimes wondered whether the bird ever truly existed in the real world at all, or if I only ever saw it with my mind’s eye so vividly I believed it to be real.

But this bird was real. And if I concentrated enough and watched it with my mind’s eye—with my ethereal senses—I would see that it has an ethereal counterpart. A larger crow made almost entirely of shadow, with glowing yellow eyes poised at the front of its face instead of on its sides. A shadow bird.

I had never before heard of such a thing, but I had heard that crows were often thought to be harbingers of death—and not reapers. Maybe its passing caused things to die. Weak things, like plants and animals. Maybe it wasn’t at all responsible for the death, and all it wanted to do was deliver a message. A message to me.

But why me?

Whatever it wanted, it had my attention now. So I got dressed as fast as I could and followed the bird wherever it wanted to take me, cautious to keep my eyes on it and reminded about the time I followed a bird right to the riverbank and then took a dip in the freezing cold water. This was all looking way too familiar, but I pressed on.

The bird flew ahead, and I followed on foot. It took me out of the suburbs, ten minutes or so, and then into a densely forested park. This was a public park, with a hiking trail that led up to the cliffs, but I hadn’t been inside of it very often; and I had never walked off the path, either. Not that I thought I would get lost if I did, but the path had been carefully carved out through the flattest parts of the forest. The rest of it was a jungle of dips and hills, of rocks and trees.

The bird fluttered from tree to tree, seeming to wait whenever I fell behind and take off as I approached. Odd, sure. But unsettling, too. Because wherever it waited—wherever it stayed for more than a moment—the things it touched would begin to decay and wilt away. Healthy brown tree bark would turn black, leaves would go brown and fall to the ground, and wounds of sap would begin to leak.

Thump.

I jumped and backed up as a large hunk of dead
thing
hit the ground not three feet from me. My heart skipped and bounced behind my ribcage as I approached, hands trembling, to investigate. It was an owl. An owl! I stared up into the trees to see where it had fallen from but couldn’t spot a nest.

Thump-thump.

Two more birds fell from the sky. They were
falling
.

“Stop!” I yelled into the forest, hoping that the crow could hear me. “Stop it right now!”

I didn’t care if it wasn’t its fault. I couldn’t bear to see what was happening here. Everything was dying, and for what?

I stood up and searched for the bird, but I couldn’t find it in the trees. What did catch my eye, though, was a slight pillar of smoke rising into the air not far from where I was. I approached, careful not to move too quickly for fear of falling over and really hurting myself, and arrived at the foot of a cottage situated in the middle of a small clearing.

A clearing stained with the touch of death.

Thin white mist floated a few inches off the ground and retreated as I moved through it, step by step. The cottage was a small building. A single floor made of stone with box windows and a door on the long edge, and a chimney on the far end. The wooden roof had collapsed in some places, but otherwise seemed to be in good repair. And whatever vines had once smothered the cottage and hidden it from sight now lay dead around its feet, like a former owner killed over a property dispute.

Something about this was starting to feel familiar. Hadn’t I written about a dying forest before? Birds falling out of the sky, trees and grass, and plants dying? The story came from a dream, and in the story there were wolves. But I couldn’t remember if they had a part in my dream of if they were just an added touch of fiction on my part.

The déjà vu was tough to ignore, but I shoved it to the back of my mind and called out. The chimney was smoking, and that meant someone was here.

“Hello?” I said. The woods took my voice and spread it far.