by Sierra Dean
I gave a shudder, remembering my experience in New York City years earlier, when a gang of necromancers had raised all the dead in the entire city area. It was hell on earth. Ever since then I had no interest in meeting another necromancer as long as I lived. Or after.
“Well that’s good to know.”
“Necromancers don’t actually bring the dead back to life, but rather use the corpse as an extension of their own whims. The body remains dead, but animated. Not alive again. There are ways to bring the dead back, but the price to pay is a high one, both for the caster and the recently deceased.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, you lose the amount of time a body is brought back from your own life. So, bring a body back for ten minutes, no big deal. But days, weeks? That’s all coming off your bottom line. And maybe it’s no big deal if you only bring one body up, but there are necromancers out there doing four, five, ten risings a week? There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of gray-haired necromancers running around. After awhile the risk of it stops worrying them, they just get high on the power. Or so I’m told. Again, I’m not a necromancer.”
“But you can bring the dead back to life?”
“So could you.”
I blanched. “No.”
“Sure you could. You might not know the words or the steps, but you’ve dipped your toe into some dark magic, Genie, I’ve seen it. If you don’t think you’re capable of doing something like this, you’re kidding yourself.”
Swallowing hard, I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. He was throwing me off without even trying. As far as Santiago went, this was him behaving himself. And all the same, I was totally floundering.
“I’m not worried about me, right now.”
“I could show you how, you know.”
“No thank you.” The ability to raise the dead wasn’t something I particularly needed to have in my repertoire. I was learning all too well this week that the dead were probably best left in their graves.
“Too bad. You’d be good at it.” He sipped his tea, and his curls brushed against his eyelashes. Goddamn.
“We’re not talking about me,” I said again.
“We’re always talking about you,” he replied.
“Just answer her questions so we can go,” Wilder snarled.
I glanced over and him and the tightness in his jaw and shoulders was incredible. Even though Santiago was being relatively well behaved, it was obvious Wilder still wanted to punch him in the face. I hated to imagine what might happen if the witch turned on the charm to its megawatt maximum.
Danger, danger Will Robinson.
“If she’d stop circling around what she really wants to know, I’ll be happy to answer anything she wants to ask. She’s altogether too fond of dragging things out, I find.” A brow lifted in challenge, but Wilder didn’t take the bait.
“My mother is alive,” I announced.
“Congrats.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, the smell of the room thickening heavily and pressing against my sinuses. “My dead mother is alive.”
“How interesting.” He leaned forward in his seat, resting his forearms on his thighs and clasping his hands together. He did look genuinely interested. I found his focus discomfiting. “How long has she been dead?”
“Years.”
He pursed his lips together. “Raised by a necromancer? Messy business when they’ve been gone that long. Parts falling off everywhere.”
I shook my head. “No, she’s… completely whole.”
“Oh.”
I sure didn’t like the sound of that one simple little word. Oh. It sounded like it should be follow by dear or shit or fuck. It was the kind of word that just came across like bad news on its own.
“Oh.” Wilder snorted. “This guy doesn’t know anything, Genie, let’s go.” He moved to stand, but I grabbed his arm and squeezed, urging him to stay in place.
Something in the way Santiago was looking at me, his skin a little paler, his eyes a little wider, it reminded me of the way Cain had looked at me when I’d told him the same news.
“How did she die?” Santiago asked.
“Beheading.”
He swallowed hard, then without another word he got to his feet and left the room.
“Where the hell is he going?” Wilder craned his neck to watch the witch leave. From the kitchen I could hear the rattle and bang of things being moved and sorted through. A faucet ran. A moment later Santiago returned with a black iron pot in one hand, water sloshing around inside. In his other hand was an athame.
Wilder and I both watched with wary expressions as Santiago set the pot on the coffee table in front of us and held out his hand, palm up. I stared at it like he was offering me a poisonous snake.
“What?” I asked.
“Give me your hand.”
“Like hell,” Wilder said.
“I’m not asking you,” Santiago countered. “And the last time I checked, the princess has a mind of her own. Can I please have your hand?” he asked me.
“What’s the knife for?” I jerked my chin towards the athame.
“For cutting.”
“For cutting what?”
“You.”
The three of us exchanged glances and I could feel the rage radiating off Wilder. I put a hand on his thigh. “It’s okay.”
Then I offered my other hand to Santiago, laying it in his so my own palm was exposed. He drew the knife lightly over my skin and the blade was so sharp the blood was already pooling before I even felt the sting. He held my hand over the pot and my blood dripped into the water, making tiny ripples on the surface. I half expected the pot to steam, or hiss, but nothing especially magical happened.
Before I could ask what was going to happen next, Santiago lifted the pot to his lips and drank.
“Wait.” I was much too late to stop him.
“What the fuck?” Wilder asked.
Sneaky goddamn bastard.
Santiago set the empty pot back on the table, but rather than looking like he was ready to gloat—after all, getting a taste of my blood was a surefire way to sample my powers first hand—he simply trailed his thumb across his lips to wipe away the water, and stared at me thoughtfully.
“That wasn’t part of the agreement here,” I snapped.
“We don’t have an agreement right now. But this does—in part—fulfill the last one we made that I know you’re hoping I’d forgetten. And I suspect he’s happier about me doing it this way than the other ways I could have imagined getting a taste of you.”
Wilder growled. It was audible and angry, and brutal rumble right from the pit of his belly. I could feel the vibration of it in my own ribs where we were pressed against each other.
“Calm down, wolf boy,” Santiago said. “I’m trying to be generous here.”
“Some generosity,” Wilder replied, his voice raspy with barely contained anger. If I didn’t change the subject soon, these two were probably going to murder each other.
“Hey. Guys. My blood, here.” I held up my still bleeding palm, and Wilder grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on the table, pressing them against the cut. They were soon stained red, but the worst of the bleeding seemed to be finished. “Care to explain what that was really about, because I don’t think for one second you were just fulfilling a debt owed.”
“Not just a pretty face, are you?”
“Thank god.”
Santiago emptied his teacup into the iron pot and left the room with the empty mug and the athame.
“Want to explain to me what the hell is going on?” Wilder asked in a low tone.
“That would require me having the first clue. But if you rip his throat out we’re not going to get any answers, so just try to play nice a little longer. Please.” I gave him my best soothing smile and rubbed his cheek with my uninjured hand. My werewolf healing would have the cut set right in no time, I could already feel the skin stitching itself back together, which tickled.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he took a seat in the big armchair again, looking so relaxed I thought we were going to complete gloss over what had just happened like it was a perfectly normal thing to drink your guest’s blood.
“Genie, I mean this in the kindest way, but if you could shut up for a minute and just let the spell work, that would be great.”
I scowled at him, and wanted to snark back, but unlike my sister I knew there were times for a good one-liner and times to keep your mouth shut.
I just didn’t like being told when to be silent.
I didn’t like being told to do many things.
He closed his eyes and drank the contents of his cup, his nose wrinkling as he did so, making me think it must have tasted just as bad as it smelled. He remained like that for a minute or two then his head slumped backwards, like he’d lost total control over his neck.
A gurgling, wet noise bubbled up in his throat, and he began to twitch. First just his fingertips, then his shoulders and arms, until he was shaking like a puppet whose strings were all atangle.
“Should we do something?” Wilder whispered.
I shook my head. “Just wait.”
Magic wasn’t always pretty to look at, and I had a feeling what we were witnessing was precisely what Santiago had planned to happen. As quickly as the tremors began he went perfectly still, and slowly his head rose back up.
When he opened his eyes, they were milky white.
A croak escaped his throat, and Wilder and I both went stock still at the same time. Huh-huh-huh came the sound, and it was exactly the noise the charred woman on the highway had made the night before when I thought she’d been laughing.
“Genie McQueen,” said a voice that was not even remotely Santiago’s. “The dead are coming for you.”
Chapter Nine
Fucking nooooope.
I dug my fingernails into Wilder’s arm, and the voice coming out of Santiago’s throat continued to laugh in its husky, rattling way.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. You’ll know soon.”
“Why have you been following me?”
“Smart girl, smart girl. You’ve been seeing the dead for a long time now. But now you’re not the only one.”
Santiago’s lips curled into a scary as shit smile that made his mouth a little too wide, his teeth a little too feral. He didn’t look human anymore. The face reminded me of Japanese oni masks. The exaggerated brows and big mouth. There was no way this was good for Santiago’s perfect bone structure.
“Don’t hurt him,” I whispered.
His face returned to normal, but the eyes were still white and unseeing.
“Just a man, just a man. What does he mean? Nothing. Life means nothing to you, Genie McQueen. You only care about yourself.”
Who the fuck was this person? The woman who had been following me for over a year but had, until now, been unable to speak, obviously harbored quite the grudge against me.
“That’s not true.”
“True enough. True enough. But the dead are coming. They’ll have their justice.”
“What doesn’t that even mean?” I asked.
“You’ll see. You’ll see.”
I didn’t want to see.
“What does this have to do with my mother?”
“Dead. Dead because of you. We’re all coming back. All the ones you’ve killed.”
I swallowed hard, but my mind was reeling, trying to make sense of what the voice meant. Dead because of me? But I didn’t go around killing people like it was going out of style. I wasn’t a killer. And how was I responsible for Mercy’s death? I hadn’t been the one to swing the blade.
This didn’t make any sense.
“We’re coming. We’re coming.”
“Who is we?”
“So many. So many, Genie McQueen. We’ll finally know peace when we’re through.”
Huh-huh-huh came the harsh laugh once more.
Then Santiago’s eyes closed and his head slumped forward against his chest. He was so still and the room so silent that for the agonizing few seconds after he stopped moving, I thought he might actually be dead.
A groan from the back of his throat was the only indication he was still among the living.
I clambered to my feet, in spite of Wilder’s firm grip on my thigh trying to keep me in place. I crossed the room and knelt in front of Santiago, placing one hand on his shoulder and using my other to lift his chin, so I could get a better look at his face. His dark stubble tickled my palm, and his skin was clammy to the touch.
I half expected him to open his eyes and still have them be that ghostly white. If that dead bitch started talking to me again I was so out of here.
Instead he made another groan and blinked, chocolately brown eyes finding mine and focusing at last.
“Ain’t that just the way with the pretty ones.” He shook his head but it seemed to pain him so instead he shrugged off my hand and sank deeper into the armchair, looking for all the world like a man just coming off the worst hangover of his life.
He glanced at the cup sitting next to him and wrinkled his nose, visibly recoiling from it.
Guess that whole encounter was just as fun for him to experience as it had been for us to watch. Santiago licked his lips, which had gone dry and parched. I wasn’t a total dick to not notice it. “Do you want some water?” I asked.
“Preferably without your blood in it, thanks. That’s not a trip I want to take again any time soon.”
“Good, because my blood wasn’t on offer, then or now.”
He smiled faintly and closed his eyes. “Magic demands sacrifice, doll.”
I grunted and walked into the kitchen. Leaving him and Wilder alone in a room together was always a risk, but I hoped they could behave themselves for twelve seconds, especially when one of them was down for the count. Wilder wasn’t big on taking advantage of the weak and helpless, even if he did hate them.
Such gallantry.
I found a clean glass in one of Santiago’s kitchen cupboards and filled it with water from the tap. His kitchen was so filled with wondrous and disgusting objects I wanted to spend my unobserved time going through all of them to see what he had lying around. Too bad I’d absolutely be busted for doing it.
I returned to the living room and set the glass of cloudy water down by his elbow. For a moment I hovered in front of him, wanting to do all manner of absurd and motherly things. It was my fault he’d been hit by a metaphysical Mack truck, shouldn’t it also be up to me to make sure he was okay?
Instead I sat down beside Wilder again, feeling conflicted and guilty about everything.
I regretted coming here more and more every second. Now not only did I have an undead mother to deal with, apparently the dead themselves had a vendetta against me that was coming time to be paid?
Frankly, I’d been around the walking dead before, and while they might not be brain-starved zombies who would rip you limb from limb, they also weren’t terribly enticing party guests. If I could avoid dealing with that scenario again, I would.
“Do you, um…” I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase the question I wanted to ask. “Were you present for that?”
“For the ghost who is chasing your blood to use me as her puppet? Yeah I got to witness that super fun bit of theatre. I’ve got to say, Genie, I thought you were an interesting case, and I wanted to get a taste of your particular flavor of magic, but goddamn, girl. You’ve got the most curse-tainted blood I’ve ever tasted. There’s a cloud hanging over you unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“Awesome.”
“I don’t mean to be a drag about it, but whatever that was speaking through me
, she’s still in pain. I could feel it. And behind that pain is an anger unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. She blames you for what she’s experiencing, and now she believes she’s pierced some kind of veil and she’s about to get everything she wants.”
“Which is?”
“As far as I can tell? Killing you.”
Chapter Ten
Super duper.
“The dead want to kill me.” I sighed.
“This one definitely does. I mean, damn girl, what did you do to her? It felt like I was burning up from the inside.” Santigo took a sip of water, then seemed to decide a sip wasn’t enough. He polished off the rest of the glass in a long, drawn-out series of gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested.
“She certainly thinks you have.”
“Well I sure as hell haven’t burned anyone alive from the inside out,” I snapped.
I wasn’t sure why I was feeling so defensive about it. It was such a ridiculous thing to accuse me of. But I also couldn’t quite put a finger on why it was I felt like I was lying. Of course I hadn’t burned anyone alive, that was insane.
Yet the memory of flames crackled and curled at the back of my mind.
I shook my head, hoping to chase the thoughts away. When I looked over at Wilder, he was observing me with the most puzzled expression on his face. At least he wasn’t recoiling in horror like Santiago had earlier.
Nothing to take you down a few self-esteem pegs like a guy who had once tried to seduce you now acting like you carried the plague.
“What does any of this have to do with my mother?”
“That’s just it. This wasn’t her. Your blood…” Santiago shuddered, then looked into his empty glass like he was hoping he could further rinse my blood out of his mouth. “Your blood is just loaded with that kind of venom. She’s not the only one following you. I could feel the tug of at least three more spirits. Maybe more. There were definitely four very distinctive dead voices calling your name.”
“Oh come on, that’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I just know what it felt like in there, and it was a lot of anger, confusion, and pain, and all of it was directed at you.”