by Riley Archer
Naughty Necromancer
A Reaper Collective Novel
Riley Archer
Copyright © 2020 by Riley Archer
All rights reserved.
Visit my website at rileyarcher.com
Cover Designer: Covers by Combs
Published by Golden Fox Press
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ASIN: B08MCRL78K
ISBN: 9798556601772
Cinnamon
Contents
1. The Trial
2. The Gavel Drop
3. The Special Project
4. The Furry Poltergeist
5. The Unsociable Butterfly
6. The Polyester Professor
7. The Cuffing
8. The Talented Mistress
9. The Duel
10. The Invitation
11. The Twilight Quest
12. The Branding
13. The Sleepover
14. The Dark Prince
15. The Death Note
16. The Twig Wielder
17. The Catsassin
18. The Touchy Caterers
19. The Cracked Egg
20. The Masquerade
21. The Head in a Fishbowl
22. The Spectral Party Crashers
23. The Head on a Pike
24. The Dark Side
25. The Aberration Royale
26. The Grim Faerie
27. The Shifty Reunion
28. The Soul Prison
Afterword
About the Author
1
The Trial
The stuffy room brimmed with glossy oak furniture and the rustle of paper.
These guys thought their tense pauses would fill me with suspense, thus making me spill my oh-so-guilty guts, but I’d started playing a game with myself instead.
Physical or spiritual realm?
There was a twinkle of dust in the air. That leaned toward physical, but there was almost too much, like another Reaper Collective attempt to mask reality. Hmm. Spiritual. One bite of something scrumptious (or not so scrumptious) and I could’ve settled this quickly.
But no snacks or water were offered to me. I was surviving on processed salt and barely tempered rage. And from my arrest until now, I moved cells almost daily, and each time I was escorted by a new, burly Enforcer. I took the size of their gradually bigger biceps as a compliment. That meant they saw me as a threat.
Just kidding. They just wanted me disoriented, which came with a dry throat.
Nice move, law-enforcing supernaturals.
Judge Merriweather coughed, probably from all the fake dust. The courtroom doors burst open, and Otto was marshaled in by an Enforcer larger than any of the ones assigned to me. His dark waves had grown past his chin, which was scruffy and unshaven, and his scalp had the greasy sheen of prison cell hygiene. His eyes swirled with the weight of the world and his dewy complexion could make a cover girl jealous. Although his orange jumpsuit was hideous, he was still too gorgeous for this realm. Whichever it was.
And he was too composed for someone falsely accused of attempting to overthrow the magical government.
We locked eyes, his dark irises full of something I have tried and failed to decipher, and my soul melted. Right there in the witness stand.
Oh, yeah, I was in the witness stand because my trial had somewhat concluded. Too many witnesses saw me kidnapped, and all of Atlas’s “investors” had told a story that supported my side to the point of perjury.
Controlling Glitches? Nope.
Necromancer reaper? Never heard of such a thing.
She’s a little unhinged? Definitely.
On my side, as I said.
Except they all claimed their mysterious leader was none other than Otto Tanaka. I supposed pointing the blame at a guy rotting in hell wouldn’t have done much to help their supernatural-prison sentences, but it still pissed me off.
The prosecution—a desk-flying reaper in a suit I thought of as Chad—noticed me turn into soul putty. “Do you see the way she responds to him, your honor? Stockholm syndrome at its finest.”
I was doing a shitty job of keeping my face unreadable. I cracked my neck. “If you were better at gauging people, you’d probably be in the field instead of this dust box.”
I scrunched my nose at the stately glare pointed down on me. The old judge should’ve been used to my quips by now. My trial had been three long, bad-mouthed days.
Otto’s attention settled on me and I forced myself to look away. A pang of remorse skittered down my spine. I have to play nice. It’s not just my future on the line.
I bit the inside of my lip. I was extra cranky and I needed to put a leash on it.
But I wasn’t meant for holding still. It did bad things to my brain and the words that materialized on my tongue.
The prosecutor plucked a tiny black device from his briefcase and gave me a slick smile.
He could smile all he wanted. I wasn’t a lawyer or anything, but even I knew that a few tattletale fingers pointing false blame wasn’t much of a case. Sure, Atlas had been a neat freak, but he’d gotten sloppy toward the end.
Even so, Chad’s slimy smirk made me uncomfortable, and not just because it was extra tight from all the gel pulling his hair back.
“Is this not your voice?” He pressed an itty-bitty button.
As if the device were a mouthpiece from the depths of the Abyss, Atlas’s voice poured out of it. The despicable sound said, “But who? And who are they feeding the information to?”
My heart slowed and then did a funky little dance.
I remembered this conversation.
“I have an idea who’s feeding the information,” my voice pierced the thick air. It was one of those moments in afterlife where you wanted to go back in time and slap your previous self for being an idiot. “Otto Tanaka.”
I closed my ears to the rest. I knew how it went.
It didn’t paint a pretty picture for Otto. I went on to say how Otto had been popping up in weird places, how I thought he might be following me, and how I found the circumstances of my recruitment into Reaper Collective overwhelmingly suspicious. My insinuation that Otto had murdered me was not subtle.
It was convincing because, at the time, I was convinced.
Chad set the recorder down and it knocked gently against the wood. I wanted very badly to smash it to bits. “Was that not you, Miss Kennicot?”
Deep breath. “I was misinformed—”
“So, it was you. Did you mean what you said?”
The air filling my lungs was as taut as the room. Or maybe it was my lungs themselves refusing to stretch.
“Yes or no, Miss Kennicot,” prosecutor Chad made his way over to me and slapped his hand on the stand.
No objections came for badgering the witness. My defense counsel, Karen, sat with her arms crossed, as useless as ever. From the looks she gave me down to her wardrobe, I guessed she was besties with my least favorite caseworker, Linda.
Either way, this court was tainted. Shit, shit, shit.
“You must answer the question,” Judge Merriweather said after a yawn. I wanted to ask him if my and Otto’s dangling
fates bored him, but I bit my tongue.
I needed to play nice. Lower my hackles. Flies and vinegar or whatever.
But that didn’t mean I had to like it. I scratched at the desk in front of me, lifting a splinter with my nail. “No.”
Chad perked up. “So, you lied to Command Coordinator Atlas, who is now missing.”
“Well—”
“Why should we trust an admitted liar?” He spun with his arms open, projecting loud enough for the entire courthouse to hear. Especially the jury, which was behind one-way glass staring in on the courtroom like it was a maze. Which made us the mice. “The prosecution would like to call our next witness.”
I shot up and then took a calming breath. It was like inhaling lava. “A little help here, Karen?”
Useless Karen stood and straightened her blazer. It seemed Linda 2.0 was finally going to earn her keep. “The defense has no further questions.” She sat her lazy tush back down.
I dug my nail into my palm hard enough to distract myself, my skull bursting with helpless disbelief. As I stepped down, a familiar yet friendly face entered and spanned the hall. The unshaved half of her head was candy blue and her lips were her staple fire-engine red.
My nerves had been tied into too many knots to feel relief, but the pressure in my veins lessened just a bit.
Because if Reaper Collective’s mystery witness was Diana, my reaper-sister and the closest thing I had to a friend within the walls of RC, then maybe they really didn’t have much to go on.
Diana only glanced at me once before the questioning started.
And it started out well. She said she got along with me. She said Grim Tanaka was always professional. Then, when prompted, she looked at her hands and said, “He had more of an interest in Ellis than anyone else.”
Chad looked at Diana like she’d just slapped a filet of raw steak in front of him and he was ravenous. “Can you detail what you mean by that?”
Diana tilted her head and briefly looked at the ceiling. “It wasn’t anything that made me suspicious or anything. He was just more … present when she was around. In training, he focused on her the most. He challenged her and pushed her limits.”
“And how did you feel about that?”
So, now Chad cares about feelings? I got some feelings I’d like to show him. My fist has all kinds of things to work out.
Diana shrugged. “I took it as a compliment, like I didn’t need as much attention because I was already killing it.” A teasing smile almost tugged at her mouth, but then she seemed to remember where she was.
“Thank you, Collector Johnson. You may leave the stand.”
Otto’s supervisor was called next and asked about Otto’s work performance. The questioning boiled down to Otto being a great Recruiter and an even better Grim, but on the well-documented occasions where he was found negligent of his duties, the timing aligned perfectly with Atlas’s schemes. Probably because Otto had been following me around and doing his own sneaky investigation, the beautiful idiot.
“Defense counsel is negligent of her duties, but nobody’s claiming she tried to rule the world,” I muttered under my breath. Or … not under my breath.
I received another be quiet glower from the judge.
By the time Otto’s supervisor was dismissed, a strange numbness was branching up my arms. A reaper version of a panic attack, perhaps?
The prosecution introduced their final witness: Dr. Eleanor Kaminsky.
I didn’t recognize her. She wore hefty black spectacles and shrank under everyone’s gaze. Her corduroy jacket had shoulder pads that could make the 90s roll around in its grave. She didn’t look the slightest bit intimidating, which led me to believe she was lethal.
Chad asked her what she did for Reaper Collective.
She cleared her throat and answered, “Forensic Science Analyst.”
He asked her if she was familiar with this case, and if she was proficient in her position; her description of the massacre was full of words usually reserved for the dictionary and her record was full of accolades.
Dangling fate and all, I was almost asleep by the time she finished.
We get it, Chad. She’s good at her job and super-duper smart.
“After examining the evidence from the scene,” Chad tapped his chin and paced. “In a strictly fact-based assessment, how would you say defendant Otto Tanaka was primarily connected to the Wildenhoff Manor?”
I didn’t know who Wildenhoff was, but if he owned the estate Atlas used as his evil lair, I’d bet good money he was rotting in an unmarked grave somewhere. Or Atlas had fed him to his carnivorous werewolf pals.
“His fingerprints.” She leaned into the small microphone. “Both visible and latent fingerprints were found within the residence and the exterior landscape. Due to the nature of the scene, DNA evidence was robust, to say the least,” she chuckled softly as if she’d told a joke we were all in on. Then, she scratched her neck and continued, “But fingerprints matching Grim Tanaka’s International Reaper Database file were consistent with long-term residency.”
Two separate migraines drilled into my temples, one for each side. This was bad. If the cold-hard truth hadn’t rocked my being, I’d have suspected Otto too. Hell, I had suspected Otto, even without reaper Velma’s testimony. He had been thoroughly framed—probably as a way to buy time with RC while the final manipulative pieces of the revolution puzzle fell into place.
Atlas was one meticulous asshole.
Chad’s voice was sweetly suggestive. “Which would point to him being the instigator behind this conspiracy, wouldn’t it?”
Dr. Kaminsky’s returning smile was politely awkward. “I’d prefer not to speculate.”
Chad’s smile cracked like plastic. “Thank you, Doctor. You may step down.”
Once she’d evacuated—literally, she practically ran out of the courtroom—the judge called for final statements.
Chad puffed his chest for a performance. “Let’s start at the beginning. Someone within Reaper Collective was obsessed with former Collector Kennicot to the point they were pulling strings to get her promoted, to get her in just the right place at the right time so she could be kidnapped to fulfill their delusional fantasy. This person has ties to what is known as the Black Diamond Gentlemen’s Club—a place former Grim Otto Tanaka was seen entering on multiple occasions.
“Now, let’s trek back to that delusion for a moment. Former Collector Kennicot testified that the surge in Glitches was due to reaper souls being trapped inside a whistle, and then, when blown into, would force souls to spiral out of control. Sounds a little silly, right? But following good procedure, Reaper Collective searched for evidence of such an object.
“No sign of such a whistle was found at the site of the slaughter. A spellbook of lore was mentioned, never found, and has probably never existed. And that slaughter took place at the Wildenhoff Manor—an estate in Otto Tanaka’s name.” Chad’s voice took on an annoying, exasperated falsetto. “And not only was the property in his name, scientific testing also suggested he lived there. And if this evidence isn’t enough, all involved in the scheme claimed Otto Tanaka was their leader.”
Chad rubbed his fingers together like he was crushing a piece of lint. What he was really crushing was my patience. “Last but not least, an esteemed Command Coordinator is missing and has been named by Otto Tanaka, and Miss Kennicot by proxy, as a scapegoat. Not only should Otto Tanaka be found guilty of conspiracy and kidnapping; he should be found guilty of the disappearance and murder of Command Coordinator Cameron Atlas.”
Chad’s pointer finger slashed toward Otto. And there it was—the unholy crackle of my tolerance going kaput.
I jumped up. “Do you even hear yourself, you Draco Malfoy wannabe? Why would a patient, thorough criminal put the property of their crimes in their name? And leave their fingerprints everywhere?”
Chad’s hand hovered near his hair and I was glad he got my Draco reference. He directed his answer to the crowd. “He
was too confident at that point. The delusion had taken over.”
“And what about Atlas’s record? His goal was to control Glitches for Pete’s sake—”
“Another unproven delusion. And that brings me to my next point—”
My knuckles cracked. “You absolute—”
A booming voice cut me off. “Ellis Kennicot. Sit down or I will have you thrown out of my courtroom.”
Well, Judge Merriweather was fully awake now.
Chad cleared his throat. “As I was saying, my next point is that while Miss Kennicot has gone through a treacherous ordeal, her psychological state has been comprised. She cannot return to duty. I plead with the court to deactivate her status as a Reaper Collective employee.”
Deactivate? I snorted. I’m not a magazine subscription, Chad.
My heart sank into my stomach anyway. I’d never heard of deactivation, but if it was anything like retirement, it meant I’d be dead for real.
Karen didn’t bother to fully leave her chair. She held her stomach like she was going to be sick. “The defense rests.”
The defense has done nothing but rest. I scoffed, but there was too much cold fear in my system to put any oomph behind it.
“Do you wish to make a statement, Mr. Tanaka?” The judge asked through his bifocals, ginormous nostrils on full display.
“Yes.” Otto stood like an angel of death dressed in orange. “No matter what the court decides for me, I ask for leniency in the ruling against Collector Kennicot. Before this, her performance record has been spotless, and I believe she is fully capable of rehabilitation.”