Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

by Lish McBride

  I cut my arm down by my elbow. That way I could hide the cut while it healed and it wouldn’t interfere with anything. It’s funny, in movies, when people need blood, they always slice their hands. That’s never made sense to me. You use your hands a lot, and they’re hard to heal. I let the blood drip into the grass and called Brooke’s body out of the ground. The earth split easily and let her up, I think because she was newly dead. Or maybe it was because she wanted this as much as I needed to do it. Once her body was completely out, I gave her back her head, knitting the flesh together at the neck. She stood in front of me, smiling, hugging herself with her arms.

  “Feel better?” I could barely choke out the words. I couldn’t tell if it was the joy of seeing her whole again or the pain of letting her go.

  Brooke threw her arms around me and kissed me on the forehead. I hugged her back, holding her as tight as I could.

  “Thank you.” She leaned down and pulled a strip of cloth out of her bowling bag. Frank had put it there to cushion her neck. I guess we didn’t need it anymore. She wrapped the strip around the new cut on my elbow, tying it into a neat bandage. Then she reached up and wiped my cheeks. I hadn’t realized that I was crying.

  Brooke looked out of the circle and smiled. She nodded at the detective and waved at Frank, her grin growing bigger. He used the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe his eyes. Brooke’s smile turned a little sad as she watched Frank break down.

  “You sure?” His voice broke on the words.

  She nodded. “I can’t stay this way, Frank.” He returned her nod, his shoulders slumping in acceptance. “Hey,” she said. He looked back up at her and she blew him a kiss.

  Frank reached out and caught it.

  I put Brooke back in the ground, everything going off without a hitch. A thoughtful—and shaken—Dunaway said good-bye with promises that we’d talk about all of this tomorrow. I shook his hand and walked back to the car, a dejected Frank in my wake.

  I took a few of the sedatives once I got home. I needed rest, and I didn’t think there was any other way I was going to get it. I felt drained down to nothing.

  Frank slept on the floor. He didn’t feel right about taking Ramon’s spot, even after I told him Ramon would tell him to get his ass on the couch.

  I slept like a sedated baby. When I woke up, I felt refreshed and fairly happy. My blankets were warm, my pillow soft, and I didn’t want to get up. It was my pillow. It had been an uphill battle to get back to it.

  “You’re going to get bedsores if you don’t get up soon.”

  I twisted and fell off my bed with a shout. I peeked past the edge of my bed. Brooke, the whole Brooke, peered back at me. Her hands curled over the mattress, her back arched like a cat ready to pounce.

  “What the hell?” I yelled.

  Frank ran in. His face broke into a smile.

  “What?” Brooke said, resting her ghostly hands on her hips. “You didn’t think I’d leave you losers on your own, did you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I kind of thought you would.”

  “Psh, whatever.” Brooke pulled a ghostly pen and clipboard out of thin air. “Ashley said you needed another adviser, so we worked something out.” She tapped her pen against her lips. “Now, what should we do first?”

  Detective Dunaway called me later that day. We’d been playing Mario Party, Frank and I hitting buttons, Brooke ordering us around. She’d made us choose Princess Daisy and Princess Peach for the computer players so she could yell derogatory names at them while we played. I felt better than I had in a long time.

  “I’m not sure what to do with the info you’ve given me,” he said, “but I’ll figure out something. Something to give the family closure at least.”

  “You’re not going to drag us into the station?”

  “And tell them what? I’d be in a shrink’s office before I finished my first sentence.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I hope it doesn’t get you in trouble.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ve still got a lot of questions for you, though.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll give you what I got.”

  “And, Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If it ever turns out that you had something to do with this, I’ll hang you out to dry, shrink’s office or no.”

  “I would expect nothing less.”

  I hung up and went back to the game.

  After a few days of rest and contemplation, and Brooke’s constant hounding, I had Frank start setting things up for our move. My apartment was too small for three people and a spirit, so we might as well make good use of Douglas’s house. I needed to get over what had happened there. It was also the only way to get Brooke to leave me alone. She could be very insistent when she wanted to be.

  In the meantime, I’d clean the house of anything unsavory or dangerous. That way if I hated the place, I could sell it. Or bulldoze it. I hadn’t totally given up on that plan yet.

  Besides, I would need the extra room when Ramon got better. I was sure he’d get out of the clinic. He had to. So we needed the house because when he got released he couldn’t exactly stay at his mom’s to deal with his new, um, “lifestyle changes.” A were-bear in my apartment building would be just as disastrous.

  I needed to take the house on, if only to prove to myself that I was right—that this power could be used for good. I needed to accept what I was. What I am.

  My name is Samhain Corvus LaCroix. I am a necromancer. Now, if only I could say that with a straight face.

  The Seattle Times

  Wednesday, April 2

  *

  Local citizens were shocked today when Woodland Park Zoo announced that the panda, Ling Tsu, died late last night. Zoo officials are “stunned by the unexpected death.” They haven’t released a cause of death at this time, telling members of the press only that there were several unexplained findings in Ling Tsu’s necropsy. Zoo officials wish to publicly apologize to the Chinese zoo. “With the current political climate being what it is, we hope to make reparations as quickly as possible in order to continue the trading program that we currently have with China,” one inside source informed the Seattle Times. “Thanks to an anonymous benefactor, that might be possible. Because of the generous donation, we are already beginning talks with Chinese officials about setting up a panda preserve in Ling Tsu’s memory.”

  Until then, the police will continue their investigation to answer the baffling questions that have surfaced in this case. When questioned, a representative from the police department said, “I just wish we knew why there was so much salt.”

  *

  Acknowledgments

  Novels don’t happen by themselves. Here are some of the people who helped me, so now you know exactly who to blame:

  Adam and Gryphon, you’re amazing, thank you. My mother, of course; my brothers, Darin, Jeremy, and Alex, and their families, for all their support and general greatness. Grams, Dad, Michele, Ann, Brian—I am lucky that there are too many of you to list. Thank you, my family, for your support, even if half of you have no idea what, exactly, it is that I do.

  Devon “Porkchop” Fiene, Abby Murray, Tiny and Erica Crane, Jose Perez III, J’romy Armstrong, Ben “Man of” Steele, and Rachel Trujillo, for baby wrangling and first reads (I owe you); Jen Violi, for guidance—both spiritual and line-by-line; Parker, for thumbs-ups and general shenanigans; Casey “Fox Bandit” Lefante, for encouragement and orphans; Dense, Blake, Jason Buch, and Brent McKnight, for bad movies and reminding me what readers want; Barb Johnson, Trisha Rezende, Jeni Stewart, and the rest of Team Parkview: Where would I be without you all?

  Sharon Cumberland, for getting me into graduate school in the first place; Joanna Leake, for reading stories about unicorn death matches and not instantly throwing me out on my ass; Joseph Boyden, for playing the good cop and for always making me stay for another round; Amanda Boyden, for making me throw away the first chapter and for telling me what I needed to hear.
Thanks to Ed Dieranger, former NOPD, for all my police-related info. If I got any of it wrong, I swear it’s not your fault. To my agent, Jason Anthony, for being simply amazing, and his team at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin for the same. Many thanks to my film agent, Sylvie Rabineau. And of course, to my editor, Reka Simonsen, at Holt, for making this a wonderful process.

  You are all, fully and completely, chock-full of awesome.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Publishers since 1866

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  New York, New York 10010

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  Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Lish McBride

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McBride, Lish.

  Hold me closer, necromancer / Lish McBride.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sam LaCroix, a Seattle fast-food worker and college dropout, discovers that he is a necromancer, part of a world of harbingers, werewolves, satyrs, and one particular necromancer who sees Sam as a threat to his lucrative business of raising the dead.

  ISBN: 978-0-8050-9098-7

  [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Dead—Fiction. 4. Werewolves—Fiction. 5. Identity—Fiction. 6. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M478267Hol 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009050768