“Who am I? I’m the one looking into whoever killed you.”
“What? Wait. So you know?”
“Get her out of here. And you better hope nobody caught her on the way over.”
“Nobody saw me,” she said. “And if they did, they didn’t recognize me.”
“I recognized you.”
“Exception rather than the rule.”
John King looked at the necromancer.
“I should kill you.”
This, he uttered in a manner of epiphany. As though he’d given birth to an ingenious idea.
“Perhaps later. For now I’d like to know why you two were waiting outside that office.”
“There’s someone in there,” Dina supplied. “He’s been rifling around my desk.”
“Who?”
John King backed, “Looked like a janitor or something. I was waiting here for the coast to clear so I could go in and get the books.”
“Maybe he’s gone,” said Dina, and then abruptly left the maintenance closet.
“Wait.”
Sebastian and John King followed until they reached the window to what was once the office of Dina Malloy.
“Coast is clear.”
The space inside was small but neat. Stacks of documents and file folders sat on her desk in rows of well-organized piles labeled on top by way of post-it notes. There was order in her work space. Every square inch of it, symmetrical and even.
Sebastian took the time to observe the photographs on her desk. One, taken several years back, had her wearing a robe and tassel. A few others were of her and her family. And then there was one with her old dog Cutter. The old white terrier smiling back at the necromancer through gaping tongue, as if to say that there were no hard feelings.
Dina shuffled about the cabinets behind her desk until she found what she was looking for.
“There.”
A thick, maroon red binder rife with balance sheets and ledgers.
“That’s everything?” asked John King, maintaining as safe a distance from the dead woman as he could within the cramped space.
“Just about.”
“Then be a doll and hand that over to my idiot colleague over there.”
“Hey don’t call him that.”
John King grimaced at the necromancer.
“I’ll take it,” he said, and Dina handed the evidence to Sebastian. “It’s time to get you back now.”
Dina understood. Although in spite of this, she sighed.
“I don’t want to.”
John King rolled his eyes.
“Your problem,” he said, his words directed straight to Sebastian. “You got her in here, you get her out.”
And with that the private investigator took his leave. And perhaps it was just as well. For Sebastian Grimm found himself at a loss for what to do. What to say to convince the girl that her life was done.
“I know this is hard for you. But you can’t stay like this. You know what happened to Cutter.”
“I do. But I don’t want to go. I can’t go. Not like this. Not now.”
“Dina, it’s the only option you have. You can’t end up like Cutter. You don’t want that.”
“I want to live longer. That’s all I want. My life was taken from me it isn’t fair.”
Of course, it wasn’t. But then again neither are the cards that most among us are dealt. Sebastian took pity on the girl, and wished more than anything else that there was another way.
But there was another way. One that he despised to consider, but it was an option nevertheless.
“I can let you stay until the first symptom comes up.”
“Will you?”
Clearly, Dina was more open to the idea than the necromancer himself. This astounded the necromancer, given all she had seen from Cutter. But who was he to judge? It was her life after all.
“How would this work?” Sebastian asked.
“Maybe I stay with you for a while? Until, you know.”
A strange suggestion for which the necromancer had no idea how to interpret his reaction. On the one hand, he feared to think of Dina ever having to suffer as dire an illness as did her pet dog. Especially during the final hours of her life. And yet, beyond that stark reality was a part of him that was interested. Hopeful even, by the notion of sharing his home with a friend as her.
“Maybe we can try,” replied Sebastian.
Dina smiled. Her lips and cheeks as long and spry as the moment of their first reunion. And after that, all doubts were washed from his mind.
The necromancer would keep his childhood friend. And together they would make the most out of what little time Dina had left. How long that would be, neither among them knew for certain. But as it is that life is but a journey of endless pursuits, perhaps for them it could be forever.
* * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mortimer Jackson is a self-published author living in the underbellies of suburban California, where as a novelist he writes in the hopes of one day joining the ranks of the overrated. His first children’s fantasy, The Land of Stories Book 1, has just been released exclusively for Amazon Kindle. For more information, visit themorningdread.weebly.com.
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