A Fine Necromance

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “If this is a faery breakfast, I’m so down for it.”

  “The honey comes from our own bees,” Stuart said. “They feed only on the most pure mountain flowers.”

  “Who is ‘our’?” Alec asked.

  “Penny and Orson and myself,” Stuart said. “I am the son of a faery lord, but I don’t have a lord’s domain so much as I have a homestead. My father sent these two to maintain my household. I don’t ask them to do much, but they do keep the bees.”

  “This cream is delicious, too,” I said. “Do y’all keep cows?”

  “No, Orson went to Publix this morning. He’s a gruagach, resilient enough to handle the human world, and he needs his cream.”

  “I don’t need my cream as much as you need your coffee, Stuart,” Orson said, giving him a rather peeved expression.

  “Oh.” Right. Publix probably had a buy one get one on berries, and now I didn’t want to ask where the biscuits came from. If he told me they were Pillsbury I was going to lose the fantasy entirely. Note to self: read up more about faeries. If I was supposed to know what a gruagach was, I certainly didn’t.

  “If you’re done, let’s begin. We have a lot of work to do before school starts, and Ignatius is counting on me. Come alone.”

  “Have you heard from him at all?” I asked, as I finished off my last biscuit.

  “No. I am sure they haven’t allowed him any contact with his allies.”

  “He’s a she, right?” Harris said.

  “Harris, jeez,” I said. “It seems like he identifies with male pronouns, doesn’t he, Stuart?”

  “Er, yes, I think I know what you mean,” Stuart said. “Ignatius was born a woman but has lived his life as a man and I can’t really think of him any other way.”

  “And he was in love with Ina, right?”

  “Oh, yes. They were…both very much in love,” Professor McGuinness said hesitantly. “And she knew his secret, but if it troubled her, she never said so.”

  “I ship that,” I whispered. Ina was still alive, she was just in the Haven, and insane. Were they still in love? That would be the cutest thing ever.

  Professor McGuinness looked at me thoughtfully.

  “I envy you young American humans,” he said. “In the magical world, LGBT is not a community. One is tolerated quietly, but not accepted—celebrated, even—in the way I see in the human world these days.”

  “It depends where you live,” I said. “But you’re right. I mean, what kind of monster do you have to be to not enjoy Queer Eye. When they filmed it in Georgia we all wished they would come for our science teacher. You…I mean…is it true about you and Samuel?”

  He looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t know if I can say that.”

  “But you had feelings for him?”

  He was a fairly old dude, but he looked as nervous as a teenager when I asked him that. “Oh—well—”

  “It’s okay to say so,” I said. “Whether he liked you or not. Like…maybe you need closure?”

  “Closure…” He gave me one of my favorite looks of all time. It’s the look an old person gives you when they notice your generation is not all just morons hunched over phones. “It’s…true that I had feelings for Samuel. I would like to think maybe he felt the same. He was much more exciting than I was. I never dared to say a word. He was ambitious and I’m sure I would have hampered that.” He shook his head. “No need to dwell on the past.”

  “It’s not really the past,” I said. “You’re still here. I mean, it seems like maybe you guys could have been together and you didn’t take a shot.”

  “No,” he said, regretfully. “I didn’t. My parents told me if I didn’t want to get married I should become a professor or a scholar in a place like Merlin where women weren’t allowed. Happiness was not much of a consideration. I would hurt Samuel’s career. At this time, even humans were not tolerant of such things.”

  “How can it be good magic if no one is happy?” I asked.

  “It isn’t good so much as orderly,” he said. “But Sinistral is still worse.”

  “Which is why we must find a way to Wyrd. We have work to do,” Stuart repeated.

  “Right.” I tried to give Professor McGuinness a smile. Like, nothing was more sad than an older person with unrequited, forbidden love hanging over their head. He looked abruptly stoic, like his students smiling at him was a bridge too far. Okay, maybe that was fair.

  “Let me get my hiking shoes on. I really wish I had a more mystical outfit to get into the mood.”

  “If you are devoted to learning this magic, clothes are irrelevant,” Stuart said.

  “I am! But what happened to your 1970s jackets, Stuart? You sure changed your own wardrobe fast.” I laced up my boots and finished the hike up the mountain to the meadow of the Wyrd tree. Stuart didn’t walk with me, but he was waiting there.

  “How have you been doing with the exercises I gave you?”

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Firian was a strict teacher.”

  Stuart brushed a hand just over several points on my body that were probably chakras. “Not perfect, but better than I expected,” he said. “It was probably a good thing he was trapped in fox form, for the purpose of the moment.”

  “But he’s so miserable…”

  Stuart gave me a deadly serious look. “Charlotte, up until now, I have treated you as any other student at Merlin College. That’s what we all wanted for you. A normal life, and a trial period to see if you were up for the challenge presented. But that time is over now. When your junior year begins, you are walking back into the hands of the council. I can tell that you did take your studies seriously, and I’m glad of it, but this is where it gets serious.”

  I did appreciate Stuart’s tact. He didn’t say outright that I needed to think about my magic and the seriousness of this mission more than I needed to think about making out with guys.

  But, message received. I tried to look resolved, like I was thinking about the gravity of my position and not how good it felt to be the center of an Alec and Montague sandwich. “I understand, Lord Stuart. Can I call you Lord Stuart? That sounds a little more faery appropriate.”

  He almost, but not quite, rolled his eyes. “If it helps, go right ahead.” He brushed a finger along the top of my wand, like he was testing it somehow. “You have proved yourself a talented magical user in a number of disciplines, but the one that intrigues me most is the same power Samuel had. He could summon the dead at will without succumbing to its darker side. You had never summoned the dead before, but when you were in St. Augustine you summoned powerful spirits to your aid. You are going to work on this all year, and you’re not going to tell the council or any of the teachers about it.”

  “Okay. What do I do?”

  “First, this is the reason I’ve been having you do deep focus exercises. You need to work on connecting to the place where you are and the spirits that dwell there, and you need to be good at wards so you can control the spirits if needed, but—you will be a Wyrd witch, so your focus is going to be on maintaining calm and accepting the flow of events. You are not a good witch or a bad witch. You’re a neutral witch. So you will summon all sorts of spirits, without judgment. But, you are still within your rights to defend yourself when a spirit turns violent.”

  “I understand…”

  “Most importantly, remember the definition of a white necromancer.”

  “Don’t get emotionally attached to the dead,” I said. “I have to let loved ones go.” I knocked on the tree trunk. “Hopefully, I won’t have to face that.”

  “You will,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

  “I mean, I know people I love will die,” I said. “I already saw my grandfather’s spirit…”

  “You are a witch,” Stuart said. “One day, you will lose someone who didn’t seem ready to go. It happens to all of us. You must let it happen. You must learn to believe it was their time. That’s how you will become great.”

  Montague. Alec. Firi
an. Harris. Daisy. Stuart. Ignatius. My dad.

  My brain was racing over all the people I knew, considering what I would do if they died. Whether I could handle it and let them go.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  Never mind! I want to go home! My brain screamed in panic.

  Stuart kept giving me that calm expression. “Clear your mind, Charlotte. Take a deep breath.”

  There is no way but forward.

  I’m not sure who was talking in my head now. My own voice, Samuel…?

  Oh, right, that was a line from Mom’s yoga video. It sounded pretty wise, so I repeated it aloud.

  “Very good,” Stuart said. “You are already connecting with the spirit of Wyrd. There was never any way but forward. There was never any path for you but this one. Of all the infinite paths, once you take one, all others become irrelevant, and so there is no mistake.”

  I twisted the ring that would never leave my finger. Fares Wyrd as she must.

  “Try to connect with the spirits,” Stuart said.

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. Right now.”

  “But…what do I tell them? I’m not in danger so I don’t know what I’m calling them for, or who I’m trying to summon.”

  “It is harder without a reason or person in mind. That’s why you need to practice.”

  I wrapped both hands around my wand and tried to focus on opening my mind to the spirit world, without knowing what I wanted to happen. I just needed to be able to reach into that channel any time, the way I was able to summon the lady spirits to help me before. I felt like Samuel’s spirit helped me out that time. I wanted to be able to do it on my own. His spirit wouldn’t always be there for me, would it?

  I knew Samuel didn’t mean to die. But…sometimes it felt like none of my magical family was there for me. All the adults ended up dying or going crazy or turning bad, so would that happen to me too?

  Would I lose the boys I loved so much?

  “Charlotte,” Stuart said. “Stop. Breathe again. What did we just discuss?”

  “There is no way but forward.”

  “Do you know why people die?”

  “Well, I’ve seen the sexist old council and I’m glad people do die eventually…”

  “Death makes the living stronger,” he said. “Death makes us live harder and love harder. Faeries don’t love or grieve the same way. We can live for hundreds of years. We envy you.”

  “Oh, right… I’m so sure.”

  “It’s true. Faeries still die, of course. But it’s not the same. Now—go ahead and see what you can manage. Take your time.”

  I breathed. I tried to empty my mind. At first I didn’t try to do anything else.

  All summer, Firian had nagged me to improve my concentration and meditate. It was a real drag. I still didn’t like it very much. My mind was restless, thinking about how much I missed my guys, and all the things I wanted to do, and my worries. But when I got frustrated, Dad reminded me that it was like playing an instrument. “You know how long I had to keep practicing the same stuff over and over before I could finger pick a tune? And then I never really stuck with it. Even so-called prodigies have to put in the hours. I’ll always wonder if I would have made it in a band, you know? Keep with it.”

  Even though I was resistant, I was getting better at it little by little too, and some days I could feel it. Some days I saw a twinkle in Firian’s fox eyes that showed he was proud of me.

  I felt the world shift slightly. Sometimes magic wasn’t shooting fireballs and burning down Master Blair’s office. The real power seemed to be in the subtle stuff.

  Harris is better at that than I am, I thought, and that got me bristling.

  I felt the air spark around me, the mood changing, and a few ghostly figures swirled around me.

  “Excellent work!”

  “What do I do now?”

  “Ask them to lend you power.”

  “Okay—um—hello, spirits…” The spirits were whooshing around in these undefinable ghostly forms. I wasn’t getting awesome witches or a Native American hunting party this time. These ghosts were actually making a little “whooo” sound as they darted around like big fluttery hornets, and to be honest I felt silly talking to them.

  “More authoritative,” Stuart said.

  I threw out my arms. “O spirits, lend me your strength! —hey!” The spirits whirled away and vanished. “What the hell?”

  “They determined you weren’t a good host,” he said. “You don’t have enough command.”

  “Well, I don’t want to boss them around. I’m trying to be respectful. Plus, they weren’t the best ghosts I’ve ever seen.”

  “You have to be very decisive,” he said. “Spirits respect strength. When you’re afraid, you will be more decisive. You need to learn to call them any time, for any reason. But it’s fine. Just summoning them at all is a fine start. Whatever the council assigns you to do, just keep up the bare minimum. Work on this. If you can summon and command the dead, you’ll have an army at your disposal any time. Also,” he added, “don’t insult the ghosts. You know that.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I am very sorry, ghosts.”

  He waved his hand. “Too late. They won’t come back. But it’s all right. They were not the best ghosts.”

  Chapter Nine

  Charlotte

  As long as I was training with Stuart and hanging out with HAM, that last week of summer felt pretty normal. But the moment I stepped out of car on the other side of the mountain, on campus, I knew this year would be very different.

  The presence of guards had increased. The air just felt heavy. As soon as we emerged, the new headmaster saw us from across the open lawn in the front of the campus and made a beeline for us.

  “Cousin,” he said, nodding at Harris. “Miss Byrne.” He arched an eyebrow at Montague and Alec and didn’t greet them at all. Firian, of course, had vanished off to Etherium. He was safer there. “I’m looking forward to seeing your talents, which I have heard so much about from the professors here…”

  “I’m glad they’re saying nice things about me,” I said. “I always got the impression most of them weren’t thrilled about having a girl here.”

  “They certainly weren’t,” he said. “No warlock would accept a woman learning the masculine magical arts without a certain sense of threat, eh?” He laughed dryly, patting Harris’ shoulder. Harris was standing very stiffly.

  “Well, if they’re confident in their own skill, I don’t see why not,” Harris shot back.

  “It remains taboo, but Miss Byrne really is special…isn’t she?” He looked over the wand I carried, made from the pale, blue-tinged wood of the Wyrd tree.

  I was on my guard. I remembered well what Harris said about his cousin and Daisy. Piers seemed to want Daisy’s power. He was at least ten years older than her, although that wouldn’t bother me too much if he was an awesome guy and she loved him, especially knowing that witches and warlocks live to be over a hundred.

  But, needless to say, he wasn’t. He said he would ‘tame the bitch’. And right now, his fair face, with skin so perfect it had to be glamoured, cold eyes and a smile that seemed to curl up his face like he didn’t know what a real smile was, he looked like he was already thinking about taming me. Although not in a husband-and-wife kind of way, thank goodness.

  “Is Daisy here?” I asked.

  “Not…yet,” he said.

  “But she is coming?”

  “They’re not married yet,” Harris said. “I would have heard.”

  “Would you?” Piers said. “I heard that you ran away from home. Poor cousin. It seems like you’re going through some things. Taking the break up hard? I swear, I didn’t ask for her hand to rub it in your face. I’ve loved that girl forever.”

  “Well, I hope it’s mutual,” Harris said. “You’re not Daisy’s type. I know that much.”

  “We might look alike, but I am a very different sort of man,” Piers said. “I already know my p
lace in the world. My reputation is settled. But I will do everything I can to help you get to where I am, I promise you that. It must be a trial having so many older sisters. You can think of me like an older brother.”

  “I hardly know you,” Harris said.

  Montague interjected, holding out a hand to Piers. “Good morning, Piers. I’m Montague Xarra and this is Alec, if you’ve forgotten our names.”

  “I didn’t forget your names.” Piers very quickly shook his hand.

  “I suppose you forgot to greet us, then,” Montague said. “I’m sure that must be it, since you seem like a gentleman.”

  Piers looked irritated. “Yes, vampire, that must be it.” He turned, his cape swirling.

  “You know, I think I want to add a cape to my ensemble this year,” I said. “I’ve been playing it safe. Y’all wanna go cape shopping with me?”

  Montague, Alec and Harris were all just staring at Piers’ back as he stalked off, pausing finally to speak to Professor Pacetti.

  “Sure,” Montague said, though gritted teeth. He shook it off and took my arm.

  “Whatever,” Alec said. “I’m glad if he doesn’t want to pay attention to us.”

  “I respect your desire to be low key, but I’ve been shunned all summer back home,” Montague said. “They all think it’s only a matter of time before I join the vampires, so I’m practically written out of the books already. Piers would like to just ignore us because we have Sinistral blood.”

  We breezed into the uniform shop on campus, which was where I first met Montague and Harris, incidentally. Benton was still working there. He always gave me comic book nerd vibes and seemed like he was resigned to never being cool, which actually made me like him a little but we never talked. I actually thought he graduated, but I guess not. He waved and shrugged at us. “Better get it before the new management decides the uniform options are too radical.”

  “The first year, I was so confused. I just wanted to make it through the year without dying. Second year, I was hoping to fit in. This year, I’m not dead yet, and I’ll never fit in. So maybe it’s time for a little flair. Master Blair always looked so stylish.”