A Fine Necromance

by Lidiya Foxglove

  Ignatius was struggling to beat crows off with a stick while his familiar, in human form, drew a ring of fire to protect them. Then she collapsed, sweating. The crows fought past his stick, pecking at his face.

  I took flight and rushed them, growling. The crows backed down.

  “Alec?” Ignatius looked up at me, shoving his messy hair out of his eyes. “Is that you? You’ve gone full demon,” he said, as I offered him a hand.

  “It was either that or lose my demon side,” I said.

  I realized he was wearing a dress. It didn’t look right on him. The dress made him seem more feminine, like for the first time I saw how he could have been a woman, but it didn’t look right either. He quickly snapped up an illusion spell, replacing the dress with a red velvet smoking jacket.

  “I’m sorry, Alec,” he said.

  “I mean…we’re both in the same boat, I guess.”

  “Can you un-demon yourself?” Ignatius asked, as he patted his familiar’s clothes as if to check that she was all right. “You could go to the Fixed Plane.”

  “I haven’t been able to,” I said.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing. I just—”

  “You’re afraid of something, or you’d be able to do it,” he said, with the sharpness of someone who has taught too many kids the same lesson.

  “I don’t want to have sex with someone who isn’t Charlotte,” I said. “The demons have been coming onto me, but I’m not into demons like I’m into…humans.”

  Ignatius sighed. “So you’re afraid of cheating on Charlotte.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” I said. “But I do need strength.”

  “I don’t want to go to the Fixed Plane,” his familiar said, looking at the woods nervously. “But I can’t stay here alone…and would you be any safer there either? Those warlocks might come after you. This incubus looks big and strong…maybe we should…stick with him, huh?”

  “Kim…be careful, please, you know what he is.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her eyes widened. “He’s just…um…releasing a scent.”

  “Yes, Alec is our resident sex demon. Please try not to release a scent,” Ignatius told me.

  “I don’t think I can control that,” I said. “But I won’t touch your familiar.”

  “Where is your familiar?” Then he saw my face. “Oh…”

  “Oh?” Kim said.

  “Sinistral warlocks still have familiars. Demons don’t,” Ignatius said.

  “Oh…” She petted my arm. Ignatius quickly pulled her away when she started to clutch me.

  “We need to find a safe place,” he said. “There are good demons. One of them might give us refuge.”

  “How do we find anything here?” I asked. “Are there safe places?”

  “Try to imagine safety,” Kim said. “Solid walls to protect us from the crows and a warm hearth. People who will offer us food and a place to rest without asking for much in return, since…we don’t have much to offer.”

  “A friendly holding,” Ignatius said. “And a good bowl of stew that isn’t too strange. And some wine, or ale, or whatever they drink in Sinistral…”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  The path ahead seemed to change a little. I would have thought it was my imagination, only I was starting to get used to how Sinistral worked, after surviving here for a little while. It was true, the magical world tended to give you what you wanted, if you stayed calm and asked for it. When I was hungry, I found berries and nuts. There were plenty of birds and rabbits to eat, too, but it wasn’t like I knew how to kill animals and prepare them for eating, even if I had the nerve to do it. I would kill for some meat stew by now.

  “You have seen Charlotte, haven’t you?” Ignatius asked, as he found a stick to stroll with.

  “In her dreams…yes.”

  “I should never have put her through all this…”

  “Nah. Charlotte is tough. As long as she doesn’t get killed.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m afraid of. My friends and I were both prepared to die to open up Wyrd, and I…I’ve seen Charlotte as someone who might be put in danger for the good of the realm. I didn’t know her. It was easy to detach myself and I got increasingly excited when she showed a strong potential…but she didn’t sign up for this.”

  “At least you admit it,” I said. “Nothing better happen to her when we fight the Withered Lord.”

  “I swear to you, Alec, I will take a fatal blow for any one of you kids. You are, I hope, the ones who will carry on what we started, and now it’s down to…just Stuart and me…” He stopped and looked at me, his eyes not quite focusing on mine at first, like he was seeing something in the past. “I hope you know what it will mean if we could get a foothold in Wyrd.”

  I wasn’t sure I truly did, but one look at his face and I know he really was prepared to die for it. “Take care of yourself, too,” I said. “We’re going to do this thing.”

  “Yes,” Kim said. “Please take care of yourself. I’ve been hiding out way too long.”

  After hours of walking, occasionally battling crows and one ornery lizard-beast about the size of a goat, we reached a small castle. There were some baby dragons playing outside in the grass.

  “Aww!” Kim said.

  Three of the dragons started growling like nervous cats, and the other one took flight back to the castle. “Papa!” it cried. “Demons!”

  It took about two seconds from there for a much bigger dragon to swoop out of the castle.

  “So much for that welcoming hearth,” Ignatius said, as two more dragons joined the first one and the baby dragons retreated into the castle.

  “I’ve never seen dragons before,” I said, and I was trying hard not to freak out. Considering I had turned into some sort of creature myself, maybe I should have taken this in stride, but the dragons were big and they had teeth as long as my arms.

  Ignatius lifted his hands. “We mean no harm, good sirs. The path led us to you.”

  “An incubus,” one of the dragons said, leaning in to sniff me and then giving a hot, disparaging snort. A little smoke came out of his nostrils. “Stay away from our mate and her kinfolk.”

  “Do you see the tattoos on his body?” Ignatius said. “Look—they’re control spells. This incubus has a mate of his own already.”

  “That’s right. I have no interest in yours.”

  “I must demand your sworn oath or I will not permit you to enter.”

  “I swear.”

  “He means a spell,” Ignatius said.

  “Yes. If your cock should so much as twitch in the presence of our mate, we will turn you to ash.”

  I bristled. “I can’t promise that! I’m still an incubus. I think I need to find somewhere else to go.”

  One of the other dragons laughed. “Guys, do we really want an incubus to not be attracted to our girl? That would be an insult to Lady Dakota.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But you must swear not to touch her nor anyone in our household in a purposeful way, nor to enter her dreams.”

  “I swear. If I go anywhere in my dreams, it’s back to my own girl.”

  The dragon cast a spell that made his eyes glow, and a heaviness settled through my body. “Come in, but…I will be watching you closely, incubus.”

  “I think our wife can take care of herself,” the other dragon said.

  As they turned to the castle, they shifted into human forms, which…I was trying to be cool about this, but I had to admit that just because I was a demon, didn’t mean I was used to seeing shapeshifting.

  The castle seemed like a busy, pleasant place on the inside. It was very Medieval-looking, but the furniture was abundant and comfortable, and some women were hanging out while kids played. I think the kids had been the dragons a minute ago.

  “I am Lord Hiron. These are my bond-brothers, Xado and Rafe, and this is our wife and children,” one of the dragons said. As me
n, Hiron and Xado were more jacked than I was, even in my demon form, while Rafe was obviously the artsy one, because he was wearing normal clothes and looked like a guy who might live in Los Angeles and drive an old fin car; his style almost had a rockabilly vibe. You really could find anything in the magical world.

  “As I said, stay away from our mate,” Xado said.

  “I mean…,” their ‘mate’ said. This had to be Lady Dakota, a cute blonde—no, damnit, don’t even go there—old enough to be my mom. Better. One of the easiest antidotes to my incubus mojo was to remind myself that my human side was really not into women old enough to be my mom. Ignore him, Lady Dakota mouthed, with a little dismissive wave.

  “We will be happy to offer you supper, as you look like you have been on a long journey,” Xado said.

  “Yes,” Ignatius said. “Long enough, certainly.”

  “What is your final destination?” Hiron asked. “Have you lost your way?”

  “I’m an Ethereal warlock,” Ignatius said. “I was banished…and Alec, here, was the same, but they attempted to purify him.”

  “Purify?” Lady Dakota asked. “What does that mean?”

  “They have some way of trying to purify demons,” I said. “We watched them try it with a Sinistral spirit and it seemed to vanquish her entirely. When they tried it with me, I turned into this and ended up here. I haven’t seen my friends or girlfriend since.”

  “You should be able to take a human form and get to the Fixed Plane,” Hiron said. “We are all able to do so.”

  “He needs to rest up, that’s all,” Ignatius said.

  “You can stay here for a few weeks,” Lady Dakota said. “This is the party pad.”

  Xado was staring us down. “You are our mate, and I desire your happiness above all else,” he said, “but they are strangers.”

  The dragons and their lady started arguing in lowered tones off in the corner while Dakota’s friends shrugged at us a little, calming down some bursts of child screaming, and one of us offered to pour us some ale. I caught some occasional words from Dakota like “never get to hang out with humans!” and “my mom would…murmur…good example for the kids…” and “test them?”

  Xado didn’t want an incubus in the house. He kept glaring at me. I got the feeling that if my cock did twitch, he would tear it off.

  “My first duty is to my kingdom and family!” Hiron hissed.

  “These pure Sinistrals get very heavy handed,” Ignatius said. “They don’t use contractions when they speak either.”

  “You don’t seem worried they might kick us out.”

  “The path led us here,” Kim said. “So it must be right. The woman is a human and she seems kind.”

  Something rumbled outside. The kids shut up abruptly, running to their parents.

  “Haxon, you must be brave,” Xado said gently to one wide-eyed little girl. “You’re a dragon. It’s just thunder.”

  Ignatius ran to the tall but narrow window. The gloomy sky crackled with eerie lightning that streaked across the sky. The wind had picked up so much that it rattled the panes. The temperature in the room plummeted. It become so cold it was painful. Now I wished I had more clothes, but clearly it didn’t matter. The cold seemed to come from inside me. The kids were shivering and crying.

  “I’m coming for you…” A dry, rattling voice seemed to swirl around us from outside, but it was also in my head.

  The kids screamed, covering their ears. “Mama…!”

  “Shh, Mara…it’s all—right!” Lady Dakota shrieked as the window glass shattered. Ignatius barely dove out of the way and he still ended up with cuts.

  “It cannot enter this castle,” Hiron said. “The protections run deep.”

  One of Dakota’s lady friends, whom I realized were actually triplets with matching sets of fanged grins, helped Ignatius up along with Kim. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

  Rafe had run to the window.

  “Get back from there,” Xado said.

  Through the jagged shards of what was left of the windows, a bone-white face appeared in the window against the backdrop of lightning and swirling wind. Horns sprouted from his head, but he was so still that I wondered if what I was seeing was real. Then I saw his eyes track us and settled on Ignatius.

  “A warning, Ignatius…you know what I am capable of… Emily is mine. Ina is mad. And Samuel is dead. What shall I do to you, now that you are in my realm?”

  Ignatius buckled over into the glass, his eyes flashing blue light.

  The Withered Lord is attacking him somehow, I realized. Was I looking at his face right now? I quickly grabbed some paper and a quill that were sitting on a desk in the corner and started to sketch the face, and the demon hissed and vanished as he realized I was trying to capture his likeness.

  The raging storm died down like a summer shower and Ignatius hardly seemed to notice Kim and the demon girl as they tried to check for glass in his hands.

  I blinked and the face was gone. I let out my breath and quickly finished up the sketch from memory.

  “Are you drawing?” Haxon asked, having urgently wriggled out of her father’s arms.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m drawing the demon so I can get power over him.”

  “Oh…” She looked at her sisters like she was considering how well that magic worked.

  “What was that?” Hiron asked. “That demon got through the wards, warlock. We can’t put our children in danger.”

  “Hold still,” Kim said. “There’s glass in your palm.”

  “That was the Withered Lord,” Ignatius said, still shivering as he slowly came back to himself. “He can hurt me through the wards because he has a strand of my hair, given to him long ago. You’re not in danger here, but I am.”

  “Why does he want you?” Hiron was still clutching a scared child. “You may be in Sinistral, but this is a peaceful region. I don’t want high demons coming around.”

  “He doesn’t want me in Sinistral because I was a good friend to someone who is in his clutches,” Ignatius said. “If I saw her, I like to think she would remember who she really is. But it’s my business. I won’t trouble you and your family. I can find a safe place in the Fixed Plane, away from demon magic…”

  “Your familiar is still in danger?” Dakota asked. “Do I understand that right? Maybe she could stay here. I’ve been learning witchcraft but I grew up human so I never had a familiar, and maybe she could help me with my spells…the kids, too.”

  “The children are dragons,” Xado said.

  “Ohmigod, come off it,” Dakota snapped at him, like this was something they’d argued about. “They can be two things at once!”

  “Well…” Kim changed into her bearded dragon form. “I would fit right in.”

  One of the other girls gasped. “Mama, I want her!”

  “She’s not a pet,” Dakota said.

  “I don’t know if it’s safe,” Hiron said. “But if we keep the children in the castle for now, it would be the honorable thing to do…if this demon is as cruel as you say.”

  “I would be deeply grateful if you give Kim a safe home for now,” Ignatius said. He looked at me. “Alec, I’ve got to go back.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I said.

  “Do you think you can?”

  “I think so. I feel a little more like myself now, after being lost out there for a few days. It was good to see someone I know. Anyway, you could use the help and I need to get back to Charlotte and…”

  “HAM without Alec is just ‘HM’,” Ignatius said. “Come on, then.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Charlotte

  “O Christmas break, O Christmas break, you’re going to be so awkward…” I shoved clothes into my bag, my goofy singing barely staving off my sadness. Oh shit. I stopped with a sinking feeling. I never even bought Dad or Grandma their Christmas presents. I never thought about it. I’m a terrible daughter. “O Christmas gifts, O Christmas gifts, I need a ride to Target…�
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  “Are you singing a narrative of your life?” Montague asked behind me.

  “Stop sneaking up on me like that!”

  “I don’t sneak up on you.”

  “Yes. You do. See how quiet your footsteps are?”

  He was walking into the room. “It’s a vampire thing.” He crouched next to me as I was grabbing pairs of shoes from under the bed. “You’ll have me this year.”

  “That won’t add to the awkwardness at all. Grandma knows we’re dating. She doesn’t know I’m not just dating you. And she never will. But it’s more than that. I’ve barely called Dad this year and—”

  “Come here. Stop stressing over stuff you can’t control.” He pushed me down to the rug and kissed me. His lips held fading warmth from the thermos of hot tea he was carrying.

  “Make me forget.”

  “Challenge accepted…” He unfastened the button of my pants, tugged down the zipper, and stuck his fingers in the tight space there between my underwear and my most sensitive bits, as he unbuttoned my shirt.

  “Mm…”

  “I think we should sneak off and have sex in Firian’s cabin.”

  “I don’t know what Firian will say about that.”

  “He already told me we could.”

  “When did you talk to Firian?”

  “We were both wandering the halls the other night. I couldn’t sleep. He said you were making a lot of noise.” He lifted his brows. “Alec?”

  “Oh stop…”

  “I miss him,” Montague said. “And I miss seeing you with both of us. You miss that too, don’t you?”

  “So much,” I groaned, which was easy to do with his fingers wigging around in my underwear, teasing me. “I really need skirts with my uniform.”

  “So these other jerks get to see your legs? Nah. I don’t mind the challenge.” He yanked them off me and then he scooped me up and carried me into bed. He dropped me on my face and then stopped to stroke a hand over my backside. “I think I’d better make sure you’re still ready for Alec to come back and check on that tight ass.”

  I pushed his hand away. “Maybe you should wait to open your presents until we get to the cabin…”