A Fine Necromance

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “Come in,” he said. “I’m glad you made it here safely. Are you ready for this?”

  “You look great!” I said. “Like…I barely recognized you! Is this your demon battling outfit?”

  Professor McGuinness had gotten a tan and he was wearing linen pants and a pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Oh—well,” he said. “I’ve been getting out, dear. After all that stuff you were saying about humans and that very enlightening trip to the mall…I thought, maybe I need to get away from the magical world now and then. In the Fixed Plane Savannah has this thing called a Pride Parade.”

  “They have those in a lot of places,” Firian said.

  “Don’t burst his bubble, Firian,” I said. “That’s great! So you went?”

  “Yes. It was very eye-opening. Now I really see what Samuel meant when he always wanted to get out and about with the humans. I was always more of a stickler for the rules. I thought warlocks were obvious superior. So I’ve been sprucing things up around here. No more black.”

  “It’s been good with me,” Professor Adams said. “I don’t know anything about decorating, but my lady has been appreciating the upgrade.”

  “Have you been to this place called World Market?” McGuinness asked.

  “Ohh…you redecorated too.”

  “I got this rattan set on clearance for the porch but they wouldn’t give me a credit card. Apparently I don’t exist in the computer.”

  “Are we killing a demon at a shitty motel or are we just talking about rattan?” Harris snapped. “This is our moment. Professor, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying life, but put on a cloak and let’s go.”

  “Are you with us, Professor Adams?” I asked.

  “Oh no no. I’m not fighting a demon,” he said. “I’m dating a demoness and I don’t want to tangle her up in any trouble with a high demon.”

  “Well, we are going to kill said demon,” Harris said. “But, do what you have to do.”

  Professor Adams shook his head. “You kids, I don’t know about this.”

  McGuinness grabbed his cloak off the coat hanger. “None of us do, but we have to try.”

  It was cloak time, baby. We’re talking wands out, fluttering velvet, smoke machine wizard action. We’re talking fashion for walking out of a building just before it blows up. This was the calm before the storm where we could show off, and nobody brought it like Master Blair.

  We arrived at the motel and he showed up giving us Howl’s Moving Castle. Perfect hair, almost too much collar, some killer lace-up boots, and his wand. And then there was my demon stud in t-shirt and jeans. I ran into Alec’s arms.

  “So no one has heard from Stu?” Ignatius said. “The vampires said Daisy couldn’t come either. And I thought you were turning Firian back into a human.”

  “We ran out of time,” I said, shivering. “But…it’s enough, right? Harris has some holy magic from the Hapsburgs.”

  “Water of the Holy Grail,” he said. “Stuart has to hide. The council is looking for him. Did you hear what happened with Orson?”

  I could hear the girl at the check-in desk whispering on the phone to a manager about whether foxes were allowed inside, but the vampires were right. It seemed like anything could somehow blend in at a cheap roadside motel.

  “I see,” Ignatius said, as Harris told him the story.

  “I have something to show you,” Alec said, his arms around me.

  “Oh yeah? I feel that,” I said, grinding against him.

  “Not that. Well—maybe that too. We have a minute, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What we don’t have is a clean surface, but…”

  “That’s okay,” he whispered in my ear.

  Rayner and the rest of the clan had shown up, and it seemed like the adults were talking, so Alec pulled me aside into his motel room and picked me up by the legs. One thrust of his cock inside me and I almost forgot how much it really did smell like both pot smoke and cigarette smoke and also Raid, but he was strong enough to hold me so that I barely touched anything. The sex could have seemed as routine as needing to pee, but Alec always made me feel like I was the center of the universe. He made sure I was as satisfied as he was; half the time his incubus length could get right at my G spot, and luckily this was one of those times because I didn’t want to linger too long here.

  He grinned at me as I panted. “It hasn’t really been that long,” he said.

  “Yeah, right, don’t play cool,” I said. “What are you going to show me?”

  He handed me a locket. “I made this for you…”

  I opened it, and inside I found a miniature portrait of my mom. Like all of Alec’s art, it wasn’t an exact likeness, nor was it trying to be. He captured her essence.

  “I saw her in Sinistral,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could paint her. So I’ve been trying, and trying, but I think I finally got it. So take this, and…it will help you.”

  “Alec…”

  “You helped me find out what happened to my mom,” he said.

  “Yeah, and that didn’t work out very well…”

  “It did,” he said. “I needed to know that side of me. And even if she had a terrible way of showing it, her motherly advice wasn’t wrong. I needed to embrace my incubus side and stop trying to just be a warlock. Things will work out better with your mom, Char. I promise.”

  I wrapped my arms around him. I felt like we could go for a second round, so I forced myself to keep the kiss quick. “Thank you so much, Alec.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I should also tell you…”

  “You slept with Harris?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course you would know somehow.”

  “I feel like I smell him on you…”

  “Don’t say it that way. God, it just sounds skeevy.”

  “Was it good?”

  “It was…Harris. Like—we couldn’t stop bickering. But it was hot.”

  “That’s how Harris shows affection,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to it…”

  “To…”

  “Seeing all of us inside you at once…” He brushed a hand under my skirt, teasing me through my panties with his fingertips.

  I clamped my thighs around his hand, trying to shut him out. “If we make it out alive!”

  “Spread those legs, princess…”

  Aw, crap, okay, second round in a crappy motel.

  Might as well live while I can.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Charlotte

  “The moment is at hand,” Ignatius said. “We will open the gate and summon the Withered Lord. We will be drawn into Sinistral to wage the battle. It will be a dangerous place for Ethereal wizards, so you’ll have to be strong.”

  “The Withered Lord has an unknown number of Sinistrals enslaved to him, willing to fight for him. We have to get through them quickly. They won’t stay loyal to him if he’s killed. They are prisoners,” Silvus said.

  “Harris has the water from the holy grail,” Ignatius said. “All we really need to do is make contact.”

  Anyway, I can sum this strategy meeting:

  1. They talked for two hours.

  2. They went around in circles.

  3. No one knew for sure how to battle a high demon, but they sure had a lot of confidence anyway. You want egos? Throw a bunch of old vampires in with warlocks who are competitive with the vampires.

  There was talk of tricks, battle formations, etcetera, but basically everyone was just going to do what they did best. The warlocks would cast spells while the vampires were going to do vampire stuff with this cache of weapons they had unfolded from a big wool blanket, swords and daggers for the older vampires and pistols for Thom.

  My job was to save Mom.

  I kept looking at Alec’s painting, and wondering how it would be enough this time if it wasn’t enough last time. What was I missing? Why wasn’t I good enough? Why didn’t the mere mention of Dad and me and how much we loved her make her want to come back?

 
“Enough,” Rayner said. “I’m tired of talk. I’ve walked this earth for five hundred years. I won’t die today. Let’s meet this demon today and tomorrow I’ll have Lisbeth in my arms, God willing.”

  “I’m ready,” Ignatius said. “Ready to plead my case to the faery queen. I’ve always lived between worlds. Wyrd is where I belong.”

  “Let’s do this,” Harris said.

  “Join hands,” Silvus said.

  “I’m opening the gate,” Rayner said. “We don’t need to join hands.”

  “If you won’t do this my way, at least indulge me,” Silvus said. “Love and connection is anathema to demons. We might be unlikely allies, but we are allies all the same. Some of us love each other, and we all can find something to respect.” He held out a hand to Rayner. “Come on, my old adversary. You know it’s true.”

  Rayner slowly held out a hand to Silvus, grumbling. He took Ignatius’ hand in his other, while Harris held out a hand to me readily, surprising me with the purpose of his touch. Montague gripped my other hand, and Montague and Alec took Firian’s paws, a subtle show of solidarity. Firian wasn’t just mine anymore. He was a part of what had become Us.

  “I summon to me the demon of winter’s chill, the demon who snaps hearts like brittle twigs. I summon to me the demon who collects children like butterflies on pins, to suck the magic from their bones. I summon the high demon known as the Withered Lord,” Rayner said.

  Personally, I could have done without all that. Maybe it was part of the process.

  A crack appeared in the fabric of space ahead of us, and then it tore open, and darkness seeped out. The room turned cold, and the crack kept opening wider, becoming a portal that started tugging us in with suction.

  Oh, shit. This was happening. I managed not to pee myself during this part, and that was worth bragging about.

  The portals opened to what must have been Sinistral. We dropped into a frigid forest, bare trees dusted in a bleak, dry snow—and as soon as we landed, a bunch of demonic creatures raced out to attack us. Like, no talk, no preamble. Pretty rude. The vampires got to work without blinking. Rayner’s sword slashed outward as he grunted angrily, blood splaying on the snow. Thom shot some ravens out of the sky, crumpled black feathers falling.

  Almost immediately, I could feel the forest turning colder. It was angry. I could just feel it. I hadn’t dressed properly for cold weather but I could tell it wouldn’t even matter. This cold wouldn’t be held back by clothes.

  Ignatius threw up a protective bubble around us. It shimmered briefly and then a voice spoke as if from the trees in some dark tongue, maybe that language they speak in Mordor. Whatever it was, it ate away the protective bubble. One minute we held onto a fragile safety, and the next minute I felt completely exposed again.

  Ignatius was driven back a step, nearly crashing into me before he switched to a fire spell. I was, at this point, huddled around Firian while fire leapt around me, driving back the wolves enough to keep us safe.

  “Kili Forest, Charlotte,” he said. “You’re good at fire spells.”

  That was the region of Fortune’s Favor where you were always getting attacked by wolves and if you stayed there too long, your charisma would drop out of sadness, but everything in the forest was weak against fire.

  “Right.” I cast a quick fire spell, the flames bursting around my wand. The vampires had killed a couple of wolves already. It wasn’t a pretty scene and the battle had hardly begun.

  “Aren’t these wolves captives of the Withered Lord like my grandfathers?” I cried.

  “Probably. Doesn’t matter,” Rayner said. “They have to work for him, so we have to kill them.”

  “Careful—” Harris yanked me out of the way just in time before an arrow landed at my feet.

  Archers? Yeah, now we had archers. Professor McGuinness let out a sudden yell of pain and I thought he was hit, but instead a snake was biting his ankle.

  The vampires charged the trees to bring down the archers, who were these pale, wiry, dark elf looking girls. We turned our magic toward the trees, flushing a few more out to be dispatched by the vampires, but the vampires were killing them too. Like, without even blinking. Pointy-eared girls with dark hair and blue-hued skin collapsed around us with lifeless eyes.

  We really could die too.

  It was hard not to feel completely rattled.

  “Behind us!” Montague said, pulling my attention in other directions—too many directions. While the vampires were duking it out with the girls, the temperature seemed to get even colder. The forest was misty behind us, and as I was watching, the mist half-formed into phantoms. Every phantom had the same face, white skin stretched against the bones of their faces, their eyes glowing blue in a hollow way. They drifted toward us.

  “They all have his face,” Alec said.

  “Welcome to my forest,” the phantoms said, almost—but not quite—in unison. “There are only eleven of you. And infinite numbers of me. I thought there would be more of you. I thought there would be thirteen, thirteen…”

  Firian growled in a low, worried way. “It would be really stupid,” he said, “if we failed because we needed thirteen. Stuart is the thirteenth child. There were supposed to be thirteen of us. The magical realms love numbers.”

  “I’m not going to accept losing over that,” Alec said. But his hot demon ass was shivering. Since he was in his full on Sinistral demon form, even his tail was shivering.

  It would be really stupid, I thought, if we died of hypothermia and not even fighting demons, but that started to feel possible on top of everything else. I was shivering so much I thought I might break my teeth. I tried to cast a warming spell but my brain seemed stuck in a reeling loop of fear as the phantoms came closer and closer.

  “Come on, everyone,” Ignatius said. “Holy ward!”

  We all chanted together, generating a new barrier of warm light, and this one seemed a little stronger than the one Ignatius made by himself. Life slowly bled back into my frigid—

  Aaand nevermind. The phantoms came toward the ward. The moment their bodies struck the shimmering bubble, they melted it instantly. And they kept coming. I scrambled back. The vampires moved to the forefront to protect us. Well, maybe not to protect us, really, because I don’t think they cared, but let a girl dream. I wanted someone to save me, but maybe there was no one. The vampires couldn’t touch the phantoms with their blades or their strength.

  “Speak to me, demon,” Rayner said.

  All the phantoms opened their creaking mouths and spoke, still not quite in synch, in the brittle voice of the Withered Lord. Your compel magic means nothing to me. You cannot touch me.

  “Speak to me! Where is Lisbeth?” Rayner swept his blade toward the phantoms, meeting no resistance, but he swiped it again anyway. “What have you done with her?”

  I am shielding her from you.

  “Why?”

  Because you vampires and your arrogance and your insistent affection for one stupid girl is annoying. Because I can. Because I feed off of your misery, and there is nothing more delicious than toying with all of your affections…

  “At least come out here and fight me with your corporeal form!” Rayner growled.

  The Withered Lord’s phantoms lifted their hands and shot cold fire at Rayner, his clothes burning away and then the flesh of his chest singeing as he screamed.

  Silvus threw up shielding spells while Montague moved away from me and toward them to help. I saw Harris’ brow furrow.

  Rayner collapsed to his knees, hissing with pain. “Don’t touch me.”

  Harris moved forward a step, but then hesitated.

  “What is it?” Firian asked.

  “He hasn’t shown his true form yet. Would it work?”

  I knew he meant the grail water. “But he can hurt us with these ghost creatures, so why would he ever show his true form?” I whispered.

  “This really is a boss battle,” Firian said. “Charlotte, you’ve been training for this al
l your life.”

  Meanwhile, the Withered Lord wasted no time swooping around Ignatius with the cold phantom fingers of his three illusionary forms. You know, Ignatius, the more time I spent with you, the more I like you. You smell like ambition. Like Emily.

  “I am not joining you,” Ignatius said. “I would rather die.”

  I could arrange that.

  “Wait—no,” I said.

  “Ignatius? Charlotte?”

  I heard my mom’s voice emerging from behind the phantoms, and I felt faintly dizzy as I saw their ghostly forms part. She walked toward me. She looked…normal. Human. She was gorgeous, too. I could see why Dad idolized her. I never looked that put together and sophisticated, but…I saw the family resemblance. It was so weird, seeing so much of me in another woman. She had on a black trench and, no kidding, skintight gold pants. Mom showed up to the battle in skintight gold pants. Fucking rock star. Her hair was past her shoulders, thick auburn, with some light curl mine didn’t have.

  “Mom?” I felt choked. “Mom…”

  She held out her hands. “I want you here, little goblin. You and Firian.”

  She seemed more mellow than when I summoned her. Kind of sad. I didn’t know what to say at first. I wanted to hug her and talk to her like she was normal, but she was working for a demon who took pleasure in killing people.

  “I can’t be here, Mom,” I said. “I already told you that.”

  “But now you have friends here,” she said. “I would teach you everything I know. No one would ever hurt you or control you again.”

  “Do you realize this demon killed your cousin?”

  “Y—yes.” Some tears formed in her eyes although her face was resolute.

  “Emily,” the Withered Lord said, speaking from just one phantom now, instead of the multi-voice-stereo-effect thing he had going on before. He was more gentle with her, but it was just as terrifying, especially since the voice was coming from this dead-eyed ghost. “You know the bargain.”