The Necromancer's Seduction (13 page)

“The forces at play, our natural world, draw energy from all life in the demon realm.
Demons are able to take the energy back, recycle it. A human can’t. They wither away
and die.”

“That’s really interesting, strange but interesting.” Too bad I can’t teach a class
on the anthropology of the demon realm.

“Not really, when you think about it. Trees in the human realm take carbon, which
they need to survive, and produce air, which you need to survive. Same concept, different
elements.”

He stood and held out his hand. “Let’s get out of here.” He scanned the sky. “Before
any more assassins decide to make an appearance.”

Whoever had sicced the attack demons on us had known when we’d cross through the portal.
He, she, it, or whatever was one step ahead of us. I hoped we could catch up before
it was too late.

Chapter Twelve

I recuperated with Jax and Adam in the demon lair over a frenetic martial arts movie
and Chinese food while Ewan debriefed with Malthus. I watched the black-clad Ninjas
bound off buildings and fly through treetops in surreal, fantastic slow motion and
laughed at the scenes that seemed more real to me than the one I’d just survived in
the demon realm.

When the movie ended, I loathed moving off the couch. Moving meant acknowledging reality,
however warped it’d become, and reality meant my Tuesday class. I’m forever going
to associate that class with fae and dead witches.

I pushed myself up. “I gotta go.” I turned to Adam. “Can you come by my place this
evening? I should be home by five.”

“We gonna spend some quality necromancer-revenant time together? Do our part for inter-afterlife
relations?”

I dug into my last reserve of patience. “Look. I know this is hard for you. I’m trying
the best I can under the circumstances.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be more cheerful. Happy about the fact that I was reanimated against
my will.” His words slapped me. Jax kept a wary eye trained on Adam, his body tensed.
Maybe quality time was a bad idea.

Adam sunk deeper into the couch. “Sorry.” His tone wasn’t sorry. It was still pretty
angry.

“I’ll see you later.”

I ran into Ewan in the foyer. He’d changed into loose jeans and a T-shirt. Thank God.
I couldn’t cope with more bared-Ewan-chest right now.

“How’s Adam?” he asked.

“He hates me. I don’t blame him, but it’s not a good thing.” I wanted to hold Ewan’s
hand again and eat hot dogs.

“You’ll figure this out.” He rubbed my chin with his thumb, catching my lip in a subtle
caress.

I ignored the soft tremble of my lips at his touch. “He’s coming over to my place
later so we can talk.”

He pulled his hand away and rubbed his neck. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“I’m figuring it out. If I can’t spend time with him and exert some level of control,
then I’m not much of a necromancer.”

“He needs more time to get used to his situation, and you need time to rest and gather
your strength so when his urges surface, you can quell them with your power.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. “It’s been less than a day since I reanimated
him, too soon for those urges, plus we don’t have time.” And whether I wanted to admit
it or not, I was curious about my revenant and wanted to get to know him better.

Ewan eyed me from lowered lashes, then nodded more to himself than me. “Call me later.”

I trotted down the steps to the street, exhausted and sulking, the high from raising
Adam having worn off. I’d convinced myself I was going to leave this brave new supe
world behind once we found Cael or whoever’s behind the murders, but the fishing line
had tangled around me. I’d used my power twice. Each time grew easier, less painful,
didn’t leave new shoe blisters on my ankles. It tempted me now. The fishing line tugged,
tightened, urged. It whispered power spheres.

And I listened.

* * * *

I found Adam waiting on my doorstep when I got home from class. Teaching had sapped
what little energy lingered after raising him. He followed me to the kitchen where
I poured myself some water. He fingered a glass, his back to me. Revenants, like vampires,
didn’t drink or eat food. They feed off the necro’s power. When that’s not enough,
they resort to the protein rich zombie diet, and I thought that perhaps Ewan had been
right. I needed to rest.

He wore a hoodie with a cartoon picture of what was supposed to be a zombie holding
a sign with the words,
Zombies
are
were people too
. Cute.

“Where’d you get the hoodie?” I asked.

“You like it?” He turned around smiling. “I figured I should do my part for my people
while I can.”

“You have got to be kidding me. From reluctant revenant to a champion of the reanimated.”

“Why fight it when I can have fun with this? Embracing my inner zombie has improved
my disposition.”

“Except you’re not a zombie,” I said dryly.

“Revenant, uber-zombie, call me what you will.” He spread his hands out in front of
him, palms outward.

“If it stops the constant glares thrown my way, then power to the zombies . . . I
guess.” I shook my head. “So back to my first question?”

His blank eyes lit up. “The hoodie, right. That’s the interesting part. On the way
here, I went into one of the little boutique stores that sells funky stuff and saw
the hoodie. Naturally, I had to posses it, so I put it on and walked out.”

“Great. I raised a shoplifting revenant.”

He shrugged. “I’m dead. Who cares about moral ambiguities? So back to the story. I
told the store clerk that I’d worn it into the store, and what a coincidence that
he had the very same hoodie on sale. I voiced the spell and pushed the command into
his mind, and he didn’t question it. Admittedly, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the
shed, making the manipulation easier.”

“You influenced his mind,” I said, trying to maintain my calm, but feeling the fear
rising within me.

“Yeah. It was one of my human witch spells.”

“So you brought that spell back with you.”

“I think you brought it back with me.”

Shit. The diagram. Why didn’t the first necromancer compile a manual with a list of
cautions? Don’t raise a supernatural revenant, don’t construct a ritual that rouses
a witch’s mind control spells—all the rules I’ve broken.

“Look, you’re supposed to do what I say, right?” I asked. He narrowed his eyes and
nodded. “So don’t mind control anyone for now.” He turned his back to me, fingered
the glass, and muttered something about ruining his fun.

I strode over to him and tugged on his hood. “Come with me to the Tenderloin. I want
to get some sticky buns.”

He turned, and I released his hood. “You like sticky buns?”

“A guilty pleasure. I also want to buy some lemon grass. You can help me cook some
Thai food.”

He tapped his fingers on the counter, his expression doubtful. “You know how to cook
Thai food?”

“My grandmother traveled to Asia and taught me some recipes she learned.”

“She traveled a lot?” he asked.

I nodded. “She thought visiting exotic places would reveal all the dark necromancer
secrets.”

“Did they?”

I didn’t know. In the wee hours, I’d find Cora staring out the front room window,
awakened from a nightmare brought on by the memories and thoughts transmitted to her
from the corpses she’d reanimated. Unlike mindless zombies, reanimated corpses and
revenants retain their life memories. Problem is the memories often contain details
and images of the car wreck or grisly attack that killed the person. I never got more
than fleeting thoughts, like déjà vu, but I stocked my mind with scenes from movies
to block out the trespassing memories of the corpses.

I didn’t know if Cora had held dark necromancer secrets, but I knew she’d held the
dark secrets of the dead. I looked down at the floor. “Something got her killed.”
I grabbed his arm and led him down the hall. “Come on, this is the first time I’ve
felt like cooking since she died.”

“Okay, but gotta check on something first. Where’s the bathroom?”

“Up the stairs. First door on the right,” I said without thinking.

“You don’t have a bathroom downstairs?”

Without turning my head, I stopped and pointed at a door to the side of the staircase.
Adam opened it. I moved farther down the hall, but could see him in front of the mirror
tugging at his eyelids and wetting them with eye drops. “My eyes have been super dry.
Is this some kind of revenant affliction?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we can find a doctor that specializes in treating the undead.”

“Your sarcasm is unappreciated.” He finished his eye examination and glanced around.
“Don’t you ever use this bathroom? You could eat dinner off the floor.”

“Let’s go. Don’t forget to close that door.” My words clipped the air, rushing out
to catch up with my feet already at the exit.

Out on the street Adam asked if we could stop by his place to get some clothes. The
last thing I wanted to do was go to Adam’s place, just like the last thing I’d wanted
was to find his body, but a quick visit couldn’t hurt, I guessed.

“I’ll wait here,” I said when we arrived at his apartment.

“All right. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

I wandered into the convenience store on the ground floor of his building and flipped
through some magazines. A few minutes turned into fifteen. I put the magazine down,
ignored the glare from the clerk, and went outside. I felt a tug on the bond. Weird.
I was still getting used to the sensation, like having a cast over a broken arm or
leg, except this cast bound my chest.

I entered his building and walked up the steps. The door to his apartment opened by
itself.

“I figured the necro wouldn’t be far behind.”

Sybil wasn’t wearing a tight skirt this time, but her black jeans didn’t leave much
to the imagination. “You coming in?” she asked.

I was starting to believe that Adam’s apartment was a gateway to Shitsville.

She’d apparently made herself at home on his couch, legs crossed, and arm resting
along the back. He was leaning against the windowsill at the bottom of the stairs
that led to his bedroom.

I searched Adam’s eyes before sitting on a step midway up the staircase. He ignored
me, keeping his eyes fixed on Sybil. Witches were super-attuned to body language,
always assessing others for a telltale whisper or flick of the hand that would signal
the start of a spell.

“You’re not supposed to be around Adam,” I told her.

“Just because you raised a supernatural revenant, don’t think you’ve gained some kind
of status in the community. You’re still nothing.”

It took a moment for me to recover from the sting of her insult. I pursed my lips
and said with my best dose of arrogance, “Then you have . . . nothing to fear.”

My words hit their target, and Sybil uncrossed her legs and sat upright.

“The coven has the book,” Adam broke in. “This is pointless.”

“You have the spells here.” Sybil tapped her forehead with one finger.

“I’m not going to tell you the spells.”

“I can clear your name.”

I saw the indecision twist his face, cloud his vision. Sybil smiled, her smugness
showing through her pursed lips.

“I can’t believe you’re okay with being made a revenant and helping the very people
who expelled you from the coven,” she said.

“I know you killed Jenna. Maybe the coven would be interested in that information,”
he said.

“The coven investigated her death and ruled it assisted suicide.” She fisted her hand
in front of her and rubbed her manicured nails with her thumb. “You can’t prove otherwise.
Plus who’s going to listen to a dead man?”

His anger seared me, but it wasn’t anger at Sybil. It was anger at his own lack of
power, his inability to right a wrong. I still didn’t understand the depth of his
despair, but I felt it, pure and raw, tearing at my insides. No wonder he’d been angry
at being awakened from death. Does he feel this every day?

“Fuck you,” he said. Then he doubled over, his pain pummeling me through the bond.
“She’s trying to bind me,” he said, words forced through clenched teeth.

Her spell reached out to me, wrapping me inside and out. Adam pulled at our bond,
seeking more power to fight her. I channeled power to him, squeezing it out. I grabbed
the stair rail, guiding myself to the floor where I curled around my stomach. He’d
sucked so much power that I felt as if my body had imploded. It was almost too much.

I slapped my cheeks to keep from fainting, using the pain to dispel the onset of panic.
My body shook, a crazy shake that rattled my eyeballs. Adam’s shout was followed by
a crash.

“Sorry. Are you okay?” Adam crouched beside me. He held a miniature surfboard carved
from wood and painted in red and black stripes. His charm?

I gasped as if I’d been holding my breath underwater for way too long. “What was that?”

“I used a deflection spell, and she knocked over my table. Made a mess, but at least
she’s gone.”

I laughed and couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop, letting the laughter loosen my tight
nerves.

“What?” he asked.

I waved my hand at his messy apartment. “She made a mess? Really?”

After a few more breaths, some of my strength returned. “What’s Sybil’s obsession
with you?”

“She wants some of my spells.”

“The mind control ones?”

“Kara told you?”

I nodded and opened my mouth to ask him about Jenna when he cut me off. “I don’t want
to talk about it. Just leave it alone.” He tightened his grip on the surfboard.