The Necromancer's Seduction

by Mimi Sebastian

He stood and walked over, taking my hand in a firm shake. He smiled. “I’m used to that look.”

  I’m not even going to try to understand how a wolf can reside within a priest. As if reading my thoughts, he said, “Even the beasts need to confess.” He returned to straddle his chair. Wow, did Cora ever meet this guy? She would have loved him.

  “My dear, please sit down,” Malthus said.

  I took the edge of the antique baroque chair next to Kara and squeezed my knees together.

  “Adam was not the first supernatural murdered,” he said, not mincing words.

  Anger flared and heated my face. Kara looked away at the glare I leveled at her. Oh, hell. I pushed the anger down. This wasn’t her fault. But supe murders? Why hadn’t anyone told me until now?

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Adam makes three. A demon fell victim before him.” He folded his arms in front of his chest. “I’m aware of your reluctance to participate in our affairs and have always respected your wishes. Normally, we’d involve your grandmother.”

  I nodded and bit my lower lip. “Wait. That’s only two.”

  “I also believe your grandmother’s death is related.”

  His words jerked my head up. “What?”

  I pressed my palms against the thick cushion of the chair and lifted an inch, my body ready to pop.

  Malthus studied me. He spoke as if choosing his words with care, almost hesitant. “The car accident was not an accident.”

  “What about the police report?” I questioned in a sharp tone.

  Cora had been visiting a friend in New York, driving upstate at night. The police found her rental car down a ravine, compressed like an accordion. They didn’t find evidence to explain the accident. Her blood tested clean. No additional tire marks on the road. They theorized she fell asleep at the wheel. A common occurrence on that stretch of road, they’d said. Bullshit, I’d said. Cora loved singing to music while driving. The blaring sounds always kept me from dozing and sure as shit kept her awake.

  I’d traveled to the crash site seeking another explanation, something to allay my bafflement at the second tragedy to hit my family. I’m not sure what answers I expected to find on that road, but I’d come away with no reason to think she’d fallen victim to some nefarious plot.

  “Are you sure?” I asked Malthus, settling back on the chair’s edge, deflated.

  “Absolutely. Don’t tell me you bought that business about sleeping at the wheel.”

  I mulled over his words, finding myself speechless. Since her death, I’ve been looking over my shoulder, waiting for the strike. All the women in my family had suffered strange, untimely deaths, and now someone had killed my grandmother. I couldn’t help thinking I could have prevented it.

  Malthus reached for his crystal glass, taking a slow sip of an amber liquid—whiskey.

  “So what’s your theory?” I asked.

  “We believe a supernatural killed your grandmother and the others.”

  “How?”

  “We detected arcane residue on the bodies, evidence that some sort of ritual was attempted on the corpse.”

  The silence in the room pounded my chest. The only supes that perform rituals on dead bodies and leave arcane residue are witches and—fuck—necromancers.

  Malthus stared into his glass as if guessing my thoughts.

  “You think another necromancer might be responsible?” My hands fluttered. “The killer was trying to make supernatural zombies?”

  “Possibly, or create supernatural revenants.”

  I clasped my throat. “I—Cora never mentioned other necros in San Francisco.”

  “We’re not aware of any other necros either,” Julian said.

  I focused on a stained glass window on the opposite wall depicting aberrant winged creatures far from anything found in this realm. I rubbed my hands, remembering the feel of the gargoyle when a chill gripped my spine. “You don’t think I . . .?”

  I darted my gaze around the room. Now would be a good time for someone to voice a vehement denial, but enough seconds passed to make me nervous.

  “We didn’t ask you here to accuse you.” Brandon’s voice calmed the undercurrents of power swirling in the room, easing my chill. I shifted back into the armchair. He sought my eyes, sympathy in his expression. I’m not Catholic or any religion, but I must go to confession one of these days.

  “Don’t worry,” Kara said. “Most likely we’ll find out it was Mr. Green in the billiard room with the candlestick.”

  Brandon chuckled, clasped his hands behind his head, and leaned back in his chair, impervious to Malthus’s pinched face. “You have a billiard room, Malthus?”

  I scanned the tense faces in the room, thinking the scene did remind me of a whodunit movie. A thunder strike and a French maid would complete the picture.

  “So why am I here?” I asked.

  “We think Adam might have information, maybe even the identity of the killer. It’s no coincidence that you and Kara encountered an unknown visitor at Adam’s apartment.”

  The breath caught in my throat. “You want me to raise him.”

  Kara gasped, and her only-the-devil-cares façade collapsed. I was relieved she didn’t know about Malthus’s plan to raise Adam. I would have been more than a little peeved, especially after she neglected to inform me about the other deaths.

  “That is one option,” he said. “A better one is to make him a revenant.”

  The greens, blues and yellows of the stained glass merged into a quivering, unfocused blur. At some point during the conversation, Julian had slid off his chair and returned to slip a drink into my hand. I sipped on the whiskey, letting the spicy liquid numb my jangled nerves.

  “You want me to create a supernatural revenant to help you find out who is killing other supes?” I almost laughed the words.

  Cora had beat me over the head with warnings against raising a revenant, knowing the dangers in reanimating a corpse equally intelligent in death as in life. Unlike zombies, revenants awaken with their souls restored. They appear normal—no slouching gait or single-minded purpose. On the other hand, a zombie’s intelligence and physical condition varied, depending on the necromancer’s strength.

  Revenants are usually pissed at the necro who wrestles them from the grave and jump at the chance to kill him or her. The idea of creating a supernatural revenant was one that resided in some dark chamber of a Lovecraft nightmare.

  “You have to consult with the coven,” Kara said, recovered from her previous lapse and back into command mode.

  “I’m aware of the codes, and I spoke to Matilda. She agreed,” Malthus said.

  I’m sure not without a fair amount of protest. I looked from Kara’s tight lips to Malthus’s unaffected posture. Matilda was the coven Wiseacre, or leader, elected by the witches to serve a five-year term. She was no pushover, but Malthus served his authority like the whiskey he drank—smooth with a spicy aftertaste. He didn’t obtain his position among the demons without knowing how to manipulate others.

  “The vampires aren’t going to be happy we left them out of our little party,” Julian said, fingering his manicured nails.

  “I’ll deal with Dominic,” Malthus said. He didn’t sound worried about offending the vampires’ sensibilities. Getting the supes together was worse than throwing a bunch of beta fish in a bowl. I’m surprised the truce between them has lasted this long, needing but a tap to knock the frothing kettle over. But the supes don’t want to rile the masses, causing them to break out the pitchforks . . . except now they’d come at us with incendiary blogs, Tweets, and Facebook posts by self-proclaimed supernatural experts who earned their credentials watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and reading comics. I preferred the pitchforks.

  “Why not just raise him, ask him some questions, and then send him back to the endless sleep?” My voice rose a few notches.

  Necros can wake a corpse without turning it into a zombie or revenant. It’s a basic, low-level necro skill.
The corpse stays reanimated for a few moments, enough time to extract the information you need. Simple. Clean. No decomposing bodies running amuck in the city.

  “We’re talking about a supernatural revenant,” I continued. “We’d be playing by an entirely different set of rules.” Acid scalded my tongue at the thought of mastering a bond with a supe revenant. “I don’t understand why we can’t just wake him.”

  “Trust us, we’ve already considered that option.”

  I looked up at the sound of Ewan’s voice. Trust and demon in the same sentence? He shifted to face me. I managed to avoid staring at his body, but failed at shutting out his husky voice that slipped under my skin and warmed the space between my thighs.

  “We don’t want a supe revenant running around any more than you want to make one. We’re aware of the danger, but we need Adam alive, able to think and reason until we figure out the identity of the killer,” he said.

  “What if he doesn’t know?” I asked.

  “We can tap other memories to help our investigation.” His eyes never left my face, the flashes of gold hypnotizing me.

  I rested my forehead on my fingers. “Okay, say we absolutely need Adam the revenant.” I shook my head. “What makes you think I’m capable of creating him? Only the more powerful necromancers can create human revenants, much less a supernatural one. I’ve never heard of a necro that’s done it.”

  “Your mother raised a supernatural revenant,” Malthus said. “—a werewolf.” The room grew still. I regarded him, my eyes wide.

  “No one but the Seattle wolf pack has known until now,” he added, his voice perfectly mild, as if he hadn’t just revealed a long-kept secret.

  I plopped my glass on the side table hard enough to slosh some of the whiskey onto the stained wood. “Can you lay out all your cards? Any other secrets about my life you need to tell me?”

  He blinked a few times, then gazed past me at the fireplace. “No.”

  I felt like Malthus had squeezed my head between two small presses, and each word from him twisted the cranks a notch. I reached for my glass and gulped down some whiskey. I was not a fan of whiskey, dammit. My non-inner demons were driving me to drink.

  “How do you know my mom raised a supernatural revenant?” I finally asked.

  Malthus walked over to me, a small book in his hand. “Your grandmother’s journal. She recorded her actions as a necromancer, her knowledge, her ideas. I think she ultimately wanted you to have it, but was conflicted about giving you all this knowledge. A disservice to you, in my opinion.”

  My hand shook as I grasped the worn edge of the small book.

  “I believe you’ll find an account of when your mother raised the revenant. Your grandmother helped her.” Malthus paused. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I know this is a lot of information to absorb at once.”

  “Ya think?” I rubbed my forehead, trying to ease the pressure. “How do you have this?”

  He stared at the journal in my hand, his eyelids stiff. “She wanted me to safeguard it. I wouldn’t ask you to perform this task if I didn’t think raising Adam was important or if you weren’t capable.”

  I hated the wariness in his eyes, as if he were coaxing a skittish rabbit. But even more I hated that he was right to employ caution, to understand my own lack of faith in my supernatural ability.

  My head seemed to drift around me in a haze. I glanced at the whiskey in my hand. That wasn’t helping. “A supe’s body and residual soul are stronger than a normal person’s, more difficult to control. It takes a powerful, knowledgeable necromancer to raise and contain such a revenant without dying. They literally feed off the necro’s power, and if the necro doesn’t have enough to sustain it . . .” I broke off, not wanting to explore that thought further.

  “I understand the risk involved. This is not a frivolous request. If your grandmother were alive . . .”

  “Yes, I know.” I sighed. “Granny to the rescue.” I stared at the journal. “It’s not only about the risk. I have moral issues about raising zombies and revenants.”

  Malthus regarded me, his disinterest in my moral quandaries evident with each careful blink of his eyes. I wished Cora was alive so I could watch the sparks bounce between her and Malthus. They’re so different. She was warm and spunky. He’s overbearing.

  I finished off my drink. Most likely I wouldn’t be able to make a revenant, and none of this would matter.

  “I need a day or two to think it over,” I said.

  He swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Fair enough, but bear in mind, we risk more supernatural deaths if we wait too long.”

  He raised his hand in front of him, his brow furrowed. He turned to Ewan. “The portal.”

  Ewan met his gaze, and the two demons communicated without words. Ewan moved off the stool and strode towards the door, his shoulders stiff.

  Malthus controls the portal linking the human and demon realms. I never quite understood how it worked, only that demons could access it from different parts of our world. Cora had explained the portal to me when I was a kid, describing it like a gateway to fairyland. I spent my entire childhood begging her to take me through the fairy door, except it didn’t lead to a shiny fairyland. I’m sure she regretted ever opening her mouth about it.

  “Can you get me some coffee while you’re at it?” Julian asked Ewan as he passed, his mouth twisted in a smirk.

  Ewan halted and flexed his hand closest to Julian’s head, letting his finger joints crack. Malthus observed the exchange. After a few more tense moments, Ewan left the room. Malthus turned his back to us and made a call on his cell, speaking in the demon tongue. I haven’t heard the entrancing demon language spoken in years, musical but offset by sharp accents like percussion over a smooth bossa nova.

  Jax leaned close to Julian. “Becoming a council member has given you courage. Right now, I’d be hoping Ewan forgets your little jab so when he finally—” He paused, darting his eyes to me then back to Julian, then smiled—a smile far removed from any happy thought. “Of course, we all know he won’t—forget.”

  Ewan returned, without coffee, expression grave. “An unauthorized denizen of the demon realm has breached the portal.”

  * * * *

  I wrinkled my nose at the scent of wet, dirty city streets that hung in the air after the rainfall. Kara’s boots splashed the puddles behind me as I marched to the bus stop. She caught up to me, and we walked a couple of blocks in silence.

  She finally spoke. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about the other death. I had no idea Adam was next on the kill list. I honestly thought we’d retrieve the spell book and leave.”

  “I don’t blame you.” I placed my hands on top of my head, twining my fingers. “I feel like I just found out I was adopted. Who knows, maybe that’s next.” I dropped my hands to my sides. “So my grandmother was murdered.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about that or about your mom raising a revenant.”

  I smiled a thin smile that bore only a touch of humor. “Neither did I.”

  Cora had immersed herself in supe affairs while I hid out at the university, ignoring her middle of the night phone conversations and meetings behind closed doors. My lungs tightened. I emitted a low curse for my self-righteous seclusion. Grandmothers aren’t supposed to get killed. They were supposed to ease into death, occupied with knitting sweaters dotted with flowers and hearts and telling bedtime stories. Except Cora never knitted, and her bedtime stories often gave me nightmares.

  “Don’t blame yourself.”

  I fixed my gaze on the little rainbows formed by the oil and water splattered on the sidewalk. “Malthus knows a lot more than he’s letting on.”

  She snorted. “What’s new?”

  I ignored her, too preoccupied to respond. If I made Adam a revenant, I’d be thrust back into the supe world, like it or not. My fingers twitched. And thrust into Ewan’s company, more like it than not. Despite sporadic encounters with him going back a few years, the only thing I knew about
him was his effect on me.

  “Have you ever noticed Ewan’s skin glowing or shining?” I asked.

  She barked her laughter. “Wow, you have it bad for all dark and gorgeous.”

  “Kara, please, have you?”

  She continued to snigger. “No, but then I’m not smitten with him.”

  “I’m not smitten. What kind of demon is Ewan . . . and Malthus for that matter?”

  “Ewan and Malthus don’t share that kind of information with us mere mortal supernaturals. Their power is intense, though. It literally seeps out of their pores.” Her eyes shone. “You’d like to feel Ewan’s power.”

  “Can you be serious?” I snapped at her in my uppity professor tone, as she liked to call it.

  She tightened her jaw, freezing her instinct to snap back.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not able to handle the teasing banter right now.”

  She gave me a small nod of understanding.

  “What about Jax?” I asked in a more calm, controlled voice.

  “Jax is a Yasha demon or flesh eater.”

  “Flesh eater? He seems so . . . unbloody.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Jax’s great. He doesn’t have human four-course meals or anything. He’s more like a vampire, drinks blood.” She paused. “What did you think about him?” She fingered her necklace, acting absorbed in watching the cars pass, as if my response didn’t matter. She must really like him.

  “Hot bod —” I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. I haven’t spent quality time with Jax. He seemed easygoing.”

  Her gaze dropped to the sidewalk. “Too easygoing. You know, during the meeting, Ewan definitely had his eye on you.”

  My face flushed. “I have a lot to think about. This meeting was crazy. Sex with a demon is not my priority.”

  “Sucks for you.”

  “You think the portal breach is related to the deaths?”

  “I don’t know, but Malthus better get a handle on it before the other supes challenge the demons’ authority over the portal.” Kara grabbed my arm, stopping me, and I angled my body to face her.

  “I’m the first to cheer at the idea of you joining our ranks and helping us find out who’s killing supes, but don’t let Malthus bully you like he evidently bullied Matilda,” she said.