by Jen Kirchner
“I'm not interested in Cody Springer. At all.”
“Who are you interested in, then?”
“You. I thought that was obvious.”
No answer. He just gave me a little nod, and that was it.
Once we reached the Rochester city limits, Mikelis looked so deep in thought that I gave up talking altogether. It was clear from the scenery that we were heading back to my house. I assumed he would drop me off and we’d go our separate ways. I was a little sad and a little angry but too stubborn to say anything about it. I barely even looked at him.
When we were two blocks from my house, I bent down and grabbed my purse, searching for my keys. Suddenly I was thrown back, then forward, then back again. I realized Mikelis was pumping the brakes. He mumbled a word under his breath that I didn't know. It sounded like a curse. He hit the gas, turned the left signal on, and whipped the car around.
“What's going on?” I asked. “Aren't you taking me home?”
His jaw tightened for a few seconds in a frustrated grimace, then he said, “I need to do something first, and I really shouldn't leave you alone in the house.” He sounded annoyed, and I took it to mean I was a major inconvenience.
“You aren’t obligated to keep me with you,” I snapped. “Marcus placed new spells around the house, and Luucas added one too. I’ll be fine on my own.”
“It's enough protection against most people,” he said. “It’s not enough against Ruairí.”
I sat back in the seat and folded my arms across my chest. “Okay, so where are we going?”
He hesitated. His jaw worked a little bit before answering. “I got out of bed and went directly to meet you this morning. I didn't shower, and The Fathers are going to be here…” His voice trailed off into awkward silence.
A thrill ran through me and tingled in my toes: Mikelis was nervous because he was taking me to his apartment. I sat on the edge of my seat for the rest of the drive.
We pulled into the parking lot of the Richmond Meadows apartments and parked in a covered spot facing the rear building. He shut the car off but didn’t immediately get out. He slowly removed the keys from the ignition and then checked his pockets. It seemed to me he was stalling.
Mikelis had trespassed in every house and apartment I had lived in since college, and I had never once been inside his. If he thought I was going to linger long enough for him to change his mind, he was crazy. I grabbed my purse and jumped out before he could stop me.
He climbed out of the car and walked past me to the steps. I followed him to the building and down the long, dim hallway to the last door on the right. There was no number on the door, though I still would have known it was his—a heavy tangle of necromancer spells was wrapped around the apartment and cluttered onto the door like a swarm of black serpents.
He fumbled with the keys a bit and unlocked the deadbolt, but he paused before opening the door. He turned to me with a nervous glint in his eye. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to having company.”
I believed that. I bet every immortal that lived in this building was considered brave just for sleeping in close proximity.
“Listen, Mikelis,” I said, pointing at the door, “I’m going in, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Absolutely.”
His eyes met mine. “You aren’t in my access spell.”
I smiled, pulled off my own magical fingerprint with a slight flickering of my fingers, and inserted it neatly into his access spell. A loud clang echoed in the hall.
“I am now.”
I grabbed the door handle, twisted it, and shoved the door open with my hip. The lights were off inside Mikelis’s apartment, so I could only see by the dim light of the hall. Mikelis’s head cocked to the side as I slipped in front of him, into the apartment, and started groping for a light switch.
He shut the door behind us, eliminating the little light that I had. I heard a set of keys tossed onto a table and then a light turned on above me. I found myself standing in a small entry that separated a kitchenette and a large living area. A row of hooks was attached to the wall by the door. Mikelis hung up his jacket and hat and offered to hang my things as well. I gave him my purse and coat.
“I’d tell you to make yourself at home, but I think you’re going to regardless.”
I smiled.
Mikelis shook his head at me. “I’ll be just a few minutes.”
“Take your time.”
Mikelis walked across the living area and down a hall. He turned into the first door on the left. A couple of minutes later, I heard a shower running.
I looked around. The living room was tidy and everything was a neutral shade. The couch looked fairly new, at least in immortal terms. By the style, I guessed it had been bought in the last decade. A couple of bookshelves stood against the wall and a comfortable recliner had been positioned in front of them. The television was a small, heavy box from the 1980s. Only one piece of art hung on the wall. It depicted an ocean scene.
The kitchenette was sparse. The only appliances were the refrigerator, stocked only with water; a small, wall-mounted microwave; and a coffee maker. An old laptop and yesterday’s Democrat & Chronicle newspaper sat on a small dining room table.
I stepped into the hall. I assumed the closed door Mikelis had gone through led to his bedroom. The next door revealed a spare bedroom that looked as if it had just been cleaned out. It must have been the room Luucas used while he was trying to get back on his feet. At the end of the hall was another bathroom and, opposite to that, a dark room without windows. I found a switch, but it wasn’t responding. It was so dark inside that I was afraid to wander around looking for a lamp or a window, so I just turned around and started to close the door behind me.
Necromancer!
The mental voice brought me to an immediate halt. No wonder the room was dark; it was where Mikelis kept his knives.
I didn’t answer quickly enough, causing the knives to get a little stirred up. A second one started calling for me.
Necromancer! We can teach you things!
Oh boy.
“Hey,” I said, my voice matching their level of excitement. “Who wants to go for a ride in the garbage disposal? You know, it’s the ugly metal thing that spins real fast.”
Instant silence.
“No?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
Still no answer.
I shrugged at the dark room. “Suit yourselves.”
I turned around. Mikelis was standing at the opposite end of the hall, in his now-open doorway, eyeing me carefully. He had finished with his shower and was dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a navy blue t-shirt, though his short, dark hair was still damp and spiky from being vigorously towel-dried.
“I don’t have a garbage disposal. Even if I did, it wouldn’t damage the knives. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, but they hate the spinning.”
He blinked hard. “You’re kidding.”
“They’ll destroy your garbage disposal, but when you get fed up, it’s completely worth it.”
He walked down to where I was standing and leaned a shoulder against the door frame. “You treat your knives like people.”
“That’s because they are. Deranged people.”
He glanced inside the room and said, “Deranged is right.”
If I had legs, I’d make you regret that comment.
Mikelis pulled the door halfway closed to give us a little privacy.
“Thanks for coming with me today,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t mind spending time with you.” He leaned a little closer, driving my pulse up. His eyes flickered to my mouth. I waited for something to happen, but he made no other move.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you going to kiss me or what?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“You had no problem last night.”
“The situation was smoother. The transi
tion here isn’t as easy to navigate.”
“How about if I kiss you first? When was the last time someone just grabbed you?”
He shook his head. “The last person to grab me was Ruairí O’Bryne.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It wasn’t. I killed his brother, he murdered my parents, my three brothers, and my sister, and then Luucas and I killed every friend of his that we could find.”
Yikes. “Out of curiosity, how many people did you two kill?”
“We lost count after 113.”
“Okay, let’s forget about that plan. What if we grab each other at the same time?”
He laughed. “What?”
“We’ll go on the count of three.”
Somehow, that plan made sense. He got into a ready stance, one foot slightly in front of the other, with his hands ready to reach for me. I did the same.
“Okay,” I said. “One... two... three.”
We reached for each other. One hand slipped around my waist, and the other cupped my cheek, tilting my face up. I slipped one arm around his waist and the other over his shoulder so my fingers could play with the damp ends of his hair. As our lips pressed together, he pulled me against his chest. My heart fluttered.
In the back of my mind, I detected mental confusion. The knives didn’t understand what was happening. A foreign thought broke into my head.
Mikelis? Ah hem. AH HEM!
I do not recall this being the proper way to kill another necromancer.
Without pausing our embrace, Mikelis released my waist and pulled the door shut, throwing his knives into panic. They thought I was doing terrible things to Mikelis and started shouting out instructions on how to escape my evil clutches.
Put her in a headlock!
Pile driver! Pile driver!
Our kiss broke. I was laughing too hard to continue.
Mikelis tried to explain. “I’m sorry. Last night, I let my knives watch TV like yours do. It was the first time I had tried it. I put them in the living room with a crime show on, but when I came back, they had been watching wrestling for three hours.”
I laughed harder and fell against the wall, struggling to breathe. “I’m sorry,” I tried to say.
“Don’t be. It’s actually an improvement over what they used to shout.” He opened the door, looked inside the room, and told the knives, “We’re both okay.”
The shouting stopped, and I felt their disappointment.
I suppose there’s always the overtime round…
I had to admit, I liked the sound of that. “You only have the two knives? That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“I don’t need more than two. Diaco has three, but you probably knew that. It will be a long time before I need instruction from a third.” He shut the door again and we walked back to the living room.
“You mean there’s a system to it?”
“Most necromancers never get past the instruction of their first knife. The Change is required to get anywhere near the powers of the third.” He helped me with my jacket before putting on his hat. “I’m surprised no one has ever talked to you about this.”
“I chose not to talk about it with my dad, but I talk to Grandpa and Moons. Moons was actually the one who encouraged me to keep everything private. Whenever I show them what I’ve done, they never look shocked or surprised.”
“Have they seen your knives?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Until I went through your panic room, I had only seen Stubby and Mouth,” he said. “You have another that looks unlike any knife I’ve seen—and I’ve seen a lot.”
“Rambo? It looks normal to me.”
“A gigantic, jagged knife that speaks in monotone? That knife makes me nervous.”
I found that a little surprising, but I didn’t think it was cause for alarm or conspiracy. “What are you implying?”
“That The Fathers know something you don’t.”
I laughed. “I think you’re just curious about what I’ve been doing.”
“Maybe.” He opened the door. “Do you need help cleaning your laboratory before The Fathers arrive?”
“Oh, you’re definitely going to clean. Don’t even think of trying to get out of it.”
TWENTY
The panic room and lab took forever to clean up, mostly because Mikelis kept asking me about the panic room’s contents, further cementing the idea that my necromancy was a little on the strange side. We tried asking the knives about it but they just yelled at us for blocking the television.
I was giving the floor a final sweep and Mikelis was negotiating with the knives on tonight’s DVD when I heard the gate buzzer go off: Grandpa and Moons had arrived. Their fingerprints hadn’t been added to my new access spell and they couldn’t get in.
I ran upstairs and out to the front porch. I stood on my tiptoes, barely able to see the top of a silver Honda Accord. I hopped up and down, waving my hands around, until I could finally grab each of their fingerprints and insert them into the access spell. Then I leaned back inside the house and opened the gate. The car drove up and parked behind Mikelis’s.
The driver’s door opened and a tall, black man stepped out. He wore a black wool coat that fell mid-thigh over neatly pressed gray trousers. Nice shoes. The air around him shimmered like heat radiating from pavement in the height of summer, his unnatural, prolonged existence in conflict with the natural world. I had never seen the effect on other immortals. The man was technically dead, which was why I could look at him and instantly know all of his important information: he was precisely 3,872 years old and, according to his magical fingerprint, his name was Asharniuset. Of course, I had never called him that.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I said, and gave him a big hug.
He kissed my cheek and hugged me back gently, being careful not to crush me. “Hello, Sweetheart! You look wonderful.”
“Thanks. So do you.”
As we exchanged our happy greeting, a second black man stood up from the car. He had the same shimmering aura that distorted the world around him, but he was shorter and his skin was a couple of shades lighter. Though he was a few years younger than Grandpa, they both had died on the same date and at almost exactly the same minute. The most distracting difference between the two was their attire: Moons wore a banana-colored jogging suit with vibrant blue sneakers. A metallic fish skeleton hung from one ear. It was a clip-on. Moons saw my reaction to his appearance and laughed.
“Who else saw you dressed like this, Moons?”
He smiled knowingly and gave me a gentle hug. “Hopefully everyone.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you two hear about the concilium?”
They answered simultaneously. “Yes.”
“If they see Moons dressed like that, you’ll probably be excused from the meeting.”
“My scheme is working, then!”
Grandpa’s expression sombered. “We also heard about the Yeng Fuling Spell.”
I winced. “You talked to Luucas?”
“He met us at the airport to provide the standard pomp and circumstance. He also updated us on everything that has happened since we spoke last night. The situation has become much more serious.”
“Which part?” I asked. “Ruairí O’Bryne or the Styx?”
“Both.”
I turned and led them into the house. “I’m okay. Mikelis stayed with me the whole day and we never saw Ruairí. As for the Styx, Mikelis helped me clean up the lab and now we’re ready to investigate.”
As we neared the lab, I could hear that an argument had started between Mikelis and the knives.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Mikelis emerged from the panic room holding a DVD. “Apparently, we’re trying to decide whether we should stab someone or watch a movie.”
“Which one’s winning?”
“The movie.”
Moons lifted both eyebrows. “That is good news for me.”
“I’m assuming you two have a
lready met Mikelis,” I said.
“Never formally,” Moons said.
I stood aside and watched a proper immortal greeting ensue. Moons and Mikelis approached one another, stood a foot apart, and stared. After a few seconds, they both nodded, and Moons stepped aside. Then it was Grandpa’s turn. They never touched; they just looked. I had no idea what the transaction meant. I knew something was going on, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Grandpa saw me studying the exchange and smiled. “One day, you will understand. Should we get started?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but we don’t know where to start.”
Grandpa rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Voodoo spells must be attached to an object when cast. They cannot exist on their own, unlike channel magic. Whatever this spell is attached to, I would assume Ruairí keeps it close.”
“That’s what we thought, too.”
“A spell that siphons such a large amount of power can’t go unnoticed,” Mikelis said, “especially if it’s as old as Ruairí. Considering that it regularly pulls power from The Floor, it is most likely always active, so any necromancer could feel it if we got near.”
“But we don’t even know what direction to start looking,” I said. “We can’t just start driving around looking for it, can we? It’s like a needle in a haystack.”
“We may have to resort to that,” Moons replied.
Mikelis shrugged. “Maybe I can determine something from the Styx itself. I have a lot of experience with voodoo. If you take me down to The Floor, maybe I can get some information.”
Moons and Grandpa looked interested.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I said.
“Why?” Mikelis asked. “You said it was okay for Luucas.”
“That was different. He was only down there for a few seconds, and he wasn’t poking at the Styx.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
Memories of the Styx chasing me flashed through my head. “Not down there, you don’t. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“I’ll be careful,” he assured me. “We at least have to try.”
I still didn’t like the idea, but I knew he was right. “At the first sign of trouble, we’re getting out of there, no matter what’s going on.”
