A heavy silence blanketed the crowd, and I thrived on the high of knowing I had shaken them.
“If the house burned down, then what are we looking at?” my first skeptic of the night asked.
“Well, the thing is, Volkov House was a local institution. It was the most beautiful, most luxurious and most extravagant home in town, and the mayor had had his eye on it for a long while, hoping the destitute heirs would consent to sell it.” I painted on a frown. “When he heard about the tragic deaths of the Volkovs, he set about convincing prospective buyers the property was haunted by Nester and Dina’s ghosts. The property went to auction, and with no one to bid against him, the lot and the charred skeleton of the house went for five hundred dollars.”
Someone whistled. “That was a steal.”
“Yes, it was.” I tapped the bronzed plaque marking the place as a historical landmark, one best known for the mayor who went on to be governor and pitched a hissy to have his home declared the state manse. He failed, by the way. “Mayor Rouillard, for he was at the time, rebuilt the home from partial plans found in the builder’s records and redecorated it down to the gold-tasseled couch cushions from memory.”
“Creepy.”
“Very,” I agreed with absolute conviction.
“Is this the part where you claim the locals report hearing a gunshot every night at midnight?” a thickly accented voice sliced through the crowd. “Or where you tell us passersby have seen a flaming woman pounding on the windows, trying to escape the fire?”
The gathering parted to reveal a man who wore his charcoal suit with the ease of a businessman, but violence beat beneath his skin, the same as mine. A knowing passed between us, and I felt his awareness of me as other to the tips of my toes.
The expensive threads matched his thundercloud eyes, and his wavy hair was so black the moon lent him blue highlights. He strode forward, and I leaned in, two opposite sides of a magnet caught in helpless attraction. His eyes, predator-sharp, searched my face for some unknown revelation. He invaded my personal space, crowding me against the fence. The fragrance of his skin reminded me of old coins and crushed rosemary.
“Have you been on this tour before?” The words tore from me on a ragged whisper.
Had he been in my group earlier, I would have noticed. My knees would have liquefied sooner.
“No.” His tumultuous silver gaze swept over me, lingering on my throat. “I overheard you last night.”
I palmed the side of my neck to get his eyes off my pulse. “Come again?”
“I’m Danill Volkov.” His cocky smile bared straight white teeth. No fangs in sight. “This is my home.”
Had his family name meant nothing to me, I would have recognized his breed.
Vampire.
The intoxicating pheromones he was tossing my way, his lure, had me ready to mewl for his kiss.
“I apologize.” I flattened my spine against the warming metal. “I didn’t realize you were in town.” I peered around him, aiming my parasol at a stop sign marking our next turn. “Why don’t you guys hang out over there and give me a moment alone with Mr. Volkov?”
The name raised more than a few eyebrows. Afraid they might be trespassing, or perhaps taking me too seriously about the shotgun warning, they scurried off to give us privacy.
Cricket orchestrated our tours to cause as little disruption to the locations and owners as possible, since pissing off fourth-generation locals meant stern calls from the chamber of commerce. She would not be thrilled to hear about the disruption Mr. Volkov’s appearance caused in tonight’s haunted history lesson or the fact she would lose the crowning gem of her downtown tour in the interim.
“I arrived three days ago.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and his canines sharpened before my eyes. “Perhaps I will see you here. Tomorrow night. Around the same time.”
“That’s not a great idea.” For too many reasons to count. “I’m not what you think I am.”
“Oh yes, you are.” He lowered his head, the tip of his nose trailing along my jaw. His lips moved against my skin, the warmth of his exhale puffing in my ear. “You call to me, necromancer.”
Breath hitching, I swore I felt the rasp of teeth against my skin. “I don’t practice.”
“Liar,” he breathed. “I smell the grave on your skin.”
“I should go.” Volkov might as well have been carved from stone for all the give when I pushed him. “I have a tour to, uh, guide.”
A cool smile bent his mouth as he let me escape. “I will see you again.”
“I’ll talk to my boss about removing your house from the tour.” I stumbled toward the scattered group waiting on the corner, impatience and curiosity mingling on their faces. “I don’t want to disturb you.”
“You do not disturb me.” His nostrils flared one last time. “Good night…”
The single, damning word tumbled past my lips without consulting my brain. “Grier.”
“Grier,” he repeated, possessing my name as if I had given it to him for safekeeping.
Sneakers glued to the sidewalk, I stood there while he let himself through the gate then disappeared inside his house. Only when the front door closed did the others rejoin me.
Smoothing my skirts, I faced them with a pasted-on smile meant to reassure. “Now if you’ll all follow me…”
I set off at breakneck speed to the next destination, desperate to put distance between Volkov and me.
The rest of the night passed in a different kind of blur. When I reached The Point of Hey You Made It Back, I collected my tips, waved off my group, and made a beeline for HQ. I was counting on Amelie’s teensy obsession with the new guide, who was about as theatrical as a moth-eaten curtain, to delay her.
Sure enough, I found her all but swooning over his historically inaccurate retelling of one of my favorite ghost stories.
“Come on.” I hooked my arm through hers on my way past and hauled her into the parlor where the female Haints changed. “We need to talk.”
She stumbled after me. “Boaz made me promise—”
“This is not about that.” Though that talk was coming. “I saw something tonight.”
“Based on your reviews on Yelp, I’d say you make sure you see something every night.” She disentangled from me and started unpinning her hair from its elaborate twist. “Not that I’m jealous or anything. Except I am. Totally. My skin is green under this dress.”
Envy was a sore topic between Amelie and me, always had been, so I pretended not to hear. “I’m serious.”
“Okay.” Her fingers hesitated before she unspooled her first curl. “What happened?”
“I met Danill Volkov.”
She barked out an incredulous laugh. “Wait. You’re serious?” She bared her teeth and tapped her canines. “Like an honest-to-God Volkov? A descendant of the guy who built the crazypants murder house?”
I bobbed my head like a juicy apple floating in a water-filled barrel.
“Wow.” She leaned her hip against the sink. “Did he speak? Or did he just glare from the porch and shake his cane at the kids on his lawn?”
“Oh yeah. He spoke all right.” Recalling all the things he’d said, the heat of his breath on my skin, raised gooseflesh. “He’s not grandpa material either. He’s mid-twenties or early thirties. At least that’s how he appears.”
Clapping her hands together, she squealed, “Tell me everything.”
I repeated him word for word and watched her eyebrows ratchet higher and higher toward her hairline.
“You didn’t give him your last name?” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm, illustrating where I had picked up the habit. “Or your phone number?” She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe you should have given him your number if he’s that hot.”
“Best-case scenario is he’s a vampire. Necromancers are like catnip to them.” And Volkov had already pawed me once tonight. “The options get worse from there.”
The undead came in severa
l flavors, and I wasn’t about to taste Volkov to determine his. He struck me as the kind of guy who bit back. Hard. Vamps were common in necromantic society. Not unexpected since they were our creations. Not to mention our bread-and-butter. But there were vampires, and then there were vampires. I got the feeling he fell into the latter category.
Your basic undead are created when a necromancer tethers a human soul with very, very deep pockets to its body after death. Those vampires are classified as resurrections, humans resuscitated by necromantic magic, and they rise as the undead with a thirst for human blood. They come equipped with a lure, a sensuous magnetism, that helps them ensnare prey. But only the oldest among them are a threat to necromancers. We have a natural immunity to them. So, pretty classic by horror-movie standards.
Those don’t last forever, and most go insane and have to be put down before the half-century mark.
Then you’ve got the Last Seeds. Turns out sperm can stay alive inside a dead man’s body for up to thirty-six hours. Freezing the swimmers doesn’t work. Magic and medicine don’t always see eye to eye on such matters. But that still gives resurrected vamps plenty of time to knock up willing surrogates (or human partners) for the purpose of creating offspring. For a fee, of course. A steep one. Last Seeds are just that—a male vampire’s last drops of humanity preserved for all eternity in his child. They’re also so rare and so cosseted by their vampire clans as to be fabled.
Last Seeds are immortal from birth and stop aging in their thirties. The Society allows them to live because in addition to being rare, they’re also sterile, making their population even easier to control. Otherwise, there’s no way those High Society stuffed-shirts would allow the Last Seeds and their irresistible lures to traipse around ensnaring necros willy-nilly, as I suspected Volkov had done to me.
Stashed in the bottom drawer are ghosts, ghouls and wraiths, byproducts of violent deaths, resuscitations gone wrong, and dark magic used to take lives.
The creation of psychopomps were a specialization as well. I won’t even lie. Necros who focus on pets make all the money. We’ve all seen people carrying teeny-tiny toy dogs around in designer purses. Offer a rich owner the chance to give Mr. Fluffy Lumpkins a second leash on life and cha-ching.
Even the fae deigned to bargain with us for the lives of their most beloved companions.
I got hot flashes just thinking about all that cold, hard cash.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, necromancy was a lucrative field, regardless of your specialty. Practitioners made bank, but skilled assistants, those without criminal records, earned more than I would see in a human lifetime.
How the mighty have fallen.
“I’m kidding, Grier. Sheesh. Give me some credit. I might be Low Society, but I’m not human.” Her sobering words brought my attention swinging back to her. “Volkov would have recognized your last name.”
Maud had been famous in her own right. Me? I was more infamous. Not quite the same thing.
“You were smart to protect yourself. We have no idea how the Society as a whole, let alone the Undead Coalition, will react to the news of your release once it trickles down.” She worked three more bobby pins loose from her hair. “Boaz will start knocking heads together if any of the factions take exception to your pardon, and that will get messy fast.” She winked. “And that’s not counting what I’ll do.”
The cold fingers of dread traced a line down my spine. “Amelie, you can’t—”
“I’m not afraid of the Society, and they don’t even know I exist. I’m too far below their notice.” Bitterness tinged her voice. The title of assistant might have stung my pride, but she burned for even that much respect among our peers. “Can you imagine if they did try to silence me?”
Actually, I could. Easily. After all, they’d done a bang-up job of muzzling me.
“Rumor has it that poor Amelie Pritchard took on a ruthless secret society and was silenced for her daring.” She strode toward one of the dressing booths and pushed aside the curtain as though she were opening a door. “Amelie was shoved down three flights of stairs by Matilda Bolivar at Sorrel-Weed House while leading a tour, and now she haunts this very house. It’s said that only people she once guided can see her, and that she awaits them to join her as she tours the afterlife.”
I cracked up at her ridiculousness. “You’re horrible.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is hilarious. You’re not the only one with Yelp reviews, you know.”
I pinched my lips closed to prevent more snark from slipping free.
“So, what are you going to do about the vamp?”
“Tell Cricket to remove his house from the tour routes and avoid his street like the plague.”
“I approve of this plan.” She cleared her throat delicately. “Speaking of avoidance…”
“Yes, yes. I saw your brother tonight.” The skin of my throat tingled in memory of his wide palm wrapping the delicate column like a necklace. “Most of him anyway.”
Blood rushed from her cheeks, and she leaned against the nearest wall for support. “He made me promise.”
“Did he honestly believe it would make any difference to me?” I picked at the worn lace on the front of my dress. “I never thought I’d see him—or you—again. Does he think I’m that shallow?”
“He’s a man, and men are ninety percent pride.” She chewed on her thumbnail. “And I think, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, he was punishing you. He had no idea what was happening to you inside…” She let the sentence fade. “He must have figured it was only fair you had no idea how bad things had gotten out here for him either.”
“He tried to kiss me,” I blurted.
“This is Boaz we’re talking about.” Amelie didn’t blink. “What did you expect?”
“For him to ignore the fact I’m a grown woman until the day he died? Probably from having sex with a set of triplets half his age?”
She didn’t disagree. “Do you remember how you two met?”
I narrowed my gaze. “You’re not helping his case here.”
“Picture it.” Her tour guide voice came back in full force. “The playground. Kindergarten. Me and you. Sitting on the swings at recess, eating apple slices instead of sour candy straws, because even then Mom didn’t want me to live my best life. Boaz steps out the double doors, hops down the steps and walks right up to you. He stuck out his hand and—”
“He basically karate-chopped me in the chest,” I protested. “I wasn’t holding on to the chains. I was eating my apple. I fell.”
“The facts are these: he walked up to you, and you hit the dirt on your back with your legs sticking straight up in the air.” She snickered. “He’s been trying to get you back there ever since.”
“He got plenty of other girls in the dead-bug position.” So many I’d lost count of how my heart broke each time he brought a new girl home on his arm. “He just wanted another specimen to add to his collection.”
Having nursed me through many of those late-night crying jags, I recognized her world-class diversion techniques. All he’d had to do was crook his finger, and I would have been his for the asking. We both knew that. Heck, all three of us did, and that made the shame of my open secret so much worse.
Amelie flounced over, bumped hoop skirts with me in solidarity, and I started pulling on her laces.
“You were fifteen when he noticed you were a girl and not just his kid sister’s best friend.” She clicked her tongue. “He was eighteen. You weren’t ready for sex, and he’d just figured out he could sweet-talk his way into girls’ panties and what to do when he got there.” She shuddered at the thought. “He was a decent guy, but he was still a hormonal teenager. He wasn’t ready to give up his new favorite hobby while he waited for you to mature.”
“But has he matured?” The searing intensity in him when he ticked off his reasons for leaving still smoldered in my memory. But Boaz was blessed with a silver tongue, and he had slipped it down way too m
any throats for me to believe mine was anything special.
“Boaz doesn’t come home often, and he never stays long.” Her casual shrug didn’t fool me for a minute. She was close to her brother, and she must miss him something fierce. “Part of me hopes having you back home will anchor him.” She rubbed the spot over her breastbone. “The other part knows in order for you to heal, you need to figure yourself out first.” She dipped her chin to hide the moisture pooling in her eyes. “But I know how determined he can be. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants. And it terrifies me that it’s you. I’m worried if he cuts and runs again, if he breaks your heart for real this time, that I’ll lose you both.”
I crossed to her and gathered her in my arms, ignoring the dampness spreading across my shoulder. “I don’t know what I want for breakfast most mornings, let alone who I want to share it with.”
No matter how solid Boaz had felt trapped between my thighs, Amelie was right. I might hide from my problems, but he had a bad habit of running from his, and I was tired of being the reason he avoided his home and family. Maybe it was time both our inner teenagers grew up before we ruined a good thing.
“The late-late tour leaves in a few. I need to get out there and twirl my parasol before Cricket has a coronary.” I waited until Amelie peeled out of her corset before I turned. “See you tomorrow?”
“Call if anything else creepy happens.” She pointed a warning finger at me. “I mean it.”
“I will.” I curtsied and unlocked the door on my way out. “Promise.”
On my way downstairs, I ducked into Cricket’s empty office and left a note on her desk about the Volkov heir’s mysterious return then slipped back into the parking lot with a sigh as cool air teased my skirt. Sunlight bathing my face was nice, but give me the kiss of the moon, the call of night birds, the smells of light extinguished, of the darker world rousing to wakefulness, any day.
The ardent cry of a mockingbird caught my attention, and I glanced up at the lightning-struck Bradford pear tree leaning over the entryway. The pale gray bird perched on a charred limb, deep in shadow that ought to have concealed him, chest fluffed out as it completed a pitch-perfect impersonation of Cricket’s car alarm. But I saw him, and when he noticed that, he took personal offense and flew away.
How to Save an Undead Life (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 1) Page 4
