Shame curled in my gut as I accepted his offering. His concern warmed me, but I hated him thinking I was a charity case. First the bike and now this. Tomorrow I would have to set him straight. But tonight… I poured myself a tall glass and nuked it to perfection with a sappy grin in place.
I was on my way upstairs with my treat when I spotted the plastic bag on the counter. I poked it with a finger, revealing an opened package with one cuttlebone left and a bag of seed twisted off with a sandwich tie. Another note clung to the packaging. I read it out loud, though I was sure Woolly already had the scoop. “You take worse care of that zombie bird than Macon did. I found him zooming around your bathroom crapping everywhere. I cleaned up the mess and put the little turd in his cage. You can thank me later. I will accept dirty pics as payment. Left you something to pose in.”
I tossed his note aside and skidded into the living room to find Keet dozing in his cage. Boaz had positioned the stand near the picture window overlooking the rose garden, exactly where I’d intended for him to go. It’s not like Keet required seed or water to live, just the occasional drop of blood, but he seemed to enjoy the catharsis of cracking seeds, and some of it must be going down the hatch since he pooped enough to be an ostrich.
Wary of what other gifts Boaz might have left me, I jogged upstairs and shoved open the door to my room. I’m not sure what I expected. Lace. Silk. Something highly inappropriate. A scrap of fabric that wouldn’t cover anything. What I found was an olive drab tee that smelled like him and could wrap around me three times. The reminder he knew what it was like to wake from fractured memories with a scream lodged in his throat soothed my earlier irritation enough that I shucked my top and slid into his, snapped a picture and texted it to him. No caption. Anything I could think of now felt too much like an invitation, and I’d already received one too many of those for one night.
Five
I woke in a nest of twisted sheets on the floor in my usual corner. Guess not even Boaz’s shirt was enough to ward off the dreams. Oh well. It was the thought that counted. Woolly, usually the first one to prod me after an episode, left me blissfully alone. But then again, I was taking her advice and talking to people. That must have been enough to earn me a gold star for effort.
The clatter of dishes jarred me, and I leapt to my feet, pulse thundering in my ears. “Woolly?”
A hiss escaped the floor register, a sigh of disappointment that I thought she would let in trouble.
But she had welcomed a vampire. And Boaz, whose middle name, I was pretty certain, was Trouble.
Maybe it was time to educate the old girl on the meaning of stranger danger.
After pulling on a bra and a pair of pajama bottoms, I shoved open my door and padded into the hall. That’s when the dueling scents hit me. Coffee. Onions. Cheese. Three of my favorite things. I trotted downstairs into the kitchen and came skidding to a halt.
“Amelie.” Not the Pritchard sibling I’d expected to see. “What is it with your family breaking into my house?”
“Grier? Is that you?” She hunched her spine, pretended to gasp and wheeze, and used the spatula as the world’s shortest cane. “It’s been so long. I thought you’d forgotten about your old pal Amelie.”
“It’s been like—a day.” I crept past her to sniff whatever she was cooking. “And I’ve been busy.”
“Clearly.” She plucked at my shirt. “Please tell me I don’t have to make this breakfast for three.” She lifted a halved cherry tomato off the cutting board and held it against my flaming cheek. “Hmm. Cherry tomato red. That, my friend, is the color of guilt.” She bit into the slice then yelled, “Guilt! Get your guilt here! Grab it while it’s hot and fresh, people.”
“Boaz left me the shirt.” I clamped a hand over her mouth. “He wasn’t still in it.”
“I don’t need details.” She pretended to heave. “Really, I don’t.”
I took the plate she offered me then poured us both mugs of coffee and carried it all to the bar.
“What brings you by so early?” I took a bite of garden omelet and groaned. “Not that I mind if you want to do this for me every night.”
“You only think it tastes good because you’ve been living on oatmeal. Trust me, no one else will eat my cooking. You leave a few eggshells in one time, and suddenly you’ve earned a spot on Worst Cooks in America.” She tucked into her meal. “I wanted to make sure after everything that’s happened you’re still okay with taking my shifts tonight.”
“I gotcha covered.” I waved away her concern. “Did you find out where you’re going yet?”
“Nope.” She glared at her fork. “I asked my folks again, and they fed me more super-secret Pritchard family gobbledygook.”
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable. Amelie noticed and pounced.
“What’s got you so twitchy?” Her nose wrinkled. “Unless my brother is the reason you can’t sit still on a hard surface. That you can take to your grave.”
Glowering at her, I resisted the urge to defend my honor and stabbed a tomato instead. “I heard the Society is about to name a new Grande Dame.”
“Boaz told me about the invitation.” Amelie shoved her plate of half-eaten food away. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t like her own cooking or if the topic had turned her stomach. Either way, I was making eyes at her omelet. “She’s got balls to issue you an invitation. I hope they turn blue waiting on you to show up to her soiree.”
“Will your family attend?” Her mother, Annabeth Pritchard, served as matron of their family. The voices of Low Society members might not be heard as clearly as those of the High Society, but the swearing-in of a new Grande Dame was meant to bridge the gap between classes. “You can take notes and report back to me.”
“I doubt I’ll go.” She shrugged. “I’ll ask my folks for the highlights.”
“What about Boaz?” He looked good in a penguin suit, even if he hated acting grown-up long enough to tie his patent leather shoes.
“None of us want him set free in a room full of people who turned the other cheek while you were sentenced.” She wrapped her hands around her warm mug. “He’s spent five years learning how to kill, and our parents want to keep his itchy trigger finger scratched in other ways.”
Her comment swept chills down my arms. “What exactly does Boaz do for the army?”
“That’s classified,” he growled from the doorway. “Amelie, it’s time to go.”
“Really, Woolly?” I kicked the back of the bar with the ball of my foot. “Do I even get a say in who comes in my house?”
The lights flickered and died until the only sound left in the kitchen was the hum of major appliances.
“You forget, she is the house.” Boaz crossed to me, his eyesight keen in the dark, and tugged on the sleeve of my shirt before grazing my flannel-covered thigh with his fingertips. “This is a good look for you, but the idea was to wear only what I left you.”
“All I saw was the T-shirt.”
Leaning close, he breathed me in, and his breath tickled the shell of my ear. “Exactly.”
“Ugh.” Amelie carried her dishes to the sink then fed her omelet to the disposal. “I’m out.”
A horn honked loud enough to convince me Boaz had left the front door open. “Have they given you the scoop?”
“Nope.” He rolled his eyes. “They won’t even share the location, so we’re all riding together.”
“The family that conducts dark rites together stays together?” I shoveled in another mouthful of omelet. “Don’t sacrifice too many virgins. Your parents probably had to special order them from out of town now that you’re back.”
“There’s only one virgin I’m interested in sacrificing,” he purred.
The skin on my face ignited like the surface of the sun, and I was grateful for the darkness. The jerk might see my expression, but he couldn’t pick out the red splotches rouging my cheeks.
“You are not sheathing your ceremonial dagger in my—” I finished lamely “�
�sheath.”
“You’re so cute.” His teeth closed over my pulse. “I could eat you up.”
“I’m a virgin, not an idiot. I grasp double entendres just fine.”
“I bet you do.”
Spinning the fork on my palm, I jabbed him in the abs, and he jumped back while I cackled. “Shoo fly, don’t bother me.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Grier Woolworth.” He clutched his gut like I’d disemboweled him instead of checking him for doneness. “You’re lucky I like claws. The more you scratch me, the worse the itch gets.”
Short blasts from a car horn had him cursing under his breath.
“Maybe you should consult a dermatologist.” I smiled as sweet as you please. “Or maybe a vet since you’ve developed some odd cat fetish? Or would that require a psychiatrist?”
“We’ll finish this later.” He darted in and ruffled my hair. “Later, Squirt.”
I bared my teeth and hissed at him just to hear him laugh his way out the door.
Sadly, my antics didn’t amuse Woolly. She remained stubbornly silent while I rinsed the dishes. Mourning the loss of Amelie’s omelet, I put away the supplies littered across the counter. I reserved a few slivers of tomato and carried those into the living room. Keet, diurnal by nature, was snoozing on his perch when I popped in to check on him and left him with his treat.
The skin at my nape prickled when I stepped out onto the front porch, and Woolly didn’t rouse herself to protest against my exit. Usually I got a slamming door or flickering porchlight—some outward indication she was in a tizzy over me leaving.
The absolute stillness disturbed me enough I reached for the wards on instinct. A skull-rattling pain sliced through my scalp, and I gasped through the resonations that almost sent me crashing to my knees. The normally radiant song of her consciousness had quieted until I had to strain to make out even a note, and still she hadn’t cried out in those final moments. Maybe because she couldn’t.
An oily blackness clung to the back door, seeping underneath and spilling across the hardwood planks.
This was no temper tantrum. The wards had been breached. Woolly was… She was… Silent.
I took a running start and jumped off the porch into the yard, keeping a mental eye on the intruder. I shoved into the carriage house, retrieved the key and battled with the smallest trunk to retrieve Maud’s bag. This time the trunk behaved, so I set the bag on its lid and opened the ink to dip the brush for the sigil required to deepen my perception. Not waiting for it to dry, I pocketed the ink and the brush then charged back into the house.
The greasy taint stained the door leading down into the basement, but a quick check of its knob assured me the wards sealing off Maud’s private laboratory remained secure. She had refreshed the wards protecting her sanctuary each night with blood straight from the vein. I doubted anything could crack the magic seal—I couldn’t—but it made me uneasy that this thing had tried.
Glimmers of spent magic sparkled out of the corner of my eye. Under the sigil’s influence, the intruder left a shimmering slug trail of dark energy. I painted a few sigils for safety on my arm, but that was all the protection my weakened powers offered.
A panicked chirrup caused my heartbeat to skip, and I bolted into the living room to face the intruder.
Or not face him. He didn’t have one. A mass of undulating robes whipped in an unfelt breeze. The wraith sensed me and whirled, its hood as empty as eternity. In his fist, he clutched Keet. Droppings oozed through his spectral fingers, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Release him,” I ordered, advancing on the wraith. “Let him go, and I won’t banish you.”
I didn’t have the strength to banish a wraith, but the wraith’s master didn’t have to know that.
Rather than back down, the creature pulled a smoking envelope from the depths of its robes and passed it between the bars of the empty cage. Before I settled on a plan of action, he popped Keet like a snack into his absent mouth and vanished in a whirl of black mist.
“Keet.”
I spun in a circle, my mind touching on every corner of the collapsing wards, but I already knew what I’d find.
Keet was gone.
I spent the better part of an hour restoring the wards and rousing Woolly from her drugged slumber. The fact my house could be knocked unconscious terrified me. Whoever had controlled the wraith had managed to slip inside with a nasty bit of work that overlapped one of the weakened points in the wards.
I snapped pictures of the combined sigils the intruder had used to gain access so I could show Odette later, then scrubbed the foul ink until red bubbles frothed through my fingers. The anchor wards surrounding Woolworth House were carved into the stone of her foundation. A little bit of blood shouldn’t have overpowered inset patterns woven together by a master necromancer, but these had, and I worried this was more proof the old girl’s strength mirrored mine.
At least my puny magic wasn’t at fault for the breakdown in communication between Woolly and me. As it turned out, someone had eroded key points in the sigils that had slowly eaten away at our link until the only time I registered the interference was when I made a focused effort to check the wards.
Flicking the light on my phone, I started the grueling process of examining the foundation. I didn’t have to look far before I spotted the first missing sigil, gouged from the stone with sharp claws. Great. Permanent damage. How was I supposed to repair this? It’s not like I could lift up Woolly and slide a new slab under her.
I found five more missing sigils that corresponded with the thinning of the wards I’d been sensing over the past several days. For now, the best I could do was dip my brush and swipe on fresh symbols. Those would keep until it rained, or at least until the dew faded them.
After examining the patchwork wards with a critical eye, I decided they would do and capped my ink.
As much as I hated leaving Woolly while she was vulnerable, I had to honor my promise to Amelie. We both needed our jobs, and being Haints paid better than anything else we could do while keeping our night-owl schedule.
I trudged up the steps and entered the house. “Will you be okay for a few hours?”
The foyer chandelier dimmed to near blackness before surging.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of.” I patted the doorframe. “This is my fault. I should have pulled my head out of my butt sooner.” All that wallowing hadn’t gotten me anything except a violated home and a stolen pet. “If I had taken the minor attacks more seriously, I might have noticed the damage to the sigils before the wraith…” I spun on my heel, thought trailing, marched to Keet’s empty cage and fished out the envelope. “Why am I not surprised?”
A nearby floor register ticked on and set a curtain wriggling in anticipation.
“It’s from Dame Lawson,” I told her, and opened the envelope with care. “Guess I didn’t RSVP fast enough for her.” I skimmed the first line then read the rest aloud for Woolly’s benefit. “Dearest Grier, I do hope you’ll reconsider my previous invitation. Being named the Grande Dame of the Society for Post-Death Management is a momentous occasion, and I expect all my family to be in attendance. That includes you. Our relationship has been strained these past few years, but I hope to rectify that soon. Proof of my good intentions should be evident by now. You are standing in your own living room, reading this letter, are you not? You can thank me for that with your presence.”
The tinkle of crystals in the chandelier laughed at her gall in claiming me now that I’d been exonerated.
Again, I rolled the vampire’s warning around in my head. What did Dame Lawson want from me? What did he want? Why did anyone want anything from me at all when I had nothing but the clothes on my back and the roof over my head to my name?
Dame Lawson hadn’t just dispatched one of her lackeys to leave her calling card. Whoever the architect of this infiltration was, he was brilliant. And the energy, now that I’d had time to reflect, had definitely been male.
&n
bsp; With those grim thoughts circling, I walked into the kitchen, scooped up the invitation, and dialed the gas burner high on the stove. Then I took Boaz’s advice and burned them both to cinders.
The floor register gusted air in a relieved sigh as I swirled the ashes down the sink.
“We ought to be safe. For now.” A tired exhale parted my lips. “They got what they wanted. A hostage.”
The letter hadn’t mentioned poor Keet, but it would have been incriminating if it had, and you didn’t get to be the Grande Dame by making such rudimentary errors. The message was clear. Her wraith postman had done his job well, proving she could get to me and mine inside the wards, inside the house. But why she would demand my presence at all stumped me.
I was a half-trained assistant with no title and no prospects. The Society had already added my inheritance to their coffers. They had seized control of my assets at my sentencing. Woolly had been the only thing I fought tooth and nail to keep. At the time, she had been flush with Maud’s power, and no one but me could have given her to another master without her consent. So, really, that had less to do with my wishes and more to do with hers.
A sliver of fear pierced me through the heart. What if that was the game? Letting her rot these past few years without a necromancer tending her wards? Woolly was weak, a shadow of her former self, but she would fight a new master to her death, of that I was sure. But did the Society care?
Woolly was more than a house, more than my family. Her basement was a library full of books written in Maud’s own hand. Her entire brilliant career, every experiment, every memory, every theory, penned in leather-bound volumes. The collection was priceless, and the magical locks protecting her life’s work could not be shattered without Maud’s blood. And that was long gone.
“I’ll be back as soon as my shift ends,” I comforted the house. “You remember how to use the phone?”
The landline was a luxury I almost couldn’t afford, but the connection to me soothed her.
How to Save an Undead Life (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 1) Page 8
