Nothing But Necromancy (Macrow Necromancers Book 1)

by J A Campbell

  “You will be assimilated….” Harmony circled thumb and forefinger over one eye and did her best Queen of the Borg imitation. It wasn’t working. Her roomie shook her head. She contemplated telling her she wasn’t a fan of Professor Thompson, but that wasn’t going to work, either. Elise had an innate respect for authority and she had exquisite manners. She’d make an excellent diplomat—or even House leader if she chose such a path. She always seemed to know the right thing to do, and she handled herself with a grace and courtesy Harmony admired. “Elise, I’ve never been a joiner.”

  “And that might be why you weren’t popular in school.” Elise looked remorseful the minute the words come out of her mouth. Harmony understood precisely how she felt. It was too early in the morning after a long night of studying, preceded by a long day of school, and their extra hours of lessons with Professor Thompson and Cousin Macrow in the evening.

  Both of them were tense and close to exhaustion. With the added necromancy and magical control lessons, they barely had time to study for the real-world classes that’d get them into college—if college really was a possibility for necromancers, after all.

  “Look, Professor Thompson is saying that the two of us should not share a room—or actually even hang together. We’re making the regular students at this school nervous and uncomfortable. There have been complaints. We do this or become the new kids on the block at the House Macrow Academy with all those kids who’ve been going there since practically birth. Joining this club is something we can do to show our fellow students that we are ordinary people and not to be feared—that we are like them.”

  Harmony swallowed back the rancid taste in her mouth. Elise had no idea what terrible things “ordinary people” could, and did, do. She knew she was lucky—the handicapped, small, low self-esteem kids got bullied a lot worse than she ever had. She’d at least been able to fight back, verbally and physically when she had to. Mostly they just gave her a wide berth, which was completely fine. She’d done the same with them.

  But she thought she was fitting in better here. Mindy and the other workers in the Dungeon were always glad to see her. But she’d promised to stick with Elise and they’d protect each other. They were kindred of some kind, the only real kindred Harmony had ever known. And a promise was a promise.

  “Oh why not,” Harmony grumped. “I’m awake now and the club’s initials are HH, the same as mine. How bad can it be?”

  “Strict uniform,” Elise said when Harmony started to pull on her knee-high black boots. The headmaster made that one uniform concession for her. Being brought up in Texas, her feet were cold in the oncoming damp Oregon winter. The black knee-length boots were close enough to the regulation black tights of the girls’ uniform that he let her wear them. She’d never understand why, in Oregon of all places, Wellies weren’t part of the uniform. Not all of their classes, or even the cafeteria, were in the same building, and it rained all the time. She and the other female students were constantly having to dry off their sodden legs while the male students were much more comfortable in their trousers. If she had any aspirations to teaching, she’d change the crazy rules that said girls have to wear jumpers and tights with pretty light-weight blouses and boys get to wear pants and jackets.

  Harmony grumbled, but just slid on an extra pair of the black tights instead. Sooner or later, she’d get acclimated to the cold and damp.

  Sure…about the time she was ready to leave for college…preferably in California, where it was warm and she had a beach instead of a river.

  At least the fall colors were glorious. The maples and oaks in the valley were already changing to bright yellows, fiery golds, and deep rich reds.

  She hastened to load up her backpack for the day, and followed Elise downstairs. The meeting was halfway across campus in a room that was mostly used for the gym and special events like dances and concerts. Yes, even magic school had choir. Fortunately, none of the singers paid her much heed.

  The fog felt like an entity, blown in on a clammy river breeze. It blanketed the campus in icy cold veils, haloing the peach-hued dispersed security lights that scarcely put out sufficient illumination on clear nights. Visibility was pretty much your hand in front of your face. Dark ominous shapes of trees towered above them. Eerie to walk into the sphere of light and have the peach-tinted fog magically lift right before you. Thick fingers of fog reached out from the holly bushes planted alongside their way, curling and beckoning them to the darkened end of the campus where the asylum cemetery lay. Most students didn’t go there in the daytime. Rumor had it even the best of the mages hadn’t been able to lay the uneasy and unreasoning spirits to rest. What a crazy place to put a school full of mages. Someone said the JM got it cheap for the lesser mages. It really hadn’t been a problem up until now. After all, none of the faculty or students were necromancers up until she and Elise came.

  Now they had three: the two of them—and Cousin, who Harmony suspected could lay the whole cemetery to rest if need be. The more she knew him, the scarier he got. She had no idea how long he’d been alive, but from some of the things he said, he might well be as old—or older—than Granddaddy.

  The path of circular cobblestones, four wide and alternating like dragon scales, ornate and attractive on fair days, became slicker than snake snot in the ever-present rain and fog. In the last of summer’s heat, they’d only briefly been their natural color before autumn moisture turned them bright green with mold, which only made them near impossible to see in the murk and slippery to boot.

  Globes of bright light of various colors from yellows to greens and even purples, appearing briefly in the miasma, indicated that better-trained mages journeyed with them. Professor Thompson assured them after a few months they’d be able to conjure lights of their own. Harmony had tried and come up with something which looked more like the bluish heat lightning Emperor Palpatine battled with in Star Wars. On the plus side, she was getting real good at lightning bolts. Cousin actually cracked a smile in class at her latest attempts. Getting your butt kicked every day was a surefire motivator. Elise had even managed to produce bolts of her own. The gentle girl had some fire to her, and even she wouldn’t take getting zapped without finding a way to fight back.

  Harmony’s long black wool coat had kept her mostly warm particularly with the hood drawn up, but moisture soaked the uniform-regulation black tights by the time she’d reached the tiny meeting room at the back of the gym. She’d met a good number of her fellow mages, but none of the frowning faces who turned to see who’d arrived looked familiar.

  “Our magic is just as good as the inbred Houses,” a guy in a t-shirt emblazoned with the letters HH was speaking at the podium. “They don’t trust any of us lesser folk to breed with, after all. Most of them are crazy or have to kill every other child because of some serious defect. We’re healthy—we’re not our own grandparents!”

  The kids in the front row were cheering and stomping their feet like it was a sporting event.

  “Let’s show them what we can do!” one girl yelled. Raven haired, and shapely, Harmony noted that when she spoke every male in the room looked at her, even if it was only for a moment. She made her school uniform look like something you’d wear to a night club.

  “It’s time we got the atten....”

  A loud harrumph from one of the male students who’d been staring at them in the doorway stopped the speaker cold. He looked in the direction of the student who’d made the noise and then followed the guy’s pointing chin to them. His Adam’s apple went up and down several times as he reddened and gulped audibly enough for the microphone to pick up.

  “I—think we should turn this back over to our faculty sponsor….”

  “Please welcome Harmony Hendricks and Elise Winters to our club,” the sponsor, a perky brunette with a buxom figure, who must have been a cheerleader before she found out she had magic, rushed to the podium her hands fluttering. She stood too close to the mic so her voice boomed out with feedback in the s
mall room.

  Harmony winced, gritted her teeth. They were definitely in the wrong place, but there was no way to back out now. Talk about getting your butt handed to you. She had shields enough to cover the two of them ready and hoped she didn’t have to use them. They were outnumbered. The only advantage she could think of was that they were closer to the door and they had Cousin Macrow teaching them defense.

  “Elise, Harmony.” The woman’s voice was so high with nerves, she sounded like she’d had helium. Harmony didn’t recall ever being introduced to the woman, but she clearly knew both of their names. Guess they were famous. Or infamous? “Would you like to come up here and tell us why you’re here?”

  “Yeah,” Harmony heard the mutter from someone off to the side. “Why would a snooty pair of purebred bitches show up….”

  “Slumming….”

  The other remarks didn’t bear repeating. Elise was blushing. Harmony had heard a lot worse and generally could answer right up. She just wasn’t going to tar Elise with her ill behavior—unless she had to.

  “Shhhhhh!”

  “I was told this is the club to join if you want to learn more about use of magic.” Elise didn’t take up the offer to come forward, but she nodded graciously in acknowledgement and spoke. Her voice was steady, but Harmony could see her trembling. “I wanted to make connections with my fellow students.”

  Professor Thompson set the poor girl up. Harmony’s muscles tensed. She was used to crap like this, but it was clear from Elise’s apple red cheeks and too shiny eyes she hadn’t expected a teacher to be cruel. She forced herself not to flex her fists, to breathe steadily. She’d dealt with so much of this garbage it was almost second-nature, but she couldn’t stand to see an innocent—a younger kid, an old person, or an animal—hurt. She got that from her mom. Elise was a good person, a trusting person, and that made her vulnerable in this kind of cutthroat place. Harmony wasn’t sure she’d make it in the House Macrow Academy, but she was certain Elise would not in her current state of naiveté.

  “Elise is here to support me.” Harmony swaggered to the front and by virtue of height and a very polite “excuse me,” shifted the sponsor off the mic. “They tell me I have purebred powers, but I don’t know if my dad’s Willie Nelson or the local car mechanic…I suspect one of the Macrows was slumming with a wild Austin hippie chick at one of the weed fests.”

  She expected the kid up front eating a banana to throw the peel at her or at least get the breakfast burrito one of the other kids had in his hand lobbed in her general direction. Instead, quite a few of the kids applauded. It was polite, but that was better than Elise being embarrassed in the spotlight. Yeah, they felt kicked around. She got that. The school pretty much taught that they were inferior to the House mages. If attitude was everything, maybe they could kick the Houses’ butts.

  “I need to understand better how magic works,” Harmony continued. “I’m new to this and I was told you guys are the students to talk to. I hope I’m right.”

  Silence, then a couple of the kids clapped. It wasn’t a standing ovation. Harmony didn’t expect one. But she got a few of the club members at least looking at her, and Elise by extension, as human beings. It was a start.

  “Thanks.” Harmony bowed and moved back to Elise. She returned nods and smiles from the few students who offered them and did her best to ignore the hatred. Her guess was that most of the students gathered wouldn’t harm them, but a few who she knew were senior-level made her nervous. She might be able to handle a physical confrontation, but a magical one wouldn’t end well for any of them.

  She grabbed a couple of folding chairs and set them up so they’d be close to the door with their backs to the wall. The general tone of hatred and resentment made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Hopefully having a sponsor there would keep any serious violence from happening. She saw Elise’s eyes shift to the door several times. She wanted to leave, but Harmony wasn’t going to walk back in the darkness and fog.

  Sun would be up by the time the meeting was over. They’d have a safer walk back with a lot more people on campus. She was grateful she’d brought her cell phone. She dialed Cousin’s number and surreptitiously sent a quick text for him to be ready…just in case.

  It was pretty clear the meeting’s agenda completely changed. The sponsor called out names and students arrived at the podium doing their best to speak about a topic off-the-cuff. It reminded Harmony of the random draw three-minute talks she had to do every week in her Speech class.

  She wasn’t afraid of public speaking—or improv, for that matter. It was a test of character to see how each student handled the uncertainty and frustration of an unknown topic for what seemed like an eternity.

  Rich kids who’d had everything handed to them often froze or lost their temper while the quiet nerdy kid who couldn’t say hello could cheerfully expound and expand on just about any topic. It was all about rolling with whatever was thrown at you and dealing with the frustration in a positive way.

  Professor Thompson arrived mid-meeting. His eyes lit when he saw the two of them. There was no mistaking that wolfish grin as anything but triumphant. His step was light as he moved past them to the sponsor. He stood up front, his arms crossed, smirking.

  Harmony grinned back at him and resisted the temptation to raise her hand to wave. She might forget to use all five fingers…. She suppressed a sigh of relief when the meeting ended. She shouldn’t have. They still had to walk back to the dorm for breakfast and it wasn’t quite dawn yet.

  Harmony made sure they were neither the first nor the last to leave the building and she kept checking their six as surreptitiously as she could.

  “Snooty fullbloods think they’re better than we are,” the guy who’d been complaining at first was loud in his derision once he was back with his cronies and felt safe. Others whispered their jealousy and hate.

  By silent mutual agreement, they opted to avoid the dining hall where most of the club members headed. Instead, they took a turn for their dorm and no one followed.

  She didn’t realize why until she noted Cousin jogging down the path on his morning run. He didn’t acknowledge them or the other students, but none of them were stupid enough to even mutter about them when he was anywhere close.

  Cowards.

  “This is the verbal equivalent of getting stoned,” Harmony muttered when they reached their own dorm and collapsed in the girl’s lounge.

  “Drugs are dangerous, Harmony,” Elise said in a tired, gentle voice.

  “Drugs, hell!” Harmony shook her head. “I never did drugs even when they were right in front of me at Mom’s. Just passive exposure to weed gave me the weirdest dreams. And I didn’t even want to be in the same room when folks were smoking. Too hard to breathe. Girls threw rocks at me and called me a witch.”

  Elise’s eyes widened and were bright with unshed tears. She’d blown on her hands for warmth and cupped them over her temples, wincing with pain. It was the face of the girl haunted by ghosts. Harmony thought their lessons and her periodic banishments had managed to help Elise get control over the spectral visitors, but the taunts had chinked the wall she’d built up.

  “Hold on,” Harmony said. She raced up the stairs and steeped a cup of Chai for her and grabbed an Aleve for the headache.

  She came downstairs on tiptoes. She arrived to see her kinswoman curled in a miserable ball weeping near hysterically.

  “Hey,” Harmony said as she set the cup down in front of her and held out the Aleve. “Thought this might help.”

  Elise's face was sheet pale with fevered red cheeks. She swallowed hard and managed to hold the tea without spilling it to take the Aleve.

  “Why don’t you go back up to bed and rest?” Harmony said. “I’ll call Mrs. Mathers.”

  “No. No. I’m going to class.” Elise managed to stand and teeter for the door. “I. Am. Not. Letting. Them. Beat. Me.”

  “Good,” Harmony said. “The whole lot of them are not worth one
of you.” That much she knew.

  Despite the chill air, Harmony’s temper simmered as she walked Elise to her first class. Once she knew Elise was safely inside and seated, she started for her own class.

  On the way, she passed Professor Thompson’s office. The man chuckled softly as she passed, probably thinking she wouldn’t hear him.

  “You set us up,” Harmony said. “Why? For the pleasure of hurting kids?”

  Professor Thompson’s rictus grin spread. “Because the purebreds have nothing on us.”

  “I’ve seen more magic from homeless people on the beach,” Harmony spat. “A kid who could talk to birds, mermaids, a werewolf pack—there’s a whole world out there besides this wretched….”

  “There is no such thing!” Thompson stood toe-to-toe with her. “There is only our magic. Our power. This world belongs to the Justiciarate Magus!”

  “There’s.... Harmony started to refute him when their eyes met.

  The last thing she remembered was sharp pain. Then, she remembered nothing.

  Darn it, Harmony, how long does it take to break your word?

  Elise sat stewing in Calculus, staring at Harmony’s assigned seat right in front of her. It hadn’t been a week since they promised to do the best they could in school and stick together. Cutting Calculus before half-semester exam was not keeping her promise.

  Of course, she’d give her kinswoman the notes for the class. She really sort of owed her that for the HH club this morning. Harmony had been right about not joining. She shouldn’t have just taken Professor Thompson’s word that it was a good idea. But all her life she’d been taught to trust her teachers. If they weren’t there to help and teach them, what were they there for?

  She moved on, struggling through derivation and wishing Magic School did not include such a heavy math and science course load. She was scheduled for her SATs soon and she had a grave fear that this material could be on the test.