Page 28 of Flock This

Living as a necromancer didn’t seem that easy, given her physical state. It seemed the dead never gave her a free moment, like an annoying first date that just won’t take ‘not interested’ for an answer.

“Not really,” I admitted to her. “If you’d asked me a week ago if I was going to infiltrate a vampire stronghold by pretending to be a thrall, I’d have said, ‘Fuck no. That’s dumb,’ but when you run out of options, even the bad ones start sounding good.”

Bray blew out a long breath and crossed her thin arms. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You work and live here.”

“Because I’m a Grave. It’s like having a crazy family. I can’t recommend it to anyone else, but for me? It’s home. Besides, I don’t have people looking for me here.”

“To be fair, people are looking for me out there. No one expects me to be here.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a fool.”

“So why are you helping me?”

“Because you’re a fool who’ll do what you want anyway, and your odds of surviving this go up if you have a little help. I can get you in, but I can’t do much beyond that. You’ll be on your own once you’re inside. Are you sure you want to do this?”

I took a deep breath, wanting so badly to say no. I could run—I couldn’t be tracked by regular means, and who cared about this city? They had alcohol and sex toys in every city, so I could just pick up and move, right?

Except, then I thought about everyone I’d leave behind. My parents and siblings, Galen, Kelvin, Ignis, even Bray. I had so many people who’d suffer if I just disappeared. If the vampires got their warrant for me, they’d stop at nothing to find me.

I shuddered to think of what could happen to my mother if she were found…

Which meant I couldn’t run. “I have to do this,” I told her.

Her expression said she didn’t agree, but she didn’t argue with me either. She’d known me long enough to realize arguing was pointless.

“Okay.” She took one more deep breath, then gestured for me to follow. “If you aren’t going to smarten up, then let’s do something stupid, I guess.”

Bray opened the door to a different entrance to the huge building than the one I’d used. I’d always entered through the main lobby in the past. This time, I’d met Bray in the underground parking structure. The garages went down deep, to allow vampires a way to enter and leave the Castle safely. All the advancements in window shading helped ensure their ability to move around more easily than the good old days. Back before the invention of all of that, the best a vampire could do was try to cover up with a blanket and run really fast from shadow to shadow.

Which, I had to admit, sounded hilarious.

Bray didn’t fully enter, even with the door open, however. She stood at the threshold and waited.

When I didn’t move, she waved her hand. “Come on. You can’t pass through, not until you’re in their system, unless you have a Grave holding the door for you.”

When I entered, I felt nothing. No wave of discomfort, no signs of wards or shields.

“A Grave passing through disables all security,” she explained, then moved in front of me. Her steps were light and quick, and her ability to walk even with how exhausted she seemed surprised me. If I had to say there was one Grave I could get along with, it had to be Bray.

I still recalled when we’d met—I’d shown up in the lobby for my first delivery to the Castle. The vampire at the front desk had given me problems—which wasn’t uncommon—and since I’d still been new, I hadn’t known how to wave around my tiny bit of influence. Just before I got myself thrown out—at least, I hoped just thrown out, because who knew when dealing with vampires—Bray had shown up and put the vampire in his place with a flair and spunk that had caught my eye.

And ever since then, I’d become buddies with the only necromancer who spent time at the vampire stronghold.

Birds of a feather and all that, it seemed.

We got into one of the many elevators at the end of a long hallway. I lifted my arm to work the panel, but Bray caught my wrist before I could wave it over the sensor. “Your access would have been revoked by now, and it’ll set off alarms if you try it.”

My cheeks burned at the stupidity of that choice and just how I’d almost fucked it up. Bray placed her palm flat against a different sensor, the light turning green before she jammed her finger against the ten button.

She released my wrist when the elevator started to move, as if she could finally trust me not to do something stupid. That was always a bad bet.

“I’m going to take you up to the thrall level. You’ll go through the introduction process—I can’t get you around that. They’ll give you access to the correct floors, assign a job, then give you quarters. You won’t be able to get into any high-level area, but you’ll be able to move through the general areas and the thrall areas freely.”

“Sounds good to me. I’d rather deal with thralls than vampires anyway.”

She nodded, then tucked her hands into the front pocket of her baggy sweatshirt. “You know, if something goes wrong here…”

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