Page 14 of Necromancers Don't Raise

“It must be the goblin in me. Do you think that they’d actually pay to see you without your shirt? They probably would.” I raised my head and looked at him speculatively.

He squinted at me and then pushed my head back down on his shoulder. “Stop looking at me like you’re measuring me for a coffin. I already have several, and all of them are full.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Go to sleep, Miss Nova. I’d prefer to pay you directly and forget about the expenses of a pool and the humiliation of being goblin eye candy.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t pay me for any of that.”

“On the contrary. I would pay very well to avoid being pursued by goblins.”

“Goblins like me?”

“You can’t pursue me. You’re my prisoner. In my possession. Mine.” His low voice rippled down my spine like a feather. He made it sound incredibly dramatic and passionate, better than Vilus.

“Yours to protect,” I said, nodded against his jacket, then closed my eyes. “Like Bones is yours. I will try not to humiliate you too badly in the cause of employment.”

He sighed heavily. “I would appreciate it. Sleep, Nova. Sleep like the dead.”

Chapter

Five

Iwoke up feeling much better, practically back to normal. My eyes popped open, and I was ready to conquer this day, make every appointment and have time left over for a guilty pleasure like chocolate orTheDetective Warlock. Maybe both.

What did I need to do? I needed to establish my new identity as soon as possible so that I could open a bank account, get a driver’s license, not that Bones had seemed to need one, and start building my portfolio. I needed to somehow let my parents know that I was safely dead so they could stop looking for me. I had to contact Fin and have her hack into the Singsong train station feed so I could watch myself get off the train with Bree and Callie. My friends. I needed to find them and figure out what had happened. What if the psychopath who had mutilated me had one of them in captivity? I needed to stop him. Why couldn’t I remember?

“I can hear you getting into trouble, and you’ve been awake for three seconds,” Mercury grumbled.

I sat up, except I fell back down because my arms were entangled with his. That is, my arms had been wrapped around his like a teddy bear I’d clung to irrationally when I was younger. I was still clinging to his arm after how many hours?

I squinted at him in the dark. “Are you in my bed?”

“Yes. It’s very dusty,” he grumbled, sounding like my dad when I woke him up in the middle of the night with a nightmare.

“Why are you in my bed?” He wasn’t my dad. He was an extremely attractive man, and I’d never had an extremely attractive man in my bed before.

He exhaled a sigh. “You were hanging onto me and I didn’t want to wake you up, because I knew you’d catapult yourself into a career path or other mischief the second you woke up.” His eyes flickered with lightning in the dark. “And I’m not wrong. I can hear you thinking a mile a minute about all the things you’re going to do to get into trouble today.”

Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Oh. I was so incredibly out of his league, he didn’t even think about the implications of sleeping in my bed with me. As Cassandra Clarence, if I so much as smiled too warmly at a man, I was pursued to the logical conclusion, according to man-think, but now, as Nova Nativitae, it didn’t even cross his mind to take advantage of me. I cleared my throat and tried not to feel bad about my lack of sex appeal. “I wasn’t thinking about trouble. Actually, I was thinking about job options, so tell me what you think.”

“You see? I knew it!”

I rolled my eyes. He could probably see in the dark, but I couldn’t. “Aren’t you clever? Diabolical is probably part of your surname. Anyway, what you really need is someone who can teach Bones to cook, and I know just the person.” I beamed at him while I tried not to notice the fact that he was still lying in my bed, in the dark, while I sat there trying to get a job. If I were all goblin, I’d be thinking about a lot of other things, like how many layers of clothes he had on. Happily, I only thought about thinking about that and focused on the important things instead.

“You’ve taught cooking classes before?”

“No, but I’ve taken hundreds. I’m an exceptional cook.”

“And a swimmer, so if you accidentally fall into a vat of tomato soup, you’ll be able to swim to safety.”

“Exactly. I could even pull Bones with me if necessary.” I jabbed his side, trying to get him to be serious. “Come on, Mercury. I have to do something with my life, because I’m alive, and you have to admit that it would be nice if Bones wasn’t always trying to kill you with his cooking.”

“He’s a very good cook.” He said it stubbornly, like he’d defend Bones to the death. Because he was one of his precious undead, and he had to protect their feelings.

I snorted. “He made me an omelet, Mercury. I ate the entire thing, which tells you how hungry I was, and I didn’t die, or maybe I did, but I didn’t notice because I regenerate so quickly.” I poked him again. “Well? It’s something you need, and something you want, and something I can do. It’s worth a regular paycheck and benefits.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

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