Page 26 of Necromancers Don't Raise

I kissed him back, uncertain at first, but then his taste was so rich and delicious, so tantalizingly unknown, a flavor and texture unlike anything I’d ever dreamed of. Whenever I’d put something in my mouth as a child, my mother had said, ‘Only goblins put whatever they like in their mouth.’ Apparently, whatever I wanted was him. Goblins got to do what they wanted with their mouths, so I did.

Chapter

Eight

The next morning, I was teaching Bones how to make bread when a brunette woman walked into the kitchen like she owned it.

“Bones! How is the master?” she asked, smiling eerily at him, the dramatic scars across her face and down her neck and chest making her look like a mobster, or maybe that was the fedora perched rakishly on her head.

“Mistress, he is well,” Bones said with a bow to the woman.

Mistress? Was this female Mercury’s girlfriend? Wife? Lover? Her brilliant blue eyes were even more stunning than my contacts had been, probably because they glowed slightly. She was a sorceress? There was something familiar about her. Ever since last night and the madness that had me shamelessly kissing Mercury in front of Philip, and my mother, and the rest of the world, I’d been trying to understand what I’d been thinking, but I wasn’t sure I’d been thinking at all. Who kisses a dark sorcerer, much less one at a funeral, particularly one that’s obsessed with who you used to be, and won’t ever be again? He’d propositioned someone at their own husband’s event. He was vile, and yet, he’d kissed me like a tornado, uprooting all of my fear and insecurities, leaving nothing behind but desire.

“You have to let the dough rise, right?” she asked, coming to peer over my shoulder. She was slightly shorter than I was and seemed extremely good-natured in spite of whatever magic she possessed.

If she was one of his inappropriate relationships, I would be particularly polite, because I was one of his pathetic dead. I nodded politely and turned to Bones. “Remember, we have to set the timer so we don’t get distracted by the show.”

He nodded ponderously. This was the fourth time we’d gone over it, but he had difficulty remembering details. I smiled warmly at him. He would get it eventually, and then we’d move onto something more interesting, croissants maybe.

“Perfect,” the woman said and grabbed my elbow with iron fingers. “I’m taking her out to lunch,” she told Bones. “If Mercury asks, we’re at the Cat’s Pause.” She turned and waved a hand, ripping a hole into the kitchen and into another space, then pulled me through, into a chaotic sushi and piano bar, with afternoon light coming through the window.

I gasped and blinked around me in confusion, the old woman playing the piano like a drunk, or maybe the piano was drunk, and all the decorations from Easter to Halloween, perched between fish tanks and the two bars, one for sushi and light drinks, the other around the piano. She’d just ripped a hole in space and pulled me through. That wasn’t small magic. Mercury didn’t throw around magic like that, but this woman wasn’t anything like Mercury. Maybe she was going to kill me for touching her lover.

“It didn’t mean anything,” I stammered.

She raised a brow. “Tell me your name. Mercury didn’t mention it when he brought your samples. Rynne, I’ve got the guest I called you about. Make sure everything’s cooked well. If I get her sick, Mercury will probably behead me. She’s his specialfriend.” My samples? This was his associate he’d talked to about me with?

A waitress with purple streaks in her hair nodded at us and headed through the bar and into the back kitchen, leaving a cloud of steam to escape into the bar behind her.

“Sit down and tell me everything,” Mercury’s associate said, dragging me to a table in the corner furthest from the windows and the piano. It was almost private, if you could be private while looking out over a busy street.

“I’m sorry, but why did you bring me here?”

Her eyes twinkled. “I’m going to get information out of you. I’m the wife of his only friend. I would say that we were friends, but he doesn’t want to be friends with married women. My husband is extremely protective of me and would happily rip off Mercury’s arms.”

“Oh, you’re the one Mercury propositioned at Vincent’s ball?” And I’d said that out loud. How could I be so rude?

She just flashed a sharp smile at me. “Yes, but he was only joking. And I’d never be interested in him, which he knows. Although he does have nice hair, and his rats are sweet. My taste in men runs to the extreme in beauty and wealth.”

I stared at her, relieved that she thought he was joking, and shocked that she’d say that about herself and her husband. He had been handsome, but I didn’t think he was any more handsome than Mercury. His hair was very lovely. I cleared my throat. “You’re very open about it. Most people hide their interest in money and looks. You must be very honest.”

She nodded and then a squirrel leapt onto her shoulder and she pulled a nut out of her pocket and fed it to him. “Let’s start over and I’ll introduce myself properly. I’m Anna Doe Bellham, Grand Sorcerer. My father is King Crown, if you know what that means.”

King Crown was the largest name in elixirs. Clarence Corp. had done some business with him in the past. He was extremely wealthy, and this was his daughter? She was an heiress? Without the scars, she would have been a much more beautiful woman than I was without surgery. “You didn’t try to get rid of the scars. You don’t actually care about beauty, because you have at your disposal all the magic, all the elixirs, all the money you’d need to at least wear constant glamours, even if you couldn’t completely erase the scars. Your husband might be handsome, but that’s not why you love him. Also, you aren’t very honest.”

Her smile was almost soft as she relaxed in her seat, studying me openly. “You aren’t intimidated by money, power, or scars. What are you afraid of?”

A memory of waking up alone to rats and cold misery, with pain enveloping me, hit me pretty hard. I swallowed. “Nothing I haven’t experienced. Why did you want to take me to lunch?”

She snorted. “You’re too polite. Let’s call a kidnapping a kidnapping, shall we? Well, when my husband’s good friend, Oswald Mercury, a notorious bachelor and lover of rats makes out with some mystery girl at a very public funeral, I get curious. Were you drunk? You don’t look the type. You’re a little uptight, if you know what I mean.” She poked my shoulder with a bony finger.

She wanted to know why I’d kissed Mercury. I was trying to figure that out myself. I spoke slowly. “I’m used to holding back what I think and feel, but I haven’t kept most of my thoughts to myself since I died. You’re the associate he took my samples to? The Grand Sorcerer of the world? But you’re a woman. That’s funny.”

She poked my shoulder again. Ow. “You say that’s funny, but you don’t laugh. You’re so repressed. And yet, you were making out at that funeral like you were a fifteen-year-old in the back of a car. Not that I know about that. I was five times morerepressed than you at your age. I was a great surgeon, and trying to be the perfect son for my father, who never wanted a girl. I had to leave everything behind, including my mind, to realize what was really important to me, who I really was, and what I really wanted. You died, but you remember who you were?”

I hesitated, then nodded. “I remember everything up to the train ride before I was murdered.”

“So, why don’t you go back to your old life?”

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