Page 57 of Necromancers Don't Raise

She grinned at me. “Fun. Like your hair. Not the dress. No offense.”

I laughed. “None taken. The dress was for the next time I went to a funeral, you know, so I could be dressed appropriately, but it turns out, I needed it to visit the prison instead.”

“That’s handy. I have a whole closet of appropriate clothing. Happily, I also have a whole closet of inappropriate clothing, too. My mother helps me stock it.”

“I like her fedora.”

She beamed at me. “She’s determined to make it her statement, like mob bosses should also be grand sorcerers.”

“Why not?”

She led me down the steps in Apple City to a large dark car, with another one ahead and another one behind. An ogre was inside the backseat, but the redhead didn’t seem to notice the enormous hulking female as we climbed inside.

“Hi,” I said to her.

She grunted.

“Don’t talk to the guard. She finds it offensive, like you’re intentionally trying to distract her from her work, although how that would be possible, I have no idea. She’s a workaholic.”

“We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Nova Nativitae Estrecha.” I held out my hand, and she hesitated a moment before she took it, shaking enthusiastically.

“Oh! I’m Gabby Marigold. Not really, but my husband’s other names annoy me. I’m married to the most self-absorbed genius you ever don’t want to meet. Not that he doesn’t have perfect manners and a perfect body, and a face that makes you want to scream, it’s so pretty.” She sighed dreamily.

“He sounds very nice. Like my ex fiancé.”

She refocused on me. “He was a self-absorbed narcissist?”

“Oh, no, he’s like prince charming, always ready to save the day or give you the perfect compliment. He’s pretty. That’s what I meant. Pretty, not anything against his character. He always has perfect manners.”

“Oh. Boring. So that’s why you dumped him.”

I blinked at her. “No, actually, we broke up when I died.”

She stared at me. “He didn’t like you dead? Lame. Some guys can’t appreciate a soul.”

I laughed. “If your husband died, you’d just make the best of living with a corpse?”

“Of course. What’s the point of being married if you aren’t in it for the long haul? I’m also a sorceress, so that makes me more possessive than most. I’d probably get some lessons from Mercury or my mother, although she doesn’t think I should dabble in dark sorcery. You have to really invest your whole life in it, or leave it alone, but Mercury would give me a few lessons on raising the dead, right?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t like the living, and you’re very alive, so…”

She pinched my cheek. Not too hard, but firm. “So are you, and he likes you.”

“He doesn’t like me. He’s made that very clear.”

“Oh. My bad. Do you want him to like you?”

Her bright eyes were so energetic. I looked from her to the ogre bodyguard, then back to her. “I mean, it would be nice to be liked.”

“In general, but specifically…”

I sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Supposedly, you’d be a lunatic to want a dark sorcerer to like you.”

“That’s true. To be honest, you do strike me as somewhat of a lunatic. You are the girl who made out during that funeral, very publicly, with none other than our necromancer. And thenthe auction, shooting like that with those guns. You didn’t bring your guns?”

“No, I thought they wouldn’t let me into the prison with them.”

“Good thinking.”

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