Page 61 of Necromancers Don't Raise

“Come on!” Gabby tugged me towards the door. “We’ve got to get you out of here before he rips the entire place apart!”

Chapter

Sixteen

We ran through halls that time with blinking lights and blaring alarms. “What’s really going on?” I gasped as I tried to keep up with her. The girl was fast.

“Like he said, your necromancer has come for you.”

Another shock went through the stone building, and I fell into a wall. Gabby jerked my arm, pulling me upright, and then we kept going. Each shake was harder, like a giant was trying to get salt out of a shaker.

Finally, we broke out the main door, and there were the cars, engines running, back door open, waiting for us to scramble in. “Go! Go!” Gabby yelled, rapping on the partition between us and the driver.

The cars took off, all three of them, but the ground heaved, and my stomach lurched while I grabbed onto the armrest. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

She gave me a look. “You know, I think you maybe should have brought your butler after all. I don’t think yournecromancer likes you running around without having eyes on you.”

“There’s no way that this is Mercury.”

“It has his magical signature all over it.” She licked a finger and then held it up, like she was checking which direction the wind was blowing. “Oh, yes, and he is angry. My husband is going to be so upset that I decided to mess with the necromancer.”

“You’re messing with Mercury? How?”

She grinned and pointed at me. “I stole his girlfriend. Obviously, he’d be upset, but I didn’t think he’d rip apart the world about it.”

“I’m not his girlfriend, just his pathetic formerly undead.”

“Okay, sure, whatever. This is just how my dad got when my mom was almost killed by demons.”

“We aren’t married.”

“Then maybe you should tell him that he’s overreacting, since the two of you are so uninvolved.” She rolled her eyes like I was in denial. I wasn’t in denial. He’d kissed me to steal my broken arm, not because he liked kissing me. I was his to protect. Then again, I’d put myself in a dangerous situation. Maybe he felt like he had to protect me from Mr. Good, even if he was in jail.

Our car headed out of the last gate and onto the bridge with a bump. The stretch of metal screeched and keened above us against an inky blue sky.

She whistled as the car pulled out over the water, where gray waves the color of wet cement churned. “That’s a pretty sky. I wonder how he gets that coloration. Mom would know. Maybe. She’s not as into the visual effects as Mercury. He’s an artist.”

I peered up at the pattern of roiling clouds pierced by flashes of lightning. Terrifying. “It’s very nice.” She was insane.

The car rolled along on the swaying bridge, when it twisted and I hit the opposite side of the car while Gabby hit the ceiling and then came down with an oof.

“What was that?” I asked, trying to stay calm when it looked like the bridge was going to toss our car off it into the water.

“It’s a Jonah case,” Gabby said, reached past me, opened the door and then climbed out, pulling me along with her. The road was starting to crack as she dragged me towards the side.

“Jonah who?”

“And the whale. We have to throw you off the bridge, or all the cars will be destroyed. Every time I destroy a car, Apples gets so sad.”

I stared at her. “You’re crazy. You want me to jump off the bridge?”

She nodded soberly. “Or we’ll all die. All these bodyguards. You have to protect them. You’re like that, right? Motivated by protecting other people? You have that aura. So, jump.”

I stared at her. “You want me to sacrifice myself to save the rest of you?”

“Well, you’re immortal, and the odds that Mercury won’t pick you up are incredibly slim, so it’s not like a big deal.”

I looked over the railing at the waves. They looked like solid chunks of lead. “Yeah, it’s not a big deal.” Looking at this situation logically, if the cars didn’t make it, then we would all die. Did I want to drown inside a car or outside of one? If I died, I’d come back, and that was incredibly miserable, but not the end of the world. This felt like the end of the world. I undid the armored vest, handed it to her, then took a deep breath and climbed over the side. I dove off before I could rethink things. It had to be a very clean dive, or I’d hit that water like it was solid.

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