Page 62 of Necromancers Don't Raise

It wasn’t solid, but it was cold. I dove well, but my combat boots weren’t the best for buoyancy. However, the worst werethe fingers that almost immediately clutched at me, dragging me down however hard I kicked and struggled.

I bit a hand, and it slid off my arm, but there were more bodies, pulling me, slick and gray, death and misery. So this really was the work of a necromancer. I struggled, panicking as my lungs ached from holding my breath. Maybe I was panicking from all the bodies rubbing against me, relentless and determined to take me wherever they wanted me to go.

Why would Mercury want to kill me? Did he assume that I was now corrupt because I’d chatted with Mr. Good? That didn’t make sense. Not that any of this was anything close to rational. What would Mr. Good get out of convincing me that he was my birth father? Did he want me to mistrust my mother?

I struggled on and on until my lungs couldn’t hold their air. Right before I was about to inhale lungfuls of water, I was shoved above the surface. Those icy dead fingers pressed me against a boat, glorious solid wood. I scrambled up, gasping, clinging to the deck, escaping the horrible grasp of death.

I was like that for a long time, gasping and shuddering until I pushed onto my hands and knees and looked up to find Oswald Mercury lounging on the large boat, sunglasses over his eyes, wearing nothing but black swim trunks.

His chest was absolutely phenomenal, even better than the poster, and it was right there in front of me, black runes inked into his pale skin over those hard muscles.

I gasped, then choked and coughed for a few minutes. Now I choke, after I’m out of the water, just because some necromancer happens to have an impressive chest? I was such an idiot. Finally, I croaked out, “You’d tan better if you didn’t turn the sky black.”

“It’s technically blue.”

“Excuse me for being imprecise.” I clambered to my feet and glared at him. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Me? I don’t try to kill. If I wanted you dead, that’s what you’d be.” His voice was so hard and cold, like the water, like all of me, inside and out.

I shuddered. I was cold, freezing, and the soaked funeral dress and combat boots were not helping to block the icy breeze coming off the water. “I don’t understand. Usually I understand people, but this is madness. Are you insane? Truly?” I studied him, but with his glasses on, I couldn’t read anything other than a tautness around his mouth. I shook my head and went for the hatch that led down to the hull to get out of the wind and try to find something dry to wear. I was almost past him when he sat up, snagged my waist and tugged me so I sprawled over him.

I lay on his bare skin, heat seeping into me as I stared up at him past his jaw and those angular cheekbones to eyes hidden behind those dark glasses, but I saw the flickers of lightning. He was so deliciously warm and I was so miserably cold.

“What are you doing?” I stammered, completely bewildered. “I’m cold and wet. I need to change my clothes.” And he needed to put some clothes on before his bare skin really went to my head. Or I licked him.

His voice was a low growl, his hands gripping me like he wouldn’t ever let me go. “You need to tell me what happened with Mr. Good.”

I stared at him, at how hard his mouth was, but I knew how soft and sweet it could be. I licked my lips as a rush of aching went through me. He was a dark sorcerer who was furious enough with whatever I’d said to Mr. Good to attack the prison with dark magical forces, but he had such gentle hands and so much compassion for the dead. Not that I was dead anymore, but if Mr. Good was right, I’d probably die again sometime, and then maybe I’d stay dead for a little longer afterwards. He made even death sweet.

Mercury raised a dark brow. “Do you refuse to divulge your secrets?”

He was so warm, like a cozy fire on a miserable day. He was always like that, making the worst experiences into the best ones. He didn’t want to know my secrets, not that I was Cassandra Clarence, not that my mother may have had a sordid affair with the worst man in the universe to save her business, or the other one about how he made me feel alive, safe, and whole, even when everything else was falling apart.

I took a shaky breath. “He said that he isn’t the one trying to kill me. He said…” I swallowed hard. “He can’t lie about something like that. I’ll just take a paternity test. He’s not my father. There’s no way that I have immortality from a deal he made with a devil. That makes absolutely no sense.”

He sat up, bringing me up with him, but not letting me away from that massive, beautiful stretch of well-muscled flesh. “Mr. Good thinks he’s your father? But he had a statue commissioned of Cassandra Clarence.” He frowned at me so intently that I shivered.

I licked my lips. He probably needed to know all the salient facts. Not that it would make a difference. I was just some stupidly sweet girl he’d been tricked into brokering a statue of. “That’s the thing,” I said, lamely. “I’m not Callie. I mean, I wasn’t ever Callie. I just didn’t want to tell you, because I’m not her anymore, and I can’t be again, so why dwell on it?”

“You were Cassandra Clarence?” he murmured, still studying me, like he was trying to find the Cassandra Clarence perfection in my features. I hated that look, trying to match who I’d been to who I was now. It just didn’t fit.

I chewed on my bottom lip, then shrugged helplessly. “Yes. It’s surgery. Glamours are too delicate to hold up against the gaze of powerful magic-users, so we had to make it permanent. Not that it was.”

His lips thinned, and his voice lowered. “Surgery? They cut your face into that other shape? Your mother forced you to? How old were you your first time?”

He made it sound so bizarre and twisted. I sighed. “It’s not that big of a deal. Everyone in my circle does it. I was twelve when my mother took me for my first nose alteration.” I spoke quickly, trying to not feel the words too deeply. It was in the past, another life.

“Alteration, like you’re a piece of clothing, to be cut and sewn into shape? How abominable.”

I stiffened up. “Yes, well, coming from a necromantic sorcerer, who sews dead people together, refusing to let their souls rest, I suppose you’d know exactly how abominable it is.”

He blinked at me, slightly taken aback. “Your mother taught you to hate yourself as you truly are, to make it impossible for you to see the beauty. How is that just? How is that right?”

“She taught me to be respectable. She’s creating a society where humanity is protected from all the predators that want to rip it apart.”

“You’re defending her.” He shook his head slowly, apparently disgusted with me. “You’re loyal, even though she tortured her, like you’re unquestioningly loyal to me, because I showed you some small care.”

Yes, because I was so stupidly sweet and couldn’t see evil when it was right in front of me. How dare he judge me? I pulled away, straddling his lap. “You showered me when I was covered in sewage! With these hands,” I snarled, grabbing his strong hands in mine while I raged at him. “With your own perfectly manicured hands, you cared for a dead girl like I was precious. No one has ever shown me such tenderness, however perfect I was. My mother’s character isn’t flawless, but she’s my mother, and she taught me to protect myself, to do good, and to be the best that I could be. I forbid you from speaking about her in anyway other than respectfully! She’d never betray my father with a monster like Mr. Good, no matter what he says!”

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