Page 81 of Necromancers Don't Raise

She continued, gesturing with her gun. “You had everything, but you never appreciated it. You didn’t love your prince charming, and you didn’t focus on making the business strong. All you cared about was being ‘The Saint,’ the perfect little untouched human who had to save everyone else. But that changed when I got you alone after the meeting, when I finally cut you apart.” She smiled in a truly creepy way, but then her face fell and the demonic fire flared in her eyes. “But you weren’t Cassandra Clarence. I could kill hundreds of people, but none of that would give me what I worked so hard for. Because she never existed.”

“Well, that explains things very well,” Barbara said, nodding and grimacing, like she shared Patricia’s baby’s frustration.

While my clone was looking at her, I pulled my beautiful shotgun out of the chair case leaning against me, and cocked it loudly, getting everyone’s attention.

I stood up, aiming my gun casually in my duplicate’s direction. “Do you have a name?” I asked pleasantly. “Or should I just call you Miss Watford?”

“How dare you call me anything!” She raised the gun to shoot me, but a knife slid through the bones of her hand, making her drop the gun while she bled, staring at the knife in shock.

My mother walked over to her. “Patricia was going to name you Fiora, after the fire demon Feoran that she loved so much.”She grasped Fiora’s wrist and pulled out her knife, making the girl with my face cry out in shock and pain.

My mother put an arm around her shoulder and led her over to my seat, helping her sit down. “Let me fix that.” She pulled out a handkerchief and started binding the wound, like it wasn’t her knife that she’d thrown at the girl. It was a little unnerving how incredibly good she was with knives. That was a side of my mother I’d never seen before. “You could have come to me for help. That’s what we do, help those who have nowhere else to turn.”

Fiora grimaced. “I did. Your company got me an ID, work, and a place to live. It was better than where I came from, but there was Cassandra in her ivory tower, existing to be adored. I started thinking how easy it would be to take her place, how I would be the daughter who would appreciate all the things she took for granted.”

“She never was very good at appreciating what she was given, but you didn’t see the other side of it, the hours of painful surgery, the isolation to keep her from being discovered, the rules she had to follow, and the perfection she had to maintain. She never had the luxury of being herself, at least not until you killed her.” My mother smiled, and it was a bit frightening. “You killed my daughter. What I’m curious about is how you produced the video of her alive, running back into the flames.”

She glanced away from us into the shadowy corners of the site and then shook her head. “It’s just a video. Those are easy enough to fake.”

“You have a background in movie making?” Mr. Good asked, voice carefully neutral. What did he think about all this?

“Also the dark magic construct,” I said.

She glared at me, hostile instead of apologetic with my mom. Callie had always been like that, weirdly worshipful of Mrs. Clarence.

“You had a partner?” Barbara asked gently.

“She hired it done,” I said, studying her. “She had the makeup artist helping her. It was her boyfriend who helped Fiora summon the demon. The artist’s lucky you didn’t steal her face.”

She sneered at me. “I don’t go around stealing people’s lives. Callie deserved it, and so did you.”

I took a deep breath, so I didn’t accidentally shoot her. At that moment, I smelled something strange, sweet, cloying.

Barbara started blinking blearily and then her head tilted to the side, stilled in death.

She was here. Salina the vampire was here with her death aura. My heart started racing faster, but I took a deep breath and grasped my gun. She couldn’t hurt me as long as I was wearing the bracelet. That’s the only reason Mercury had been on board with this.

Fiora started gagging and choking, grabbing her throat and convulsing. My mother and Mr. Good exchanged glances.

“Fifty feet?” my mother asked.

He nodded as he studied the dying girl with calculation. He knew what this looked like. He must have some resistance to the death aura or he couldn’t have worked with her. They were prepared for this eventuality, but Fiora was not.

I couldn’t watch her die. I’d promised Mercury that I’d keep the bracelet on, that I wouldn’t jeopardize my health in this ridiculous scheme, but I still pulled my bracelet off and shoved it over her hand.

The death aura hit me hard. Every vein in my body was on fire, like my blood had evaporated or boiled. I jerked and then slumped as my heart beat two ragged beats and stopped.

My double inhaled a jerky breath, looking around wildly while my mother crouched beside me, grabbing my wrist and looking furious. My eyes were still open, and I wasn’t losingconsciousness, but I was definitely not breathing, and my heart wasn’t beating, so, yep, probably dead.

“Her eyes are glazing over. It’s too late,” Mr. Good said, tugging at my mother’s shoulder. He didn’t have handcuffs on anymore. Terrifying. And the sorcerers had to keep their distance because they had no immunity to Salina’s death aura. I was supposed to be using my vampire-killing gun to shoot Salina apart until she was weak enough that Mercury could approach with his undead. He could fight her armies and win, but not even his undead could get close to her. Why did I give my murderer the bracelet? She’d killed me. She deserved to die! I was too stupid to live. Apparently. Because I was dead.

Mr. Good ran a hand down my mother’s arm, looking at her like she was a miracle. “We need to leave now, or we die here.”

My mother turned on him with a snarl, a knife in each hand. “My daughter died for this idiot human-demon who already killed her! What is wrong with her?”

My double looked at me, horrified that I’d pull the Saint card one last time. I would have given her a spiteful smile if I’d been able to move my face.

Mr. Good smiled gently at my mother and touched her hair, carefully. He was so stupidly in love, poor idiot. “She took after my own mother. She was a nun. Couldn’t see suffering she didn’t want to relieve. Well, Lira, do we run?”

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