Home > How to Live an Undead Lie (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #5)(3)

How to Live an Undead Lie (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #5)(3)
Author: Hailey Edwards

“We found his map and his sword.” Guilt bowed Lethe’s shoulders, and misery thickened her voice. “I gave him a head start so I could take a snack break, like it would have killed me to wait an hour before stuffing my face again.”

“This isn’t your fault.” I unstrapped her fin. “Besides, we don’t know for sure that anything is wrong.”

“I’m going to have a flesh-and-blood kid soon,” she fretted. “What if I park his or her stroller at a food truck, get preoccupied inhaling calories, and walk off without him or her? Or worse—what if he or she is kidnapped? The grandchild of the Atlanta alpha is a major bargaining chip.”

“Hear how panicked you are right now?” I rested my hands on her shoulders. “That’s how I know you’re going to be an amazing mom. You would never forget your kid, not even on Two for One Taco Tuesday.”

Eyes glassy with unshed tears, she pushed out a slow exhale. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Unable to resist, I gave her a playful shake. “Now if it was a churro stand…”

“That’s your kryptonite.” Her watery laugh made me smile. “Not mine.”

“As much as I enjoy hearing you two rank which foods are most likely to result in the child abandonment or kidnapping of our firstborn, we need to focus.” Hood rubbed his jaw. “Oscar is tight with Woolly. She might have an idea of where he’s gone. We should check with her next.”

Hope surged through me in an electric tingle. “I could kiss you right now.”

“Please don’t.” He shot Linus a pitying look. “I remember what happened to the last guy.”

A teensy smile curved Linus’s mouth, but he dropped his chin to conceal his amusement.

I saw it, though. I had gotten good at noticing what he hid from the world. Or maybe he wasn’t hiding so much as no one had bothered looking. He was seen now. And when his gaze met mine and the corners of his eyes crinkled, I was flustered at the uptick in my pulse from a simple glance.

Linus meshed his fingers with mine. “How close do we need to get for Woolly to answer?”

The chills racing up my arm had nothing to do with the temperature of his skin, and my chest tightened.

“I can sense her whenever I’m on the property, but our connection is strongest when I’m in sight of her.” We set out again, and in a little bit her pitched roof came into view. “Close enough.”

I shot the question to Woolly along our bond, and alarm flared, sinking my hope she had a bead on Oscar.

“No luck.” I sweated against his palm. “She hasn’t seen him since we left.”

“Go to work,” Lethe suggested. “Get your mind off things.”

“We’ll worry if he hasn’t checked in by dawn,” Hood agreed. “Lethe will keep an eye out for him and call if he beats you home.”

“All right.” I exhaled. “I don’t have any better ideas, so we’ll go with yours.”

“Where are you guys patrolling?” Lethe cut into my swirling thoughts. “Downtown?”

“River Street,” I said, deciding I would check the Cora Ann in case the magic binding Oscar to the brass button I wore around my neck had faltered long enough for him to be sucked back to the scene of his death.

“Bring home some of those churros you mentioned.” She patted her flat stomach. “Baby likes cinnamon.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I didn’t bother hiding my eye-roll. “Does baby like caramel and chocolate sauce too?”

“Yes, he or she does.” Lethe ignored my sarcasm. “Thanks for asking.”

Back at Woolly, Linus and I left the gwyllgi to discuss security protocols while we stepped inside to dress for the night.

Since I no longer held a job as a Haint, River or otherwise, I had started joining him during his nightly patrols. While it didn’t pay much—or anything at all, really—I enjoyed getting to know my city through his eyes. The contacts I made now, with him at my side to vouch for me, would prove invaluable after he returned to Atlanta.

Ouch.

The pinch in my heart when I thought of him going home no longer took me by surprise, but it still hurt.

I didn’t want him to leave, but he had a job, a duty. And it wasn’t to Savannah, or to me.

“You’re quiet,” he murmured at the base of the stairs. “Oscar, or something else?”

The man was perceptive. I had to give him that. But telling him I was dreading Atlanta yet again was out of the question. My insecurities would drive a wedge between us if the topic kept popping up in every conversation. Instead of venting, I reminded myself I had known what I was getting into, and with whom, and shook my head.

“Let me grab my bag.” It wasn’t an answer, but he didn’t press. Like I said—perceptive. “Be right back.”

I had a thing about ignoring my feelings, bottling them up until pressure built under my skin, ready to explode. I was getting better about letting off steam before I reached that point. Lethe’s friendship was slowly filling the hole where Amelie used to fit. There would always be a gap, a space no one else could fill, but such was life.

Old friends left, new ones took their places. Even if the old ones still lived in your carriage house.

Up in my room, I went to check on Eileen where she gazed out into the yard from the oak podium I had rescued from the attic. I kept track of my goddess-touched sigils within her pages, but she seemed otherwise content to bask in the moonlight like a cat in the sun.

I was scratching her eyelids with my fingernail when the force of Woolly’s mental ping made me gasp.

Images of Oscar flipped through my head, each one brighter than the last.

“We’ll find him,” I promised, regaining my balance. “The kid is family.”

Her relief gusted from the floor registers to flutter the curtains above my window.

“He played hard today.” I located a black nylon backpack crammed with necromantic paraphernalia. It was nowhere near as elegant as Maud’s leather doctor bag, but that statement piece hadn’t exactly been vintage chic when she started carrying it, either. “He might have gone…wherever it is he goes when he’s not here.”

Oscar never volunteered the information, and I had never asked. I wasn’t certain he was aware when he began fading, and if he wasn’t, I didn’t want to be the one who told him.

A knock on the front door brought my head up, and I strained to hear who Linus greeted, but Woolly’s consciousness flared, and a jaunty melody crashed through my mind with her incandescent joy.

“Oscar?” I asked, not quite believing our luck. “He knocked?”

How unlike my little sneak, who preferred popping in and scaring the pee out of people. Mostly me.

Thanks to my connection with Woolly, I was aware of Linus approaching before I heard footsteps on the stairs, and I met him in the hall.

“We have a situation.” His lips thinned, and his hand tightened on the banister. “You have a guest.”

“I thought…” I peered around him, but he stood alone. “Oscar isn’t here?”

Linus hesitated. “He’s downstairs.”

Certain the last thing I wanted to do was find out what put that look on his face, I followed for Oscar’s sake.

The front door stood open, and a young man around my age waited on the porch. He jingled a ring of keys hooked around one finger while clutching the glowing blue hand of my adoptive son with the other hand. The man’s hair was black as midnight, and the soft waves fell across his shoulders, clashing with the hard set of his jaw and the piercing green eyes that measured me from top to bottom. He was handsome enough, but wiry. Lean like he was hungry. And he was…angry.

No, that wasn’t quite it. He was nail-spitting furious. With me. Over what I had done to him.

How I knew all that at a glance made me question my sanity, but his truth beat against my senses.

Behind him, in the shadows, lurked the gwyllgi. Lethe had already shifted, but Hood remained upright.

As I stepped closer, a prickle of awareness swept up my spine, alerting me to the fact our visitor was a vampire, but…there was more. Not the lure of Last Seed, but a resonance that vibrated in my back teeth, an urge to reach out and touch him. Soothe him. Make amends.

“Oscar.” I waved him over, not trusting myself any closer to the vampire. “Come here.”

The ghost boy continued staring a hole in my thigh through unseeing eyes.

“I call to spirits,” the vampire explained. “I don’t mean to summon them.” He opened his fingers, but Oscar kept gripping his hand. With a sigh, he pressed a guiding palm between Oscar’s thin shoulder blades and nudged his toes right up to the threshold. “I figured you’d want this back.”

Ghosts tended to be drawn to necromancers, not vampires, but stranger things had happened.

Just look at me.

Reaching through the wards, I pulled Oscar to me and then demanded, “Who are you?”

“Corbin Theroux.”

“That doesn’t give me much to go on.” I examined his face, trying to place him, but memory failed me. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

“Only once.” His hard smile showcased elongated fangs. “I’m your progeny.”

“Oh.”

Fiddlesticks.

Two

Progeny.

My progeny.

Corbin Theroux.

Black edged my vision, and Linus cupped my elbow to steady me. “Why are you here?”

Never is a long time for a necromancer, but I hadn’t expected the Grande Dame to allow this meeting.

Labeling Corbin as an accident was harsh, but that’s how I viewed his creation. I had no memory of coaxing my first vampire into existence after his mortal death at the hands of a fellow inmate. Most of my time in Atramentous was spent in a drugged haze, and I hadn’t blinked clear of it when I made him.

“I escaped from my cell.” He flashed the keys in his palm. “I stole a car and drove to Savannah.” Bitterness tightened his mouth. “I can’t go home. Not like this. My parents would kill me.”

   
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