Icy fingers pried my hands from my eyes and held them. “I’ll fetch Oscar.”
The offer stung, my fault, not his. “He’s my responsibility.”
“You can’t go back,” he said, and I wanted to hate him for echoing my own thoughts. “You’ll have to cut ties with the Haints after this. Living with one foot in both worlds is drawing too much attention to you.”
The porch light dimmed as his meaning sank in for the old house.
A whisper of presence tickled my skull as she let herself into my head. Thanks to her upgraded wards, she had an all-access pass to my brain, and she used it to review the night through the lens of my memories.
A frantic burst of energy shattered a bulb on the porch.
Fiddlesticks.
“It’s okay,” I soothed. “I’m fine. Oscar will be too. He’s probably having the time of his life.”
Another pop conveyed her disbelief with explosive results.
“You can’t keep hurting yourself.” I walked up the front steps and wrapped my arms around the nearest column. “Everything is going to be all right. I promise.” A watery laugh escaped me. “After tonight, I’m out of a job, so you can expect me to be around more often.”
The light overhead brightened with excitement that almost banished the misery churning in my gut.
Cheek braced against the flaking paint, I cut my eyes toward Linus. “When will you retrieve Oscar?”
“In a few hours,” he decided after weighing the position of the moon. “I’ll give the Haints time to close out their tour and clean up before I go.”
“Thanks.” I screwed my eyes closed. “I still can’t believe I left him.”
The kid must be terrified after I stranded him where he died all those decades ago. I just hoped no one got hurt when he pitched a temper tantrum. Oscar was a good kid, but he was an eternal six-year-old, and that age wasn’t known for its rational thinking.
“He will forgive you.” Caution dictated his slow ascent up the stairs. Linus was blood, and Woolly loved him, but he had cut her deep. Total forgiveness might not be on the table yet, but she was willing to let him pull up a chair. That was progress. “You did the best you could to keep yourself and Hood alive.” He set his hands on my shoulders, light as birds’ wings. “Oscar will care more that you survived than you forgot.”
“Maybe so.” His praise warmed me beneath the bite of his touch. “For future reference, we should invent sigils for gills and a headlamp.” Cool laughter huffed across my face, and I caught myself smiling along with him. “You think I’m joking, but this is me volunteering for extra credit. You ought to take advantage.”
“Never of you,” he breathed, letting his hands fall to his sides where they curled into fists. “I’ll set you up with your lesson before I go.”
A groan escaped me as I pushed off the column. “A near-death experience doesn’t get me off the hook?”
The floorboards trembled under our feet, a nervous flutter, and I bit my lip. Me and my big mouth.
“I have a surprise for you.”
The distraction worked on us both. Woolly rustled her curtains, attention perked, and I cocked my head too.
“Hmm.” I fingered the rubber necklace he had given me. It cost him maybe a dollar, and he strung it with a dented brass button that acted as an anchor for Oscar. “Please tell me it came from a ninety-nine-cent bin somewhere.”
Dollar gifts I could accept. More than that, and I felt their weight. Cheap came with fewer strings attached. Thrifty was my comfort zone, and I appreciated it when he pinched his pennies where I was concerned.
“A surprise,” he clarified. “Not a gift.”
Linus trailed me into the house, his presence a shiver down my spine.
Sweet relief flowed through me. “What is it?”
A twinkle set off the rich navy in his blue eyes. “The very definition—”
“I’ll pester you until you cave.” I jabbed him in the ribs. “I have mad skills. I’ll follow you everywhere you go, and you won’t get a moment’s peace until you spill. Really, I’m trying to help you.”
The smile twitching his lips told me he underestimated my ability to annoy him, but I had tweaked Boaz enough over the years to have the routine down pat.
A pang arrowed through me, hitting its mark. Even thinking Boaz’s name hurt like the dickens.
“I’ve accepted a petition for resuscitation.” Linus crossed into the office and thumped the textbook on the desk Amelie had claimed as her own before her eviction to the carriage house. “You will assist.”
I flinched away from the word. “Will you bring Julius?”
Familiars boosted a necromancer’s power, so it made sense he might want his great horned owl with him to act as a battery. That meant he would have to check Julius out of the Lawson aviary since I refused to let him stay in Woolly for Keet’s sake. And mine. He was dang creepy.
“No.” To soften the use of a designation that still smarted, he gentled his voice. “I won’t need him for this.”
I bit my lip to stop from saying Good. Owls might be the symbol of Hecate, but he was a pain in my butt.
“You need practical experience,” he continued. “This will help you frame how the process works and put your studies into perspective.”
“How it should work.” That’s what he meant. “For a normal necromancer.”
“Your gift amazes me.” His knuckles grazed my cheek, leaving tingling cold in their wake. “None of us are normal, not by human standards.” His eyes softened, the blue warming. “You’re exactly as Hecate intended. Goddess-touched, remember?”
“More like goddess-washed-her-hands-of-me.” I searched his face. “Where was she when Maud died? When I was in Atramentous? When Volkov took me?”
“Grier.” My name tore from his lips. No. Deeper. He made it sound as if it were wrenched from his soul. “I have lost my faith too many times to help anyone find theirs.”
A shocked laugh burst out of me. “Here I thought you had all the answers.”
“I might be a professor, but theology has never been my area of expertise.”
“How can you invoke the goddess when it sounds like you don’t believe in her either?”
“I’ve beheld miracles.” His gaze roved my face. “There must be an explanation for them.”
“I’m no miracle,” I whispered. “I’m…” an abomination in the eyes of the Society, if my former stalkerpire was to be believed, “…a blade to be forged.”
And the Grande Dame had placed me into his hands. That was an incontrovertible truth, and I hated it.
Another mask lowered across his features, that of Professor Lawson. Linus, my friend, was gone.
“Do your homework.” Head angled down, he pivoted on his heel. “I’ll be home before dawn.”
I positioned myself by the window and watched as he exited the house, crossed the lawn and embraced the night as if he had never been a flesh and blood man. He vanished, whisked away by the darkness, and I wasn’t the only one who had noticed.
Amelie peered out the window of the carriage house. Her hand raised in a timid wave I didn’t return.
Heart bleeding out behind me, I crossed the room, sank into the chair, and cracked open the book.
Joyous baying startled me out of the chapter I was reading on the purifying qualities of sage. The debate on the superior properties of white sage versus garden sage as it applied to resuscitations was about as dry as the herb in question, so I rewarded my studiousness with a quick trip onto the front porch to check on the Kinase pack.
Half bullmastiff and half Komodo dragon, three rust-colored gwyllgi romped across the manicured lawn. Powerful jaws snapped at wagging tails. Tongues lolled across razor teeth. Low growls tapered into canine laughter.
Not gonna lie. The tender organ in my chest swelled three times its normal size watching them play like Hood hadn’t just survived a brush with death. Then again, maybe that was the cause for their celebration.
Feeling guilty for my part in his close call, I pivoted on my heel, leaving them to enjoy themselves.
A sharp bark had me looking back as the largest of the three wagged his tail at me.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I called. “I didn’t mean to intrude. You guys can go back to your—” frolicking might not be the best word to use when dealing with predators, “—fun.”
A startled gasp rang out that caused my gut to tighten, and I whipped my head toward the carriage house. Amelie stood in the doorway, her eyes swallowing her face as the origin of the commotion registered.
She looked good. That was my first thought. Amelie had let herself go while living at Woolworth House. The heartbreak from her disownment spiraled her to a darker place than the one she had gone to all on her own by welcoming the dybbuk calling himself Ambrose into her life, into her body, into her very soul.
Oh crap was my second thought as Lethe flattened her ears against her skull and stalked toward Amelie.
Linus warned her about the new security measures, but this must be the first time she had come face to face with them.
“Lethe, no.” I took a step toward the gwyllgi before Woolly trapped me on the spot. “Don’t hurt her.”
She continued her hunt, her eyes flashing ruby malevolence, a rumble moving through her.
Amelie stood her ground for two seconds longer than I would have before slamming the door in Lethe’s face.
Lethe cranked her head toward me, registered my panic, and chuffed out a laugh that fit wrong in her throat while trotting back to join the others who welcomed her with yelping cackles that made them sound more like hyenas than dog-lizard things.
“Not funny,” I growled, wrenching free of Woolly’s hold. “Leave her alone.”
Until her indenture was paid, Amelie remained my responsibility. I wasn’t going to present her to the Lyceum missing a few chunks. And okay, fine, I didn’t want to see her in pain even if she had no trouble inflicting it on me.