I dug my toes into the lush grass and shivered as a garden spider bustled across my heel. I gave three good tugs, and the cardboard coffin pulled free. After dusting off the top, I traced the decorations scribbled in crayon down the sides then lifted the lid. Paper towels folded to resemble sheets on a bed rested high on the dead bird’s chest where he had been tucked between them for one final snooze.
Keet’s silver-white cheeks looked as plump and adorable as I remembered. His feathers as bright yellow as a fresh banana peel. His bill and legs held a reddish tint, and his eyes, when they opened again, would be deep crimson.
That was thanks to his Lutino coloring, not magic, but the effect was eerie all the same.
“Hey, little guy.” I lifted him with care and set about tidying the area so no one would suspect precocious little Macon of playing mortician. “Long time, no see, huh?”
Having been dead for some time, the parakeet didn’t answer.
That would have been creepy.
Fisting the bone handle on Maud’s bag, I hauled it closer. The latches flipped with ease, and I cracked the top halves open, rooting around in the bag’s cavernous belly until my fingers located my favorite round paintbrush in its case. I removed the brush and a jar of crimson ink that smelled of spiced pennies then set them at my knee.
Other necromancers-in-training in my age group had been raised with their familiars, but I had never stayed in one place long enough for a pet until I went to live with Maud. Things might have gone differently had she not sent a softhearted kid to pick up her order of feeder mice. After learning the writhing pinkies were snake chow, I bawled until the store owner, terrified of losing a lucrative contract, shoved a parakeet into my hands to shut me up as he nudged me out the door.
Keet was not the familiar Maud had in mind for her pupil, but she allowed the match to placate me. Sadly, the store owner had a reason for selecting that particular bird, and Keet kicked the bucket two days later. Cheered by the opportunity to use him as a teaching exercise, Maud coached me through inking my first sigils. But I must have smudged one, because bada-bing, bada-boom, I found myself the proud owner of a psychopomp.
I’ll never forget how the blood drained from her face as his wisp of a soul reentered his rigid body, or how she made the goddess sign across her heart thrice with trembling fingers when his tiny lungs caught a second wind.
She enrolled me in public school the next day, where my peers consisted of plain-vanilla humans and the children of Low Society members. She claimed that in order to survive in our world, one had to understand theirs. But how I was meant to grasp the workings of the High Society while masquerading as a mortal, I had no idea. And after I met Amelie and her older brother, Boaz, I stopped caring how I was ever meant to fit into that world of castes, rules and blood magic.
Maud continued teaching me rudimentary herblore and basic warding magic on the weekends, always behind locked doors, and I excelled at both. But that one failure with Keet, who she refused to share air with, had cemented my fate.
Assistant.
The designation still smarted.
A quick dip of my brush, and I painted a modified sigil on my forehead that gave me the ability to perceive souls. Yep. Just as expected, the shimmery whorl of Keet’s spirit drifted in a glittery cloud around him, bound to his corpse and the sigil burnt into my skin by a fine thread so that each of his deaths, and there had been many, summoned me. Using the end of my brush, I disturbed the halo of motes, scattering them into the night. Slowly, oh so slowly, they gravitated back to Keet and reformed as if I had never agitated them.
Here was proof positive that my magic had been wonky from the get-go.
Assistant indeed.
Sitting back on my heels, I rotated his small body in my palm until his belly faced the stars. I dipped my brush and swiped a few symbols on the smooth feathers covering his abdomen. The effect left him slashed with red, as gruesome as a disemboweled murder victim, but the sigils would wash off with soap and water later.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Boaz.” The brush rolled from my fingers, and my heart clanged against my ribs. The urge to glance back at him twitched in my neck, but fear he might vanish like mist if I looked at him head-on kept me staring straight ahead. “Amelie said you got deployed.”
“Yeah, well, I got undeployed.” He nudged the tips of my toes with the blunt edge of his massive boot. “You’d know that if you hadn’t been hiding from me.”
“I haven’t been hiding,” I lied on reflex, shielding my own wounded pride.
“You don’t call. You don’t email. You don’t snail mail.” A growl laced his voice. “Sounds like hiding to me.”
“At least I didn’t run.” I balled my empty fist in my lap. “How is what you did any better?”
“I enlisted.”
“Maud was barely in the ground when you shipped out.”
“You were already gone,” he seethed. “What did you expect me to do? Stay in Savannah? Wake up every morning and see your house sitting empty? Torment myself with the knowledge you weren’t there? That I would never see you again?”
“Stop,” I whispered.
“They sentenced you to Atramentous without a fucking trial—”
“Stop.”
Boaz was past listening. How his parents didn’t hear us shouting, I had no idea. Then again, they ought to be used to yelling where he and I were concerned. After all, he was a firm believer that volume increased understanding.
“You kept in touch with Amelie.” His hurt pulsed like a sore tooth he couldn’t stop poking with his tongue. “Why not me?”
Telling him that facing his sister was easier wouldn’t make the truth hurt any less.
“I’m standing right here, and you can’t even look at me.” He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat, the kind the sentinels used to make before hocking a loogie in my face. “I might have lost a leg, but I can still kick your ass.”
The world ground to a halt on its axis as his threat permeated my skull.
I whipped my head toward him, and my vision ran crimson with fury. “You what?”
“Landmine in Afghanistan.” He bent over and knocked where his left femur should have been. It made a hollow sound that echoed in my chest. “Turns out they explode if you step on them. Who knew?”
One minute I was kneeling in the grass, the next I was climbing him like a tree.
Turned out I made for one pissed-off monkey.
“Oof.”
Impact knocked him to the grass, and I ended up straddling his hips with my right foot hooked over his shin, metallic and cold where he should be muscle and heat.
“When?” I fisted the front of his olive drab tee and thumped his head on the ground. “When did this happen? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Amelie—”
“I told her to keep her yap shut.” He glared up at me. “I told her if you wanted news about me, then you damn well came to the source or you’d go thirsty.” He fit his hand around the base of my throat, stroking over my carotid with a calloused thumb. “You want to get a drink with me?”
“What? You’re asking me out? Now?” I wriggled lower on his hips, trying to get off this crazy ride. His lips twisted in a grimace of pain. I scrambled off him so fast I fell on my butt in the cold grass. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Naw, Grier. It feels good having my head bashed into the dirt. I worried I didn’t have enough rocks rattling around in there already.” He lifted his head and rubbed the base of his skull. “It happened two years ago. You’re not going to hurt me. The new leg is titanium. It’s tough, but don’t tear it off and start whacking me with it, okay? TRICARE only covers so much.”
Ducking my head, shame burning my cheeks, I murmured, “Can we start over?”
“Sure. Give me a second.” Linking his hands behind his head, he crossed his legs at the ankles and wiggled his hips. “All right. You can straddle me again. I’m ready this time. I’ll even keep my hands to myself.” His mischievous wink made heat gather low in my stomach. “I like giving orders better anyway. I’ve learned I’m good at it.”
“Pervert.”
He rolled a shoulder, not disagreeing with me. “The offer stands.”
I bet it did. “Nice try. I’m not checking out your crotch.”