There
are some things you get used to when you live with a necromancer. The strange
looks the neighbours give you—although if you’re the kind of person who lives
with a necromancer, you probably got a lot of stares anyway—the way mundane
animals won’t go near your roommate, the odd hours, the spare bedroom converted
into a freezer. Going out to cemeteries in the middle of the night, of course,
although that could be fun if you didn’t mind a lot of digging[1].
And the dead could be pretty interesting to talk to. Of course, if you were one
of them, you could be a little biased on that point, but at least some of them
understood what you were talking about.
What
you never got used to was finding your roommate in a cemetery covered in his
own blood in the middle of the night. Especially when it was your fault,
because you let him go out doing magic alone even though you know he gets carried away sometimes, and
now you have to explain to the paramedics even though you have no idea what the
hell is going on.
For
Saturday, it was not a good night. Granted, it was probably a worse night for
Rosseau, but unconscious people don’t generally give their opinions, so it was
hard to be sure.
Saturday
was sitting in a plastic chair that had been designed for people of average
height and that forced his knees up somewhere around his shoulders, staring
blankly at the waiting room wall. They had been through things like this
before, of course, because necromancy had a lot of relics from the days when
everything was ritual-based and there are some things you can’t modernize, but
it was still difficult. Because you didn’t know. That was the thing. One day
the text wouldn’t come (and god, there was nothing worse than getting the text
“possibly bleeding to death pls help” when up until now you’ve been having a
very nice relaxing evening and were thinking of maybe going to bed around now)
or he’d get there too late or Rosseau would forget to mention where he was
going (no he wouldn’t, he was too smart for that, wasn’t he?) and then…
He
pulled out the flask without even thinking about it, drinking from it in a
reflex born of three years’ avoiding decomposition. It was disgusting, but it
helped, sort of.
A
pen fell off the table next to him. The room was so quiet it actually echoed,
because nobody talks in a hospital waiting room. He reached down automatically
to pick it up—oh, yes, and there was the other problem.
Because
Rosseau hadn’t said what he was going to do, just that he had work and where he
was going, the kind of blank statement that Saturday was used to when he wasn’t
needed for heavy lifting or companionship. So, of course, Saturday had arrived
and discovered a lot of blood and a seven-year-old girl who had died over a
century ago and whose ghost Rosseau had tethered to the piece of dull
rose-colored ribbon now tied around Saturday’s wrist. The name on the headstone
was Angelina, but he didn’t know anything else about the ghost because he
wasn’t a necromancer and she wouldn’t give him her voice[2],
which he supposed was reasonable since she probably didn’t have the energy for
a lot of people, but it was overall kind of frustrating.
At
least she wasn’t one of the dangerous
ghosts, the ones that got really angry when you tried to talk to them. Ghosts
can only move things with the mass of a pen or less, but there are plenty of
dangerous things in that category.
It
was almost one in the morning. If he had gone to bed, he’d probably have scared
himself awake by now anyway. This was not much of a comfort.
“What
happened to yours?”
Saturday
turned, startled. There was a woman in the seat next to him, short faded blonde
hair, an unaccountably fancy black dress with some jagged rips in the hem, and
with the ghastly grey pallor that generally marked the undead. Impossible to
tell her age, but she looked younger than him. There was a long-dead lily
tucked behind her ear, which made her look fresh from the grave. Maybe she was.
“I’m
sorry, what?” That was rude; he’d have to apologize at some point, when he was
feeling better, if he happened to still be here by then.
She
nodded toward the closed door which prevented him from running off to harass
the doctors for information, and which he regarded with a kind of anticipatory
dread. “You have someone in there, right? You don’t hang around hospitals for
fun? In which case I would assume it’s your necromancer. I’m here for mine.”
Not
exactly, since his necromancer would be the actual person who raised him from
the dead, but he didn’t feel like explaining. “Yeah.”
“Who’s
that ghost? Somebody important?”
“I
don’t know, Miss…?”
“Oh,
I’m Maddie.” She was chewing gum, he realized; the snapping noise made him
flinch. She leaned toward him, and he could smell the nasty pseudo-watermelon
flavour as she spoke. “So. The ghost? How come you’re carrying her around if
you don’t even know who she is?”
“Well,
my friend—that is, necromancer—I don’t know what he was doing, but I found this
ghost with him. I guess he must have needed her for something, and I couldn’t
really just leave her there.” He wasn’t really listening to what he was saying.
To be honest, he wasn’t really listening to what she was saying either. Hard to
focus on anything right now. He’d been waiting an awfully long time, hadn’t he?
No way of telling. That clock was broken and he didn’t have a watch anymore
(remember to get a waterproof one next time, you’ll probably have to jump in
the bay at least once more), but really, why was he so worried? It couldn’t
have been that long. He had no sense of time. Everything would be fine, of
course.
Everything
would be fine. It couldn’t not be.
Maddie
was talking again, something about her necromancer and how he’d been “kinda
chewed up” by someone’s dog for some reason, and how she wasn’t too worried
because “stuff like this happens every other week, doesn’t it?” She didn’t need
Saturday to actually respond as long as he looked attentive, probably. But then
she poked him in the shoulder, surprisingly hard, and said, “Hey, how old are
you, anyway?”
Unaccountably
rude, but he was so startled he answered. “Uh, twenty-five. Three years dead.”
That was something you had to include, to avoid confusion. Of course, sometimes
it made things more confusing, because sometimes people didn’t realize that you
were dead until then.
She
stared at him admiringly. “Whoa! Three years?
I’ve been dead six months. Do you have any, you know, advice or something?”
“No.”
His
tone made her stop talking to him, finally. Rude. Very rude. Now he’d
definitely have to apologize. Later, though, because even though he felt bad
now, he wasn’t sure he could handle a long conversation, which it would surely
be. Maybe he could find her somehow. Look up deaths six months ago of women
named Madison or Madeline or whatever else might be abbreviated the same way,
and find her in the phone book…
Angelina
was poking him with the pen she’d knocked down before. He looked over at her
and was confronted with a lot of wild and unintelligible gesticulation, made
harder to interpret because she was mostly transparent under the bright
waiting-room lights. She lost concentration, busy trying to make herself
understood, and the pen fell through her hand.
Time
dragged. He almost missed the nightmares. At least you could wake up from
those. Maddie left at some point; he barely noticed.
And
then suddenly there were doctors, and lots of whispering, and someone talked to
him and he got the meaning but not the words, and they gave him a phone number
and told him he should probably go home. And he did, stumbling around in the
dark apartment because he didn’t care to turn on the lights, checking Rosseau’s
glowing clock (was it really only two?), finally just stretching out on the
couch and not worrying anymore, except for the normal background worry that was
pretty much standard by now. Forget the nightmares, because this one was over
now.
Everything
was fine.
[1] Because necromancy is
one of the more unsettling types of magic, most magicians with an aptitude for
it get a necromancy license when they leave school; this allows them to legally
dig up bodies, summon ghosts, etc, although it’s considered very rude to do so
without consulting the family if you’re messing with the recently dead. A
necromancer without a license will be arrested if caught digging up graves,
even if they are able to prove they are a necromancer.
[2] Ghosts cannot be heard
by non-necromancers unless they establish a link to the person, known as
“giving one’s voice”. Most ghosts can only do this with about three people
because they don’t have enough spare energy for any more; in the case of child
ghosts, there may only be enough spare energy for one.
