Tale of the Necromancer by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

20

Rinaldo tappedhis fingers on the iron arm of the patio furniture he was sitting in. They were at a coffee shop downtown—some dumb little place the Cardinal had suggested might be a good place to meet Maggie. Somewhere his snipers could get a clean shot if need be.

He was nervous, to say the least. Ally was at his side but didn’t seem to share his mood. As usual, she was smiling away, sipping her coffee, and launching into random conversations with the strangers around them.

Checking his phone for the millionth time, he finally turned it face down and slid it away. No outside communication for the half hour prior to a planned incident with a dangerous party. Or at least potentially dangerous.

Maggie was just a girl. A poor girl, caught in the crossfire of the world’s most dangerous necromancer. A poor girl who was trapped in some strange cycle of death, but…Gideon was to blame for that.

When he had received a text message from her, asking to meet up, he’d been surprised. They lost track of the undead trio—Gideon, Maggie, and Harry—back in Northampton, Massachusetts, several months prior. He had expected them to jump the continent, head somewhere far away and quiet. Not head back to Boston.

But here he was. Sitting on the sidewalk of a café in Boston, drinking a not-nearly-as-good-as-the-real-stuff cappuccino, waiting for her to show up.

“Hi, guys.”

He jolted in surprise and looked up at Maggie. She smiled at them warmly.

She was alone.

Well, save for a rat on her shoulder, who looked far more alive than the last time he had seen it. “Is that…?”

“Hm?” She looked down at the rat, scooped him up from her shoulder, and smiled. For all intents and purposes, the creature looked fully alive. “Yeah. I’m getting better at this.” She tucked him into her bag and placed it down on the ground by the chair across from them. “Hi, Ally. How’re you?”

“I’m just peachy,” the demoness-turned-sister at her side said with a beaming smile. “You look good! You look fantastic, actually. What’s changed?”

“Oh. A lot. A lot’s changed.” Maggie rubbed the back of her neck. “Can I get a coffee before we launch into this, and you probably put a bullet in my head?”

Rinne stammered for a second before he gave up and nodded. Something felt off. Very off. Maggie had…changed. Ally was right. She did look good—the bags under her eyes were gone. She didn’t look so pale. Hell, the girl even looked like she had a tan, of all things. But that wasn’t the only thing that had shifted.

Her aura had changed. The colors around her were no longer muted but flared in fully saturated tones. He could barely see it before, the weathered tones grayed and lifeless. And her mood had risen to match. Her smile seemed natural and real. She wasn’t…afraid. Or morose. It was like some weight had been taken from her shoulders.

“She’s here alone,” Ally observed thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

“They might be lurking nearby.”

“Could be. Or not.” She hummed. “Something feels different.”

Maggie came back a moment later, carrying a coffee and a tray of various sweets. She put the pile of confections down in the middle of the table and sat across from them. “All right. So. Hi. Been a while.” She glanced up at the city skyscrapers around them. “How many?”

“Four,” Ally answered, ever chipper.

“Not bad.” Maggie snickered. “I feel important.”

“We assumed you’d have friends with you.” Rinnie was tempted to reach over and take one of the croissants, but…having sticky hands during a gunfight that might happen seemed like bad protocol.

Ally didn’t seem to have a problem with it and plucked a donut from the tray and began picking it apart to eat it. “Thanks for the treats.”

“You’re welcome.” Maggie snorted. “Not my money, though.”

“Raithe?” Rinaldo eyed the young woman, still trying to figure out what must have happened to change her in such a way.

“I’m having fun racking up his credit bill. Bastard keeps paying it off, though, so…I don’t know. Might buy a yacht tomorrow. Yachts sound fun. Oh!” Maggie snapped her fingers as she remembered something. “I never got to say, Ally, your demon form is epic.”

“Thank you.” His partner smiled almost bashfully. “It’s rare that I get to stretch my legs.”

“How is it that you can walk in your demon form, but not in your human one?”

“Ah. Well, I was cursed.” Ally shrugged. “A witch doctor from the village in South Africa where I was trying to save the sick.”

“And you can’t fix it?”

“I could. My kind are quite adept at breaking curses.” Ally smiled gently. “But I don’t want to. We are the experiences that make us, and this is part of who I am now. Part of my identity. It makes me…more human. More grounded to this world. I would hate to say goodbye to a part of myself simply because I’m annoyed I can’t reach the shelves in my kitchen.”

Maggie sat back, pondering that for a moment, and then returned her gentle smile. “I understand.”

“I figured you might.” Ally pulled off another part of the sugary donut and, when she was done eating it, chuckled. “Thank Gideon for the sweets, then, if you get the chance.”

“We’re not on speaking terms at the moment.”

“Oh?” Ally frowned. “What happened?”

Rinaldo sat there, amazed once more at watching Ally work. The demoness was very, very good at her job. He’d never understood the point of diplomacy until he met her. It wasn’t that she was faking her concern—or that she was manipulating Maggie through the conversation. But she had a target in mind, and she just got there with words.

He shook his head, sipped his coffee, and reached across the table to grab a croissant. Fuck it.

“Well, that’s…why I called you guys. I remember everything now.”

He blinked. “Everything?”

“Everything.” Maggie sipped her own coffee and looked off down the street thoughtfully. “It’s nice to not be plagued by blackouts anymore. I’m finally in control of my own mind for once. But yeah. Everything. And it wasn’t a fun ride.”

“I—I fear a single cup of coffee won’t cover the span of your tale, but someday I would love to hear it. If it is not too painful for you.” His partner frowned, true empathy in her eyes. God, he loved that demoness.

Maggie smiled sadly. “It’s more of a story for alcoholic drinks. If we come out the other side of this meeting still friends, we can go out to dinner, and I’ll tell you the whole thing. Maybe we can trade. I still want to know how you got to be here.”

“Done.” The demoness sat back in her wheelchair, beaming.

“The short of it, which applies to this conversation, is that he murdered everyone I ever loved. He did it all because he was desperate to have me. He loves me more than anything in this world.” Maggie tapped her fingernails on the side of her porcelain mug. She was talking without focusing on the world around her, lost in her thoughts.

Ally asked the question with all the trepidation of someone stepping out onto a shaky wooden bridge over a volcano. “And…you?”

“Complicated.” Maggie laughed, a short and sarcastic sound. “God damn it, he was right. It’s complicated.”

Rinnie felt the need to interject at least once in this conversation between the two women. “Why did you contact us?”

“Because you need to stop hunting him. And you need to stop hunting his phylactery. We need to come to some sort of truce.” She turned her attention back to him, emerald eyes clearer and more focused than he had ever seen them. It was like she had been taken out of a fog. He was happy for her, but it also made him nervous.

She wasn’t a damsel in distress any longer.

“A truce,” he repeated incredulously. “With him.”

“No. With his phylactery.” She snickered. “Sorry. I know where his phylactery is. I forgot to tell you that bit.”

Oh, no.Something in the way she said it tipped him off. Something about her wording. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Maggie laughed, smiling. “You got it.”

“But it’s not possible. That can’t be done.”

“Proof to the contrary.” She lifted her coffee.

“Where is it?” Ally blinked, oblivious. “I don’t get it.”

Rinaldo wiped his hand over his face and let out a long groan. The Cardinal would have to hear about this. “She’s the phylactery.”

* * *

Rinnie was a big,gun-happy old—sorry, middle aged—priest, but he was quick to put things together. Maggie smiled at him as he sat there, glaring at her in frustration. She knew why he was pissed, and part of her was flattered. He’s supposed to capture the phylactery to control Gideon, and he was still hoping I was just an innocent bystander he could save.

Nope.

Ally was staring at her, mouth open, eyes wide. “No.”

“Yup.” She was still chuckling at their reaction. “Found the phylactery as we agreed.” She opened her arms wide to gesture at herself. “Tah-dah.”

“But—no—what—how—why?” Ally went through all the words without putting them together, shaking her head in confusion.

Okay, it shouldn’t be as funny as it was. Her life—correction, freedom—was at stake. They had snipers on the roofs and probably a dozen other operatives in the Order nearby ready to swoop in and shove her into the trunk of a car. She shouldn’t be sitting here laughing, enjoying watching the two holy soldiers grapple with her reality.

She supposed it was kind of fun to see somebody else put the pieces together for a change. “The how, I don’t still quite know the specifics. Simply that he shoved his soul in my body and turned me into his phylactery. Our souls are tangled up together now, indistinguishable from each other. That was why he was so desperate to ‘fix his phylactery.’ If I died one more time, my mind would have shattered, and I’d be in a coma. I think that would have been too much for him to deal with for eternity. He’d have destroyed me out of pity, and that would have taken him out.”

The two priests sat there, staring at her in silence now, trying to wrap their heads around the reality of her existence. She shrugged and continued to talk. There was no harm in telling them. “As for the why? I guess it’s jumping to the end of the story I owe you over vodka, Ally, but here you go. In—shit, I don’t even know the year. 1560? 1560-something? I jumped to my death after learning about everything he did to me. He was desperate to keep me alive. He didn’t want to be in love with one of his revenants. So…he did the only thing he could think of.” She made a click with her tongue and pointed at herself with her thumb.

Silence.

Ally spoke first.

“Holy shit.”

Maggie cackled again, unable to help it. She really, really liked the two soldiers. Even if they were going to cause her serious problems in short order. “About sums it up, yeah.”

Rinnie furrowed his brow and frowned, staring at her as if trying to fill in the gaps himself. “And you’re here alone. He just let you go?”

“I’ve been his prisoner for over four hundred years. It was trying to keep me leashed to him that got us into this mess. I think he finally learned his lesson. He’s…giving me space. It’s not like I can ever really be free of him. See previous comment about our souls.” The humor left her as the familiar sadness of the topic of Gideon came back to her.

“Do you…want to be free of him?” Ally asked, once more wary, as she knew she was asking a really sensitive question.

She took a moment to think about her answer. “I honestly don’t know.” She shook her head. “Complicated. Like I said.”

“You love him.” Rinaldo narrowed his eyes. “I can see it.”

Oh. Right. He could see auras. “Cheater.”

That got him to snort. “But you do.”

“Yeah, and he ruined my fucking life.” She rolled her eyes. “And he did it in a way that only a murderous, super-powered, evil lich can. I’m trying to reconcile that shit, Rinnie. Thanks for pointing that out. Really needed that put out on the table right now.”

Ally smacked him in the arm. “You shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s fine.” She sipped her coffee. It was starting to get cold. She’d have to order a second one soon if this was going to be a long conversation. At least Rinnie stopped staring at the damn croissant it was clear he had wanted and was now munching away on it. “It’s true, anyway.”

“Still shouldn’t have said it.” Ally primly lifted her chin. “It’s a woman’s private business.”

God damn it, she really liked the demoness. “I really hope we get to stay friends.”

The sister chuckled. “Me, too.”

Rinnie, however, shook his head. “We’re going to need you to come with us, Maggie. We need to go back to the Vatican. You’re…you’re the phylactery of the most powerful necromancer in the world. We can’t just let you run loose.”

And there was the other shoe dropping. Leaning back in her chair, she watched him thoughtfully. “No.”

He parted his jacket, revealing the gun she knew he carried. “You’re immortal, but you still die. I can put you down and take you there in a box. But I really, really don’t want to.”

Maggie smiled at him. She put her coffee down on the table in front of her. And reaching out with her mind, she commanded every single patron of the café to turn to them and stand from their seats, metal chairs scraping on the sidewalk.

Ally and Rinnie froze. The priest’s eyes went wide as he stared.

“I told you I was getting better at this.” Maggie sat back in her own chair and watched them. “Here’s the one thing I need to correct you on, Rinnie. Gideon isn’t the world’s most powerful necromancer.” She smiled. “I am.”