Lux wrinkled her nose.
Necromancy was costly: the exhaustion inflicted by reviving a soul was nothing in comparison to the overpriced items needed to perform the enchantment. Few of the poor could afford her services, and she couldn’t afford to do it forfree.
The lumbering cart continued on.
That only left one place for the dead to go.
A resounding knock pummeled her door again. “Devil’s tits. Is the entire town dying off tonight?” With a forlorn glance at her now-cold tea, Lux strode up the steps.
Chapter two
Rainwater ran in rivuletsalong the mottled body.
“Necromancer?” The disheveled man shifted the weight in his arms, his voice breathless with hope.
“The one and only.” She beckoned him in.Death sure is a greedy beast this evening.
Through the kitchen, Lux lit a lamp in an adjoining room. A room where the dead kept her company and the living were only allowed for the time it took to deposit their coin. The flickering light danced off the body’s unfortunate pallor before discovering the shelves. Spreading out like a scarce sunburst, the shelves slanted away from a single window, their angle just enough to notice but not so severe as to render them useless.
Arranged with an assortment of decanters sloshing with liquid, pots of powders both fine and coarse, and jars of talons, teeth, and wings, the display was unique to her profession and hers alone. A necromancer, just as a full glimpse of sunlight inGhadra, was very, very rare. It remained one of the few things Lux was proud of.
The burnt smell rising from the snuffed match twined through the air. Below the window, several creeping plants shrank away from its path. Overly sensitive, their tendrils tentatively ventured toward the window from the worn countertop again once it dissipated. All these years spent in this apartment and she still hadn’t found a use for them, but she kept them anyway.
Lux patted the bare table engulfing the room, dark wood gleaming after being thoroughly cleaned from the previous occupant. The man sniffed loudly, laying the body as if it were a newborn babe on the hard surface. He swiped at his nose, stepping back.
“Payment first, if you would.” She kindly relayed the sum.
The man balked, eyes bulging. “So much?” When Lux only blinked like an expectant owl, he gave in, fishing within his dripping, long coat.
He made to drop the gold coins into her hand, but Lux shook her head, inclining it toward the stone jar perched on the counter. With several loud pings, the payment was made. She cracked her neck with the push of her palm.
“How long has he been—”
“Five, maybe six hours,” he rushed in, interrupting her, giving Lux the feeling that hearing the word ‘dead’ would have been his undoing.
She stilled, her hands retracting to her sides. “Which is it? The timeframe is very important here.”
His eyes darted around the dim room as he thought, fingers counting silently. “Six. Six.”
She nodded.Good. Anything less and all her efforts would have been wasted. A handful more and—she twitched. She wouldn’t,couldn’t,think about it.
Undressing the body to the skin, she handed the items to the anxiously awaiting partner—for that’s whom she’d decided he was—and shooed him into her living room. She didn’t like people watching her work. In fact, she didn’t like people looking at her at all. Invisibility, when she could manage it, had become her armor over the years.
As she covered the dead man with a thin white cloth, Lux scanned up his length. No obvious signs of trauma. He still appeared a healthy weight. “Bad heart, maybe.” She shrugged. She wasn’t a physician, merely guessing, as the cause of death outside of old age mattered little, after all.
Lux peeled back eyelids to reveal fixed pupils embedded within cerulean irises. “Pretty.” The man’s head remained positioned at an awkward angle, but it couldn’t be helped now. Rigor mortis had thoroughly set in—as it must be. Languid bodies meant death was recent. Soft bodies meant warm, red blood.
Lux huffed through her nose.
Turning from the table, she quickly surveyed the assorted ingredients dotting the shelves. Six hours meant she didn’t need the howler’s teeth. Thank fate.
With a step stool, she pulled down two decanters, a jar, and several small pots before stepping down to haul a mortar and pestle to the forefront. Swatting at the weaving, green vines brushing against her in greeting, she set to work.
“You’re lucky I don’t toss you out,” she told them. But just as with half the contents of the alcove, while they may be useless, they were precious to her. It was the sentimental ridiculousness of it all that ensured she would never follow through on her threats.
Grinding a wyvern claw took nearly as much effort as the dratted teeth, and soon Lux’s body flushed with it. Down to a fine powder now, she added mashed marsh snapper eyes,a spoonful of snake venom, shredding the batwing into thin strings. A few more bits and pieces, liquids and powders, and the entire concoction was complete.
It looked like marsh mud, and it smelled even worse. Years had gone by, and Lux still hadn’t gotten used to it. She crushed a sprig of mint beneath her nose. “Your man better not have been wrong about you,” she told the body at her back. “These aren’t any old healer’s ingredients; I have to buy them special.”
