Page 26 of Grave Humor

While I couldn’t fix all of Eoghan’s problems, I could do something to make life a little easier on him—and it would give me an excuse to keep a close eye on him. “If I have to teach you English, you should teach me your first language.”

“Nobody speaks it anymore.”

I viewed that as a challenge, one I couldn’t refuse without some attempt to learn it. “Except you,” I countered. “Then I can speak to you in your own language. It’s not a dead language if there are those who can still speak it. If you can teach me, then you can teach others, too. We’d bring an entire language back to life!”

As far as hare-brained ideas went, I liked mine. It would take up a lot of time, it wouldn’t cost me anything, and I’d be kept busy. It would give me a purpose, one that didn’t involve worrying about what had happened at the funeral home.

I still hadn’t checked the employment offer, which waited inside the briefcase. It, far more than Eoghan’s shocking wealth, scared me. Once I looked, there’d be no turning back. I’d keep my word and deal with it, no matter how little I was paid, although it’d be almost impossible to pay me less than what I’d gotten at the funeral home. If I got any sort of decent health care plan, I’d be ahead of the game, as my insurance bill murdered my account each and every month.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

His question startled me from my thoughts. “Excuse me?”

“You’re an academic type. The type who learns for the sake of learning. Your eyes got quite the gleam in them at the thought of learning my language.”

I thought about that, realizing the antique had been profiling me as much as I’d been profiling him. “I guess so. I liked school when I could worry less about the idiots I went to school with and more about learning stuff. It’s probably more about wanting what I can’t have.”

“If learning is what you want, then it is what you will have, although I hope you are willing to wait some time for me to handle this matter with Director Hammel. I would rather teach you in a time of peace than a time of turmoil. And money will not be an issue should you wish to attend an institution. Does this emergence have only religious institutions of learning? It varies between the emergences, and I no longer bother trying to guess how humans will behave.”

“They’re not religious in nature normally now. And as for Director Hammel, that seems like a wise idea, especially since he tried to kill me.”

“He made assumptions, entirely wrong ones. While he was wise to offer you as a sacrifice, he didn’t realize the word was meant in a different fashion. I expect he killed my caretaker believing in the wrong definition of that word. I regret that. He will regret his choice more.”

I wondered if his guilt would follow him the rest of his long life. “Director Hammel is an idiot.”

“Yes, he is. He won’t live long enough to learn from his mistakes, but I want to find out all of his motivations. He wanted either Gordon or I awake, and I want to know why. That means finding him and asking a few questions.”

“That sounds vaguely threatening,” I admitted.

“There are many ways to get answers out of a body, and I know them all. If his mouth won’t speak the truth to me, I have other methods I can use, ones that he cannot lie his way through. I just hate the screams.”

My eyes widened. “You mean to torture him?”

“Oh, no. I mean to slice him open and read the truth on his entrails and heart. That’s far more satisfying than torture, and his screams won’t last long that way. The moment of death is when all of a human’s truths are brought to light. It is a rather brutal method, but it works. My magic allows me to read many truths at the moment of death. You can consider that a clue if you’d like.”

I’d heard of necromancy before, although few toyed with such magics, as it could have dire consequences. “Are you a necromancer?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take someone who used the dead as a puppet to bed with me, and it would put a bit of a damper on our non-existent relationship.

“No, I’m nothing so foul as that lot. Well, I don’t know if your necromancers are like the ones I knew. The ones I knew were foul at best. It makes sense why you might think I am one, however. The necromancers I’m familiar with can read the truth in that method, but they’re far more limited than I am. They can only ask one question of the body. I can learn the entire truth. But I am not a necromancer and have no interest in controlling the dead or falsely bringing them back to life.”

Huh. “There were necromancers back then, too? I’ll admit, I don’t really know much about them except they work some type of death magic.”

“Of course. There were many forms of magic that dealt with the dead and dying back then. Humans had not yet come to terms with their lifespan. When I first lived, most were lucky to live to see forty. A few lived many long years, but they were few and far between—or touched by the gods who were still forming.”

“The divines weren’t just there?”

“No, of course not. Most of the divines, with limited exception, are creations.”

Hello, information. “Created by whom, exactly?”

“People, of course. The power of belief in an era of magic is a magnificent thing, Anwen. Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.”

I returned to attempting to make sense of Eoghan’s finances and new life, and I wondered.

It took me several hours to confirm what I’d guessed when I’d first gotten a hold of Eoghan’s finances. The man had turned the wealth of the past into an empire for himself, one he could enjoy without lifting a finger. The previous caretaker, a thirty-six year old named Jones, had left a meticulous list of all contacts in charge of Eoghan’s accounts, contact information, and account instructions, which I’d use as the basis for preserving the antique’s prosperity.

The account managers split ten percent of the profits, I would take ten percent of the profits for dealing with the managers and the details of Eoghan’s daily life, and Eoghan got the rest, distributed to his various accounts depending on where the funds had come from.