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The priest smiled apologetically. “A necromancer is a magic user who raises the dead and summons spirits to command for—”
“I know what a necromancer is!” She took a step away from him. “Get out. Get out.”
“I need you to listen to me. You’re—”
“No. There are two options here.” She glared at the man angrily. She didn’t need this. She didn’t need whatever this was in her life. But here she was, having to deal with it anyway. “What apartment did you just move into? 6C was empty. Is that it? This is 6A. You went in the wrong door.”
Now it was his turn to be confused. He arched an eyebrow, and then realization dawned on him. “Oh. You think I’m insane.”
“The other option is that I’m way more gone than I thought and you’re just a figment of my imagination. Either way, you need to go.”
He sighed and finally lowered his hands from where he had been holding him like this was a stick-up. “I’m not insane. And neither are you.”
She snorted. “Right.”
“You aren’t. Look.” He fished into his coat pocket, and she lifted the knife threateningly. He slowed down and very carefully pulled a small piece of paper out and held it to her. It was a photo. An old one, by the looks of it. It was sepia and stained at the edges. “Here. Look.”
She tried to peer at the image from where she was, but she couldn’t see it clearly enough. She crept closer then snatched the photo from his hand and immediately jumped back to keep her distance from him.
Glancing at the image, she took another step back to get more room between them. She didn’t trust him not to rush at her when she was distracted. But when she could finally focus on what he had handed her, she found it hard to pay attention to him.
The photo was of Gideon. There was no mistaking him. The white hair, the white goatee, the sharp features. His gray-silver eyes were almost white in the slightly overexposed image. He stood regally next to a column with a serious expression etched on his face. The cane he held was even the same—a silver vulture perched atop a dark glass orb.
But the photo looked Victorian. “He went to one of those…wild west…dress-up things at Six Flags.” She shook her head. “Or a Halloween party. This doesn’t prove anything. It’s fake.”
“It isn’t. Gideon Raithe is not his real name. He was born as Faustus Diogenus in Constantinople in 611 AD. He became an influential court vizier under the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. Since then, he’s gone by a dozen names, including Johann Faust and—”
“No! This isn’t real. None of this is real.” She slammed the photo down onto her kitchen table—which was the only table she owned—and pointed at the door. “Out. Now. Or else I’m calling the cops.”
Rinaldo sighed. “It won’t do you any good. I’d be gone by the time they got here. And they won’t believe you, you know that. There’re no cameras in this place. The only one is in the lobby, and by the looks of it, it hasn’t worked in a decade. And if the cops came to hear you yammering about how a Catholic priest broke into your apartment? Well. I don’t want to make things harder for you. That’s not why I’m here.”
Her jaw ticked. She hated how right he was. “I’m going to fucking stab you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He smiled again. When he did, the lines in his face creased, showing that he had spent a lot of his life smiling and laughing. He didn’t seem dangerous. Except for the fact that he had broken into her home and was now spouting things that were legitimately insane. “Let me talk for five minutes, and then I’ll leave. I promise.”
She kept her grip on the knife. “Two minutes. Then if you don’t go, I’m going to stab you.”
“Deal.” He had a look on his face like she was a kid who had just done something adorable. Foolish, but adorable. It didn’t help how badly she wanted to stab him.
“Clock starts now. Go.”
“I represent a group of people who are very interested in stopping Gideon Raithe. He—”
“Stopping him from doing what, exactly?”
Rinaldo folded his arms across his chest. “Two minutes was the deal. Let me talk.”
“Fine. Whatever. Sorry. Go on.”
He chuckled then took a beat to settle the mood. It was clear that he felt whatever nonsense he was about to tell her was very serious. “Raithe is what is known as a lich. Meaning, he is immortal. He cannot die, as his soul is no longer inside his own body. He removed it from his own form and placed it inside an inanimate object. As such…death cannot sever his soul from his body.”
Oh, man, she had like fifty thousand questions about that. Or she wanted to laugh. But she just made a muffled noise and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She promised him two minutes.
“We aren’t sure when, or how, he got his power. It’s possible he’s even older than we know, but there’s no way of telling. For the past fourteen hundred years he’s gone from country to country, changing his name and weaseling his way into positions of power and influence. He loves to whisper into the ears of rulers to get his way. Or maybe just for laughs. We don’t know.” Rinaldo adjusted the collar of his coat and arched his back, stretching. He winced, as if something in his spine hurt.
She thought she might see the outline of a gun in a holster at his side.
She gripped her knife harder. “Tick tock.”
