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“Just Earl Grey, I swear,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Straight out of the Twinnings box if you want to see it for yourself.”
“Like that would stop you,” I said. There was no venom in my voice in spite of the barbed words.
Santiago grinned. “Clever girl. Have a seat, then, I’ll be right back.”
He left us alone in the living room and I let my gaze trail all over the art and knick-knacks spread throughout the space. Carved wooden boxes, a variety of animal skulls, an honest to God shrunken head under a bell jar, teeth—some of which looked supernatural to me, vampire, maybe wolf—and dozens of jars of unidentifiable substances.
The books on the shelves ran the gamut from spell work, to leather-bound tomes with titles written in languages I couldn’t read, to a shelf containing what appeared to be the entirety of Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly’s written works.
What a weirdo.
Santiago returned, carrying a mug, and took a seat in a beaten-up red armchair, leaving the couch empty for Wilder and myself.
We sat cautiously, and I stayed much closer to him than I needed to, our thighs pressed against each other. I felt more at ease immediately, letting out a little breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
I could do this. No problem.
“I admit, I wasn’t expecting to see either of you so soon again after the… situation last month.”
The situation he was referring to was a demon-possessed sorority house that was sucking co-eds into the walls as a form of sacrifice.
> “Yeah, we were sort of hoping we wouldn’t need your help again.” Ever was the unspoken word at the end of the sentence.
The real problem with Santiago was how much I didn’t hate him at all. In different circumstances I might even want to be friends with him. He had an easy charm and a crackling sense of humor. He also had no understanding of personal boundaries and was an enormous pain in the ass.
He held his hot mug comfortably in his hands and did nothing to rush me. It was as if he had all the time in the world to wait for me to get to the point, and that was all the more frustrating somehow.
“I was with Cain this morning, and he made a less than subtle indication that if someone wanted a person brought back from the dead, you might be the kind of man to ask.”
Santiago gave me a wary smirk, sipped his tea, and said nothing.
I waited. I waited a full minute expecting that once he had swallowed he would say something. Either agree, or deny it, maybe ask me for more details. Instead he just tipped his head to the side.
I hadn’t asked him anything, I realized.
“Can you bring people back from the dead?”
“That’s a complicated request.”
“Then simplify it for me.”
He set his tea down on a nearby stack of books, the bergamot scent filling the room so fully I was sure the drink really was enchanted somehow. Call me paranoid if you want, but paranoid people aren’t always wrong.
“There are many different kinds of death, Genie, which I suspect you probably know.”
I had some familiarity with this. Secret herself had technically been dead once, which was how she’d ultimately lost her vampire and werewolf powers. A clean slate of sorts. And vampires represented a death undone, or a new life after death.
Yeah, I guess it was a complicated question, but he knew what I meant and was just dragging this out.
“I’m not a necromancer, if that’s what you’re implying.”
I gave a shudder, remembering my experience in New York City years earlier, when a gang of necromancers had raised all the dead in the entire city area. It was hell on earth. Ever since then I had no interest in meeting another necromancer as long as I lived. Or after.
“Well that’s good to know.”
“Necromancers don’t actually bring the dead back to life, but rather use the corpse as an extension of their own whims. The body remains dead, but animated. Not alive again. There are ways to bring the dead back, but the price to pay is a high one, both for the caster and the recently deceased.”
“How so?”
