“The necromancer.” Just the word makes her flinch. “That’s who it was, isn’t it? The one who helped you raise that werewolf. And now he’s covering his tracks.”
Rebecca’s composure cracks. Just for a second, but I see it.
I’m right. I’m fuckingright.
Vyse’s voice crackles in my ear.“I felt an energy signature. Keep pushing her, Regina, you triggered something.”
“Kyle got in over his head, didn’t he?” I press harder. “Made a deal with someone he shouldn’t have. And now he’s going to let you and everyone else pay the price while he… what? Gets used as leverage? A hostage? A blood sacrifice?”
“Stop it,” she grits out, hugging herself.
“He always does this,” I go on, ignoring her. “Lets other people take the fall for his bullshit. He’s a Starbridge, after all. They don’t believe in consequences for their own actions.”
“I saidstop.”
“What’s the necromancer’s name, Rebecca? Where did Kyle find him? What did he promise in exchange for?—“
Rebecca’s scream cuts me off.
It’s not a sound of anger or frustration like I was expecting.
It’s pain.
Purple-black energy erupts in a spiderweb pattern across her skin. It spreads like ink in water, crawling up her arms, her neck, her face. Wherever it touches, her flesh begins to change. It decays before my eyes, rotting and dissolving into a thick liquid.
I’m out of my chair before I consciously decide to move, stumbling backward. The stench hits me a second later, sweet and rotten, like meat left out in the sun.
The door bursts open and Sean and Rowan are through it first, with Villeneuve right behind them. Rowan grabs me and pulls me back, trying to cover my eyes with his hands while simultaneously gagging.
“Don’t look,” he manages.
I look anyway.
The scream is mere gurgling now, wet and horrible. The purple-black magic has consumed most of Rebecca’s body. What’s left is sloughing off the chair, sliding toward the floor in thick, viscous streams.
In less than thirty seconds, there’s nothing left but a puddle of purple-gray sludge where a person used to be.
The gurgling stops, but the silence is somehow worse.
“What the fuck,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds distant. “What thefuckwas that?”
“Bro,ew,” Sean whispers, petting my hair like he doesn’t know what else to do, his eye locked on the sludge puddle.
Rowan is staring at the remains, still holding me even though all the blood has drained from his face and he looks like he’s about to pass out. He mutters something in Arabic I don’t understand, but the intonations make it clear enough it’s adjacent toholy fuck.
“That is the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve caught Sean eating a burrito he found under his bed.”
“Dude, it was a quesarito, I was a wolf, and I was drunk,” Sean mutters, as if that justifies it.
“That,” Vyse says, materializing beside us with a monogrammed handkerchief pressed firmly over his nose and mouth, “was necromancy in all its glory.”
Rowan’s hand is still ineffectively draped over my eyes. I push it away fully, even though part of me wishes I hadn’t.
“Why couldn’t you sense it before?” Rowan demands, turning on Vyse. “You’re supposed to be able to detect this kind of magic.”
“All magic leaves traces,” Villeneuve says. His voice is calm, but I can see the line of tension through his body. “However, certain very powerful magic is able to seep into the victim’s soul and conceal itself within the very seams of reality to the point where it’s all but invisible. Until something triggers it.”
“I triggered it.” The realization hits me at his words. “By pushing her.”
