I throw my dress on and head downstairs. I’ll throw my makeup into a bag and do it later. The mirror too—it’s still in the drawer.
But, flaring in my eyes like a lantern, a pile of cloth lies on the desk with a paper note atop it.
‘Catarina, I made sure everything would be in order for you. Below this note are your new lenses from the optometrist, my old great coat, a bespoke dress made for your measurements—tell me if there’s fitting issues before I have Stella make more—and my pistol. I’m sure you’ll bring your own rifles, but this is what made me feel safe on my darkest nights. Keep it safe; it’s only yours for these next two days. But, I would rather see you come back in good shape than this gun.‘
I trace the shape of the letters with my fingers. Her handwriting is so elegant, dancing like music. It’s expressive and sweet and everything unlike her. I almost find myself stuffing it next to my chest again, just before realizing that I need to completely undress and put on the new clothing.
It fits. Perfectly. No notes. It’s wonderful.
It’s hard to tell in the mirror, but I almost look more gaunt in it. Just the makeup to fix my face, and I’ll really look the part of a half dead, half hoping to be dead, necromancer.
The lenses work fine too. I guess it’s nice I can read stuff from a far—My sight was this bad? I guess… I guess I shouldn’t have thought about shooting rifles at humanoid creatures with my very humanoid friends, in the dark, without glasses.
The pistol can really only go in the coat’s pocket—which is terrifyingly deep compared to my dress pockets—so I unload the magazine and eject its bullet before throwing it all in there.
The note, of course, gets to stay next to my chest.
Overly dramatic knocks from the front door steal my attention. Lucia, of course. And her… That’s so many boyfriends.
I slip outside and lock the door behind me. “Are they all yours?”
“Yep. Missing one though,” she replies.
“Carlo, the fucking coward,” some—one of them says.
She leans close to me, hands daring to land on my hips, and whispers, “but, hey, you look cuter than the rest of them.”
I hide away my face. “I-I didn’t even have time to put makeup on.”
“It’s dark. I can’t see your face. But I can definitely feel your waist.” She winks. “If you don’t mind me touching.”
“Please touch me.”
That came off wrong.
“Alright.” She grabs my waist and pulls me along in the center of her admiring party. “I hope you don’t mind being surrounded by men. They’resuch cheap and obedient windbreakers. Most of them are more submissive than you.”
I don’twanther touch. I just want to be touched until I like it.
Through her coughing, Lucia says, “your doctor better show up if we’re waiting out here in the cold.”
I face away from her smoking mouth. “It doesn’t leave for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes spent without my consorts and out in the cold? You’re cute, but even I have my limits.” She smiles. “Maybe you’ll figure them out.”
I turn to look at her, to take in the face that should fill me with happiness, arousal.
Am I watching someone die? Smoke fills her breath, just as it did since she could afford packs with consort money in upper secondary. Now that I’m thinking about it, she used to be quite the athlete. Cold weather wouldn’t have touched the muscles that once ran over her.
But, I can look down at my own skin. It hasn’t turned pale from necromancy yet, but I want it to. I want my skin to draw closely to the bone. I want to wake up without feelings. I want to feel cold, always.
Lucia’s no necromancer. She’s killing herself in a boring way. A way that’ll give her no gifts as her body weakens from age.
I’ll learn how to dance the line.
When her body’s being repatriated—after a tumor, after a heart attack, after a bullet from an ex-lover, or just after a bad clot during a minor surgery—and I watch as her corpse’s animated and her locket’s locked away in a box, an immortal lifetime left to live without her in my life, will I be any more alive than the laborer they turn her shape into?
I guess I’m glad that there’s no love between a consort and a patron. Necromancers should love necromancers. Mortals should love mortals. And which am I? I only hope to be a necromancer.
