Blood Rush: A Reverse Harem

Paranormal Romance (Love &

Judgment - Book 1) Michaela Haze
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BLOOD RUSH
By Michaela Haze
 BLOOD RUSH

Originally published in the United States/United Kingdom in 2023 by

DIRTY JEANS PUBLISHING
www.michaelahaze.com
Copyright © Michaela Haze 2023
All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in
the public domain, are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover design: Michaela Haze

Cover image: Istock

BLOOD RUSH IS FOR AMAZON DISTRIBUTION ONLY.

Permission has not been given for sharing this electronic file on any other platform.
 A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Hi everyone!

Thank you so much for choosing to read BLOOD RUSH.

Blood Rush is the first book in the duet ‘Love & Judgment.’
I apologize in advance, as this book ends on a semi-cliffhanger.
If this is your first time reading one of my books, then you probably haven’t read BLOOD SUGAR, which can be read as a
standalone or a prequel. Blood Sugar is available on Kindle Unlimited. However, you don’t need to have read Blood Sugar to
enjoy this book.
TW: mention of SA, mentions of kidnapping

Happy reading,
Michaela x
 “Blood was spilled and never stopped,
When Hades' blood did rise,
When golden gates and the final seal,
Were destined to have died,
Inside the blood, Hades lay,
A father’s love and care,
Judgment woke, starved,
To feed on the despair,
On mighty steeds, they slept and slept,
Waiting to awake,
When Hades found their resting place,
And from their altars, take.
The horsemen rose upon their steeds,
First, a horse on bitter white
Bringing with him human rot,
Sickness, decay, and blight.
Then a red horse, wrath, and rage,
Destined to arise,
War on bloodied sands,
With a horseman as it’s prize.
Black as night, the third did come,
A challenge to be met,
For famine isn’t lack of food,
But lack of life and get.
Death will answer Hades,
With betrayal in his sight,
A trusted companion,
A horse, pale and light,
Hades took their old friend’s hand,
The final seal was done,
The golden gates had closed,
And Death had finally won.”
-
Judgment And It’s End, A Poem from The Word of the Sect
 PREFACE

Previously in Blood Sugar…

The First God was named the Balance. She was The God of All Things and oversaw good and evil. Light and darkness. Life
and death. She reigned over all things, made all, and knew all.
With time, she grew lonely. She birthed two daughters—gifting one dominion over Life and the other Death—together,
they formed a trio that presided over all things.
Nova, the God of Life, created the Summerland and the Angels. She took in all the souls that had lived a life of virtue.
Mara, the God of Death, created Hell and the Demons. Mara took in all the souls that failed Nova’s stringent
requirements and allowed them to rehabilitate themselves. Mara took power from the Sins and shared it with her first demons.
Nova grew jealous of Mara’s world and the demons' love for their creator. Nova sent plague and strife into Mara’s
world. Creatures that devoured every being they could but were never satisfied.
With the last of her strength before sacrificing herself, Mara opened a tear in the world and pushed her first seven
children to safety, into a place called the Never—where nothing aged and life was stagnant. Mara hoped to return one day to
free her children, but instead, she was torn into billions of pieces and scattered throughout the worlds.
The Seven Original demons remained trapped in the Never. The embodiment of their Sins, with the blood of a Goddess
in their veins.
The God of all Things watched over her daughters. She saw Nova’s jealousy and Mara’s destruction. The God of All
Things took a human woman and gifted her the ability to move between the worlds. She gave the woman the tools to free
Mara’s favorite children. And then she sat back…and waited.
The bargain was simple. The woman was to free the Sins, and in exchange, her family and her village would be
allowed to keep the magic that escaped from the Never and into their blood.
The Never remained closed for all but a trickle of death magic that clung to the soil and water the woman's descendants
drank and used to grow their crops.
The Goddess's bargain with The Woman went unfulfilled—but magic is not so easily sated.
The burden of freeing the Seven Sins fell to The Woman's kin. Each generation, a new woman was offered to the forest.
Each woman sent into the in-between was given the same task.
Free the Seven Sins.
Unfortunately, every woman who came after the first found the task more complicated than it seemed. The original
woman had imprisoned the Sins for her own nefarious purposes, and every attempt to free the Sins failed.
Time passed, as it is wont to do.
The original purpose of the offering was twisted. The rituals grew new life, and the tale of the Old Gods spawned its
own religion—confined to those that lived on the boundary of the Never.
The Seven Sins were resigned to their existence in the Never. Trapped in their own personal prisons.
Until Ophelia Love.
Running from an arranged marriage, Ophelia volunteered to become a bride.
To undergo the challenges long forgotten, save for the words of a nursery rhyme.
One by one, Ophelia released the seven sins—before realizing that the seven demons fully intended for Ophelia to be
their bride in all of the ways that mattered.
When Ophelia finally managed to escape the Never, she unwittingly brought the seven original sins back to the Human
Realities.
Starting the long-prophesized apocalypse and opening the Golden Gates of hell.

When the fires began to burn, and the Golden Gates of Hell had opened, the Sect took to the ground. They listened to their
leader, the Prime, and his closest followers, the Kindred.
Amongst the most devout was Ophelia’s mother. Determined to wait out the storm in the bunker below the compound.
But the fire heated the ground, much too hot for the human body, melting the cult into a soup of bones and flesh.
Aside from Ophelia and her seven sins, there were only two survivors.
Her father and her younger sister, Allegra Love.
This is Allegra Love’s story.
 PROLOGUE

Her mother wrenched the covers from the bed, waking the little girl from her dreams with a slap.
Allegra screamed before her mother jammed her hand over her mouth, muffling the sound.
It took a moment for Allegra to realize that she hadn’t been woken by the strange demon from her dream but her mother.
Her cheek smarted from the blow, and her eyes welled with tears.
“Hush.” Her mother snapped, leaning closer. Her breath carried the stink of alcohol. “We have to move quickly.” She
peeled her hand away from Allegra’s mouth, glaring as she waited for her daughter to scream again.
Allegra sniffed and cradled her cheek. “Mama—”
Her mother held up a finger, turning to listen to one of the voices in her head. Allegra couldn’t remember a time when
her mother had truly looked at her. Paid attention to her. Agatha Love spent her days surrounded by the spirits of the dead and
often took their words as more important than the living.
“Mama, what’s happening?” Allegra whispered, her eyes darting to the corner of the room. Unnerved by the spirit
talking to her mother, a ghost she couldn’t see or hear but knew was there.
Agatha Love ignored her daughter, nodding to the corner of the room before turning back to Allegra. “We are going to
the clearing. We must be quiet. I don’t want to wake your father.”
Allegra opened her mouth to ask another question, but her mother’s glare told her that would be a horrible idea. She
held her mother’s gaze for a moment before she withered under the full force of Agatha Love’s attention.
Her mother was doing something very wrong. Something frightening.
Allegra grabbed the cloth doll under her covers and wrapped her arms around the toy, hugging it tightly. “It’s bedtime.”
“This is important, Allegra.” Her mother sighed, speaking in a whisper. “Please put on your shoes.”
Allegra did what her mother said, in no small part because her mother terrified her.
Moving quickly, Allegra rushed to her wardrobe and pulled out a pair of leather boots. They were a size too small, but
Allegra hadn’t mentioned it to her parents. Instead, she’d stuffed them in the wardrobe and hoped that her mother would think
they were lost. Unfortunately, she needed something to keep her feet dry if they were going into the woods.
The little girl pulled on her painful boots and brushed her hands over her night dress. Her teeth chattered, though it
wasn’t cold.
Agatha Love took her daughter’s hand and silently led her child through the house. Her mother pressed her finger to her
lips as they passed the master bedroom; the only sound in the house was the dull roar of her father’s snoring.
Her mother was careful to direct her away from the creaking step at the bottom of the staircase and to leave the back
door on the latch so they didn’t make a sound. The night air was frigid, and Allegra’s breath fogged before her lips as they
walked through the vegetable garden to the road.
The valley was silent, save for the clacking of the bone ward against the treeline.
They hurried down the road, past the houses, and finally to the clearing used for rituals, heavy magic, and ceremonies.
Even at a young age, Allegra had spent most of her life in the clearing, watching her mother wave her staff and waft the
herb smoke as she called to the spirits beyond the veil. Though Allegra was only seven, her mother had tried many times to
coax her affinity to appear—to find out what kind of necromancer she would be.
Each attempt had failed.
Though Allegra was young, she knew her mother was disappointed that she had shown no skill in necromancy. She
couldn’t see the future through the veil or hear the voices of the dead like her mother. She couldn’t animate bodies like her
father. She couldn’t pass through the veil, moving miles with a single step. She couldn’t do anything.
Her sister, Ophelia, didn’t have magic. Not in the way that the Sect valued. She tended to her garden and sold her jams
and preserves at the market, keeping out of the way of the menfolk.
Ophelia told her sister that magic didn’t matter.
Their mother told her that Ophelia didn’t matter.
They came to the clearing, and her mother’s gaze snagged on something over her shoulder. Her mother smiled ruefully.
“I brought her.” She declared.
Allegra looked over her shoulder, but no one was there.
Her mother listened and then nodded before turning to her daughter. “Do you want to be powerful, Allegra?” Agatha
Love asked.
The little girl didn’t know the answer.
 Her mother nodded as if she had spoken and pulled an instrument from her pocket. A metal wand with a curved end,
like a sickle. Allegra had only ever seen her mother use her wand during rituals. The little girl’s stomach dropped, and she
began to feel sick.
“Mama—”
Her mother blew the dust from the stick, forming a cloud of ash caught by the wind. Some ash blew into Allegra’s eyes,
and she rubbed her face. Her mother paid no mind as tears began to stream down her daughter’s face. Allegra wanted to run,
but phantom hands locked her in place. Unable to move a muscle.
Her mother began to draw on the ground. Though the stick left no trace in the dirt, the air seemed to glow with each line
her mother drew.
“You have your father’s blood.” Her mother whispered. “You shall have his magic, too. We shall summon death so that
you may control it.”
“I’m scared.” The little girl whispered.
“Don’t be scared.” Her mother’s eyes glittered with manic glee. “Your father has a very powerful bloodline. I am
ensuring you are given what you are due.”
The clearing went dark as if the moon had been snuffed from the sky like a candle.
The lines on the ground began to smolder, birthing wisps of smoke.
“Mama, it hurts.” Allegra coughed.
“Hush. It’ll be over in a moment.”
Several hours later, when Allegra woke, her voice lost from screaming, she realized her mother had lied.

“What did you do?” She heard her father in the kitchen. His raised voice and the heavy footfalls of his pacing. Allegra blinked,
waking up to the wooden ceiling of her living room. Unsure of how she’d gotten out of the woods. Had her mother carried her?
She wasn’t sure; all she knew was the aching in her middle as if something had crawled inside her and made its home in her
veins.
“You couldn’t leave it alone!” Tobias Love hissed. “She would have come into her magic on her own. You risked her
life. You did something so utterly foolish—”
“Ophelia is already without magic, and Allegra would no doubt have followed her footsteps. I’m already the
laughingstock of the Never Valley!” Her mother shrieked. “If calling to the Old Gods is foolish, then perhaps you should
leave.”
“I would, Wife.” Her father snarled. “But I can’t. If I am not there to guide Allegra, she will crumble. She needs to be
Marked before sunrise; even then, she might not survive the night. You have no idea what you have put inside of our daughter.
No idea at all.”
Allegra tried to sit up but couldn’t, trapped in her body with the oily darkness in her veins pinning her down.
Her vision came in fits and starts.
Her mother’s angry face.
Her father’s tears.
Her father stood over her with a pot of ink, a needle, and a tiny hammer.
She opened her mouth to speak before the darkness claimed her again.
 CHAPTER ONE

I’d been wallowing in a slew of self-pity when someone crossed the bone ward. Notified of the intruders by the ripple in the
air and the invisible hand grabbing my gut and pulling hard.
My porch lights flickered, an ill omen if there ever was one.
My bone ward blocked most magical attacks and demons, but it didn’t keep out everything. If someone meant me harm,
it was a crap shoot if they’d bounce off the invisible boundary or be allowed to walk right through.
My wards were getting worse as my illness progressed, but I didn’t want to make that information public.
The target on my back was already big enough.
Why would someone come to my house at such a late hour?
Bad news, or bad intentions—as my father used to say.
My mother had taught me how to make a bone ward. How to trap the small animals in a snare and strip the flesh from
the bone. How to arrange the garland around the property, burying the wire in several places and elevating it in others. How to
listen to the feel of the magic and the death that lingered on the bones and use that magic to protect my home from demons. The
old Gods liked old magic. Blood, bone, and salt.
I sipped my green tea, eying my front yard over the rim of my mug. My withered legs were swathed in a patchwork
blanket the previous homeowners had left behind. The porch light flickered again. Filling my veins with ice. I knew what was
coming, as sure as the sun would set.
It had been too many months since the last round of judgment, and I’d grown comfortable.
Elliot Wise, the little boy next door, stepped out from between the trees through the gap in our shared fence. His hands
were covered in blood. A few moments later, his older sister, Ellen, followed. Both children were alone without a parent in
sight as they hustled across the lawn.
Elliot jumped up the three steps from the path to the porch and dove under my arm, pulling me from my seat. “Do you
need help, Mizz Love?”
I appreciated the gesture. “Can you get my cane? I don’t need much help to get in the kitchen, but I sense you both need
to wash up?”
Ellen finally made it to the porch, Dark circles under her eyes and blood flecks on her face. “Judgment.” She said, by
way of explanation. “Came through. It took out Wayne.”
Wayne was their stepfather and an altogether unpleasant man. He’d screamed at me several times in the last week.
Something about trash cans.
“Did you get hold of your mom on the phone?” I asked,
“She’s stuck in city hall.” Ellen winced. “She told us to come over. That we’d be safe here.”
I agreed. Judgment was one of the only things that couldn’t get through my wards. “I’ll put on some hot chocolate; we’ll
wait out the storm.”
Elliot blinked and rubbed the side of his eye with his bloody hand. “I think I saw it, Mizz Love. It was—”
I shook my head. “Don’t talk about it,” I said sternly as Ellen grabbed my cane from the side and pressed it into my
hands. “Don’t court trouble.”
Guilt painted the boy’s face before he nodded in agreement. The lights flickered overhead again as the young ones
helped me into the house.
Elliot ran to the cookie jar on the edge of the island.
I didn’t bake, but it made me feel slightly more organized if I had a place for my Oreos instead of just towering the half-
eaten packages in the pantry. It was a thing. My business partner and best friend, Gilroy, always chided me for buying and
opening more packets when I hadn’t finished the ones in the pantry. Ergo, Oreos went in the cookie jar, and I kept my very gay
work-husband off my ass.
Ellen rushed to the stove-top kettle, but I waved her away.
I didn’t need any more tea. Not just yet.
Elliot climbed onto the stool at the kitchen island. “I’m so hungry, Mizz Love.”
His sister wrinkled her nose. “Even after seeing all that blood?”
Overhead, the lights flickered again. I hoped the power would hold, but all bets were off when Judgment came. It was
an unstoppable force, sweeping through the world like a tsunami.
Then I felt them die.
 Across the river, in the city of Trainor Point, judgment scraped the sinners from the world and gorged itself on their
flesh.
Even the demons that lived in Hell Square didn’t know what judgment was or why it targeted some people but not
others. Judgment wasn’t a demon, a creature, or a mythical monster. It was a force unleashed at the same time the Golden Gates
of Hell had opened over twenty years ago. I couldn’t remember a time when Judgment hadn’t been a threat. A natural disaster
that reared its head every so often, like a hurricane or an earthquake.
I’d given up asking those kinds of questions and focused on staying protected behind my wards. Salt and bone.
After all, I was the biggest sinner of them all.

I never slept on the nights that Judgment swept through Maine. I just didn’t have it in me, even safe behind the wards.
I settled the kids on the couch, with a cartoon on the TV at a low volume, before I hobbled to the porch and stared out
onto the front lawn.
I’d buried a dozen animals of various sizes along the perimeter. Cats, dogs, and other beasties. I hadn’t killed them, but
I didn’t feel bad about using their bodies if I needed to.
I chose Buddy, the German shepherd I’d found last spring. My magic had kept him preserved, so he hadn’t rotted
enough to look dead, aside from the milky white eyes I couldn’t fix. Buddy was buried in a shallow grave on the boundary
between my property and the Wise family. He had once been their pet, so I kept Buddy to night-time outings, away from the
children. I used him for surveillance when my legs were having a bad day.
Buddy rolled out of the dirt, squirming until he was free. Possessing animals was entirely different from piloting human
corpses. Animals perceived the world in an alien manner, without the layers of human complexity—people often had scores of
memories to wade through. It was easier to possess an animal body by feeding magic into the muscles and hitching a ride. I’d
never met an animator who could work with animals like I could, save from using their bones to make psychopomps or bone
wards.
Buddy trotted to the edges of the trees and lifted his leg, an action born of habit, though no urine came out. He sniffed
the air and continued along the boundary.
Judgment didn’t care about an animated animal body, so Buddy was safe enough as he wriggled through the fence
between the Wise property and my treeline. The children had used the same entrance, their scent fresh on the damp
undergrowth.
The sharp, unpleasant tang of old blood filled Buddy’s nostrils, and even dulled by death, the scent was overwhelming.
Buddy let out a low whine from his disused vocal cords, no doubt my distress translated by a canine voice. I urged Buddy
forward, seeing the world in a wash of dull colors as we sprinted across the lawn to the house. The grass was too long, which
Elise, the children’s mother, always apologized for when I saw her. Elise used an electric wheelchair to move around, and I
hoped she didn’t think I expected her to mow the grass just because it was too tall.
Wayne, the children’s stepfather, had a lot to answer for, though I doubted he’d be answering for anything now that
Judgment had got him.
The children hadn’t seemed particularly distressed by his death, but everyone reacted to shock differently. I suspected
that once the truth of the situation hit, maybe they’d feel some sort of emotion, but for now, they were asleep in my house. Safe,
as judgment roamed the streets.
I followed the blood, moving through the dog door from Buddy’s tenure in the house. I found Wayne in the kitchen,
slumped over the table. A broken bottle of whiskey was on the floor, and his head was dented in a way that implied he’d been
clubbed with his drink of choice.
Not exactly Judgment’s preferred method of killing, but I couldn’t say the world would be sadder for Wayne Wise’s
death.
Buddy’s canine mind floated a stray memory to the forefront of my vision. Wayne used to hit Buddy with the belt. It was
likely that the children’s stepfather had been the one to kill their family dog.
Something strange lingered in the air. Something familiar but ominous. I couldn’t pinpoint where I’d felt the peculiar
magic before, but I knew I had. It didn’t feel like judgment. It felt like desperation, like hunger.
I shuddered, pulling Buddy away from the house and back to his shallow grave.
When I came back to my body and checked on the sleeping children, I wondered if they’d been the ones to beat Wayne
over the head with a bottle of Jack.
Death was a more abstract term for a necromancer. It was a different state of being. I used dead bodies every day to
move around the city. My family had passed away years before. My mother and older sister had died in a disaster shelter under
a cult compound, melted into a pile of skin and bone goo. My father passed from cancer a few years after. If I wanted to speak
to a dead person, I could call Gilroy and ask him to send a message to the great beyond. He was a Whisperer; he heard and
saw the deceased.
I couldn’t be angry, disgusted, or any other type of emotion vis-e-vis the potential murder of Wayne Wise. After all, I’d
killed people before. Instead, I struggled with a script for the conversation I no doubt had to have with their mother—who was
currently stuck at city hall as Judgment swept through Maine until the morning light.
I decided to call Elise because making phone calls was easier than receiving them.
Her cell phone went to voicemail, and I let it go without a message.
I sat and drank my tea before calling again. The children’s mother picked up on the second ring.
“Allegra, are you okay? Are the kids okay?” Elise’s voice was muffled as she moved the phone from one ear to the
other, and I heard the whizz of her wheelchair as she left the room. No doubt to get more privacy.
“They made it across the ward,” I said, eying my fingernails and the ragged skin at the base of each nail. “They said that
Judgment got Wayne.”
It didn’t occur to me to soften the blow until I heard Elise’s shaky breath, which sounded like a sob. “Judgment got my
Wayne?”
Ah, shit. I wished there was a class on how to give bad news because I sucked at it. “I’m so sorry.” I settled for a
simple platitude instead. “Elliot and Ellen are safe,” I assured her.
Elise let out another shaky breath. “Wayne is… My Wayne, he’s not a bad guy. He’s just… I don’t know. He has his
problems, but everyone does. He likes a few beers, but that’s not a crime.”
I stayed silent.
“I wished I thought harder about the ward thing. He said he didn’t want bones in the front yard, but if he’d just listened,
he’d…he’d still be… alive.” Elise lost any semblance of control over her emotions and let out a ragged sob. And another. And
another.
“Do you want me to hold onto the kids for the night?” I asked, even though the answer was obviously yes.
“Could you?” Her voice was weak. “Gosh, it’s all such a mess down here. We’re getting calls all over because the city
Prime died last night.”
My stomach muscles clenched as if I’d been socked in the belly.
The Prime was dead?
A Prime was the official leader of a necromancer ‘coven,’ Sect, or group. Whatever word people used to avoid the
term cult. Primes were revered but often had little oversight. I’d often thought of it like a monarchy.
I stayed away from the Trainor Point necromancers, and they avoided me right back.
Alice Allborn had been ninety-three years old as far as memory served. My only interaction with her had been
unpleasant, and I couldn’t have cared less that she had died—but I knew what her death meant. It meant a new Prime and the
likelihood of my quiet life being over.
I cursed. “The Prime’s dead?”
“It wasn’t judgment.” Elise rushed to say. “It happened last night, not tonight.”
“Okay.” I frowned, unsure why she felt the need to impart that information. “I don’t think the kids should go back to the
house until someone has been to clean it up.” I continued. “I’ll drop them off at city hall tomorrow, and you should find another
place to stay.”
“Yes.” Elise agreed readily. “I should. That’s a great idea.”
We said our goodbyes, and I let out a shaky breath and pressed my cell phone to my forehead. I was glad I didn’t
mention the potential murder. I hadn’t realized how much Elise had liked her husband—he had been an altogether unpleasant
man.
 CHAPTER TWO

There was a bloodthirsty hush wrapped around the dive bar like a weighted blanket.
I wasn’t fool enough to think the bar was in mourning for the city’s fallen Prime. People got over that kind of thing
quickly ever since the Golden Gates of Hell opened twenty years ago. The silence had everything to do with the impending
choice of who would be stepping into Alice Allborn’s shoes or who would be taking the fall for her murder.
Every seat was taken. Leather jackets, spiky Mohawks, and lip rings for days. The kind of clothes that screamed ‘I’ve
got death magic!’ without saying a word.
The Crooked Skull was the only bar in Trainor Point with an inch-thick ward surrounding the building to deter humans
and demons alike. I had a lifetime ban and no desire to get caught with my ass on a seat—but I’d felt the compulsion to come to
the inevitable meeting. I would have sent a proxy to the meeting and found a safe place nearby to pilot, but the ward
surrounding the bar kept out reanimated corpses.
As soon as I’d dropped the children off with their mother, I’d felt the power vacuum in the city like a weight on my
neck. No doubt a spell to make the necromancers feel uneasy until a new Prime was chosen.
I cupped my green tea, eying the steaming liquid as it warmed my hands.
I didn’t like going into the city. Trainor Point was near enough to Murphy that the demons journeying from the
Hellmouth to NYC brushed past. I’d made my home on the outskirts of the broken city for a reason. Near enough that I could
send my magic across the river but not close enough to accidentally run into Hester Allborn, the Prime’s granddaughter.
It was a busy Saturday night as the bar began to fill with necromancers. People hugged their friends as they arrived and
ordered rounds of drinks, letting out a steady miasma of death magic like flowery incense with a side of decay. There seemed
to be an inch-thick barrier between the jovial atmosphere and my dark little booth. I knew some of the people in the bar. I had
done jobs with them while wearing a dead man’s face. They were the same people that had watched and condemned me all of
those years ago. The same people who had let Hester take my legs as punishment.
Though they smiled, downed shots, and swayed to the jukebox, I hadn’t forgotten. I would never forget what the
necromancers of Trainor Point had done to me when they had turned their backs on me.
But through it all, I still cared to see who would take the reins—who would be chosen to be Prime. I wanted to know
my enemy before I hobbled back to my house in the suburbs on the other side of the river and continued to lick my wounds.
Buried under a curse without a cure. A curse that would eventually take all mobility from my legs.
I felt eyes on the back of my neck. There were whispers and snippets as people noticed my booth in the corner. The bar
was getting packed, but I had a table to myself. A hooded figure with a gnarled cane and a cup of green tea.
I kept my eyes down, feeling my face heat. I wanted to go home, but I’d come too far to run away now.
Someone approached my table, clearing their throat. I eyed the stranger like a venomous snake as he leaned down to be
heard over the rumble of chatter. I prayed to the old gods that he wasn’t one of Hester’s. The stranger was a non-descript man
in his mid-thirties, wearing a suit a size too small to look presentable. He had a nose ring, and his hair was neat as a pin. “Do
you think my group could take your table? There’s five of us, so…” He left the sentence hanging.
“No,” I said, the word caught on the jagged edges of my throat.
The man had already turned at the waist, waving over his shoulder to his group. He paused, his hand lifted, as his face
darkened. He paused for a moment, frozen with confusion. “No?”
“No,” I repeated, lifting my face to meet his eyes.
“Come on!” His jaw clenched. “There’s five of us.”
I heard the threat in his statement. “No,” I said again.
His eyes narrowed. He licked the teeth behind his top lip. “This is a necromancer bar.”
“I know.” I held his gaze.
“I don’t think you do know.” The man slid into the seat opposite my booth.
I wished my legs were strong enough that I could kick him under the table. Instead, I sent a shard of my magic out,
dragging it across the soul box in his chest, rattling his insides with the clammy hand of death.
He paled, staggering back and rubbing his chest. The man raced back to his friends at the bar without looking back.
I lifted my cup to my lips, taking a small sip. He didn’t recognize my face; that had been a good sign. I could only hope
that enough years had passed that I could make it through the meeting unscathed and unrecognized.
It was only by the luck of the Old Gods that Hester Allborn wasn’t at the Crooked Skull that evening. If she was, I’d be
forced into a fight I wasn’t sure I could win with my cursed legs. Hester kept to the city, and I avoided her at all costs. It was
an unspoken agreement. She didn’t like me, with good reason, and no matter how many attempted explanations I tried to make,
she’d never see my side of things.
Until then, I kept out of her way.
The Crooked Skull was most certainly in her way.
I silently pleaded for the meeting to start.
I rubbed my thighs, tightening my fists as my leg muscles clenched and hardened. I breathed through the pain, waiting
for my vision to clear. I wanted another drink but didn’t want to walk to the bar. I wasn’t sure I could walk, even if I wanted to.
Something shifted, and the other patrons grew silent quickly, like a pair of scissors cutting a line of thread. My eyes
flicked across the room, noting the jovial atmosphere had evaporated. Every person in the bar turned to the door as three
cloaked figures drifted through the doorway with an air of importance.
The miasma of death magic seemed to thicken, gathering at the back of my throat like the smell of potpourri. I wasn’t
sure if the magic came from the strangers or the crowd’s response to a potential threat.
Three women in cloaks—the upper echelon of the Trainor Point necromancers. I recognized two by reputation alone but
was surprised to see Scarlett St Clare amongst the Kindred. The Prime’s inner circle.
Scarlett St Clare and I had been friends before she threw her lot in with the Allborns.
The other two women were older but not as old as the Prime had been. Middle-aged, with smooth faces that only
money could buy. One of the women had pastel-blue tinted hair, with edges curled around her crown, stark against her dark
skin—Tally didn’t have a family name as far as I knew, but she was one of the Forewarned. She saw the future across the veil.
She had been the only Kindred to have fought for my innocence. I had never spoken a word or thanked her, but I would know
her pinched expression anywhere.
At the center of the three women stood the Prime’s younger sister and her closest confidant, Betty Allborn. Betty
Allborn hated me with the fire of a thousand suns, which was just as well because I hated her too.
I had expected an official announcement of the Prime’s death and more information. I hadn’t expected the appearance of
the Prime’s inner circle.
“Silence, for the Kindred.” The bartender rang the last order’s bell despite the hush that had already claimed the
patrons' voices. Not a person had spoken since the three women had walked through the door, instead watching them like
venomous snakes. Beautiful but deadly.
Scarlett St Clare cast a haughty look around the bar. I thought her gaze lingered on me, though I must have imagined it
because she didn’t scream my name and demand my immediate apprehension.
“Esteemed kin.” Betty Allborn plastered a smile on her face that looked several shades of wrong and extended her arms
like a benevolent prophet. “My heart is warm to know that so many of you mourn our Prime and my older sister, Alice.” She
placed a hand over her heart. “So tragic. Taken too soon.”
Too soon, my ass. I thought. The woman had been ninety-three. I bit back my scoff and slid further back in my seat,
ensuring my hood covered my hair.
“As you know, the Prime has been taken from us. Her death was not a natural one. Unfortunately, a Prime must be
burned so that none can possess their body and steal any secrets that may linger in her flesh.” Betty flashed an apologetic smile.
“We cannot allow viewings of the body but will hold a service for close family in due course.”
None of that was news, and based on the blank expressions on the power-hungry necromancers in the bar, it wasn’t
news to them either.
“Now, onto more pressing news.” Betty straightened her shoulders. “We must choose a new Prime. Or rather, a new
Prime must be chosen for us.”
The energy of the bar shifted, leaning in with interest.
Myself included.
Betty’s lips turned down in a sad expression that seemed a parody of what sadness actually looked like. Like a child
playing in the mirror but not getting the gesture quite right. “As you know, a family cannot pass the title of Prime from one to
another. The title must pass to another, without the Allborn name.” Betty spat out the words as if they tasted bitter. “It has been
so long since we have had to choose a new Prime.” She lamented. “But, the Word of the Sect has a comprehensive description
of the process.”
The Word of the Sect? I sat up. I hadn’t thought about that book since I’d been a child. Growing up, my father had all
but thrown away any of our ties to the original Sect—the tiny cult in the Never Valley. I hadn’t realized that their teachings
extended to other groups as well.
“All necromancers, save those carrying Allborn blood, will be entered into the pool. Expect to receive more
information in a couple of days.” Betty stated ominously. “As the Word of the Sect decrees.”
And with a swish of her cloak, Betty Allborn took her leave, leaving the two younger but no less powerful
necromancers to stare menacingly at the bar patrons.
I’d been young when I’d left the Never Valley. I couldn’t remember much of my childhood except for the shadow of the
Never Forest glowering at our small village. On the outskirts of civilization, with our own rules and rites. My father had taught
me some of the Old Ways after we had left the Never Valley, but I had seen the toll it had taken on him to believe in the Old
Gods after they had taken his wife and oldest child.
I was so distracted with my thoughts, as I tried to recall any mention of Primes in the Word of the Sect and how they
were chosen, that I didn’t notice the woman slide into the booth opposite me. Her dark hair was tied in a bun, and her bangs
were a sharp line across her forehead. Her glare would have been enough to freeze a bowl of soup.
Scarlett St Clare.
It seemed I had not gone unnoticed, as I had first thought.
My lips twisted as I kept in a slew of displeasure. I forced myself to meet her eyes.
Scarlett pressed her tongue against her canine tooth, eying me shrewdly as she chose her words. “Throwing your hat
into the ring?” She asked, her voice light as if she didn’t care about the answer. “I thought you left Trainor Point years ago.”
“I did,” I stated plainly. “I don’t come into the city if I can help it.”
“But you’re here now?”
I shrugged. “Extenuating circumstances.”
“The Prime position.” Scarlett flicked her fingers toward me. “As I asked, do you plan to put yourself forward?”
“Judgment.” I ignored her question. “I had to come to city hall. Run some errands.”
“And yet you’re here. In Hester’s bar.” Scarlett looked down her nose at me.
My mouth formed an O as if I had only just realized the point she was trying to make. “Is it? I didn’t know.”
Scarlett gave me a blank look. “You’re funny.” Her tone said she thought I was anything but. “Hester is out of town, by
the way. Her grandmother died in Murphy, on the other side of the state. They have chosen to hold the funeral in the Never
Valley.”
“The beginning and the end of the necromancers.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“What I’m saying is: you get a free pass tonight, but you should leave before anyone sees you.” Scarlett leaned in,
lowering her voice. “Hester won’t let you live. She’s only gotten…angrier.”
“I was found not guilty.” I shifted in my seat.
“But not innocent.” Scarlett lifted a shoulder before letting it drop.
“I don’t have any intention of joining the trials.” And when I said it, I realized it was the truth. “I don’t have the magic
for it, and I don’t have the desire to hold power over any others.” I tapped my cheek and frowned as a thought dawned on me.
“Besides, what’s to stop Hester from swooping in after I’ve won and killing me? She can’t be Prime now because the same
family can’t rule concurrently, but if I took the position, she could be Prime then. I don’t want to be a stopgap.”
“You really think that everyone in Trainor Point is out to get you?” Scarlett squinted.
“You came over to run me out of the bar.” I pointed out.
“I came over to warn you that Hester is out of town, but she’ll be back soon enough. You shouldn’t hang around if you
want to keep those legs of yours.” She waved to the table, where my legs sat underneath.
I lifted my mug, sipping the cold dregs, wishing I had a hot tea to help with the chill. “What are the trials about
anyway?” I kept my eyes on hers. “Are you going to throw your hat into the ring?”
She looked me up and down. “And what if I was?”
“Maybe I’d back you. If you promised to leave me alone and keep Hester off my back.” I waved a hand dismissively as
if my words meant nothing—when they meant everything.
Scarlett fixed her eyes on mine, trying to gauge if I was serious. Someone called her name on the other side of the bar.
She pointed a finger toward me, torn between telling me not to leave or reiterating her message that I should get as far from
Hester’s territory as possible. Her teeth clicked as her mouth closed, and she chose silence instead, leaving with a short, sharp
nod.
 CHAPTER THREE

I didn’t hang around long after Scarlett left the table and was swamped with necromancers vying to pull any details about the
trials they could. Instead, I grabbed my cane and shuffled to the door, determined to make my final stop for the night before I got
a cab back to my house and settled down with an episode of Fancy Cats on my TVR—a show about cat pageants and
competitions, and the unsettling drama behind the scenes.
My detour to the Crooked Skull had been to satisfy my curiosity, but the real reason I’d agreed to play taxi for the Wise
family stood a few doors down from the bar. I needed to visit Annie—the pharmacist located near the Skull. Annie specialized
in hard-to-get medications. It was almost impossible to be seen by a GP in a doctor’s surgery nowadays. Most medical care
tended to be of the life-or-death variety.
My ears popped the moment I left the safety of the ward—the air filling with the sound of car alarms, drunk idiots
staggering about the downtown street, and fights on the street corner.
I’d once asked Annie why she chose to set up shop downtown, no doubt drawing the wrong kind of crowd. She’d given
me a look, like an idiot, before telling me that demons didn’t fuck with necromancers and the Crooked Skull had the highest
concentration of death magic in the city.
I made it to Annie’s unaccosted and stood on the stoop as I pressed the buzzer by the door—ignoring the handwritten
note stating that the pharmacy was ‘appointment only.’
Annie took her sweet time before buzzing me in. No doubt studying my image on her security camera and trying to work
out if I was living or dead.
Annie didn’t do business with corpses.
Good for her, but bad for me.
Annie could spot a reanimated dead body from fifty yards with her shrewd eyes, which meant I couldn’t step foot in her
store unless I did it with my own two feet. She had all sorts of moral qualms about using corpses to move around the city.
Qualms that I did not seem to be afflicted by.
Trainor Point was dangerous, even for an Animator wearing a corpse to do their grocery shopping or pick up their dry
cleaning.
Demons lurked everywhere, though they avoided The Crooked Skull on the Eastside. The river split the city in two,
acting as a natural boundary between the city and the suburbs, with several small bridges connecting the two areas.
Moving about while wearing a corpse was terrible enough, but using my own two withered legs? I might as well have
worn a sign that screamed, ‘Eat me, please! I’m easy prey!’ Gilroy usually picked up my meds for me, but I was running out
faster and faster these days.
The more powerful demons didn’t need to roam the streets and look for victims. They lived in high rises, surrounded by
their human followers and hordes of wealth and treasure. Coming and going from hell as they pleased.
It was the lower demons you had to watch for. The ones without any real magic. They couldn’t amass any sort of
privilege in Hell or the Human Realities. Not enough magic to command status, but claws and teeth that could do plenty of
damage if they took offense to the way you walked, talked, or blinked.
There were hundreds of types of demons. Some were bottom feeders, like the Shax demons, known for feeding on the
discarded skins of the Leviathan or other lizards. Then, the top of the food chain, the fallen angels.
We didn’t get many fallen angels in Trainor Point. Though Gilroy swore he saw Lucifer once. Even though every demon
I’d ever met had told me that the devil was long dead.
I wanted to see Annie like I wanted a hole in the head—but I needed the drugs. I could no longer contain the spasms for
longer than five minutes, and every tic and cramp pushed me out of any corpse I was trying to animate.
I had run out of pills, and I had a backlog of jobs that was growing by the day.
If I couldn’t animate, I couldn’t make money; if I couldn’t make money, I couldn’t eat.
I bounced on my heels at the door like a boxer in front of their opponent. My callused palm rested against the curved
top of my cane, and I stared up at the camera in defiance.
My irrational rage burned at a low simmer. My teeth gnashed together as the pain in my periphery was making itself
known.
I’d used the last of my pills to stomach the cab ride into the city, but my medication was wearing off. I’d dropped the
children at city hall hours before, and I couldn’t stand for much longer if I didn’t get a refill. When, or if, I made it home that
night, I’d be aching for days—unable to move from my chair. Unable to even feed myself.
 The buzzer sounded, and I pushed through the door, falling forward and catching myself as my walking stick snagged on
the lifted threshold. The store was empty of people but filled with the cloying smoke of incense and dust. Annie’s eyesight
wasn’t the best, but she refused to hire anyone for fear of them stealing her products—the store was a mess of boxes stacked
next to empty shelves.
I went to the counter, almost crying with joy when I spotted the threadbare seat. The leather had cracked, revealing the
filthy turquoise foam underneath. I sank down, pulling my sweaty and blistered hands from my cane, before propping it against
the counter by the chair.
I waited for a moment, watching the street outside of the store. The view was obstructed by thick silver bars across the
front of the glass. I let out a whistle as I kneaded the cramping muscle in my thigh, willing the pain to loosen, though I knew it
wouldn’t until I got my Baclofen.
Annie took her sweet time coming to the front. I knew she had a dozen cameras clocking me the moment I’d hobbled
through the door—she was making me wait for a reason.
Annie was making me pay the asshole tax.
I used to say that the pain made me a grumpy curmudgeon. That excuse was wearing thin, as was the cloak of
indifference that I wore, telling myself that I didn’t care that I wasn’t liked.
“You were here last week.” As she approached the counter, Annie’s voice echoed from the back stairwell, growing
closer with each footstep. “You ran through a month’s supply in a few days. You can do without the meds if you’re well enough
to make it to my shop.”
“I was in the area,” I said, painting a bright smile on my face. I could argue. I could make excuses, but she didn’t want
to hear them. People never did. They chided and asked for reasons but never cared to listen to them. What I called giving
context, they called making excuses.
Annie waved her hand, dismissing me with a disgusted scoff. “At least it’s not oxy. I’ve got a dozen junkies in every
week, looking for oxy. Xanax. Valium. Adderall.” She muttered to herself. “What kind of addict wants Baclofen?”
“Not an addict,” I called out, rubbing my hands over my thighs.
“Agree to disagree.”
“Come on, Annie.” I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “What would you do if I wasn’t here to brighten
your day?”
“I was watching my soaps.” She squinted. “You need to see a doctor.”
I laughed. “Yeah? Just point me in the direction of one of those.”
“There are plenty in the Hell Square.” Annie glanced over her shoulder.
“Plenty of demons, too,” I muttered.
Annie pulled her cardigan tightly around her shoulders. “I’m glad you made it here under your own steam.”
“I’d be in a better mood if you let me animate someone to pick up the meds for me.” Another sharp pain raced down
both of my legs, and I closed my eyes as I leaned back in the chair. “Corpses aren’t evil. They rarely carry diseases; if they’re
fresh enough, they don’t smell.”
Annie said nothing.
I opened one eye, noting that the older woman’s face was pinched with distaste. “What?” I frowned.
“You’re talking about a person.” Annie held my gaze. “A once living and breathing being that had a family, friends.
Maybe even a pet. You pick them up off the street or from their homes without caring who you wear. I find your magic callous,
Ms. Love.”
My teeth mashed together. “I can’t walk.” I pushed the words through gritted teeth.
Annie sniffed, tilting her chin until she looked down her nose at me. “There is that,” She said, but I sensed she wanted
to say more on the subject. “I can’t help you.”
My brow furrowed. “What?” I sat up. “Hester didn’t get to you, did she?”
“I’m not on Hester Allborn’s payroll.” Annie shook her head. “I’ve been cleaned out. Every pharmacy on this side of
town. The city council has pulled all pharmacy stock to city hall for distribution.”
I didn’t want to go back to City Hall. Not after Elise had cried all over my hoodie.
I cursed under my breath. “People are getting sick?”
Annie shrugged, but her lip curled. “Something worrying. Probably demonic.” She eyed me as she said the word
demonic.
“I’m not a demon,” I told her with a growl. “I’m an Animator.”
“Not a law-abiding Christian woman.” Annie scoffed, glancing at the door. “I don’t have anything for you. If you want
the medication for those spasms, you’ll need to get to city hall.”
I cursed under my breath again. Hissing as I rubbed my thighs. I didn’t relish getting up and heading back to my
apartment.
“I have some ibuprofen.” Annie offered; her wrinkled face pinched as if she hated that she’d offered a pain killer. “If
you need it to get home.”
I shook my head. “I can’t take painkillers. I just need something for the spasms.”
Annie opened her mouth and closed it again, hesitating. Without another word, she grabbed the pad next to her ancient
rotary phone and scrawled something on the paper before holding it out. Brandishing it like a hot potato.
It took longer than I would have liked to lift my ass from the seat on shaking legs. I held onto the counter so I didn’t fall
before taking the paper.
“There’s a guy two streets from the Hell Square. He has a stash of some of the rarer meds. Might have some Baclofen,
might not. It’s worth checking.” Annie exhaled a sharp breath through her nose. “He also serves demons, so he probably won’t
care about no corpse-walker.”
I held the paper in a tight grip, clasped to my chest. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” Annie sniffed, looking down her nose at me. “He might not see you.”

I hobbled to the end of the road and sat down on the bench just as my legs gave up on me.
The spasms squeezed my calf muscles, locking the arches of my feet and stealing my breath. Like a wave, I waited for
the pain to pass—to roll over me and wash away.
A few minutes passed, and sweat beaded on my forehead as the pain faded away as if it had never existed, leaving only
weakness behind. My clammy hand slipped on my cane when I tried to hold it before I decided to sit for a few more minutes to
grab my breath.
I unfurled the scrunched-up note, prying it from my own fist, to read Annie’s chicken scratch.
Mor, 89 Priory Court—I recognized the address. Once upon a time, before Hell Square had eaten up the streets north of
the city center, Priory Court had been a cosmopolitan cul-de-sac of beautiful townhouses. Red brick, Georgian-style
architecture, and iron railings. Bay windows and balconies. I’d dreamt of living in Priory Court when I’d first come to Trainor
Point, but the proximity to Hell Square had put that notion to bed before it had been a fully formed idea.
More than anything, I wanted to call Gilroy for a ride and hop back home to bed.
Instead, I called a taxi.
I rarely used Quik Cars, the only taxi company still operating in the city. Most taxi drivers had given up when demons
had come to town. I supposed there was a level of risk when picking up strangers, especially if they came from Hell.
I waited on the bench until the taxi skidded to a stop in front of me, and the door swung open to reveal a young woman
with spiky blue hair. Her nose scrunched, and her eyes flicked to my useless legs and the cane hanging from my fingers.
“I’m not insured to carry you in.” She called out, hands still on the steering wheel. “I’ve got a protection circle on the
roof of the car, and I’m not leaving this seat in case you’re a demon.”
“Fair enough.” I winced, gripping my cane and heaving myself to stand. It took a minute, but I reached the curb, opened
the back door, and slid inside. I barely fastened my seatbelt before the taxi took off, slamming me back in my seat. I stared at
the driver wide-eyed, her head bobbing to the thrashing music on her CD. I took in the protection sigil on the car's roof and
burned into the fabric lining. It was good work—not anything I would have been able to draw myself. I was a necromancer and
not a witch—an expensive spell.
“Do demons skip on fares?” I asked. “Is that why taxis don’t pick them up?”
The driver snorted, shooting me a glance. “Depends on the demon. Higher demons, the ones with fancy titles, don’t
understand payment. My dad said they got offended and thought the cabbies were asking for a boon or something.” A faint
British accent filtered through the driver's voice. “You’d be lucky if they gave you a filthy look and got out without paying. My
dad was a taxi driver when the Golden Gates opened. Said that one of his friends lost an eye when he argued with a Leviathan
about not paying the bill.”
“Leviathan?” I tapped my bottom lip. “The ones with the poisonous spit?”
“The very ones.” The driver nodded, turning back to the road. “Spit in his eye.”
I winced. “Painful.”
“For sure,” The driver waved a hand over her shoulder. “How’d you do your leg in? Demons? Or did you fall in the
shower?”
“Curse,” I said, jutting my chin and meeting her eyes in the mirror.
“Bummer.” She whispered. “My name’s Kat. You’ll give me five stars on the app, right? Even though I asked about
your leg?”
“It’s both legs.” I bit back a smile. “And sure. As long as you don’t kill me before we get to Priory Court.”
“You’re lucky,” Kat told me, giving me a stern look. “I don’t go past Priory Court. The next turning is Hell Square, and
I don’t need to get bewitched by an incubus. No, thank you.”
 I snickered. “Got any horror stories about incubi?”
Kat shuddered. “I don’t go in for that, but if you do, no judgments.” She shook her head before her expression turned
pensive. “Call me and let me know how it turns out if you meet one. Death by sex is a hell of a way to go.”
I couldn’t disagree with her.

Priory Court was marked by an iron arch, inlaid with beautiful black roses and veins twisting to announce the entrance.
Kat skidded to a stop on the curb in front of the arch and tapped the steering wheel impatiently. I opened the door and
manually moved my legs to the side, using my cane to pull myself from the vehicle. Taking a moment to catch my breath, I
waved over my shoulder as Kat sped away. My phone beeped a notification from the ride app with confirmation and a receipt.
It was dark, and the streetlights stretched the shadows onto the cobblestones like reaching fingers.
Eighty-nine Priory Court sat on the other side of the courtyard, staring at the arch like a guard dog made of red brick
and Georgian pillars. The front door stood at the top of several steps, and I groaned at the thought of climbing them.
As I toddled forward, my cane clicked against the cobblestones, my thighs burned, and my legs wobbled from the
uneven surface.
When I finally reached eighty-nine, my anger was a low simmer. Misfiring in my brain, from pain in my legs, and
irrational that I hadn’t been able to just get my Baclofen from Annie and get home.
Though I was distracted by my overwhelming desire to be anywhere but Priory Court, I felt it when the air shifted. The
hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and the sensation of being watched bore down on me like a hydraulic press.
I kept my gait as even as possible as I approached the house in the center of the row. The giant house numbers were
raised, hewn copper, with hammer marks.
Before my foot touched the first step, the front door opened, revealing two women much shorter and slimmer than I had
any hope of being. Both sported identical bob haircuts; the edges were clean-cut without a hair out of place.
They wore the same outfit. A white shirt, black tie, and a men’s sport coat.
Despite their notable efforts to appear as identical as possible, I cataloged the differences in their faces. Not identical
twins, maybe fraternal. The left twin's eyebrows were straighter, whereas the Right Twin’s arched more, making her look
inquisitive rather than intimidating.
I waited, but neither woman said a word as they watched me grab the rail and pull myself up the stairs.
Another spasm raced up my calves, but I kept my feet as I finally reached the top.
I pulled out my piece of paper. “Annie sent me. She said Thane Mor had what I needed.” I was stretching the truth, but
they didn’t need to know that.
The twins exchanged a glance before waving a hand to the open doorway, gesturing for me to walk inside.
I took in the entranceway. The narrow hall, with painted black stairs and checkered marble tiles on the floor. A
seemingly random display of peeling and faded framed pictures crawled up the staircase wall.
A chuckle drifted from overhead, weaving down the steps and drawing my attention to the top of the staircase, a pale
man looking down like a king surveying his kingdom.
My heart skipped in my chest. I tasted the air for his magic but found none. A void.
It took a lot of skill and power to remove all traces of your magic from the air.
Only someone with a lot of power would go to any effort to mask it, but I knew what to look for. The hairs on my arm
lifted, and the air prickled like the moment before a lightning strike, but it was as if the man wasn’t even there.
“I think you’re on the wrong side of town, necromancer.” He said in a deep, husky voice. Rough and damaged. “What
brings you to my home?”
He took a step down out of the shadows, and I froze.
He looked like a statue, given form.
Pale alabaster skin without a blemish or mark. White hair, neat and combed back, and eyes that seemed to shift between
red and violet in the light.
He had albinism.
His hand skimmed the stair rail as he drifted down, his eyes fixed on mine. His almost invisible brows arched
expectantly, and I had forgotten he’d asked a question.
I licked my dry lips and stepped forward. “My name is Allegra Love. Annie gave me your name. She said you have
what I need,” I said.
He cocked his head to the side, regarding me without judgment. He held out his hand without a word.
I looked down, confused.
“People shake hands when they meet.” He stated. “Hello, Allegra. My name is Thane Mor.”
 “Thane Mor.” I echoed, searching my memory for the name but coming up empty. I really had been out of the loop for
too long. I had avoided the city for several years. It seemed the big players had changed in my absence, though I shouldn’t have
expected otherwise.
I held out my hand, the movement slow and reluctant, until my palm brushed his. His hand was smooth, without calluses
—the hand of a person who hadn’t done an ounce of physical labor.
Every muscle in my body locked, and something raced from head to toe, holding me in place. Reading me.
I gasped when the magic finally released me, staggering back. My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
“What was that?”
Thane smiled blithely but didn’t answer. “Oxycodone for the pain? Vicodin?”
“Baclofen.” I gasped, my shaking hand clasping my chest.
His eyes narrowed. “Baclofen?”
“For the spasms.” I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. I wanted to sink to the floor and curl up in a ball, but I couldn’t.
Finally, the invasive feeling dissolved, and my tremors stopped.
Thane Mor tilted his chin. “I apologize. Many don’t have a reaction when they touch my skin.”
“Okay,” I said, my eyes wide, unable to think of anything else to say.
The pale man tilted his chin to the door at the end of the ball, past the steps. “Follow me.”
He didn’t wait before he glided away through the open door. My cane clacked on the marble tile as I tried to catch up to
him.
The kitchen at the back of the house was beautiful, with off-white walls and white shaker-style cabinetry. I eyed the
copper sink appreciatively, wondering how much it all cost. Priory Court cost a whack just for the address, but the level of
detail in the kitchen was insane. He had to have an interior designer. Had to.
Gilroy told me every day I needed a new kitchen. Once upon a time, I’d loved to cook, but I couldn’t stand for long
periods now. I lived on a diet of Oreos and hot pockets.
Thane Mor drifted to a glass cabinet, pulling a key seemingly from thin air, though more likely, the sleeves of his fitted
suit jacket. He unlocked the cupboard and pulled it open to reveal baskets, labeled cubbies, and a row of old-fashioned glass
tincture mixtures—like some kind of alchemy laboratory amongst the modern pills and tonics.
“Did Annie mention how I do business?” Thane asked, his voice level, as he studied the contents of his pharmacy.
I stilled my hands, realizing I had been knitting them together. “I have money.”
“She didn’t explain.” He surmised, loosening a breath and glancing over his shoulders. Something passed over his
violet eyes before he grabbed a basket from the top shelf and turned to the counter. Thane decanted the pills into a smaller
container with methodical movements. “I would like to take a memory.”
“Take a memory?” I echoed, frowning, watching the little white pills on the counter like an addict determined to get
their fix.
“You’re a necromancer. Surely the idea of taking a memory isn’t so farfetched?” Thane Mor’s eyes crinkled at the
edges.
“If you take it, I can never have it back? I won’t be able to remember what you took?” I licked my dry lips. “My first
kiss? My first love? My first heartbreak?”
“Your first death.” He interrupted, placing the pills in a bag. “Tell me the first time you felt death and knew that it meant
nothing to you. When you walked both sides of the line as if it was spider silk instead of an impenetrable wall.”
Oof. That was a tough one. I needed to sit down, but though there was a kitchen island designed for sitting, there wasn’t
a single chair.
“I just tell you? You won’t pluck the memory out of my head?” I shifted again, feeling the hot skin of my palm against
my cane.
Thane watched me like I was a specimen behind glass. “Words are enough.”
Well, if that wasn’t ominous.
“I was tired. My mother had gotten me out of bed late the night before for some ritual. Speaking to a spirit I couldn’t
see. I wasn’t sure why my father was angry the next day because mom always did things like that.” I pushed a hand through my
dark hair, brushing it away from my face. “I was tired,” I repeated. “Falling asleep in the vegetable garden when I felt a rat.
One of the mousers had dragged its body behind the cottage, playing with it. I felt its life as it drifted away. It felt like a
dandelion blowing its seeds in the wind.” My eyes were unfocused, drifting to the past as I spoke. The blood rushed to my
ears. The whomping like a helicopter taking off. I took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. “The cat heard something. I don’t know
what. I grabbed the rat when it wasn’t looking. Ran away. I grabbed it with something other than my hands. An extra limb that
existed in my mind. My father found me when the cat caught up to the dead rat. I was in two places at once. In my own body
and in the cat’s mouth. Feeling its teeth slice the skin of my throat. My father brought me back, shaking me awake when I began
to scream. It was the day I discovered I was an Animator, like him.”
Thane hummed, appreciative, before he held out a paper envelope that contained my pills. “Emma and Emily will let
you out.” He told me, turning back to his cabinet and closing the doors with a soft snick.
The twins approached, drawing level with my shoulders like shadowy wings. I felt myself jarred from a daze and
wrenched back to reality with the dismissal. They blinked in time.
“Is that a party trick?” I blurted out.
Both twins rolled their eyes, ignoring my question as they walked me to the front door, waiting for me to clear the
threshold before they shut it behind me.
 CHAPTER FOUR

I lifted my tank top to wipe the sweat from my face as I walked up my driveway, finishing my run without an ounce of pain as I
crossed the bone ward.
I felt his presence before I even entered the house. My best friend, Gilroy Gunderson, stood in my kitchen, slamming
cupboards as he searched for the good coffee I kept hidden behind the potatoes in the pantry.
I made a beeline for the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and ignored Gilroy’s questioning stare.
Dressed in a purple top hat and a matching velour suit, he looked all too put together for a Sunday morning. He had
some nerve dropping in so early after ghosting me the night before when I’d asked for backup when I’d gone into the city.
I’d taken a pill before I went to sleep and again when I woke up. I felt refreshed, though my muscles ached, even if they
no longer spasmed. Hence the jog.
I watched Gilroy putter about my kitchen as I sipped my water, waiting for him to speak. When he did, it wasn’t what I
had expected.
“Heard you went to see Thane Mor last night. Wouldn’t have pegged you for a demon blood addict.” He hummed as he
opened and closed one of my cupboards. “Is that why you went for a run? You’re all healed up now?” Gilroy paused after a
moment, tilting his head to the side as if listening to someone I couldn’t see or hear. Listening to the dead
“I’m not a demon blood addict. I refilled my prescription to stop the spasms.” I put my bottle down on the kitchen bar,
glaring at him. “And you can’t ask one of the spirits in my house to tell you where my fancy coffee grounds are.”
Gilroy slanted me a look. “I can if you’re being petty and hiding them for no good reason.”
I ignored his statement. “I went to the Crooked Skull last night. After the message went out about the Prime’s death. I
didn’t see you there.” I pointed out.
“Why would I go to that Hell hole?” Gilroy snorted. “I might be a necromancer, but I have enough magic to fill a
thimble with space left over. I don’t hang around with those types.”
“What types?” I put my bottle down, eying him with interest.
Gilroy gestured toward me. “You know what I mean. It’s all backward. You’ve got more magic than all of the Trainor
Point Sect put together, and here you are, kissing their boots and paying their tithes because you fucked up and—”
I made a noise deep in the back of my throat, telling him to stop speaking without saying the words. “Where did you go
last night?”
“My grandmother’s.” He sighed, crossing his arms over his chest as he reclined against the counter. “She has a farm
north of the city, and something took out an entire field of sheep and stole her horse. Well… she thinks it stole her horse.”
I frowned. “Judgment doesn’t touch animals.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Gilroy’s mouth pursed. “Missy, her prize-winning mare, was missing from the stable.
Nana’s a Whisperer like me, but none of the dead that hang out on the farm are talking. There’s something strange going on, for
sure.”
“Is Missy a valuable horse?” I asked.
Gilroy rubbed his hand down his clean-shaven face. “Yes.” He hissed the words. “Dressage. Nana Mildred doesn’t
have much money, but she has good horses and years of experience breeding them, showing them, and the like. Missy going
missing is breaking her heart.”
I made a sound, hoping it sounded like some form of condolence because I couldn’t think of the words to say.
“I wanted to ask you about it, actually.” Gilroy winced as he met my eyes.
“About what?” I cocked my head to the side.
“About the animals. You’re the only necromancer this side of the state with an affinity for animals.” Gilroy knitted his
fingers together, holding his hands awkwardly as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “Would you consider coming out to
my grandmother’s farm? I… I’d owe you one.”
I gave him a look. “You won’t owe me anything,” I assured him.
Gilroy opened the cupboard on the end and pushed a mixing bowl out of the way, finding the coffee grounds tucked at
the back of the shelf. He released an audible aha and held the red packet to his face like a soft, cuddly koala. “Red velvet. My
favorite.” He told me. “You shouldn’t have.”
I rolled my eyes. “Have you heard about the embargo on medications?”
“There’s meant to be something going around, but Ben hasn’t heard anything at the hospital.” Gilroy grabbed a mug.
“He thinks the city government is being paranoid over nothing.”
 Ben was Gilroy’s boyfriend of four months.
“I only heard about it last night. I had no idea some kind of pandemic was going on.” I lifted my water bottle, draining
the contents before throwing the plastic in the recycling. “You know I don’t go into the city unless I have to.”
“Because of Hester.” Gilroy glanced over his shoulder. “Was she at the Skull last night?”
“Would I be alive if she was?” I scoffed. “She’d curse me. Again. Then chop off my legs this time.”
“Well, you did—”
“I don’t need to hear about what I did or didn’t do to Hester,” I growled, crossing my arms. My cane sat in the umbrella
holder by the door, and my eyes flicked to it against my volition.
Gilroy poured his coffee and took a seat at the counter.
“We’ll go see your grandmother after lunch.” I sniffed, turning on my heel and marching upstairs to get changed.

Gilroy offered to drive me to Mildred’s farm. A straight line north through the city, as the crow flies.
My French Country home in the suburbs had been procured when judgment raced through Trainor Point from Murphy to
Montreal across the border. Eating up the sinners and causing chaos that no one truly understood. I’d found the home empty; the
bodies of the previous family that had lived in the mansion had been easy enough to possess and march into the woods behind
the property. Disposing of bodies was easier when you could make them dig their own graves.
Speaking of bodies, I hadn’t checked in with the Wise house to see if Wayne’s body had been taken care of yet.
Judgment tended to be a busy day for the cleaners. The young ones had chosen an excellent time to murder their stepfather, all
things considered. Those deaths weren’t investigated. The cleaners would sweep away the evidence before the question was
even asked.
I wondered how often Judgment was blamed for just plain human savagery.
I’d taken full advantage of Judgment, swooping in and taking my home once I’d found the occupants dead where they
dropped. I’d filled a ‘Notice to occupy,’ the post-apocalyptic version of finders keepers, but for real estate.
I’d found my house in the wake of my father’s death. I’d been in Trainor Point for a year by then, taking my father to his
chemo treatments before he passed. Having a house of my own had been the new start I’d desperately hoped for—except I’d
fucked up in the first year of being alone and had been scared to show my face since.
The suburbs sat south and butted against the mountains, sitting in view of the largest peak in a hundred miles—Mount
Trainor. Our side was too steep for snow sports, but the ski resort on the other side of the mountain had boasted several
celebrity homes. Though twenty years and an apocalypse had changed that.
Several roads led to the farmland on the other side of the city, but Gilroy chose to take the windy, more scenic route.
Farmland, fields, and fields of cattle, and long stretches of road where the skyscrapers in the distance watched like mirrored
sentinels as they moved across the horizon.
“Ben wants to meet you,” Gilroy told me, saving the news for the journey's final stretch as we pulled up to his
grandmother’s gate.
“If you’re considering it, you must be serious about him.” I kept my eyes on the wooden gate and the red barn in the
distance. The world was a wash of grey through a lens of raindrops on the windscreen. One of the larger fields, visible from
the road, was empty of livestock, though the barbed wire had several tufts of white fluff. No doubt the yard that had once
housed Mildred’s sheep before they had passed.
“You said the dead weren’t talking?” I asked, frowning at the empty field. I might have been able to make a dead body
dance, but I had no skills when it came to spirits.
“They’re all gone. They’ve up and disappeared.” Gilroy’s brow furrowed as he scratched his nose. “It’s the darndest
thing.” He kept his eyes fixed on the gate. “Even Pappy hung around, haunting the tack room. It was where he went when he
wanted quiet. He passed about a decade ago, but I’d speak to him sometimes. The last time I checked, he was gone. He’d
passed on. All of them have.”
“Spooks don’t just pass on.” I frowned, “If they hang around, it’s for a reason.”
An older woman in a shawl hobbled out of the front door of the squat farmhouse in the distance and began the journey
to the gate, with several dogs hopping around her feet.
“Unfinished business?” Gilroy suggested with a wry smile.
“Debateable.” I shrugged. “My mom always used to say that the spirits stayed behind because they felt they were
needed by the living. Some lost sight of that, even after they’d made the decision to stay.”
“Your mom was a Whisperer, too, right?” Gilroy glanced at me.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “She was the most skilled Whisperer I know. She’d give the lost dead names like old woman, one
shoe, or redhead with a bloody mouth. She said they didn’t know their names anymore.”
 Gilroy’s grandmother, Mildred, finally got the gate, unlocking it with a heavy key hanging from the rat-king of keys on
her wrist. Gilroy hopped out of the car, marching toward his grandmother to help push the stiff gate to the side—uncaring about
the mud rising up the legs of his velour trousers.
Once the gate was open, Gilroy hopped back in the front seat and swung the car into park. Mildred closed the gate
behind us, a chorus of barking dogs bouncing around her.
When I left the vehicle, frowning as I stared at the empty yard next to the dirt road, something tugged my middle.
Something primal, an ancient fear that was altogether familiar. The kind of fear that came from old gods and the end of days.
Under the roar of excited dogs, the air was still. Quiet. Mildred made her way over, and the dogs settled once Gilroy
gave them a few head scratches and sent them on their way. I dragged my attention from the barren field to the older lady.
She smiled in greeting, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Ms. Love.” She tilted her head in greeting. “My grandson talks
about you all the time. Said you’re the woman to talk to about death, if I have a mind to. I’m glad you made it out. I can put on a
pot of tea if you like—”
“I’ll go straight to the pasture if you don’t mind.” I couldn’t stop my frown as I gestured to the field with the jerk of my
chin.
“Of course.” Mildred wrung her hands together.
“I’ll show her around, Nana,” Gilroy told her. “You go into the house and put on that tea.”
Mildred shuddered. “It's just so—” I sensed a dozen words that crossed her mind before the older woman settled on:
“—confusing.”
I couldn’t argue with her.
Gilroy waved as he watched his grandmother toddle back into the house, hitching her shawl tightly around her
shoulders. “Sometimes I wonder if you ever learned how to have a proper human conversation.” He remarked lightly, waving
as Mildred turned to us before disappearing into the house. “It wouldn’t kill you to assure her you’ve got this in hand.”
“I don’t,” I admitted. “I have no fucking clue what killed her sheep and took her horse.”
Gilroy scoffed. “You better get a clue.”
“Remind me of why we’re friends?” I asked, genuinely wondering at that moment in time.
“You need someone to take care of your real living body while you go off and possess dead people.” Gilroy slanted a
look my way as we started towards the empty field. “Who else would hook up your IV and change your adult diapers?”
“I’ve never worn an adult diaper.” I paused, confused.
“How would you know?” Gilroy chuckled. “When you’re piloting several corpses, you wouldn’t know if a demon sat
in your lap and braided your hair.”
He had a point.
Together, we approached the barbed wire, with the tufts of wool fluttering in the wind. I sniffled the air, expecting the
scent of death. Carrion or blood.
Nothing.
Like a dozen squirming limbs, I sent out my magic, searching for any signs of death. A hundred patches lit up in my
mind's eye, like chalk outlines on the scant grass, marking where each animal had fallen.
No blood marked the grass. No bile or burn marks. It was as if they had simply stopped living. There was no sickness.
No violence.
Just death.
How odd.
“Could it be Judgment?” I tapped my bottom lip, speaking to myself more than anyone else.
“Does it feel like Judgment?” Gilroy frowned, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth.
I exhaled sharply, exasperated. “Not really. There isn’t blood here. Judgment is like one of those cartoon smoke balls
with fists flying everywhere. It’s wrath. It’s hunger. This is just…death. It was quick. It barely brushed the grass. It swept
through and brushed against the sheep, but I don’t think the sheep were the target. Maybe just a side effect?”
I brushed my hand against the nearest post but felt nothing. Gilroy waved his hand towards the barn, which housed the
horses.
My sneakers sunk into the mud, making walking difficult, but I didn’t complain.
I was glad I’d made an effort to get my medication the night before; otherwise, the visit would have been near
intolerable.
Together, we walked through the barn doors. The scent of farm animals, feces, and hay slapped me in the face as I took
in the two rows of stables—though only one had a nameplate. The word Missy was carved in delicate calligraphy over the
stall at the end.
I didn’t see the mousers, but I felt them as they sat on the rafters above and watched from a distance the way feral cats
often did.
I felt the rats hiding away, burrowing behind the barn. The insects. All of the life surrounding us.
 I brushed my hand against Missy’s stall, expecting the same death I’d sensed in the field. The stall was clean and
smelled strongly of bleach. No hay and an empty food trough.
My brow furrowed as I brushed my hand against the door again. “No death,” I told him. “I can’t sense her. I don’t think
the horse is dead.”
“So, someone stole her.” Mildred’s voice echoed through the barn. I hadn’t heard her enter; I was too absorbed in my
work.
I shook my head. “She might have died elsewhere, but she didn’t die here.”
“What’s your range?” Mildred demanded.
I looked down at the blood, knowing exactly why she asked. She was a necromancer like Gilroy—though not a
practicing one—Mildred knew I could track Missy through her blood if she was dead.
“Do you have any blood left?” I asked, ignoring her question.
“Kept the rags.” Mildred jutted her chin and met my eyes.
I was an Animator. My skills lay in animating the dead.
But my mother had taught me many things. Spells handed down from generation to generation. Bone wards. Tracking
spells.
The Forewarned could see the future through the veil, and Travelers could cast their eyes across the world. Searching
and seeing marvelous things. I didn’t have the ability to look into the future and find the horse without doing the leg work. Even
if I could track Missy with her blood, I’d have to physically follow the trail to find out where it led.
I glanced at Gilroy, wondering if he knew just how much he was asking of me.
He might have joked about taking care of me when I was ‘under,’ but Gilroy kept me safe when my consciousness was
away from my body. I trusted him with my life, and I had to trust that he had asked for my help because he had truly exhausted
all other options.
I didn’t have a family, not anymore. It was hard to conceptualize wanting to help someone without a clear quid-pro-quo.
My family was dead. So dead that even a Whisperer couldn’t reach them.
I sighed. “Let’s set up in the living room,” I told him. “I’ll have to draw a circle.”

Mildred’s first floor had seamless laminate in the kitchen, perfect for what I needed. A circle without any breaks.
I took the chalk from my pocket and started to draw, taking time to add an extra layer of protection along the ancient
symbols around the edge.
My mother would have rolled in her grave if she saw me setting a circle. She called it a coward’s way of practicing
magic.
My father had been the one to teach me.
My scant time in the Never Valley as a child meant that I could read the symbols, but I didn’t dare speak them. My
father had warned about the dangers of speaking the language of the Old Gods.
Aside from Mildred’s missing horse being low stakes in the grand scheme of problems, I wanted to get the job over
with as quickly as possible.
My legs twinged as my medication began to wear off, and I needed to get home before my legs folded out under me.
I took the chance to sit while I had it, crossed-legged in the middle of my chalk circle. I closed my eyes, muttering
under my breath. It wasn’t a spell, not exactly, just one of the nursery rhymes I remembered from the crib—it helped to focus
the magic and the intent.
Through the thistle and the underbrush,
Duck under the fence,
Find the berries in their bush,
That taste the very best.
Find the berries left behind,
Toil in the mud,
Find the ones with the juice,
That runs as red as blood.
I saw a shadow behind my closed eyelids. Something distinctly horse-shaped, though I knew nothing about the animals
save that they came in different colors and heights.
“What color is Missy?” I asked, keeping my eyes closed.
“She’s brown. With a heart-shaped white spot on her nose.” Gilroy answered quickly.
I nodded, repeating the word horse until it bounced between my ears.
 I expected a tug in my middle, like a rope, pointing me in a particular direction. Instead, I saw a horse in my mind’s
eye. Not brown, but black as night. A void, stealing the light around it. Its eyes glittered like oil slicks, and its ears flicked as it
turned to face me.
I felt like an ant under a looking glass, the beam of a sun turning its focus on me. The horse wore a saddle, though I saw
nothing riding its back.
It lifted its muzzle, revealing sharp teeth that had no right being in a horse’s mouth, before it let out a scream and reared
on its hind legs, rushing towards me.
I opened my eyes, falling back out of the circle, while I scrambled for purchase. The horse was gone, but its shadow
remained in my vision until I blinked it away. My jaw hurt, locked against a scream that needed to escape.
“Did you find Missy?” Mildred asked timidly, her wrinkled eyes creased with concern.
Gilroy tilted his head in question.
“No.” I exhaled, hating the way the word tasted on my tongue. “But I’ll find her. I promise.”
 CHAPTER FIVE

When I got home, with the early afternoon sun shining in my eyes, my legs began to shake—unable to hold my weight as I
slumped into the chair in the entrance hall.
I rubbed a trembling hand down my face, feeling the cold sweat creep up on me.
I couldn’t get the image of that black horse from my mind; it haunted me every time I closed my eyes. Had I accidentally
keyed the spell to a different horse?
There had been a desperate hunger to the dark horse, something I wouldn’t have associated with a prey animal. The
feeling made the protection tattoo on my stomach tingle and itch like something was trying to break my father’s spell—the last
thing I had left of him.
Gilroy hadn’t said much on the drive home. He made sure to help me up the porch steps before excusing himself to go
back to his grandmother’s farm. I sensed his disappointment in the car, but when I asked about it, he told me it was ‘fine’ in a
tone that told me it very much wasn’t, but he didn’t want to talk about it.
We made plans to have a movie night later in the week, and he promised to chase a few invoices from some of the jobs
we had completed last month.
I waited until Gilroy pulled away from the driveway before I grabbed my cane from the umbrella bucket. I pulled it
between my legs as I waited for the wave of spasms to stop.
I hated feeling so weak.
So pathetic.
Each step felt like a thousand needles as I staggered to the kitchen and grabbed my medicine. I eyed the orange bottle
like an enemy, knowing that I should bite the pain for the evening so I didn’t run out of the pills further down the line.
My phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out, frowning as Scarlett’s name flashed on the screen. The trials for the new
Prime had completely slipped my mind when I stepped away from the Crooked Skull, and I had no desire to entertain any
vague threats.
“Scarlett,” I answered the call with her name instead of a greeting.
“Allegra Love, I didn’t expect to speak to you again so soon.” She returned my level of enthusiasm. “Are you free?”
“Free? As in without cost, or free, as in free to talk?”
Scarlett groaned. “I swear…”
“Can I help you with something?”
She groaned again. “I’ve run into a bit of trouble.”
“Hm?” I rubbed my hand over my mouth. “And Hester couldn’t come to the phone?”
“She’s still in Murphy.” Scarlett shifted the phone from one shoulder to the other. “You’re the only Animator in the city
right now. I got myself…um… incapacitated while undergoing the trials, and I can’t ask for help because it’ll help the others
solve a clue.”
“A clue?” I sounded as confused as I felt. “What kind of bullshit are they making you do?”
She carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. “There is a vault in the Metro Mall Bank. I’m trapped. It’s in one of the Folds
between realities. It’s a demon haunt, I think. It’s a family vault, but now I’m trapped.”
“A bank vault.” I echoed dryly.
“The Metro Mall bank. The mall was built around it.” Scarlett growled in frustration. “I followed the clues, and now
I’m trapped. Are you going to help me or not?”
I groaned. The Metro Mall sat on the border of Hell Square and the rest of the city. “You threatened me yesterday, and
now you want me to drop everything for you? Let me think about that…” I paused theatrically, pulling the phone away from my
ear to hang up.
“I’ll pay you!” She shouted.
“Don’t you have anyone else you can call?” I rolled my eyes. “You’re one of the Kindred. You don’t need my help.”
Scarlett said nothing for a moment. I’d thought she’d hung up before she spoke in the tiniest voice I’d ever heard. “It has
to be you.” She whispered.
“You don’t trust the Sect?”
She didn’t answer. “Your magic can cross the river. You don’t have to come into the city. Just… Just help. Please. I’ll
pay your rate. Whatever you want.”
I inhaled deeply, feeling my heart lurch with nervousness as I searched for the words to tell her she was utterly insane.
 “You think I’m insane, don’t you?” Scarlett laughed bitterly. “It’s important, Allegra. This is about the new Prime of
Trainor Point. You don’t want someone stupid to take the throne. Johnson wouldn’t leave you alone if he got the position. He’d
make a point of rounding up all of the independents in the city and forcing them to join the Sect. Then taxing them if they don’t.”
“Johnson’s an ass.” I agreed.
“Don’t be an ass.” She sniffed. “Back my claim. Rescue my ass.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Did you have a proxy?” I asked, knowing that she did. No necromancer worth their
salt would do a job without a spare body nearby, just in case something happened to the one they were riding.
“I parked my car in the mall lot.” She assured me. “There’s a body in the trunk. Not too old. You’ll be able to slip right
in and ride up to the vault. They’ll let you into the vault if you tell them you’re there for the white horse.”
“The white horse?”
“It’s a password, dumbass.” Scarlett bristled.
“You’ll owe me for this,” I told her.

I took my Baclofen and went to my office.

It was challenging to pilot a body and have complete control over your own body simultaneously. My recliner had
several specially fitted restraints, a lesson I had learned the hard way. Pain was an issue when it came to involuntary
movements. I’d writhed off the recliner and hit the floor more times than I could count before I’d special-ordered the chair.
Gilroy called it my ‘asylum chair.’
I always locked myself behind the reinforced door when I piloted a body. The office had no cell service, only a single
ancient landline phone. A safe room in case of a break-in. Salt-encrusted resin lined the threshold and the window ledges.
More expensive than I wanted to admit, but hopefully enough to stop a demon attack when my attention was split several ways.
I had as much desire to help Scarlett St Clare become the newest Prime as I wanted to jump in a hot tub full of piranhas,
but she was the lesser of all of the evils of Trainor Point.
I hadn’t pictured Harrison Johnson in line for the Prime position. He was in his fifties, but his misogynistic views likely
went back even further. Johnson was a Traveler—a necromancer who could see and sometimes step through the veil between
life and death. Depending on power levels, a Traveler could be virtually omnipresent. Though as far as I knew, Johnson used
his magic as a way to ‘teleport’ by stepping through the veil, where time meant nothing, and walking to his destination. Popping
out at the other side.
Harrison Johnson had two names, and neither of them were first names. I had no idea what his family had been thinking,
but then again, I didn’t know much about the necromancer families of Trainor Point.
Walking into a bank and pulling Scarlett St Clare out of the vault didn’t seem difficult on paper. Maybe I’d get a favor
from the newest Prime if she completed the trials? I told myself that was reason enough to throw my magic across the river.
I wriggled into place and put my head back on the recliner, closing my eyes and fixing a mental map of Trainor Point in
my mind’s eye. An exercise that made it easier to search for the dead in the city, especially if Scarlett had a specific corpse in
mind for me to possess.
I spiraled deeper and deeper into the well of magic inside of me, like a piece of paper lazily drifting down-down-down
to the bottom of a deep, dark hole. My father had once told me that every person should know where the bottom of their well
was. They should reach for it, if only once, to understand how far they could push themselves. It had been an exercise we
would do when I was learning the intricacies of animation.
I didn’t need to reach the bottom of my well to animate a corpse; I only needed to skim the surface.
I pinged back to my body and cast my magic across the city, finding the Metro Mall. Thousands of tiny dead animals
littered the grounds, a year’s worth of dead vermin. Insects, caught in the zappers over the food court. Rat traps in the delivery
area around the back. Dumpsters filled with raccoons, both living and dead. It was a wonder how much death surrounded the
world we lived in, and people just didn’t notice.
Like a blanket, I bathed the area in my magic until I felt Scarlett’s familiar signature.
Scarlett was an Animator. Her magic carried the same dying, pungent rose trace that my fathers’ had. I couldn’t sense
my magic, but I suspected it would taste the same.
My father had once told me that all necromancers were born from the blood of the Never Valley—from being close to
the Old Gods. Drinking the water and eating crops from land poisoned by their magic leeching through the space between
worlds.
The Word of the Sect told us that the Old Gods watched over the Never Valley. They protected us, and in exchange, they
gave us magic.
But everyone in the Never Valley had died.
 Only my father and I had gotten away that day. My sister and mother had passed along with the leader of the Sect,
Harold Marche—the Prime, and his other followers. No one truly knew what happened that day, save for the burning of every
member of the cult in their underground bunker. Turning their flesh to goo.
I shuddered, racing down to Scarlett’s dark aura and finding an empty body to slip into. Tucked in the trunk of her
Chevy Camero. The trunk had been popped and left ajar. I wondered why Scarlett hadn’t used the body to escape herself but
didn’t overthink it. If it was easy to get through the Prime trials, everyone would be Prime.
I filled the body, like pouring water into a cup. The rest of my magic sloshed over the edges and returned to my own
body, miles away from the mall. I sat up, looking down at my wrinkled but large hands. A flash of memories stole my breath as
I saw the last moments of an old man. Gasping as blood filled his mouth and lungs. The scent of sickness and an overwhelming
sense of doom.
I’d felt all kinds of death. Murder, violence, entropy and sickness. But no sickness felt like that. Malevolent. Conscious.
I shook my head, trying to put the thoughts from my mind. My proxy’s memories weren’t important. The sooner I got
Scarlett out of the vault, the sooner I could get home. I swung my legs over the edge of the trunk and eased myself out of the car.
The car was parked in the loading area around the side of the mall. I staggered out of the alleyway and toward the front
entrance of the bank—a historical building with the glass and steel eyesore of the modern mall built around it like a shell on a
tortoise.
The electric doors swished open, and I patted the corpse's shirt, finding a pair of sunglasses to hide his milky eyes.
I waited in line, and when I got to the teller, I stated the password, only to find a confused young woman unable to help.
I asked to speak to a manager. The corpse's vocal cords hadn’t rotted yet, but they were dry and difficult to use.
Eventually, I got someone who knew what I needed, and a moment later, I was greeted like a VIP and directed to the
elevator to the vaults. The teller used a special keycard, gesturing for me to join him. The teller didn’t speak until the elevator
lurched and began its descent. “May I enquire your name?”
I frowned, keeping my face forward. I said nothing.
“Well, you see...” The teller knotted his hands together. “This vault is very old. In fact, the vault has been here since the
bank was built over a hundred and fifty years ago.” He explained on a hushed exhale. “I’ve always wanted to know what was
inside.”
“I’m just here to help a friend,” I told him.
“Of course.” He repeated the phrase twice to himself as if it didn’t make sense.
The elevator stopped, swishing open to reveal the vault.
The vault door was larger than I’d expected—but I’d never robbed a bank before, so I didn’t know if that was out of the
ordinary. I’d anticipated salt on the thresholds, spell markings to ward off demons, or even a bone ward. It seemed that the
bank didn’t care about keeping demons out, even with its proximity to Hell Square.
The teller opened the vault door with an intimidating collection of retina scans and number sequences before he turned
around and handed me a heavy brass key with a number engraved at the fat part at the top. I folded the old man’s fingers over
the key and gave him a stout nod.
Scarlett stood in the middle of the vault, unscathed.
I stepped towards her, feeling the change in pressure like an airplane taking off.
A strange look crossed her face, but she didn’t say a word as she ducked her head and rushed past me, elbowing me to
the side as she gulped for air. Scarlett hunched over in the open doorway, the teller glancing between us, confused.
I would have thought she would use a proxy, but being in her own body explained why she couldn’t just evacuate a
corpse to escape.
“What did you need help with?” I asked as I took in the walls and walls of square brass drawers. Each had an engraved
number plaque on the front and a keyhole waiting for us. For all the technology on the shop floor, the vault was surprisingly
primitive. The floor was so shiny that I saw my proxy’s reflection on the mirrored surface.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” The assistant dipped his head before stepping away from the open vault door.
“What did you need?” I held up a wrinkled hand, letting the key hang from his fingers.
Scarlett rolled her dark eyes. “Gods, you are as dumb as a box of rocks.”
I lifted my brows and waited for her to elaborate.
Scarlett let out a husky laugh. “We’re not friends, Allegra. I can’t believe you even came. You’re so gullible. It’s what
got you in this mess in the first place.” Scarlett waved to my proxy’s legs, and it clicked.
I knew why she’d brought me here. “You begged for my help,” I argued, lifting my consciousness to skin level,
preparing to leave the corpse on the vault floor if I needed to.
“Hester is my friend.” Scarlett snarled. “You know that the Skull is Hester’s place. It’s her territory, and you think you
can just swan in and sit down like nothing happened?”
I held up both hands, palms facing out, placatingly. “Hester isn’t even in the city. Was this even part of the trial?”
She ignored my question. “You’re not allowed into the city.” Scarlett snapped.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 selfishness, 684, 687
stealing, 327, 330
tattling, 635
whispering, 581, 594, 597

School-room conditions related to discipline, 157

Scribbling, 659
Selfishness, 672
Self-preservative instincts, cases of discipline arising from, 129
Self-regulation, 812
Self-reporting, 594
Seventh and Eighth Grades
altruism, 734
bullying, 240, 246
cheating, 276, 279
chewing gum, 389, 391
cigarettes, 402, 405
clumsiness, 140
curiosity, 563, 567
defying teacher, 809
disrespect, 198, 200, 368
fear, 255
fighting, 240, 246
gambling, 316
hygienic toilet rooms, 838
impudence, 211
indifference, 166
jealousy, 709
keeping in line, 762
loyalty, 809
manners, 421, 423, 806
mimicry of gesture, 368
mischief, 501
noise, 140
note-writing, 836
 obedience, 76
passing quietly, 758
play teaching, how to, 522, 527, 531
ringleader, 787
selfishness, 692, 694
sex interests, 829, 836
stealing, 334, 337
strained eyes a cause of disorder, 150
stubbornness, 180
studying aloud, 628, 630
talkativeness, 612, 613, 617
tattling, 641, 642, 644, 646
teasing, 505
truancy, 163, 343
Sex-consciousness, 832
instincts, 829
Shot-throwing, 309
Sickness of a child prevents study, 154
Slouching, 57
Smartness, 190, 770
Smoking, 402
Snowballing, 236, 522, 524
Social grounds for discipline, 93,
impulses, how to control, 111, 839, 843
instincts, 671
Socializing the individual, 14
Special methods a help in discipline, 53, 54, 55, 112, 114, 303
Speech, mimicry of, 366
Spit-balls, throwing, 219, 307
Stammerer, assisting the, 248
Stammering as a cause of fighting, 246
State, submitting to control of, 809
Stealing, lunches, 334
money, 337, 338, 346
motives for, 324
pencils, etc., 638
provoked by teacher, 83, 325
Strained eyes a cause of disorder, 150
Strike of students, 106
Stubbornness, 169, 180, 774
Studying aloud, 625
Study room discipline, 59, 61, 69, 72, 94, 99, 104, 151, 194, 513, 598,
612, 623, 834
Stuttering, 651
Substitute teacher, 379
Substitution, 52, 60, 62, 71, 91, 96, 109, 112, 149, 165, 166, 167, 176,
185, 191, 201, 218, 225, 228, 231, 235, 236, 237, 238, 241, 247, 251,
253, 258, 267, 313, 367, 385, 388, 404, 406, 478, 552, 579, 583,
635, 681, 698, 797, 868
Suggestion, 51, 52, 63, 64, 79, 80, 81, 86, 92, 96, 97, 105, 114, 140,
146, 181, 183, 254, 265, 267, 300, 325, 376, 380, 385, 391, 405,
409, 413, 427, 436, 441, 478, 489, 665, 681, 698, 708, 796, 816,
868
leading, 92, 113, 119, 132, 146, 168, 198, 231, 267, 445, 592, 665,
846, 855
negative, 50, 62, 77, 83, 304, 768, 773, 812, 834
Sulkiness, 172
Suspicious attitudes causing disobedience, 59
Swearing, 651

Tale-bearing, 73, 336, 337

Talkative pupil, 605
Talking back, 195
Talking on conduct, 414, 449, 817,
on misconduct 62, 76, 80, 119, 278, 293, 304, 305, 337, 403, 434,
591, 603, 714
Tardiness, 763
Tattling, 398, 464, 466, 631
Teasing, 240, 304, 501
Terrorizing the pupil, 221
Third and Fourth Grades
bullying, 235
busy work, 553
cheating, 273, 274, 306
cleanliness, 456, 459, 554
creating a ringleader, 780, 782
curiosity, 561
discipline through fear, 259
dislike for school, 162
disrespect, 190, 195, 202, 370
fighting, 238
flag salute, 811
impudence, 205
jealousy, 702, 712
leaving room, 377
lying, 303
making faces, 487
manners, 417, 432, 439, 491
meddlesomeness, 557
mimicry of walk, 370
note-writing, 834
obedience, 56
passing quietly, 756
pets at school, 503
practical joke, 510
ringleader, submission to, 776
sex hygiene, 833, 834
stealing, 331, 333
studying aloud, 625
whispering, 586, 588, 602
Threatening the teacher, 217, 795
Threats, 57, 78, 94, 136, 173, 191, 221, 226, 259, 332, 371, 421, 518,
536, 589, 591, 697, 699, 791
Time of correction, opportune, 175, 177, 241, 242
Trips out of town, a group of pupils on, 106, 117, 534
Truancy, 163, 543, 810

Unsocial child, 671

Visitors present, discipline of children, 61, 139, 429, 431, 483

Walk, mimicry of, 370

Wilful disobedience, 49, 98
Whispering, 577, 861
Wrong-doing of children, causes of, 20, 70
Words, choice of, 175, 178
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and
variations in spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings
as printed.
3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers.
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