The candlelight shifts eerily over his face as he comes closer. His dark eyes examine me carefully, but as one would a strange and somewhat curious object.
“Why aren’t you afraid of death, child?” he murmurs without inflection.
I unstick my tongue from the roof of my dry mouth and find my voice. “Because nothing bad happens when you’re dead. You’re just a body and your soul is gone.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed and the frame creaks in protest. His cloak falls open and I see long black robes tight across his chest, and the flash of silver at his hips. A wide belt, and there are things hanging from it. Things that clack together like dry bones.
“The body doesn’t matter to you?” he asks in the same flat tone, reaching out for me.
I shrink away from him. “Don’t touch me!”
But he seizes my left wrist in his large, cold hand and pulls my arm toward him. I’m too weak to resist and I whimper as he pushes back the sleeve of my nightgown, gazing at my yellowed flesh.
Meremon mutters a word that echoes over and over again in my ears. All the veins in my arms suddenly stand out and turn black. I scream and try to wrench my arm away but he’s got a grip like iron.
From the other side of the door I hear Mama cry out. Papa tries to open the door but the necromancer must have locked it with magic and the handle rattles uselessly. Papa knocks on the door. “What’s going on in there? What are you doing to her? Rhona!”
The necromancer pulls a dagger from its sheath at his hip and I scream again, watching the blade flash in the firelight. It’s wickedly sharp and he holds it close to my forearm, ready to slash it open.
“Give me death, just give me death,” I say, a hysterical chant that won’t stop, my eyes fixed on my hideous, bulging veins and the knife Meremon is about to cut me open with.
“Rhona,” calls my mother, her voice high with panic.
The necromancer watches me balefully for a moment, and then sheaths the knife. “As you wish.”
Relief surges through me. He’s going to let me die rather than make me suffer. I welcome death. I’m so tired. Everything hurts and I just want him to go and let me die in peace.
But the necromancer hasn’t let go of my wrist. He grips my fingers with his other hand and leans over my palm. I’m reminded of the sight when I awoke earlier, of Mama bent over it and weeping.
Meremon’s long, silver hair tumbles down around his face. I feel his lips against my palm and they’re as cold as ice. My veins feel like they’re filled with tiny blades and they’re flaying me from the inside out. The pain moves up and across my body to the left-hand side and then down my arm. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt and I scream and scream, tossing about on the bed like a rag doll, only the necromancer’s strong grip keeping me where I am. The pain is concentrated where his lips are and it feels like he’s eating me alive.
Abruptly, the pain recedes, and I’m left panting and sweating on the mattress. I stare at the ceiling and listen to my parents hammering on the door and shouting. Meremon stands up and leans over the fireplace, one hand braced against the bricks. He spits a mouthful of something black into the flames and it sizzles and smokes.
The door bangs open and my wild-eyed parents fall into the room. Without another look at me the necromancer pulls his hood up and sweeps out, his footsteps disappearing into the night.
I stare down at my left hand. There’s a mark in the center of my palm as black as ink, right where Meremon’s lips were. It’s a large, many-pointed star all smoky at the edges. I try to scrub it clean on the blankets but it doesn’t budge. I spit in my palm and rub again, barely hearing my parents as they exclaim over my good color, the fever being gone, that I’m sitting up by myself and breathing easily.
I don’t care. I can still feel his cold lips on my palm no matter how hard I rub. I should have died. This isn’t right. I should have died.
I show my father the mark and he goes to work on it with a bristle brush and carbolic soap. My mother tries all the remedies she knows for stains, but it doesn’t budge.
As the days pass and my body grows strong again I get up and move about the house, but I’m still aware of Meremon. When I’m sitting in the sunshine, every now and then a shiver goes through me as if someone’s walking over my grave, and I feel the ghost of his lips in the center of my palm.