Kiss of the Necromancer (Memento Mori 1)

“Great.” He yawned then glanced at the clock. “Shit, it’s three. Don’t you have to be up early for your home visit?”

“I cleaned already. I just have to not oversleep.” Sitting up, she stretched and cracked her back. “I guess I should probably pop off for the night.” She reached down to hug him again and kissed the top of his head. “You’re a good friend, Harry. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Probably adopt a cat.” He grunted. “It’d be more affectionate.”

“With my luck, whatever cat I’d adopt would end up being half feral. It’d just knock shit off my fridge and hiss at me.” She climbed off the sofa and yawned. She was pretty damn tired. She wondered if she could get away without the sleeping pills. It was late enough—or early, depending on how she looked at it—that if she took them now, she might sleep through her alarm.

“Hey, I’m kind of like a cat. I just sit around and sleep all the time.” He climbed onto the sofa to take her spot and sprawled out to take up as much room as possible. He pulled a pillow over his head. “And I do like head pats.”

“As long as I still get to scritch your belly!” She grabbed his stomach with both hands, tickling him, laughing as the man shrieked in surprise and smacked at her before descending into laughing as well.

In the silliness, he rolled off the sofa with a thud. “Ow.”

The neighbor pounded on the wall.

Maggie muffled her laughter in her sleeve. “Oh, shit.”

“Eh, he’s a douche.” Harry got up from the floor and brushed himself off. “Go to bed, Mags. I’ll see you tomorrow before I head out to work. You can tell me how the visit with the asshole went.”

“I still don’t know why you hate him so much.”

“Long story. Tell you another time.” He yawned and flopped onto his bed by the wall, pulling the pillow over his head. “Bye.”

Rolling her eyes, she left his apartment and shut the door behind her. Typical Harry. Always half asleep or working on getting there.

Heading back into her own studio—and checking every corner for a potentially psychopathic priest—she locked the door behind her, threw the deadbolt, and changed into her pajamas. Yup. It was way too late—early—to take her sleeping pills. She’d have to deal. Crawling under her covers, she stretched, yawned, and quickly began to nod off.

Maybe I should get a cat. That’d be fun. Hopefully I wouldn’t…like…black out and kill it, though. Or lose it. Nah, I should start with a plant. Maybe a Chia Pet in the shape of a cat. If I manage to keep that fucker alive, I’ll work on the real thing. But the thought still made her smile.

Screw it. If she could go a few months and make some progress in her illness, maybe she’d reward herself by going to the shelter and picking up some old, mangy bastard of a cat who wouldn’t be adopted by anyone else. Some neglected animal that wouldn’t care if she blacked out randomly and stared at the wall for a few hours.

The trailing notes of a violin drifted through the courtyard. The glass ceiling high overhead created both a greenhouse effect and the perfect acoustics to make the mournful melody all the more haunting.

She sat by the side of a pool. Stones were placed on the bottom of the dirt in a repeating pattern that flickered in the shimmer of the water in the sunlight. Koi fish lazily swam about, nibbling at the plants that were carefully maintained, or darting under lily pads.

She smiled. They were so peaceful. This was her favorite place in the estate. She adored the animals that were kept here as pets. Even those of the less conventional nature that she had discovered in her wanderings.

He had warned her about opening doors.

She might not like what she found.

But behind them were secrets that were unlike anything she could have possibly imagined. The world was so much bigger—and more dangerous—than she once believed. And perhaps, somewhere in the strange volumes her warden collected, she might find the answer to the riddle that had plagued her since she could remember.

And it was precisely that recollection of her life, or lack thereof, which was the problem. She couldn’t remember her life at all. But the good Doctor had promised her that he knew how to restore her shattered mind to its former glory. But these things took time, he said, and for now she sat and listened to him play the violin.

And wondered if hers was a life worth remembering at all.

Maggie jerked backto awareness as someone pounded on her door. It was the knock of someone that had clearly been at it for a while and had now resorted to volume over politeness. But at the moment it was the least of her concerns.

Her concerns were twofold. One, she had blacked out while sleeping. Again. Great.

And two…she had a knife in her hand. She blinked in astonishment and turned it over. It wasn’t covered in blood. Well, great. Awesome. At least there was that. But it was covered in…wood shavings.

That was more confusing than it was upsetting, she supposed. She’d take wood shavings over blood. But it was just…really weird.

Even weirder was where the wood shavings had come from.

Wham, wham, wham!