Kiss of the Necromancer (Memento Mori 1)

Should she open it? What if it was dangerous? With the way her week was progressing, it probably was. Preparing herself for what was on the other side—as everything was on the table including monsters, demons, and a doorway into some alternate universe—she took a deep breath. And opened the door.

Right into a bathroom.

Smacking her hand over her eyes, she sighed. She was ramping herself up over nothing. Shaking her head and muttering to herself about how she was an idiot, she noticed someone had laid out some items on the counter for her. A hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, and so on. Everything she might need or want.

It was tempting to take a minute to clean herself up. She probably looked like a disaster. But she was in some weird-ass home with weird-ass antiques and had been successfully abducted by…somebody.

Thinking about it, it probably wasn’t Rinaldo. There weren’t any crosses on the walls. She figured if she had been taken by the fake Vatican “Ordo ut Solis” there’d be more religious paraphernalia around. Or she’d be under guard. Maybe they’re just polite and waiting on the other side of the door.

But the taxidermy rat she smashed didn’t strike her as fitting with a Vatican priest.

But then…who took her?

Gideon?

It would make sense. He was there that night. Or at least, she thought he had been. She wasn’t quite sure. The memory of what had happened got really hazy really quickly once the needle had bitten into her skin. She had thought he had been there. But she might have just hallucinated him.

It would be nice to be sure something was real. Anything. She wanted to be able to hold something up in her hands and say this exists. This happened. She was sick and tired of her life being nothing but “maybe” and “could be.” She was sick of the mystery.

She wanted to know something was real.

There was a slim chance she was hallucinating everything, after all. That she was strapped down to a hospital bed in a drugged-up coma, dreaming the whole thing. With a sigh, she brushed her hair. It made her look a little bit less like a hobo.

It wasn’t the first time she debated the nature of reality. It wasn’t exactly a productive use of her time. No, she had to assume the world around her was real. It was the only thing she had to go on. Gideon had taught her to list the facts when the ground underneath her felt shaky. Reflexively, she did just that.

Her name was Marguerite. She was in her early twenties. She was five foot two inches tall. She liked to dye her hair obnoxious colors for a laugh. She liked graveyards. She didn’t know who she was or why her memories were gone. She could draw. She liked to read. And she had been abducted by somebody.

She placed the hairbrush back down on the bathroom counter.

It was time to find out who had taken her.

Heading to the second door—still making sure the dead rat was in pieces, which it was—she tried the second knob. It opened. It wasn’t locked. Pulling the door open, she peered down the hallway on the other side. The building was stately and beautiful. The Victorian-era home had been restored in such a way that it still featured the wonderful architecture and looked modern without sacrificing the age of it all.

Classy. That was the word for it.

“Hello?”

No answer.

Stepping out into the hallway, she left the door open behind her. The deep burgundy carpet was thick and lush. A few of the other doors in the hallway were open, revealing a library, an office, another bedroom…nothing exciting. Nothing weird. No torture chambers or cages. The walls were lined with artwork. Paintings of landscapes, sketches, and pages from old books that had been preserved.

As she made her way along the hallway, it wasn’t long before she heard music playing quietly from down a regal flight of stairs. Nervously, she padded her way to the bottom of the carpeted stairs to the marble, black-and-white checkered floor.

If she saw Rinaldo or anyone else, she wanted to make a run for it. Speaking of—there was the front door! She crept up to it, tiptoeing along the marble, and…opened it. The door wasn’t locked. It swung open, revealing the street outside.

There were no armed guards. No men in black glaring at her with their arms crossed, guns concealed but still proudly on display.

It was sunny out. A beautiful early spring day. The flowering trees on the street were in full bloom. It smelled wonderful, even if it did make her nose itch. It looked like Brookline. Maybe Arlington? It was hard to tell. Expensive homes stretched in both directions down the narrow, tree-lined street. The sidewalk was made of brick that had heaved up over the centuries of frost and roots growing beneath them.

She could make a run for it. There was nobody around, save for the occasional passing car. She could run out into the street, scream for help, ask someone to call the cops, and then…explain what, exactly?

That she’d been abducted by a psychopath who thought he was a priest working for the Vatican, and she woke up…somewhere? Perfectly unharmed? Or that the other option was that she had been abducted by her psychiatrist who saved her from said priest, but might also be a powerful necromancer?

Even if she skipped all that, and just said she was attacked on the street, it wouldn’t go well. Sure, the hospital could check for whatever drug was still in her system—there’d be proof of that, at least—but they’d probably assume she shot herself up with something or was the victim of some fellow lowlife.

She was a nutjob living in a halfway home, and not exactly a credible witness to a crime. With a beleaguered sigh, she stepped back inside the house and shut the door. No, the only way she was going to get to the bottom of this was if she figured out where she was, who brought her here, and why.

The why was the important part. Actually, it was all pretty damn important now that she thought about it.