Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

“Thank you, Felicity. Your next period will be crampless.”

“Awesome,” she says, sounding upbeat for the first time tonight.

The piano player tickles the keys and speaks to Andrew again.

“I believe you’re the only person in this establishment drinking virgin soda water. You profane my temple, sir.”

“Ichabod?”

“At your service, as ever.”

“I called you hours ago.”

“You commanded me to appear before you. You did not specify a time.”

Everyone around the piano claps and cheers.

A man in a ridiculous toupee reaches past other celebrants to tuck a fiver in the well-stuffed tip pitcher.

The waitress points at the musician’s near-empty glass by way of asking him if he’d like another drink.

“Absinthe,” he calls to her.

Looks back at Andrew.

“What is your pleasure, O magus?”

“I have a question, but I’d like to ask it in private.”

“Ask away! Nobody’s listening.”

Now everyone in the bar turns and looks at Andrew.

“Ichabod.”

“I know. The manners in this city aren’t what they used to be. Friends, might we have a little privacy?”

The drinkers all put their fingers in their ears, still staring at Andrew.

Andrew’s fear grows, but then he remembers he’s in charge.

Sort of.

“That was good,” he tells it.

“They’re easier to control when they’re drunk. But you know about that.”

He plays a little piano riff.

“Make them stop.”

“MAKE THEM STOP!” they all say.

“I command you.”

“I COMMAND YOU!”

“Do you really?” the piano player says.

His buddy starts making a train noise with the harmonica.

“Yes,” Andrew says.

The harmonica choos like a train whistle.

The harmonica player now lowers his harmonica, looks at Andrew too.

Silence.

The piano man spins his garlanded hat, puts it back on his head at a more rakish angle.

“I choose to interpret ‘Make them stop’ as ‘Make them stop living.’ That’s a tall order. Forty souls in this room, including the piano man. I’ll have to tamper with a gas line.”

“That’s not…”

The waitress comes back with a glass of liquid that glows green like antifreeze. The piano man takes it.

Nods at her and says, “Forty-one!”

“My life sucks anyway!” she says.

“ Forty-one dead in New Orleans gas explosion, America’s oldest bar destroyed. You and I will survive, of course. But this is going to be on CNN!” says the piano player.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“I don’t have to know what you meant. I only have to know what you said. Now either you insist and they all die, or I disobey. Your call entirely.”

Now everyone in the bar drops to both knees, bowing their heads, their hands extended palms up in supplication.

“No, that’s more classical, isn’t it? Let’s do something modern.”

Now they all look up, interlace their fingers, tears streaming down their cheeks as if they were all attached to the same irrigation system.

Andrew can’t speak.

“Just say ‘live’ or ‘die.’ I won’t insist on protocol.”

Andrew’s mind races. He can’t think of a way out of this.

“Friends,” it says. “I believe the wizard fears to slacken my leash, even just a little. If you have any last words, now would be a good time to say them.”

They speak in chorus.

All eyes rest on the magus.

The sound of gas hissing rises up.

One of the candles leaps.

“Live!” Andrew says.

The hissing stops.

The candle leaps again, throwing too much light, casting the piano man’s shadow against the brick wall behind him, but of course it isn’t a man—tentacles, a writhing squid, just a split second of that.

Now he bangs out “Happy Days Are Here Again” on the piano.

All the drinkers look at each other, reach out to each other. They kiss indiscriminately, with no regard to age or gender. They begin to reach down pants, up skirts, fish out breasts.

A wild-eyed Asian man on his knees begins to stroke Andrew’s thigh. Andrew moves away forcefully, stands up. The Asian man attaches himself to another couple, pets them, is petted in return.

“Shall I make them stop ?” asks the grinning piano man.

Andrew speaks slowly, considering every word.

“I, Andrew Ranulf Blankenship, command you by the conditions of your entry into this sphere, and by the power of the words I here intone, which bind you to my service, to release all men and women currently in your power from said power, and to restore them to the state of independent thought and action in which you discovered them upon your entry to this building.”

The piano player stops playing.

“Nicely done.”

Raises his glass to Andrew.

It’s going to leave before I can ask it if the witch is really dead.

“To you, sir. And to wormwood.”

He knocks back his absinthe.

“Ichabod, wait…”

The room blurs.

The bearded boy in the bowler hat belts out “Werewolves of London,” his friend accompanying him on the harmonica.

The entity

it’s a demon just say it

is gone.

It came on its own terms and fucked with him until it got him to make a mistake.

It inched that much closer to liberty.

It kicked his ass.

Haint never comes, does not answer subsequent texts.

When Andrew gets back to the restaurant, he finds it closed and locked.

He will sleep among the crypts in the cemetery north of the Quarter, not far from Marie Laveau. He will sleep there, unafraid of molestation; he will make himself invisible.

Failing that, he has other means of self-defense.

Very persuasive means, indeed.

It will be the next day before Andrew takes his Hand of Glory and his unanswered question back through the rabbit hole, back to Dog Neck Harbor, New York.

To you, sir.

And to wormwood.

Cayuga County Deputy Brant McGowan follows the red Toyota on a hunch.

Just slips behind it as it pulls out of the Fair Haven gas station, decides to try to get a look at the driver.

A child abduction in Syracuse has everybody from here to Watertown on edge. This is the second one in two weeks, but the only one they’ve got a lead on. First one was an infant snatched from its stroller, just gone and nobody knows when or how, and that was in Red Creek. Mother is the primary person of interest. This time, some creep yanked a toddler off his sister’s arm while they were walking back from the park just two blocks from home. The suspect appears in flashes on a security camera, swooping up from his parked red Toyota Prius, the action reminding Brant of a trap-door spider he saw at an insect zoo when he was a kid. Not so long ago. Deputy McGowan is a young man.

So was the perp in the video. Young, and dirty to be in that kind of car.

Deputy McGowan is off duty, coming home from Auburn in his own Saturn—not the kind of vehicle to draw attention, although he would freely admit his sunglasses look a bit coppish.

He doesn’t think the driver knows he has a tail.

He’s seen maybe three of the distinctive Toyota hybrids in red since he saw the footage, but this is the first one driven by a male. Also the first one that makes his guts crawl. He has only seen the driver from behind so far, sees that it’s a bald or short-haired man, indeterminate age. He needs to get up beside him for a proper peek, but the one-lane roads here in farm country won’t allow for that unless he goes to pass.