Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

“Wait a moment,” she says. “The potatoes.”

The Man Who Will Not Look At Her is tying up the bag, putting it in the boat. He hears her, says,

“Potatoes? Do you need potatoes?”

“Yes. That might be enough for him. You will go tomorrow and find me a bucket of potatoes. Other things, too.”

“Of course.”

“Are you hungry?”

He shakes his head, looking at his feet.

“You’ll have to eat.”

He shakes his head again.

A tear falls on his feet.

“Go to your kennel.”

He leaves, still looking down, his shoulders folded in on themselves.

She smells the air.

Smiles.

Garlic, rosemary, wine, black pepper.

And meat.

She salivates.

The first roast is done.

Andrew drives Salvador to the North Star Garage, where Radha’s car waits to be driven north to Chicago. Salvador will drive it in a day, needing neither rest nor sleep, looking to all but the very luminous like a handsome young Latino. And the very luminous will be used to seeing strange things; will not think much of seeing a portrait of Salvador Dalí swiveling in the window of a Mini Cooper, checking the blind spot twice as it changes lanes. He will return through Radha’s shower, perhaps in time for lunch tomorrow.

Chancho shows Andrew the final touch. Zebra skin seats. He had seen on her Facebook page her post about her new zebra-skin pillow, how much she liked that particular pelt.

She’s going to squee.

Chancho looks ashen, distracted.

“You still thinking about the Russians, Chanch?”

“Them? No. One was a pussy, the other didn’t care. Not enough to tangle with us. They ain’t comin’ back.”

Andrew is thinking about the Russians, though. He thinks it might be prudent to acquire a pendant that turns bullets, a lovely bit of sorcery made from Kevlar, lead, silver, armadillo blood, and the ground tooth of someone who died of natural causes, but the user who makes these lives in Rio de Janeiro and doesn’t care for tapes of the dead or cars.

What the Brazilian wants is a cloak of feathers that will change him into a hawk. Andrew could make such a cloak, but it would take him weeks, maybe months. Birds are hard, and this is not his specialty. The user in Brazil doesn’t know Andrew and has a reputation for being kind of a prick—very QPQ. Quid pro quo. Reputation is everything between users, so they tend to trust each other. Not bullet guy. QPQ. He wants payment upon delivery. And Andrew wants the protection pendant stat.

The best shapeshifter, the one who taught Andrew, lives near Québec; she could make the hawk cloak in days, probably has one or two ready for trade. He doesn’t know what she might want, other than a really mighty youth potion, and those are in high, high demand. She has asked for stone spells before, though. If so, back to Michael Rudnick, who is sequestered with Anneke until the full moon. Luckily, the Québécoise trusts other users, knows Andrew, and would be willing to wait. Unluckily, she’s old, very old-school, and doesn’t use the Internet. Thinks it’s evil. So he’ll have to call her on her landline. Again. She didn’t answer last night, but that’s not unusual; she shifts and spends days at a time as an animal. It’s widely thought she’s close to opting out permanently, rebooting into a young critter and spending her last years on earth flying or running on all fours.

There’s a man in the city who knows about birds and shapeshifting, but he’s old, too.

And he helped Andrew once before.

The kind of help you can’t pay back, and you can’t ask other favors after.

Back to Chancho and his ashen face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Saw something messed up this morning.”

“You’ve seen plenty of messed-up shit.”

“Not like this.”

“Not like what?”

“You wanna see?”

“No. Yes.”

They walk through the employee room. An AK-47 leans in the corner looking insouciant.

“State police brought it in; I’m supposed to clean it up. They took the muerto , left the deer. Effing big effer. Look at this pinché deer.”

First he’s looking at the car.

The crumpled, dirty mess of a car.

Now he looks at the beast stoppering the hole where the windshield should be.

It is an effing big effer of a pinché deer.

Two hundred twenty-five pounds or better. Fifteen points or more on the rack, if the rack were intact. But it’s not. It’s through the windshield of the Saturn that clearly also hit a tree. The stag is practically fused into the car.

“You can see where they had to cut the poor dude out on this side, cut part of the deer’s horns off, too, where they were through him. All the way through him. Look at this seat.”

Andrew suppresses the urge to gag.

“But this is what I don’t get…”

Now he points at a hole in the deer’s rear shoulder, another flowering out of the back of the neck.

“Bullets. Homeboy shot this deer. Probably through the glass, but the glass is gone. They took the gun, too. He had it in his hand. They asked for pliers to get it out, that’s how tight he had it.”

Andrew tries to process this.

“Yeah, I know. Messed up. But look at this…”

His strong, brown finger indicates a broken headlight, blood, fur.

“And this.”

Muddy hoofprints on the roof, scratches on the door.

“More than one deer,” I say.

“Yeah, and it’s the tree that crunched in the front end, not the deer. Not this deer.”

“He didn’t hit this deer?”

“Nah. He hit another deer. Wrecked his car. Then deer come along… Maybe more than one. Look… hoof-ding, hoof-ding. Coming out of the woods and going at the car, looks like. Then the big boy came like a cannonball, ran through the effin’ windshield so fast it broke it and put its horns through his heart. Even though he shot it, shot it good. Look.”

He points again at the lethal bullet wounds.

“This is brujo stuff, isn’t it?”

Andrew touches the car.

“Isn’t it?”

Andrew nods.

Brujo stuff of the first order.

Slavic forest magic.

And very, very strong.

Then it happens.

A young man appears, pale, speared by the deer, writhing in his seat. He wears aviator sunglasses; blood comes out of his mouth, makes bubbles every time he says the word please . He says it several times.

Chancho can’t see it, is still examining the hoof and antler gouges in the Saturn’s finish as if they were a rude hieroglyph that might explain how such things happened in the world.

The ghost starts to swell up.

Take it easy , Andrew thinks. I see you.

THEN HELP ME

The pallid young man puts the phantom of his gun in his mouth, pulls the trigger impotently, coughs blood all over the gun, and cries.

Help me

How?

It shivers. Points the gun at him. Spasms its fist as it pulls the trigger. Nothing happens, but it shoots Andrew several times, then Chancho, then itself.

Get Them.

Who?

Them , it wheezes.

Becomes frustrated that Andrew doesn’t understand, begins to get tired. New ghosts get tired easily.

It vomits black liquid all over itself and fades away.

The dead deer jerks, kicks.

Chancho jumps, crosses himself.

The stag deflates a little, lies very still, won’t move again.

Andrew rubs his temples.

“Headache?”

Andrew smiles, shakes his head, closes his eyes.

“I’m in trouble, Chancho. Bad trouble.”

Chancho nods.

“I told you not to eff with this stuff anymore. ¡Cabron! ”