Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

San Francisco.

Sealiongod@me.com.

“I understand she was good,” the man says.

“She was. But she said you were better.”

“We’ll see.”

“You’ll help me?”

Sealiongod nods, smiling a little.

“I’m feeling patriotic. Let’s do this.”

He’s still young. He enjoys this shit.

Like Radha did.

Andrew-in-Marina just feels ill.

Yuri sits at his computer, the cat purring on his lap. The cat with the upside-down tail. Yuri nurses a glass of powdered cherry drink and vodka, his upper lip stained with a faint, reddish mustache.

“What’s this?” he says.

An e-mail from Marina Yaganishna.

He doesn’t want to read it—Baba Yaga has left him alone for months, and he fears this communication from her daughter might herald new demands, new threats, more bad dreams. But not opening it could be much, much worse.

Could it be spam?

An attachment titled Naughty boy gets stoned with Santa suggests it is.

And it’s only September.

Christmas already?

Maybe he won’t open that.

No, he decidedly will not open the attachment.

He reads the e-mail.

Yuri,

Open this attachment immediately.

Yuri opens the attachment.

A video.

Marina sits before a television screen, wearing only a Japanese robe. The right-pointing delta of the start symbol goads him. He clicks it. The beautiful woman in the Japanese robe animates, speaks.

American-accented Russian?

“Yuri. Watch the screen. My friend in California put this together for me. I want to thank you for what you did in Chicago. To the witch Radha. Watch!”

Turn it off, Yuri.

But he can’t turn it off.

Baba will know if he doesn’t watch it.

He instinctively hides his teeth with his hand.

The television in the video comes on.

An old man with a short, white beard is sitting on a sled, behind reindeer. He wears the red hat and robes of Father Christmas, his hat garnished with holly and pine. He is preparing to read a story to a group of bouncy little children. Snow behind him.

This doesn’t look like California.

“Michael. Michael Rudnick,” Marina says.

The old man looks confused for a second, then looks at Marina.

Nods.

Closes the book.

The bouncy children have all gone still, frozen in place while the Santa-man continues to move.

A trapdoor?

Who is this old fucker?

“Michael, the man I want you to wish a Merry Christmas is in that camera.”

Father Christmas nods.

Smiles.

Looks at the camera.

Speaks English.

“Ho Ho Ho! You’ve been a very naughty boy, Yuri. It is Yuri, right?”

Turn the computer off!

The man’s eyes flash.

A loud CRACK fills Yuri’s apartment.

The cat is caught leaping, turns to heavy Vermont granite in midair.

Lands with a loud CRASH!

Breaks in half.

Yuri is frozen reaching for the mouse.

His momentum carries him forward, topples him into his computer, destroying and toppling that.

The man downstairs bangs against the floor in protest.

A woman next door shrieks at Yuri, her voice scarcely muffled by the plaster.

“I’m tired of your noises, Yuri! Go to bed! Go to bed! Go to bed!”

St. Petersburg, Russia.

November.

The Singer Café on the second floor of the Dom Knigi bookstore on Nevsky Prospect.

A troika of women sits jet-lagged in the warm, green room while outside the sky threatens to spit snow again, as it did all the rough ride down to the Pulkovo airport this morning.

“We’re not here for magic,” Marina Yaganishna says.

“I know. But, what, are we just going to leave it here?” Anneke says, tucking the last corner of her tuna sandwich in her mouth.

The red-haired girl with the scarred nose and cheeks looks out the window, looks at the Kazan cathedral down below. She has spoken rarely since they got on the plane at JFK; she stirred from her heavy-lidded Xanax-and-vodka-induced stupor only long enough to change planes in Moscow; she hated the plane, hated everything about it, made it clear that she would rather overdose than be awake knowing she was over the ocean.

She doesn’t like water now.

Or seafood.

She nearly vomited the first time she saw a mussel.

“I have been to this church, I think,” she says in Russian, pointing down at the cathedral, which bears more than a passing resemblance to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

“Speak English, please,” Marina says to her.

“Why? You claim to speak Russian.”

“I do.”

“Like an Ohio housewife,” she manages in English.

“And when you speak Russian you sound like a spoiled tsarina who needs a whipping.”

Nadia smiles at that.

She looks at Anneke now, stirring her hot chocolate with chili. The chocolate is so thick it barely runs off the spoon.

“I have been to this church,” she says in English. “There are statues of generals from Napoleon’s inversion.”

“ Invasion is what I think you want to say,” Anneke says.

“It was a bit of an inversion,” Marina says.

“Thank you for including me,” Anneke says to Nadia, trying not to sound like a smartass—it isn’t lost on her that she may be speaking to the last living person who saw prerevolution St. Petersburg, but she needs to make her point to Andrew (she has trouble calling him Marina). She swivels her gaze to Marina Yaganishna. “But the book. Really, are we just going to leave it here?”

All three of them look at the book now.

It appears to be a Soviet-era book on trees, complete with greasy plastic cover and line drawings of leaves and happy Soviet children playing in the woods, although their playing always looks like building or marching. Andrew sees past the book’s disguise immediately. Anneke takes a few blinks. Nadia can’t see what it really is. Not yet.

Andrew reads the actual title again.

“ Magical Gardens: How to Make Anything Grow Anywhere. With a Discussion of Healing Herbs and Poisons. 1913.”

This is a handwritten book bound in brown leather with yellow stitching.

“I just don’t see the harm in buying this and bringing it back.”

Marina looks at Anneke over her glasses.

“You don’t see the harm because you didn’t have to get out of the Soviet Union with magical books after being brutalized by a witch.”

“I have been brutalized by a witch.”

“You have been gently brutalized by a witch for a very short period of time. And it had nothing to do with books.”

“Menopause isn’t going easy on you, Mr. Blankenship.”

Marina laughs despite herself.

“Just get the damned book if you want it. You’re a grown-up.”

“I was going to. How’s the chocolate?”

“Spicy deliciousness. Try it.”

Anneke’s spoon floats down.

Nadia dips into it, too, her expensive perfume filling Anneke’s nose.

Can’t call her fish-cunt anymore. She smells better than I do.

Marina looks at the cathedral now, too.

“When I was here, that was a museum of atheism.”

“You’re shitting me,” Anneke says.

“Nope. They had a big statue of Lenin, monk’s penance chains, lots of anti-religious quotes. One of the guides told me they toned it down. Used to have a painting called Christ the Oppressor . Thumbscrews and all that, too, but it didn’t play well with visitors.”

“Lenin was a pig. I can’t believe they named my city after him,” Nadia says. Her voice is different now. Softer, even when she says harsh things. She has lived with Anneke and Marina for two months now as they figure out what they all are to each other. Anneke and Marina are lovers, more frequently than they were when Andrew was Andrew, but there is still something cautious, reserved about it. It took them more than a month even to kiss.