Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

Sign off, Ichthus70

whose company might be undesirable. Permanent occupation is, of course, murder.

And yet, one might use this to live indefinitely, practicing a sort of biological alchemy, transmuting the lead of aging and sick bodies into the gold of healthy, young ones. One might live on in beauty and strength for centuries.

Andrew strongly suspects some are doing this now.

He often muses that if he were to walk into a room full of those who actually run the world, the invisibles that heads of state and oil barons take their marching orders from, it would look like the audition room for a TV soap opera: They would all be lovely; they would all look twenty-five to forty, and whether this was accomplished by the witchcraft of science or the science of witchcraft would be even money. Those who trade in magic value money less than others, true, because they can always manufacture, steal, win, or conjure it as needed; most really powerful conjurers regard those who hoard money as nothing but glorified squirrels saving for a winter they will never live to see. But when you stack enough zeroes behind an integer, enough, say, to bribe a prime minister or buy a vast old-growth forest, even a sorcerer won’t ignore it; a handful of people may well be buying their way into extended youth.

“But not eternal youth,” Andrew says at half voice.

Nothing is forever.

A memory makes him almost smile, and he shakes it off, turning his mind to the problem of the tether.

Now Salvador walks into the room and pours Gerolsteiner water from a clay pitcher (one of Anneke’s) into Andrew’s glass, hoping to receive another command, but resigning himself to being ignored—his master has inclined his head to study, and, although the days are past when the dry man with the dog’s heart has to clear two empty wine bottles from the table and cork a third before pulling his sodden master to bed by the heels, it will be nearly dawn before the magus shuts his book.

“Get that pinché thing away from me,” Chancho says.

Ten A.M., time for training.

Chancho has taken the morning off from the North Star Garage, which is his prerogative since he owns it. Todd, Rick, and Gonzo, his three employees who vary so much in height they could be a totem pole, will handle things at a slower pace in his absence, but they will still get the work done well, and God help them if they fart around and charge for the farting-around time. Chancho wants his customers to tell all their friends how cheap repairs are at North Star, how fast the work gets done, how polite the mechanics are. Gonzo, six and a half feet tall but so thin he looks like he stepped out of an El Greco, handles the counter and the phone—he wears his hair long and has a shitty goatee he used to wear a rubber band around

Why the f do you wear that thing in your beard?

You can say fuck to me, I won’t be offended.

I don’t say fuck no more.

You just did.

Why do you wear it?

I dunno.

Then stop. I won’t make you cut the beard, even though it makes you look like a pimp, but that rubber band got to go. Put it around some money.

I don’t have any.

That’s because you put it in the pinché bank. Banks are full of robbers. Put rubber bands around that shit and bury it.

Why is it okay to say shit but not fuck ?

…

I need to think about this.

but Gonzo has a voice like wildflower honey pouring winter-slow from a jar, and eyes like Paul Newman.

Everybody likes Gonzo.

The people of Cayuga County are still a little on the xenophobic side, and the Mexican invasion is only just beginning to lap at the ankles of upstate New York, so bearish, tattooed Chancho doesn’t want his brown face to be the first one they see at North Star.

He doesn’t need their love.

Just their business.

When it comes to love, he gets all he needs from his wife and Jésus Christ. Consuela got fat, but Jésus stayed skinny; he would have preferred the reverse, since he only has to chingar Consuela, but her face is still pretty and he remembers how her body was in Mexico and Texas. Maybe she does the same for him—he’s got a bigger belly now, too, and fair is fair.

“No, seriously, brujo , get this cabrón away from me. He gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Salvador stands with two bottles of mineral water balanced on a tray, his hips barely moving in the echo of a wagging tail. Salvador remembers the big man with his smell of motor oil and cumin from his four-legged days. Chancho used to throw the Frisbee for him, and praise him for how high he jumped, and scratch his ears. His master explained to him that Chancho is afraid of him now, but that he shouldn’t take that personally.

Salvador really wants Chancho to like him again.

He moves a little closer with the tray.

Chancho squints, takes his mineral water, crosses himself.

Minutes later.

Chancho holds the striking pads for Andrew and begins to call off punches.

“Jab. Jab. Right cross. Jab. Jab. Double jab. Left hook.”

Chancho calls these words at the outer limit of audibility, as gently as if he were inventorying flowers at a funeral parlor.

“Now move forward with me,” he says, lets Andrew push him across the yard. He no longer calls punches, just holds the pads up and lets his friend improvise.

“Now punch while backing up. This is very important. You can knock a guy out who thinks he has you.”

Chancho moves forward slowly but insistently, alternating pads, nodding when Andrew lands an especially crisp one.

The taped-up gloves tattoo the taped-up pads in the backyard, the staccato mixing pleasantly with birdsong and a tractor straddling asphalt and dirt on the road out front.

“Don’t puss out on me,” Chancho says, now gently boxing out at Andrew’s ears with the mitts to show him he’s letting his guard droop.

“Switch,” he says, and Andrew takes the mitts, preparing himself for the barely padded brickstorm he will now be fielding. He’s glad for the rest all the same; his drills have left him wheezing.

The staccato comes faster and harder now, the bigger man pushing the lanky one back, bobbing his head and shoulders like something between an angry chimp and a piston. Chancho had been a formidable boxer fifteen years ago, and might have gone professional had he not been so fond of beer—he had never etched a boxer’s six-pack into his belly. The obvious way to beat Chancho was to wear him out, and enough of them did to keep him from quitting his day job.

But many did not; to wear Chancho out, you had to be able to duck his bear-swat punches, which was hard, or absorb them, which was damn near impossible.

And you had to not smoke a pack a day.

“Okay, enough punching.”

“Thank the gods.”

“Now elbows,” Chancho all but whispers, smiling his big smile under the uneven, dated mustache, just going gray. Only the soul patch under his chin keeps him from looking like he stepped out of a Starsky and Hutch episode.

Chancho throws elbows first, so the magus can rest his lungs a bit more. The tattooed arms lash out and bite the pads deep, the left elbow flashing the star tattoo of Texas, where the burly man lived until he found Jésus and got out of moving drugs. Or, rather, protecting people who moved drugs.

Chancho would always be the first guy you’d want to meet in the ring and the last guy you’d want to meet in the parking lot. Or see coming up to your sliding glass door with a lucha libre mask on.