How to Break an Undead Heart (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 3) Read online

  “How do we know it wasn’t Dame Marchand who sent her protégé to woo you back into the fold? High Society families are always shopping for an angle.” The fabric crumpled in her fist. “Besides, you’ve already got one spy living on the property. You don’t need a matched set.”

  “Better the devil you know.” Defending Linus just put her teeth on edge. There was no point trying when her mind was made up about him. “What are your plans for the night?”

  “I’ll be diving into your finances here in a little bit.” Her yawn illustrated how much the prospect excited her. “I’m almost to the good stuff,” she assured me, retrieving her cell from parts unknown to check for messages. From Boaz. He was the only person calling her these days, and he checked in every forty-eight hours like clockwork. Yet he hadn’t so much as texted me since leaving her in my care. “Before I get bogged down by all those decimal points, I’m putting dinner in the Crock-Pot.”

  Hope that this might signal a return to normal for her tightened my chest. “You’re tired of cereal?”

  “No, but cereal is tired of me.” An unhappy gurgle welled in her stomach. “You off to meet Linus?”

  “Yes.” Cue my belly’s anticipatory growl. “Lessons wait for no woman. Or parakeet.”

  “I’ll be here when you get back,” she joked, mostly, the words less bitter than in nights past.

  When Amelie veered toward one of the downstairs bathrooms, she tapped each doorknob in the hall as she passed them, a new habit she’d developed that reminded me of a prisoner counting the bars on her cell. Tension ratcheted through my shoulders when her fingers brushed the glass knob leading down into the basement, but her stride didn’t so much as hitch as she marched on.

  Thank Hecate it was still magically sealed, and no one had figured out how to access it.

  At least, not yet.

  Two

  With Eileen, my eyeball-studded grimoire, tucked under one arm and what I considered Keet’s traveling cage dangling from my fingers, I exited Woolly through the kitchen and entered the rear garden. Following the winding flagstone path to the carriage house, I put an extra bounce in my step that probably had more to do with the smell of cinnamon and butter wafting through the window over the sink than the lessons awaiting me.

  The front door no longer stood open, and I missed that implied welcome more than I ever expected.

  All thanks to Julius, who had arrived from the Lawson aviary last week to assist Linus in the next phase of my education: the familiar bond. Now that the great horned butthole was in residence, Linus’s open-door policy had been nixed. Almost like he worried his owl might accidentally fly far, far away and never be seen or heard from again after I accidentally left the door open and accidentally chased him out with a broom.

  Once certain I wasn’t about to get dive-bombed, I darted inside and slammed the door behind me. I didn’t have to search far to spot Linus bent over the stove while he flipped French toast for our breakfast. Well, my breakfast. The man ate like more of a bird than his fowl-tempered familiar. Ha.

  Tonight, he wore dove-gray slacks that molded to his backside. Having pants tailor-made did that. His white button-down shirt was likewise fitted to highlight his lean musculature, the cuffs rolled up over his forearms. His dark auburn hair brushed his shoulders, the ends curling slightly thanks to the humidity. “How is Amelie today?”

  Each dusk, he greeted me with the same question. I might have drawn the containment ward meant to keep the dybbuk from repossessing her, but he had been the one to tattoo it on her ankle. His interest in her was the same as his interest in me—clinical. “Any new symptoms?”

  “No, Dr. Lawson.” A grin tugged at my lips. “The patient has not relapsed since dawn.”

  Linus glanced at me over his shoulder, his dark eyes dancing, bluer than black at the moment. “I don’t have a medical doctorate.” A smile blossomed. “Yet.”

  “Why does it not surprise me to learn you’re chasing another suffix?” I slumped into my usual chair at the kitchen table, settled Eileen an arm’s length away, then placed Keet’s cage at my feet. “You’re too ambitious for your own good. You make the rest of us look bad.”

  “You have plenty of time to catch up.” He plated us each four toasty slices of heaven, cut them on the diagonal, and dusted them with confectioner’s sugar. He carried them to the table before returning for the maple syrup and butter, and I noticed he only brought one fork. Not that I had expected him to indulge. I had yet to see him do more than nibble. As far as I could tell, he just liked keeping up appearances. “You’re twenty-one.” Back at the counter, he poured us each a glass of milk then claimed the seat across from me. “You’ve got centuries to accomplish anything you set your mind to, Grier.”

  “You’re not eating,” I mumbled around a mouthful of bliss. “Why bother cooking if you aren’t hungry?”

  “You’re hungry.” He cracked open the binder containing the syllabus for his beginner’s guide to necromancy and flipped to where we left off last night. “That’s reason enough.”

  “Do you ever eat?” Unrepentant, I stabbed the topmost piece of French toast on his plate and crammed it in my mouth before reaching for the milk. “Or drink?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited for him to expound on his dietary requirements, but he appeared absorbed in his lesson plans. “When?”

  “Does it matter?” He kept skimming, writing notes in the margin.

  “Yes.” I stole another wedge from him while he wasn’t looking and decimated it in two bites. Maple syrup stuck one corner to my cheek, but I didn’t let that slow the fork-to-mouth action. “Is this another side effect of bonding with a wraith?”

  Call me paranoid, but I was starting to think that was his go-to excuse when he wanted a topic dropped.

  “More or less.” His gaze lifted to mine, and his eyes sparkled, a rich navy blue in this light. “Do you need a wet cloth?”

  “No.” Heat tingled in my cheeks, which were goopy with syrup. “I can get it.” I poked the corner of toast glued to my face into my mouth with my pinky—like a lady—then turned up my glass of milk to wash it all down. “My compliments to the chef.”

  The chef in question stood, the blades of his sharp cheekbones ruddy beneath his freckles, and he padded to the sink where he wet a dish towel.

  “Here.” He returned to me, bending low to dab my cheek and jaw. “Let me get that.”

  “Have you ever considered teaching elementary school instead of college?”

  “No.” The rag, and his focus, slipped over my bottom lip. “Why do you ask?”

  “You’re a nurturer.” I took the cloth from him, the fabric warmer than his chilly fingers. “You’re good at taking care of people.”

  The praise stunned him into silence for a beat. “Caring for someone because you want to is a different beast than caring for someone because it’s your job.”

  “Ah,” I said eloquently while stinging heat crept across my chest like a spreading sunburn. The idea he might actually like having me around was…nice. “Can I ask you a question?”

  A crinkle pleated his forehead into neat rows. “Yes.”

  I steeled myself for his response while scrubbing the sticky residue off my hands. “Have you met any Marchands?”

  “No.” He straightened at last and reclaimed his seat. “Mother and Evangeline weren’t close. Mother was the stereotypical annoying little sister. She idolized Maud, but she wasn’t allowed in her big sister’s inner circle.” He considered me. “She probably hadn’t thought about your mother in years until Evangeline returned to Savannah. She can be…”

  “Self-centered?”

  “I was going to say career-oriented.” He twisted his mouth like it might squeeze off the laugh twitching in his shoulders. “Why do you ask?”

  “Eloise Marchand showed up on my doorstep tonight.”

  “That’s…unexpected.”

  Black devoured his eyes from corner to corner while he conferred with Clet
us. The wraith didn’t update Linus in real time unless I was in danger. Clearly Linus wasn’t willing to wait for the full report at dawn.

  “Yes and…no.” I fessed up before he put two and two together. “I might have asked Odette to call Dame Marchand.”

  “You’re searching for your father.” The statement came out with the slightest edge.

  “Yeah.” I ducked my head. “I thought it might help to know how he fits into all this.”

  This being the goddess-touched freak of nature that was his daughter.

  “There was a reason your mother kept him out of your lives.”

  “What reason?” I braced my elbow on the table and rested my chin on my palm. “No one knows.”

  Eloise’s arrival had sparked a new possibility, one I had never considered, and I couldn’t ditch the idea.

  Linus was shaking his head. “Your mother—”

  “What if she never told him about me?” I tapped my bottom lip with my pinky. “What if he doesn’t know he has a daughter?”

  “What if she was afraid to tell him?” he countered. “What if their relationship wasn’t…?”

  The implication turned my stomach, but it made sense. “You think she might have been his mistress.”

  Divorce was taboo within the Society. Affairs were of no consequence…unless you got caught.

  Having a love child smacked of incontrovertible proof to me. And yet, Mom had kept me.

  “The theory fits with her leaving him after she learned of her condition. If the Marchands suspected, and after she refused to abort, it would explain why her family disowned her.” He reached across the table, his cool pointer tapping my forearm. “The only truth to be found at this table, in this moment, is that we simply don’t know.”

  “We moved around so much.” I stared at the elegant bend of his fingers where they curled on the table, flexing as though comfort were a butterfly he feared crushing in his hand before gifting it to me. “Mom made no secret about our gifts. She never taught me, but she let me watch when she performed resuscitations.”

  Those had been off the books, a means of earning money to feed us, but I hadn’t known that until I turned Woolly upside down in search of clues. Mom had kept a ledger with notations in the margin, in case she ever got caught, and it was packed away with her belongings in the attic. Sifting through those fragments of her life hurt too much. Tears in my eyes, I had folded the box shut and hadn’t returned since.

  “We changed cities so often, I couldn’t get a familiar. She told me about them, and I wanted a kitten so badly, but there was no guarantee the next place we lived would allow pets.” I blasted out a sigh. “I was so young when she died.” Five years old and an orphan. “I don’t remember much about her, just bits and pieces of our life together. I’m afraid…” I bit my lip, “…that what I do recall isn’t real. Maud told me so many stories. I can’t tell them from memory anymore.”

  The chair legs scraped as Linus stood. The cold of his touch bit through the thin fabric of my shirt when his palm came to rest on my shoulder, but I covered his hand with mine anyway.

  “I have to know,” I confessed. “Not only what I am, but who I am too.”

  “I understand better than you might think.”

  “There’s no question of your paternity, buddy.” I patted his hand. “You’re one-part Woolworth to one-part Lawson. Mixed vigorously.” I tasted bile in my mouth. “Scratch that last part. I really don’t want to know if you were shaken or stirred into existence.”

  “No.” His hand eased away. “I’m not.”

  “What?” I toppled my chair in a rush to stand and face him. “Are you…? Were you…?”

  Adoption would explain how Linus could be both a decent guy and related to the Grande Dame. Admittedly, by eliminating the “related to the Grande Dame” part, but still.

  “Don’t get too excited,” he teased. “Clarice Lawson is my biological mother.”

  Oh, well. No one was perfect. “And your biological father?”

  “He was a donor, my father’s cousin twice removed, to keep the bloodline pure. I was carried via surrogate because of Mother’s advanced age, so no one was the wiser.”

  Surrogacy was common among necromancers due to a propensity for females to undergo menopause around three hundred years of age. Sperm donors weren’t uncommon, either. Necromancers weren’t the most fertile bunch. That’s how we ended up with a Low Society in the first place. They were interbred with humans in a bid to increase fertility rates, and it worked, but they sacrificed magic in the bargain.

  Actually, now that I thought about it, as a Woolworth seeking a financially and socially superior match rather than a genetic one, the Society would likely applaud the Grande Dame’s choice to engineer her ideal heir.

  “Advanced age,” I echoed. “Maybe never retell this story within your mother’s hearing if you want to hold on to your favored-son status.”

  Clarice Lawson was a lot of things, and vain was chief among them.

  “This information is, as I’m sure you can imagine, sensitive.” He studied the glossy tips of his dress shoes. “I would appreciate it if you kept this between us.”

  “You keep my secrets.” Oscar, my ghostly ward, came to mind. “Keeping yours is the least I can do.”

  That earned me the tiniest smile, and my lips twitched to return his confidence.

  “There’s nothing more natural than to wonder, Grier.”

  “Speaking from experience?” A hungry mind like his wouldn’t have let a mystery as compelling as his paternity go unraveled, confidentiality clause or not. “What do you know about the donor?”

  “His name is Timothy Mercer.” Linus tucked his hands into his pockets. “He lives in Montana with his wife and their daughters.”

  “You have half--sisters.” A trill of curiosity shot through me. “Have you met him? Or them?”

  “I met him once,” he admitted. “He lived in Savannah at the time, so it was easy enough for me to take a bus to the Lyceum and confront him.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter when it must have for little Linus to brave public transportation alone. “Mr. Mercer was polite about the whole thing. He told me I was the spitting image of his grandfather.” That memory earned a faint smile. “He called Mother, and she came to collect me. That was the last time I saw him. I went back once, years later, but he had already moved out west by then. Given their arrangement, it didn’t feel right to pursue the connection further, even with sisters to consider.”

  Most likely, Mercer had been pink-slipped the night he met his son. “Thank you for telling me this.”

  All kids with question marks for parents longed for a link to their roots. A connection to their past. An understanding of who they came from that might shape who they became. I got lucky. I grew up hearing stories about Mom from Maud and Odette and flipping through the scrapbooks of their lives. My father might have been a blank page, but the others overflowed with proof I had been so very loved.

  Mom had given up the right to call herself a Marchand, though she had anyway. She had forfeited her position within the family firm, forcing her to rely on her reputation to support us. She had cut ties with her relatives, forsaken her lineage. All for me.

  So yeah. I had been lucky. The luckiest. Even if I had lost her all too soon.

  Linus sharing his story with me might not count as a ringing endorsement for what I had done in recruiting Odette to make inroads with the Marchands, but it made me less ashamed for my curiosity.

  The backs of my eyelids stung, but I blinked away the blurred vision to read him better. “What is it?”

  “Let me help you find your father.”

  A tiny bubble of happiness rose in me. “Does this mean you approve?”

  “Approval is not the issue here.” Those six little words torpedoed that hope. “How you’re gathering the information is what concerns me.” He wiped a hand over his mouth. “Odette is family to you, and asking her for a favor might seem like a small thing
, but she’s a world-renowned seer. She’s hardly inconspicuous. Having her contact Dame Marchand was bound to raise eyebrows. There are members of the Marchand family, Evangeline’s contemporaries, who will immediately make the connection between her and Odette and wonder what prompted the call given the disownment. Eloise might not be the only one who overheard their conversation. Even assuming her motives are pure, others’ might not be.”

  The urge to smack myself in the forehead twitched in my palm. “When you put it like that…”

  “The fewer people who know you’re looking, the better chance you stand of finding your answers.” His gaze cut to me. “I have contacts who can be trusted. Let me make a few calls, see what they can uncover.”

  “All right.” Knowing a good deal when I heard one, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I accept your offer under the condition that you let me foot the bill. Retainer, equipment, bribes, all of it. And—” I squeezed his icy fingers, “—you tell me everything. Every. Single. Thing. No matter how bad or how much you think it might rock my world, I want to know.”

  “I give you my word.”

  “Good.” The bargain struck, I dropped back into my chair. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?”

  After clearing the dishes, he paid a visit to a nearby bookshelf and returned with a mottled tome he placed in front of me. “Open your text to page sixty-five.”

  The old leather creaked as I turned the pages. Several were stuck together with the cement that was parakeet poop. The chapter in question was titled Trust Exercises: Testing the Bond Between Practitioner and Familiar. The first subsection read Play Dates: Working in Pairs.

  “Oh no.” I grimaced. “Can we not and say we did?”

  “Keet is your familiar,” Linus scolded me. “You must stop viewing him as a pet.”

  “Your owl tried to eat him,” I shrilled. “How can he do his job if he’s terrified for his life?”

  “He’s already dead,” Linus stated flatly.

  “There’s dead,” I told him, “and then there’s digested-in-stomach-acid dead.”