Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,20

rest?” he asked. “Can’t you get them too?” His lips and tongue felt thick and slow, but the swarming shapes all over the tree made his stomach heave. “That wasn’t bad at all. Please?”

Silas came to him and gripped his elbow. “Not now. Let’s see how you are on the other side of the Veil, before we do anything rash.”

“But—” He couldn’t take his eyes off the dark swarm.

“Come along. You shouldn’t spend too long here. It’s not your place.” Silas tugged him around the tree, towards that clingy dark.

He felt a deep reluctance to go. “I could sleep here. Then you could do some more.”

“You could not sleep here,” Silas snapped. “Don’t even think about it. Quick now.”

His thoughts were too disorganized to come up with a better argument. Silas pulled him forward and the tree faded and vanished. The thick, floaty fog closed around him again, but this time there was a firm grip on his elbow, and he could disengage his mind and just follow the pull. Follow Silas’s emphatic stride. Follow…

He thought he saw a light, a dim image of a book-lined room and a figure on the floor, but he was dizzy and it faded to black. He woke with a shudder, lying on his back on something hard, and found himself staring up into Silas’s steel-gray eyes.

“Are you all right?” They said it together, then both chuckled.

Silas added, “That’s what I do, week in and week out. But the host never joins me in the removal. You were supposed to sleep through it.”

“Did I make it harder?” Darien asked. If I’d stayed out of things, could you have removed more than one?

“No. Easier than usual, if anything, although the symbology got interesting. It’s usually nothing that elaborate.” Silas tilted his head, then sat back on his heels. “When this is over, the local guild will have to figure out what your actual talent is.”

“I’m not meant to be a necromancer?” He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

“No. Necromancer energy has a different quality, very attractive to ghosts but hard for them to hold onto. I’m not sure what you are.”

Darien pushed up to sitting, and his head rewarded him with a vicious throb. He didn’t make a sound, but Silas seemed to know.

“Aspirin and more sleep, that’s what you need.” Silas bounced to his feet nimbly, his eyes bright. “Come on, let’s get you up to bed.”

Darien held a hand up to him, then froze as his sleeve fell back past his elbow, baring his arm. The knife tattoo was still there, and the tree, but where the boat had been was a patch of unmarked skin. Not unblemished. The thick scars still ridged it, turning its color to mottled purple and red and white, but that was all.

“It’s gone.” He rubbed at the spot, as if he might feel the absence of ink. It didn’t hurt, but then, it hadn’t hurt the first time it appeared. His scars pulled and slid, but no ink was visible.

Silas squeezed his wrist, stopping him as he began clawing at it. “What did you do, to hurt it so much?”

A knife. And then an iron. The remembered smell of cooking flesh filled his nose, and he retched. “Tried to burn it off.”

“I’m sorry.” Silas’s thumb stroked over the abused skin gently.

Sixteen more to go. No. He remembered the new cat on his neck. Still seventeen. But he said, “Thank you,” and meant it more than he’d meant anything in his whole life.

Chapter 6

Silas was in his study, reading a new book on demonology, when his doorbell rang. He got up reluctantly to answer it. He felt better than he had in two days, with the sweet warmth of Darien’s energy humming inside him. His head no longer ached, and he thought he could pull off a casting or two without falling over. Still, that didn’t mean he wanted to go cleanse some home of a poltergeist that was often just their imagination anyway.

The small, slim woman standing on his doorstep was a welcome surprise. “Anya! What brings you here?” He swung the door wide and touched the door ward with a fingertip to soothe it and allow a friend to enter.

Anya stepped in briskly, pulling the scarf off her cornrowed braids and stamping snow off her boots. “I heard you have a guest in need of my services. At any cost.”

“At any—?” He frowned. Heard how? And who said I’d empty the coffers for Darien?