Page 35 of The Unweaver

“I see how well that worked,” he said. “I’ve wondered, what is the Death Realm like?”

Cora blinked. No one had ever asked her about it. Not even Teddy. “Like a necropolis with private suites. Everyone’s perception of death is different. Moriarty’s Deathscape looked like the Irish countryside.”

“He’s gone home to County Cork.” Sorrow flickered across his features like a sparrow, there and gone. “What’s the oldest spirit you’ve communed with?”

“Hmm. A knight from the First Crusade.” That had been an odd favor. The knight had been little more than a ghost of a whisper. A man-shaped vapor fading to nothingness. She must have drained away a year of her own life trying to cajole a peep from him.

“Almost a thousand years. Jesus. That’s incredible.”

She glanced away, embarrassed by how his praise affected her, even if he was complimenting her abomination. “How many other Realms are there? What are they like?”

“Infinite. And infinite.” He pulled out his silver pocket watch. On its face were a half dozen hands pointing at archaic symbols rather than numbers. “Does your death sense include objects?”

She eyed the watch warily. “Sometimes.” Communing with the dead through objects or places was like casting a line into dark waters and feeling a tug. The more intimate from life or saturated with death, the stronger the tug.

He held the watch out. “Tell me who they were and how they died.”

“Are you joking?”

“Does it look like I’m joking?”

It looks like you’re incapable of joking.

Her fingertips hovered over the watch. The tug was so strong she was yanked off her feet and dragged through the depths of time. Into the past, into the death infused in the silver.

Cora was at once immersed in the bizarre.

In a frozen tundra, against the blinding glare of sunlight on snow, two men grappled for their lives. A shimmering veil surrounded them. Inside, they raged. Outside, the world stood still. Snowflakes hung suspended in the breathless air.

The man with a coppery beard pinned the older man. Eclipsing the sun overhead, he glared down at him with blue eyes colder than the ice. Betrayal was etched on the older man’s face, and his eyes, impossibly black on black, widened in disbelief.

“Ad infernos, Ghose,” said the bearded man with a grin of vicious satisfaction

Like invisible hands, a force tore the older man in two. Flesh and bones were wrenched apart, splitting him down the middle with a resounding rip. In the tumult, his guts and spirit spilled out. He thrashed in vain, struggling to hold on as one half of himself was yanked away and banished to unseen hinterlands. His other half collapsed in—

Cora was on the library floor, screaming. She couldn’t breathe. Her narrow throat couldn’t recapture the air that had gusted out. Bloody hell, was she still in one piece? She patted herself down her middle to make sure. Feeling that man getting inter-Realm drawn and quartered had been beyond disturbing.

A figure stood over her, eclipsing the fireplace. Her head snapped back and for a moment she saw the bearded killer. He held out his hand. She blinked and the library refocused.

Bane, beardless and eyes blackened, helped her to her feet. “Youexperiencedit,” he said with morbid fascination. “No wonder Edwina’s kept you to herself all these years. Your connection to death is immersive.”

“That’s one word for it,” she said. “What did you…doto that man?”

“Nothing that cunt didn’t deserve.” Scowling at the watch, he was silent for so long she didn’t think he’d elaborate. “A Chronomancer once used this watch to stop time. Sixty seconds and a pocket watch,” he mused darkly, sliding it into his waistcoat that clung to the tapering plane of his torso.

The questions on the tip of her tongue she left unasked. Some questions she didn’t want to know the answer to.

“You’re powerful, Cora.” His gaze captured hers. “The most powerful Necromancer I’ve met.”

She balked. Her only concerns with power had been her lack of it, though his declaration was a dubious honor. She was more likely to be killed for, rather than kill with, powerful death magic.

In spite of herself, she was curious. The yardstick she measured herself by came from rumors and third-hand accounts of other Necromancers ranging from the fanciful to the macabre. “Have you met many Necromancers?”

“Not many to meet. I once traversed to a village in Brazil after hearing of a so-called demon possession. A lad had reanimated his dead mutt and gained some notoriety. The creature decayed quickly in the tropics, and the lad kept patching it with pieces of other animals. With the flesh peeling off its bloated, mismatched body, it’s hard to say whether the sight or the smell was more horrific.”

“What happened to the lad?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

“They found him hanging from a rope outside the village.”

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