Page 62 of Her Majesty's Necromancer
The captain hugged his bag tighter and tried to edge past Gordon toward the door. Gordon blocked his path. The captain swallowed heavily. Now that he was closer to Gordon, he must be able to see the signs of decomposition. He'd gone quite a bit paler.
"Y—you're…Gordon Thackery."
Gordon nodded. "I have no twin."
"Y—you're dead."
"Quite. Tell me, Captain, did you kill me? I don't seem to recall much from that night, except that you visited me here."
The captain began to shake all over and a drop of sweat trickled down the side of his face. "Let me out! Let me out of here!"
Nobody came to his aid.
He tried to dodge Gordon but couldn't. Cursing, he opened his bag and pulled out a gun. He didn't point it at Gordon, however. He pointed it at me.
"No!" I cried. "Don't shoot!"
Gordon put up his hands in surrender and stepped aside. The captain ran past, flipped the curtain aside, and disappeared.
"You promised me discretion!" he shouted at someone, presumably Mr. Lee. Then the main door slammed shut.
As I once more struggled to stand, the Chinaman who'd been guarding the downstairs door suddenly appeared. He held a pistol, although at first I thought it was a black lizard. The part of my brain still functioning normally realized that it was a hallucination.
"You, out," he ordered Gordon and me. "Mr. Lee want no trouble."
"We'd better do as he says, Miss Charlie," Gordon said. "Mr. Lee may have sent for you, but I'm assuming this is more than he bargained for."
"Agreed." I was about to get up when the body on the bed gave a final gasp then went still. A moment later the spirit rose from it, glanced around, and was about to take off when it saw me watching him and not his body.
"Good evening," I said. "My name is Charlie Holloway. I'm a necromancer."
"A bloody what?"
I waved my hand. It was too difficult to explain. "Can you tell me what that man wanted with you? The man known as the captain?"
"Jasper? What's it to you?"
Jasper! I must remember that. "It's a long story, but he's linked to some grave robberies."
He shrugged. "Why should I care?"
"Because your body may be the next one he steals from its final resting place."
That got his attention. The spirit swooped closer. "Did he kill me?"
"I don't know. He might have, or you might have died anyway. I do know that he's feeding a substance to opium addicts while they are barely conscious, then, after their death, digging up their bodies. Can you tell us any more than that?"
The spirit's features bunched into a frown. "That bloody cur. If he hadn't run off like a coward, I'd bloody kill him."
"Sir? Answer my question, please."
"I don't need to answer nothing, now. But I can tell you this. If that man had anything to do with my death, I'll come back and haunt him until he's out of his mind. If you find him, you tell him that from me."
"I'll be sure to." I sighed. "So you can't tell me anything more?"
"No." The mist looked at the ceiling and I thought he was about to disappear when he added, "He fed me something on a spoon sometimes, and said my sacrifice would be worth it."
"Worth it? Worth what?"
