Page 100 of Dead Vengeance

So I turn to the internet.

My first search is Necromancers. Half the pictures are of old men with long beards, wearing robes and hunched over. The other half are demonic-looking things, creatures with skeletal faces… Not unlike the thing that’s been haunting him. Haunting us.

Something in that idea gives me pause. Because it is haunting me too. And so specifically. It’s not like I’m just caught up in Archer’s nightmares, if he even has any. Maybe he just doesn’t register the same things as nightmarish that the rest of us might because he’s used to seeing dead people.

Dead people.

Like Jem…

Lying flat on my back on my bed, I let the phone drop onto my chest while I stare up at the ceiling. All I can see is Jem’s face, with that bullet hole in his head.

Why that? Every time, over and over. It could have tormented me with a thousand things. Even the spiders would have been enough. Or any other way Jem might have died, worse than that. Visions of my mother, even. Why that so specifically?

I meander over it, pulling it back and forth, slowly, deliberately, methodically, but I know, deep down, it’s all an attempt to distract myself from what’s right here in front of me. A cold, heavy weight settles in my gut when I face it head on.

Jem really is dead.

He got shot.

Those people took his body and buried it somewhere, and we’ll never find it.

The awful thing is, somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that was the most likely thing to have happened. That he got caught on the wrong end of some drug deal. That he spent just one too many days around those people. And that was it. He’s really never coming home to us.

I roll onto my side, letting my tears sink into my pillow.

It’s not as if I didn’t know, but I’d hoped. I’d hoped over and over again that some day he’d walk back in that door. That there would be some explanation. And we’d grieve all the years lost. And my mother would cry, and she might have another breakdown. But her baby would be back. Her first born, who she loved so much. Sacrificed everything for. Worked so hard to pull him into line.

I have to wonder, if he is dead and gone, is it better for her to know? Would it be better to try to find his body, if this is really what happened, if I could identify who these people are? Or is it better for my mum to live with that shred of hope, no matter how small it is? Something to keep her going.

Does she also know, deep down? Does she secretly believe he’s gone?

I don’t know what to believe about any of it. But I know someone who might.

I swish my phone open again, scrolling through the images of necromancers. None of them are like Archer. Even the ones I eventually find on Japanese manga covers. They’re handsome. Mostly tortured-looking, powerful, with bolts of light coming out of them, surrounding them in dramatic haloes.

But Archer…

Archer, who is all aprons and baking. Fresh flowers and floral silk wallpaper. Restorations and nice cars, and his incredibly cute and odd… pet raven?

The pet raven, who he says isn’t really a pet. Who’s so intelligent. Really weirdly sort of… aware.

I flip onto my stomach and tap a new search into my phone. ‘Do necromancers have familiars?’

Yes. Yes, according to this, they do. Bats, cats, toads, spiders, and… ravens.

The room falls away as I sit bolt upright, staring into my screen.

‘Are necromancers born with their powers, or do they learn?’

Both. Either. They can be born into it and it can be… terrifying…

The way Archer saw all those people in the hospital, yet didn’t even react to them. Barely registered Jem.

God, does he see them everywhere he goes? How the fuck does he cope with that?

No wonder his house is full of ghosts. They must be drawn to him, knowing he can see them. And that’s why…

That’s why he didn’t want us to hurt them. He was trying to protect them. Even though he called the ExorSquad, had to call us once that thing showed up. And Raul didn’t listen, and Raul…