Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) Read Free

"Help me roll them over."
    She shambled up to Rodge and bent over, grabbing his arm and lifting. As he rose from the floor, I could see the plastic card laying in a pool of his filth.  
    "Put him over there." I waved towards the window, and she complied, but not without a grunt of opinion. "Just put him over there."
    I tried to take a deep breath and wound up coughing. I could feel the disease churning in my stomach, the malady that was going to take my life one of these days. That was the ultimate downside to being a necromancer, and the reason there were so few of us.  
    To wield the power of death, you had to be dying yourself.
    Rodge's body thumped back to the floor.  
    "Get the card, and wipe it off."
    "Mmmrrrrffff."
    "Just get the card."
    She came back over and picked it up, holding it gingerly between her thumb and index finger, like any of the bodily fluid clinging to it could hurt her. She brought it over to the other brute, wiped it clean on the back of his jeans, and then handed it to me.
    "Thank you." I shook my head and rolled my eyes. She smacked me on the shoulder and grumbled her complaint. "Noted, and ignored." I put the card in my pocket with the dice.
    It was a bit of good fortune that the glasses hadn't gotten crushed in the fight. I found them laying a few feet to Tim's right, waiting patiently on the carpet.  
    I held them out in front of me, remembering the first time I had owned a similar pair. They had been pretty new at the time, a marvel of technology that nobody really saw much of a need for, and only the truly bold had the guts to wear in public. Mine had been foisted on me by the medical director, who thought it would be a great idea for all of the surgeons to wear them in the operating room. Not only could we record the surgery, both for posterity and in the event of litigation, but we would have instant access to our charts, notes, and surgical plans. Never mind that you had to talk to it like it was a precocious two year old to get it to do what you wanted.
    Seven years had passed, and the things had evolved the way all technology did, even though the market for them was still shaky. There wasn't as much interest in recording your life as the makers had assumed, probably because most people weren't billionaires who could do exciting things whenever they wanted to. For some of us, our lives were living hells that we'd never want anyone to have to suffer through.
    Even so, the glasses were common enough for the Houses to parse their jobs on. They could preload any info the ghost might need and give them quick and easy access to schematics, dossiers, schedules, and whatever other intel they had gathered on the target. Even better, there was no more speaking involved. They could essentially read your mind.
    "MMmmmrrrfffrrrmmm."
    I looked at my watch. It was a classic Rolex, a heavy lump of metal with a mechanical movement and softly ticking hands. My mentor had given it to me the day I'd finished my residency. "You're right. Let me just take care of the body and we'll go."
    It wouldn't do to leave Gucci laying there, his flesh rotting and covered in gangrene. It would be too obvious how he had died, and the last thing I wanted was obvious. It was a good thing I kept the right kind of equipment for this situation.  
    I reached into a pocket and pulled out a stainless steel flask. I uncapped it and took a whiff of the kerosene, and then spread it across Gucci's body. Once it was good and wet, and the flask was empty, I took out a match. It wouldn't do much more than burn off the clothes and toast the flesh, but it didn't need to. The odds were good that they'd believe a pyro had done the dirty work. Like the man had said, necros were rare.
    "Mmmmrrrfffmmm."
    "I'm coming."  
    I lit the match and tossed it onto the corpse, waiting a few seconds to make sure it caught. Satisfied, I followed her to the window. Gucci would have had a monitor implanted near his heart that would tell someone in Mr.