emergency?”
“I found an animated one,” Elysia said, lowering her voice. “Just off campus.”
“Really? Wow. Who’s your admirer?” A grin colored her voice. At fourteen, everything revolved around boys.
“This is serious. What respectable necromancer turns lose the undead on a college campus?”
“Maybe he’s not that talented, and it got away from him.” Livie clearly thought Elysia was talking about a zombie. But that’s what most necromancers would think. Liches were too rare to even be considered.
“Then he wouldn’t be far from the corpse,” she reminded her.
“I take exception to being called a corpse,” James said.
Elysia whirled to find him halfway across the living room. She hadn’t heard him, and she had been too absorbed in the conversation to sense him. Realizing how close he had gotten without her notice set her heart to pounding.
He flopped down on the couch and cracked open a Coke he had taken from the refrigerator. He had removed his leather coat to reveal a black concert T-shirt that fit him well.
“If you drink that, you’ll vomit,” she told him. The dead didn’t possess a working digestive system.
“Hardly. I like Coke.” He took a drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
“If you make a mess, you’re cleaning it up.”
“You should be more worried about what my ass is doing to your couch.”
“Who are you arguing with?” Livie asked.
“The corpse,” James called.
“You heard that?” Elysia asked him. No way.
He ignored her, taking another drink from his can.
“Grams!” Livie screamed. Elysia pulled the phone away from her ear.
“Little sister?” James propped his feet on the coffee table, crossing his black biker boots at the ankle.
“None of your business. And get your feet down.”
His boots thumped against the carpet. A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he didn’t look at her. “You forget. My business is now nothing but your business.”
A muddled conversation and Grams’s stern tone came over the line, “What is this child talking about?”
“I just finished a binding.”
Grams must have been stunned to silence.
“A blood binding,” Elysia clarified.
“You finally embraced your calling.”
Elysia cringed at the relief in her grandmother’s voice. This was going to get ugly. “No. I found him wandering around campus.”
“You blood bound someone else’s zombie?” Grams sounded disgusted.
Elysia could feel James watching her, but didn’t look over. “He’s not a zombie. He’s a lich—I think.”
“A lich?” James demanded, rising from the couch. He seemed upset.
“What do you mean, you think?” Grams asked. “If he’s dead and walking around, he’s either a zombie or a lich.”
Elysia didn’t answer, too preoccupied watching James stalk toward her. He was lethal grace and power. Her necromantic senses screamed that he was dead, but her eyes said differently. He didn’t look dead. He didn’t move like he was dead.
“You didn’t know,” he said.
“That him?” Grams asked.
“Stop,” Elysia commanded.
James froze where he stood.
“You’re not a lich, are you?”
James frowned, but didn’t answer.
“Tell me about him,” Grams said, her tone low and urgent.
“He’s dead, but he doesn’t look like it or move like it. I sense no rot, and he’s… warm.”
James turned away, raking a hand through his hair.
“And Grams, sometimes his eyes glow.”
“Not possible,” Grams muttered.
“I’m not making this up. Might he be New Magic?” If someone with New Magic was Made, did the magic stay? She had no idea.
“No, I meant it’s not possible that you found him. We knew he had to be out there, somewhere.”
“What? Who?”
“Tell him to change.”
James whirled to face her. “No.”
“Do it, girl,” Grams said.
“Fine,” Elysia muttered. Crazy old woman. “James, change.”
Darkness swallowed the space where James stood, but it happened so quickly, she would have
Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant