Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [73]
I nudged Brid with my toe. “Maybe you should go back to being naked.”
Brid did not go back to being naked, not because of modesty, but because the temperature in the basement plummeted. God, if there was one, hated me.
No one came down to give us blankets. As it got colder, I pulled Brid into my arms without asking. Her body went stiff at first. When I didn’t try anything, she relaxed into me. I don’t know how long she’d been stuck in the cage, but from the way she nestled into my chest, I think it had been a few days. Despite our talk earlier, I still didn’t know that much about her kind. If they were anything like real wolves, though, she had to feel starved for affection. Wolves are pack animals, and Brid was probably missing her companions. I put my chin on her head and rubbed her back absently with one hand. She shook a little, like she was either trying not to cry or trying to keep me from noticing. I ignored it. Brid just needed to let go for a moment. I’d had a bad couple of days. I could feel everything roiling inside of me, and I’d have given a lot to have someone tell me it was okay and to just let it all out. Brid’s week had probably been worse. She got to fall apart first.
We must have fallen asleep like that, despite the dim basement light. All I know is that I woke up when locks clicked open on the basement door. Brid woke up too and pulled back from me enough so that she could look up.
Douglas walked down the wooden steps, heels making hollow sounds on the boards.
“Sam,” he said, “how pleasant to see you again.” He got a curious look on his face as he took in Brid and me. “And I see you’ve met Ms. Blackthorn.”
“I thought you were going to give me a week.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t like the look of things. You did not, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, seem like you were going to go gentle into that good night.”
I stared at him blankly.
He sighed theatrically as he rolled up his shirtsleeves, slowly and methodically, keeping an even cuff. “Let me see if I can find terminology more suited to your understanding. I didn’t think you were going to come over to the dark side. And don’t insult me by lying that you were.”
“You’ve been keeping an eye on me.”
“Of course not. I’m much too busy for that. I’ve had others keeping an eye on you for me.” His expression became rueful. “You are not the axis around which my world turns, Sam.”
“You sure know how to make a guy feel important.”
“I try.” He eyed me quizzically. “You didn’t think I’d let you go with no leash at all?” He pulled the chair near the cage back against the wall, baring the stained floor.
“I guess I did.”
Douglas got out a few odds and ends from a box I hadn’t seen on the bookshelf. He selected a large piece of chalk and stood before me like a professor. Just another day in the office for Douglas.
“I’ll give you a choice,” he said. “Become my apprentice.”
“Or?”
He shrugged. “Or I can kill you now.”
I mulled over that little offer of joy. “What if it doesn’t work? What if you try to teach me and I fail?”
“I can just as easily kill you then. I believe in motivating my pupils.”
“Right. Apprenticing sounds fantastic.”
Douglas walked forward, muttering, reaching for the cage door. He gave Brid a meaningful stare. “No funny business now.”
Brid held up her hands. I got up and walked toward the door. Douglas mumbled something else, and I felt the power of the cage shut off. It was sort of like the low-level whine of a stereo when it isn’t playing—you never realize until you shut it off that it’d been emitting a small amount of noise the whole time.
Douglas handed me the chalk. “Draw a circle.”
I looked around for a second before Douglas pointed downward.
Ah.
While I did my best to go back to my kindergarten days and produce