True Love and Necromancy [Featured Story!]

Chapter XIX

WHEN SWEETBRIAR AWOKE, she was lying on the floor with her hands tied together above her head. The ropes had been fastened securely to a stake driven into the floorboards, apparently for that express purpose. She wiggled and writhed, but the rough ropes held fast.

Theo, the bedraggled old hermit, was busily laying shards of crystal around her on the floor.

"What are you doing? Let me go!" cried the girl, struggling to free herself.

"Oh, bother. I told you the sleep wouldn't hold!" Elliott snapped. He was perched atop the glass coffin. When Sweetbriar saw the talking skeletal cat, she shrieked at the top of her lungs, which was a very rational reaction under the circumstances.

"I thought I put in enough!" Theo snapped back, arranging the last of the crystals. "I didn't know how long we'd need, and I'm not exactly proficient in poisoning humans!"

"You poisoned me?" Sweetbriar cried.

"Well, more or less," Theo explained, "But only to—hopefully—make what's to come a little less horrific for you. I've never done this before, you see. But I suppose there's a first time for everything."

Sweetbriar's eyes widened in terror. "Let me go. I won't tell anyone I saw you. I won't tell anyone I was here. I'll just leave, and I'll never come back."

"No, dear. You see, we need your soul," Theo said reasonably.

"Don't involve me in this tomfoolery," Elliott said. "I just stopped you from killing her with your cooking."

"Okay—well—the collective 'we' being me and—and not my c-cat, you see, but me and my wife."

The terrified Maple Leaf Scout glanced from Theo to the glass coffin. From her low vantage point she could barely see a few curls of Tansy's dark hair. "Her? What do you mean? What are you doing? What are you going to do to me?"

"It's no use explaining. I'm sure it would all be very reassuring ... well, actually, it probably wouldn't. Anyway, a long explanation would distract me and give you a window for escape. Just—just please hold still."

Theo rummaged in his robes and produced his iron dagger. He knelt by Sweetbriar within the loose ring of essence crystals. He had lain down a great many empties to ensure that he could capture all of the girl's soul, not knowing exactly how many would be needed for the soul of a human.

He'd never done this himself before.

Sweetbriar screamed and squirmed, kicking at Theo. She did not do much damage—Theo, perhaps remembering the well-aimed kick to his shin the previous day, had thoughtfully placed himself much closer to her head.

The sorcerer closed his eyes and intoned the arcane words that would bind the girl's essence to the waiting crystals when it was released from its earthly shell.

Sweetbriar was crying now, which was rather distracting. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"Hush now, child. It will only take a minute," Theo said, trying not to register the sound of her tears. He raised the dagger over his head, and he looked—quite by accident—at Sweetbriar's face.

She had a round, young, terrified face, and dark lashes fringed her gleaming eyes. The glossy braid lying on the floor looked just like Tansy's. Theo thought, This is what Tansy would have looked like when she was younger, before I knew her, and he thought, I miss her, I miss her, I miss her so much it eats away at my very core, at the very depths of me, and he thought, She would hate this; she'd hate this and she'd hate me, and he dropped the knife with a clatter.