Chapter Six
Austin
“Austin…what was your first memory?” the dead girl asked.
Hyacinth, he’d learned her name that morning and tried not to cry.
She picked my favorite flower! Sebastian and Smith looked at him like he was a porcelain doll about to break again.
Austin kept all those happy tears inside his body.
I do not think I can withstand either of you being worried about me another day longer.
Everyone, and Austin meant everyone, in the house was worried about him.
How do I get them to realize I’m fine! Wasn’t he allowed to be sad sometimes? Was it because he didn’t always smile anymore?
He didn’t want to ask in fear of popping whatever tension bubble existed around the house. If he did, who knew what would spill out. So, he pretended not to notice everyone’s lingering stares and did his best to avoid Hyacinth in the light.
Then she asked him a question, and he froze. In the middle of skinning something fluffy, he stared blankly into the darkness knowing it could only blink back at him.
“I do not remember anymore.”
That was a lie. I’m a liar now. He grimaced as he pulled the last bit of fur off the body of the werewolf he had stuffed in a trunk to the far western wall.
Austin did remember his first memory. It was a cavern full of bodies.
Not a great start. Not when her first memory was actually his face… and she screamed into it.
“Oh, then do you think I’ll remember this?”
He turned toward her, glowing in the candlelight.
She’s just so pretty. The circular shape of her face, the bump of her nose, the way her hair swept across her shoulders, he realized all too well she was miraculous.
Sebastian took extra care with her. The stitching on her wasn’t as rustic and robust as his.
She hardly looked like a collection of parts.
In fact, if she were wearing a scarf and long sleeves, she’d look…
well…still dead but not undead? Oh that didn’t make it better. He grimaced.
“I hope so. Memories can be fickle.”
She snorted softly, “Heh, I like that word.”
“Memories?”
“Pfft, no…fickle. I like the way it feels on my tongue. I also like viscous! Oh! And ginormous. Makes my mouth do this big ‘o’ shape.” She grinned easily, her gaze following him even in the shadows.
He was being silly by hiding, but his first instinct was to hide every inch of him. It didn’t stop her from staring deep into his soul with those purple eyes of hers. Like she could find him, even in the dark. Her lips twitched at the edges as she cocked her head to the side.
Answer her! He fumbled with the words that spilled from his mouth. “I, uh, like phlebotomy.”
“Fe-fu-fl,” she giggled the whole time while she tried the word.
“Phlebotomy,” he chuckled, returning to the table with his werewolf fur, wool fabric he was going to stitch it onto, and the stuffing for the teddy bear. “It’s the process of taking blood from someone.”
“Why would you need blood from someone?” She made a scrunched face as she pulled away from the table. Austin normally would worry he’d offended her, but her stare was already down at his collection of parts. It was nice to see the cogs turning on her face. “Where did you find fur?”
“Werewolf.” He flattened everything out on the workspace, eyes searching the dark for where he left the sewing machine.
Thank you, Lord Rosemont, for eyes that can see even in magic darkness.
The sewing machine was unlike the one Agatha used upstairs in the parlor.
His was a little hand cranked device that helped him sew two fabrics together.
Austin caught the handle sticking out of his box of tools on the far wall.
Sebastian allowed him to build a full wall of shelving units for organizing all the little finicky tools they needed, then for storage.
It’s where they kept all the vials, all the folded towels, and other bits and bobbles.
“And he won’t need it?” Her voice brought his attention back to her.
“No,” Austin laughed, shaking his head. “We tend to recycle here. We’re necromancers…not necromessers.”
She blinked at him, her gaze falling to the things on the table for a long moment, then glanced back up at him. “I have no idea what that means.”
“Which part?”
“Why it was funny?” she squinted at him. “I don’t understand humor just yet. I understand it, objectively, but…how do you know if something is funny?”
Austin’s eyebrows shot up on his head. “Oh…well…you just…organically laugh.”
“Huh,” she sighed, drumming her fingers across the workstation. “This must mean I’m not funny.”
“Or!” Austin interjected, causing her purple gaze to shoot up again. “Or I simply need to be funnier!”
He walked away to collect the sewing machine.
She can’t see me. I made sure of it. There wasn’t much magic that Austin could do, not without tools from Lord Rosemont.
However, the laboratory was always cloaked in magic darkness.
All it took was to turn the lights out. The candles were only able to give so much light.
However, if she were to lift the candles up to his face, he was in trouble.
Thankfully, when he returned to the table, she was more interested in watching him work than investigating the large man in the shadows.
He worried his hands would tremble from how nervous he might be…
but she wasn’t intense. Odd, maybe, as she kept turning her head in different directions to watch. But not intimidating.
Hyacinth laid her cheek to the table, watching the machine stitch the two edges of the lining and the fur together.
The candlelight caught all her angles, highlighting her brow bone and her nostrils.
It almost gave her a ghostly appearance.
Then she stood up and watched from a different angle, getting a more ethereal glow.
“How does it work?” She finally asked, tentatively poking at the crank he was using to stitch.
“Would you like to try? I’ll have to—it’ll be like hugging but not a hug?”
Hyacinth gave him an innocent shrug before she rounded the table.
Austin pulled back quickly, giving her a full arms width of room between him and the table.
She slid right in between him and the table, taking up the device.
There was no time to hesitate or consider another option as she immediately put the device against her fingers.
He pulled both her hands apart rapidly and put the sewing machine back to the fabric.
“It won’t hurt.” Her shoulders rose and fell, as if shrugging, but it was a jerky, unnatural motion.
“Just because your pain receptors do not work yet does not mean it is a good idea,” he blurted out. The words spilled out of him, and he realized he sounded exactly like Lord Rosemont. “Undeath doesn’t mean immortal life.”
“I could die?” her whisper was soft, causing the air in the laboratory to tense.
“Yes,” he confessed like she’d tugged it out of his chest with a rip cord.
The real matter of the fact was that he was not infinite.
Neither was she. They weren’t liches nor gods.
The pair of them weren’t Slenders nor eldritch horrors.
Not a ghost or a wraith or a specter haunting the halls of Rosemont Manor.
They were Undead. But undeath was not the end.
Austin continued, voice a little rattled as he gave her the same talk that Sebastian gave him the first time he was forced to protect his maker.
He tried not to change a word. It was important she heard it right.
“Your heart is a very delicate thing that many will overlook. While you can lose your stitching, fall apart at the seams. You can behead yourself or change your limbs if they don’t suit your needs.
And you may never be able to feel pain, or it may be dull.
But you can die. All they need to do is rip the organ from your chest and crush it.
The reason it takes 30 days for your heart to start beating on its own from when we sew it into place is because it is delicate.
A heart’s a very sensitive thing. Not only is it heavy but yours is enchanted with magic that can unravel you… permanently.”
She stiffened at the thought, and he feared that would be the end of their interaction. Even though he’d been enjoying it beyond anything else, he knew the cold realization that he was not, in fact, infallible. It took him days to shake it off.
Only, Hyacinth took a deep breath in through her nose. Rolling her shoulders back, she put the sewing machine back to the fabric and took up the crank. “So, do I crank this toward the dark or toward my body?”
Austin blinked rapidly before returning his hands to engulf hers. She’s not upset? Maybe it’s not set in yet. Maybe it will take time to feel real. But as he worked her through attaching the lining to the thick hide, she did so without flinching. And most importantly, without screaming in terror.