Epilogue The Bane of My Existence #4
“The Unweaver herself, asking me that question.” He shook his bald head, laughter trailing off.
“There was a gruesome series of murders here, and rumors of a haunting sure made this place a steal when I bought it as a wedding present for Brigitte. She always loved this old plantation house. It had been lying in ruin when I put down my daddy’s sugarcane money to fix it up for my new bride.
Over twenty years of marriage, and just when I think she can’t make me love her anymore, she finds a way to do it.
I hope you find that kind of love, Cora, with the right kind of man.
It’s the only way to survive, being what we are. ”
She touched the malachite ring on her finger, linked to his. Lakwa had brushed off a haunting, but the icy, phantom breath on the back of her neck had only grown stronger. She whirled around, inspecting the dark corners. “You’re sure ghosts aren’t real?”
“Spirits stay in the Death Realm.” Lakwa’s gaze was intent on her. “Don’t they?”
Unsure how to respond, Cora lowered herself into an armchair. Leather crinkled under her weight. She readily accepted Lakwa’s proffered sherry.
Hours passed unnoticed as the Necromancers spoke late into the night.
Master Lakwa—Sammy, he insisted—answered most of her questions in between barraging her with his own.
Perched on the edge of his armchair, he was as eager to learn from her, it seemed, as she was from him.
He was particularly keen on exploring her reanimation skills, rumored to be near full resurrection.
Cora hedged with careful non-answers and half-truths.
“My, I’d forgotten how nice it was to chat with another Necromancer,” Lakwa said near midnight. “A week ain’t nearly long enough for all we have to talk about. Why not stay the month?”
“You’re too kind, Master Lakwa. I’m afraid I have to return to London for an engagement before then.
” Rosemarie Archambeau’s wedding to the Hollywood actor was touted to be the event of the season, but to Cora it was already a headache.
Yvonne had not asked Cora to play piano at her daughter’s wedding reception; she had simply handed Cora the band’s full song lineup and told her in a tone that brooked no argument that the wedding’s dress code was floral.
“Now that’s a shame. I suppose we’ll have to make up for lost time.” Lakwa observed Cora over his steepled fingers. “Have you ever heard of a Necromancer known as the Queen of Rot?”
Cora started. She tried not to squirm under the full weight of his knowing gaze. “Lazlo—that is, Master Lazlo Lyter—mentioned her to me in passing once.”
She had communed with the late Master Sciomancer, with the Death Parchment in hand.
Lazlo had been shocked to see her in the Death Realm, and not in a good way.
He had retreated a step, as if he was frightened of her.
On the fringes of Lazlo’s Deathscape, Cora had glimpsed the faint outline of a figure.
His wife’s spirit, as if she sensed Lazlo’s presence and peered through murky glass to spot him.
Merging the Lyters’ Deathscapes had been simple work when the dead were so obliging.
“What did Lazlo—may my late colleague rest in peace—have to say about the Queen of Rot?”
“Just that she was powerful and…” Killed herself. “Died.”
“Indeed,” Lakwa said at length. “When I was a young man, full of youth’s uncertainties, I sought out the Queen of Rot for advice on how to survive the horrors of Necromancy. I wonder, Cora. Did Mr. Bane ever mention her to you?”
That same casual tone and pointed look made the hair on her nape stand on end. “No. He didn’t.”
Her terse response must have spoken volumes. Intrigue flashed behind his dark glasses.
“That so.” He struck a match against his boot heel and lit a cigar, puffing until thick smoke occluded his features.
“The Queen of Rot was the most powerful Necromancer born in generations. From a humble beginning in British India, she amassed untold knowledge and abilities in her short years. She died on the Winter Solstice, going on thirty years back. The same day of your birth, if I’m not mistaken. Is that not peculiar?”
Cora grew very still. Uncertain panic lapped at the shoreline of her thoughts.
She forced herself to think about how Mal would handle this situation.
He would buy time to find the right non-answer.
She slowly lit a cigarette and took an unhurried drag, smoothing her features into an impassive mask. “A peculiar coincidence.”
“Coincidence.” His drawl stretched the word into rolling valleys of disbelief as he contemplated the burning end of his cigar.
“I must say, I am mighty impressed by your abilities, Cora. Especially for an untrained mage such as yourself. As my apprentice, we shall learn just how much more you're capable of. Now, I have other interested prospects coveting this one spot, naturally, but you surpass them by a Mississippi mile. There’s a fine carriage house on the edge of the property that’ll be all yours.
One wing burned last year and is undergoing repairs, but the rest is right as rain. ”
It was the chance of a lifetime to hone her abilities under an experienced Necromancer, to learn how to live from the master of death himself.
Priceless knowledge that might come at the cost of losing Malachy.
Cora felt wrenched in two directions—exploring her new intimacy with Malachy or growing her death magic in New Orleans.
“I am flattered by your offer, Master Lakwa.” Her throat worked on a swallow. “Might I have some time to consider?”
He held her gaze, black lenses flashing. “I sense conflict in you. Earlier, I admit I didn’t think Mr. Bane would let you step foot through that portal door.”
“Why do you say that?”
He smiled like a fisherman with a well-baited hook.
“I have known Mr. Bane a long time, child. Given my position on the Tribunal, I am not at liberty to discuss the full details, you understand. But I can tell you that man keeps more secrets than all the dead buried in Lafayette Cemetery. Secrets so dark not even the light of heaven could shine through.”
She rose to defend Mal by using his own strategies—lies by omission, the Malachy Bane special. “We all have our secrets, Master Lakwa.”
“Oh, child, that devil has pulled the wool over your eyes. Ask yourself: how much do you really know about Malachy Bane?”
Denial was on the tip of her tongue. She thought of Mal’s tender sincerity, the scorching vulnerability in his blue eyes as he told her that he loved her.
She thought of the mage orphanage he’d built because of her and named after her brother.
She thought of the days and endless nights he had held her when she feared she would fall apart.
Yet she swallowed her retort down. Hadn’t she experienced more than enough of Malachy’s secret-keeping herself?
All the clandestine jobs and unexplained absences, sometimes for days at a time with only a hastily scrawled note that he would be “out of town.” He had kept her at a distance from the more unsavory aspects of his business, giving evasive answers to her direct questions such as, “It’s in your best interest not to know the details. ”
“You don’t deny it. Good. You have seen Mr. Bane’s true nature for yourself.
” Lakwa stroked his chin. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Cora, but I believe in honesty. Darlin’, how long do you really think you can hold Mr. Bane’s interest?
He would never choose you over his little smuggling empire.
And without you to warm his bed—the nature of your relationship is plain to anyone with eyes, honey—how soon before someone more convenient replaces you?
You are not the first of his employees he has used thus, and Mr. Bane is nothing if not efficient. ”
Her heart pounded in her throat. She wanted to resent Lakwa, but he had merely spoken aloud her own doubts and fears.
Cora could never hold a candle to all the beautiful women at the Realmwalker’s disposal with an ocean separating them.
She trusted Malachy with her body, but not with her heart.
Not yet. Love was a cheap word when she thought of all the other women before her.
Embroiled in her own thoughts, Cora said nothing.
“I see you remain unconvinced.” Lakwa ground out his cigar, facing her gravely.
“I had intended to wait to show you this. However… You deserve to know the truth Mr. Bane is withholding from you. I want to share a secret with you, Cora. For your ears alone. There was something in Mr. Bane’s possession that is of great interest to you, myself, and every Necromancer alive and yet to be born.
A diary. Luckily, one of my colleagues liberated it from Mr. Bane’s private collection this past winter and returned it to proper hands. ”
Liberated was a nice word for stolen. An icy bolt of realization shot through Cora.
The only one who had stepped foot inside Mal’s moving house last winter had been Ikelas and her sleepwalking puppets.
Cora remembered Malachy’s warnings, his Tribunal suspicions.
Was Lakwa a monster in the guise of good manners?
From a locked drawer, Lakwa withdrew a diary that he held in reverent hands. The diary was familiar somehow, though perhaps only in its commonness. Yet she knew what words were written on the spine before her eyes found them.
The Necromancer’s Delight.
The name rang a distant bell of alarm. She had read it before, on a crowded shelf inside Malachy’s locked room while searching for the Demonomicon.
Drawn to the diary and its strange magic, her hand reached towards it. The diary, slim and leather-bound, had a weight to it, as if more than inked paper laid within its covers.
Magic, dark and sinister, raced up her arm, searching for her edges. A fearful tremor worked through Cora. Her vision went black.
When she came to, she was shaking on the carpet.
“You all right there, hon?”
Lakwa bent down to help her up, and in her disorientation, her flailing arm knocked off his sunglasses.
The black eyes staring down at her were like open graves.
He turned and hastily recovered his glasses, and she climbed to her feet as he slid them back on.
She shrank beneath the entirety of his focus honed on her.
“Yes. I’m fine. Sorry. It happens sometimes when death has imbued an object.”
Lakwa laid a solemn hand on the diary. “The Queen of Rot filled these pages with the richest secrets of Necromancy. Secrets that had been lost for generations. Secrets that died with her. They remain hidden beneath an impenetrable cipher countless experts have failed to crack, including myself, and I knew her personally and have spent the better part of my life attempting to recreate her genius. I wonder if you might have more luck with it.”
Dread filled her. Tentatively, she took the diary. Dark magic poured inside her as she opened it.
Every page broiled with sinister energy. The words within were written in a code that appeared to be an unholy union of Latin, numerology, and archaic symbols bastardized from myriad cultures. A riddle that unspooled in the dark labyrinth of her mind.
Dread soon turned to terror.
Cora could read every word. Every horrifying word.
“You can read it? You understand the cipher? What does it say?” The intensity of Lakwa’s questions startled her. She had been so engrossed in the diary that she had not noticed Lakwa leaping out of his chair to stand beside her.
“N-no.” She felt Lakwa’s attention sharpen at her shaky denial. “The diary just has a… strange magic to it. Can’t make heads or tails of it.”
His gaze remained fixed on her profile as she kept her eyes on the diary, icy horror twisting her insides. A new abomination greeted her on each page.
Some entries were brief and nonsensical: ‘Nothing ends, only stops moving. The millennium transmutation of the spirit…’
Others detailed the Queen of Rot’s particularly heinous experiments with reanimation. ‘Mage spirit = collection of sensory impressions + CONDUIT.’
On the next page her gaze latched onto a diagram of a loom. It appeared average but she did not doubt it could produce atrocities when she read: ‘Clotho’s Spindle to make the threads that bind and the loom to weave the spirit into the vessel.’
Malachy had mentioned a late Necromancer using Clotho’s Spindle to sew the pieces of Alastair Ghose together. He had not mentioned which Necromancer. Lies by omission, his favorite.
The next page was filled with elaborate descriptions of ‘Atropos’ abhorred shears capable of severing the threads of life.’ On the next was a diagram of ‘Lachesis’ Rod to measure the thread allotted.’
The Queen of Rot had been toying with Fate.
Sick with fear, Cora kept reading. There was a diagram of ‘Pelop’s Cauldron’ along with instructions for putting pieces of a man back together within it.
The full tapestry of abominations wove together in her mind.
It was a step-by-step guide for threading a man back together with the Profanest magic.
For creating a chimera, like Alastair Ghose.
“The Tribunal went to considerable lengths to cover up the truth,” Lakwa said, wrenching Cora from her terrible reverie.
“But I will share it with you now in the strictest confidence. The Queen of Rot did not take her own life at the height of her reign, as Lazlo no doubt told you. She was murdered. The man who murdered her was none other than…” His voice trailed off as his brows rose in anticipation.
The name that slipped from her lips was drawn from a well deeper than herself. “Malachy Bane.”
A satisfied grin spread across Lakwa’s face. “Malachy Bane.”
Cora, reeling from a storm of phantom sensations, felt as if Malachy was ripping her heart out all over again.
She turned to the last entry on the last page, dated December 21, 1890. The Winter Solstice, the longest day of night, was a portentous date for dark magic. The day of the Queen of Rot’s death and Cora Walcott’s birth.
The final, coded words read: ‘Tonight, I shall succumb to the Bane of my existence.’
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