Finn Fancy Necromancy

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  This book is dedicated to my family, for all the good things.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As this is my first novel, it’s tempting to acknowledge every person who’s ever had an impact on my life, from the doctor who delivered me unto my mother with a slap on my butt, to the bookseller who delivered this book into your hand (perhaps with a slap to the butt, no judgment here).

  However, the Published Author Handbook is very clear on Acknowledgment etiquette—“butt-slapping doctor” is not thanked until at least book twelve, for example. Booksellers and librarians, however, are optional as early as book two (historically established as the point where the author realizes how important they are, and feels really bad for not mentioning them in the first book).

  Yet even focusing only on the people important specifically to this book, I find I have more than a few to name. First, my family:

  My parents; Elaine, Frank, and Mary Henderson—of all the ways you might have messed me up, thankfully I ended up with Generalized Writers Disorder, and you provided love and support through the years of rejections and really horrible prose. Thank you.

  My chosen family; Shelly, Lucas, and Kylie—as we all grew together, you formed the core of my life and helped me find the heart in my writing. Thank you for all the love, patience, and laughter. And gnomes.

  My brother, David Henderson, you’re always there when I need an ear or a kick in the butt, but thankfully never a kick in the ear. Thank you. And to my extended family, in particular Scott Henderson and Nina Wolsk-Henderson, and Grandmas Janette and Eleanor, who always expressed encouragement and enthusiasm for my writing, thank you.

  Thank you also to my writer and Finn Fancy feedbackers: Clarion West class of 2009 (particularly Emily Skaftun and Julia Sidorova for Finn feedback), Leslie Howle and Neile Graham, you helped me grow by leaps (sad, awkward leaps that often pulled a groin muscle, but leaps). To Kitsap Writers Group, in particular Larry Keeton for killing Aggie, John Pelkey for saving Mattie, and Anya Monroe, Eryn Carpenter, Gary Snodgrass, Emily Moore, and Rebecca Hudson for feedback; thanks to Cascade Writers and Karen Junker for providing me the opportunity to connect with both my editor and my agent; to Tina Connolly and Keffy Rm Kehrli for reality checks; to Christy Varonfakis Johnson for sanity boosts and crazy suggestions; to Benjamin VanWinkle for continued friendship and geekem; Tad Kershner for writerly lunches; and last but certainly not least, to Horrific Miscue Seattle, the best circle of writer friends on the planet (as rated by independent poll). If I missed anyone, apologies.

  At Tor, thank you first and foremost to my editor, Beth Meacham, whose faith in Finn Fancy is the reason why this novel is in the hands of readers; to Amy Saxon, for making things happen when they needed to happen; to word wrangler Wade Newbern for his style and nerd cred; and to everyone else who worked to make this book a reality and as successful as possible. Thank you.

  Thank you to my agent, Cameron McClure, for taking a chance on me; and to the team at DMLA.

  And finally, to you, who read this book, thank you for giving reality to my dream and life to my words.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  1. I’m Not the Man I Used to Be

  2. Our House

  3. Mad World

  4. Know Your Rights

  5. I Feel for You

  Day 1

  6. Hot for Teacher

  7. Welcome to the Jungle

  8. Sledgehammer

  9. Who Can It Be Now?

  10. Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)

  11. Burning Down the House

  12. Where Is My Mind?

  13. Bésame

  14. She Blinded Me with Science

  15. Hungry Like the Wolf

  16. Love Plus One

  Day 2

  17. Peek-a-Boo

  18. Blasphemous Rumors

  19. Talk Talk

  20. Blister in the Sun

  21. A Kind of Magic

  22. Dead Man’s Party

  23. Just Like Heaven

  Day 3

  24. Smooth Criminal

  25. Two Tribes

  26. Don’t You Forget About Me

  27. Should I Stay or Should I Go?

  28. Down Under

  29. Take On Me

  30. Karma Chameleon

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  I’m Not the Man I Used to Be

  It took all my self-control not to push my Fey warden to move faster along the glowing path toward freedom. We were like a couple of floating melted gummy bears made of unicorn snot and dreams, gliding lazily through the fractal rainbow landscape of the Other Realm. Twenty-five years, that’s how long the Arcana Ruling Council had exiled my spirit to the Other Realm without true physical sensation, without access to other people, to real music or any of the things that make our world so awesome. Exiled from my body and my life since 1986 for a crime I didn’t commit. But my sentence was over at last.

  When I get back, I projected at the warden, I’m never touching magic again, even if my family begs. Just going to find my girlfriend and live like a mundane.

  The warden didn’t respond. I was really just talking to myself anyway, nervous that the Fey would somehow yank away my freedom at the last minute.

  We reached a raised platform of violet light where a second blobby warden and exile floated nearby, faced away from us. Though we were all in the bodies of unshaped Fey, I could sense the spiritual resonance of the other exile as being human, and male.

  My warden raised a handlike glob, and the air in front of me rippled.

  A portal opened up, an oval window to my world, good ole Earth version mine. Beyond shimmered a beach, the Washington State variety with the freezing gray Pacific Ocean lapping a shoreline of pebbles and driftwood, all kissed orange by the setting sun. Just seeing those shapes and colors without having to manifest them from my own memory was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Actually, it caused butterflies to leak from the jewel-like lights that floated in the blob that served as my head, but the point is, it was damn good to see Earth again.

  I can’t say, however, it was so good to see myself standing there on the beach.

  I was fifteen years old when they exiled me from my body. And most of my time in the Other Realm had been spent reliving memories of my youth for the entertainment and nourishment of the Fey.

  So despite all the mental growth I achieved by reliving and reflecting on my past and all, my physical self-image was pretty well stuck at fifteen. But the dude who stood waiting on the other side of the portal was old. Not Emperor Palpatine old, I mean, I still had all my hair. Too much hair in fact: the wind blew it around my head in a ridiculous black mane. And the changeling who’d been granted use of my body kept me in good enough shape that he probably wasn’t even embarrassed to wear those tight jeans and even tighter black T-shirt, though I would not be continuing the David Hasselhoff look once I retook possession. But I looked, like, forty years old. I looked nearly my father’s age, or at least his age
at the time I was exiled. I’d sort of known that would happen: the changeling might be immortal, but that didn’t stop my body from aging normally while he possessed it.

  Still, it was a total mind blower.

  A man in a black suit strolled into sight of the portal. His braided mustache identified him as an enforcer, a representative of the Arcana Ruling Council and police of all things magical in our world, come to monitor the transfer. He probably had a “we’ll be watching you, punk” speech ready for me as well.

  The changeling flipped back his Joey Ramone hairdo, and raised his hand—my hand—to signal readiness for the transfer.

  And as a bonus for ordering a body transfer today, I’d receive one memory transfer absolutely free. Twenty-five years of selected life history and real-world memories from the changeling—where “I” lived, where I worked, who I’d talked to, what had happened on TV the last twenty-five years—all part of the arrangement so that I wasn’t clueless, jobless, homeless, and presumed dead by the mundane authorities when I returned home.

  I hoped he hadn’t watched Star Trek IV. It was just coming out when I got exiled, and I really wanted to experience it myself (yes, despite Star Trek III).

  And music! Oh dear gods, I hoped this guy had listened to decent music.

  Wait. Did I cancel my Columbia record and tape club membership before exile, or did I owe them like ten thousand dollars for a whole stack of unwanted tapes at this point?

  Well, I’d know soon enough. The sun melted beneath the horizon and twilight began, a time for transitions. I felt the transfer begin.

  On the beach, the enforcer kicked the changeling in the gut and flung something glittering at the portal. The transfer cut off.

  What the—?

  The flung object disintegrated against the barrier between worlds, and a screech cut through my mind like a rabid cat’s claws being scratched across a chalkboard. Roiling clouds of gibbering ink gathered above our heads.

  My warden grabbed me in a gummy bear hug. Betrayers! The word echoed through my mind. He dragged me back from the portal, but I struggled against him, willed myself forward.

  No! I projected back. I didn’t do this! Damn it, let me go you slimy—!

  Beyond the portal, the enforcer pulled out a wand and pointed it at the changeling—at my body! Purple lightning danced from the end of the twisted black stick like a neon snake having seizures, and my feybody heart lurched as I watched the arc strike my real body. Except that, somehow, the changeling deflected the lightning back at the enforcer, flinging the man back.

  The dark hair and black suit of the enforcer rippled for a second as he flew into the surf, and I caught a glimpse of blond hair, beard, and black robes beneath. A glamour! Someone had disguised themselves as an enforcer.

  The portal began to shrink.

  The screeching clouds above me fell silent.

  Then a house-size blob of deep black nothingness plummeted down like a screaming meteor of oh-crap-this-can’t-be-good.

  There was no point in arguing with my wardens now. I reached out to my body, not with my will but through the natural resonance between body and spirit, using skills learned during years of necromancy training with Grandfather. The connection was immediate. I traveled free of the Fey body and through the shrinking portal. As I hit the barrier I felt a cold behind me, the kind of cold that freezes lungs and makes yetis shiver. And then I fell to my hands and knees on the pebble beach.

  Sharp points bit into my palms and shins, chilly water splashed over my hands and wrists. The smell of salt air and rotting sea plants blasted into my awareness. I looked up to see the portal flickering. Beyond, the plummeting blackness shredded the warden, like a statue of multicolored sand blasted by high wind. The portal winked out.

  “That can’t be good,” I muttered. A bit of drool fell into the frothy brine between my hands.

  Oh wow. I was back in my body. A real body. I was alive! And I was home! Wherever home was. The body transfer worked, but I hadn’t received the changeling’s memories. I had no clue where I was, other than a beach.

  Had the other exile made it out? I looked in the direction he’d stood in the Other Realm, but rocky bluffs rose from the spot. If he had escaped, he was probably miles from here given the funky way distance worked between our world and the Other Realm. And I couldn’t sense the changeling. He’d most likely returned through the portal only to be destroyed, which just left me and—

  The attacker!

  I rose, and wavered a bit as I readjusted to having a physical body. I looked around, but I stood alone on the beach. The attacker must have fled.

  Crap. It was nice to not have a foot flying at my face and all, but somewhere out there I had an enemy with the juice to launch an attack into the Other Realm. That was most definitely not awesome.

  Why would anyone that powerful want to attack me at all? Then again, who had cared enough to frame me for dark necromancy in the first place, twenty-five years ago? Safest not to stick around enjoying the biting cold sensation of wind and water on my skin, just in case.

  Skin. I had skin! And it ached in the cold! How awesome was that?

  Okay. Focus.

  I took a few tentative steps, finding my balance and control as I pushed the floating mane of black hair out of my face. A clear path cut up between two driftwood stumps and through a bank of beach grass to my right, still visible in the surreal glow of twilight. I willed myself to be at the top of the hill. When nothing happened, I remembered that the stuff of reality no longer responded to (just) my will. So I stumbled up the path the old-fashioned human way, one step at a time.

  I was grateful in that moment for the restrictions that had been placed upon the changeling by the Pax Arcana. Not so much the ones against using Fey magic, or interacting with my real life friends and family, or even the one against sex, although by the gods if anyone was going to have sex for the first time in my body it was going to be me! No, in that moment I was grateful for the magical boundaries protecting my mind and memories from the changeling’s, and the rules requiring that the changeling keep my body in excellent physical health. From the ache that spread through my head and muscles, I doubted I would be walking and thinking at all otherwise, not after that botched transfer. I might not even be alive.

  Too bad that hadn’t protected the changeling.

  I crested the hills, and ahead a mobile home squatted in a wide gravel lot surrounded by evergreen trees. I both hoped and dreaded that this was my home—hoped, because if not then I had no clue where to go next; and dreaded because, well, it looked like a pretty crappy place to live, oceanfront or not. As I moved closer I spotted a two-seater sports car parked behind it.

  I knocked on the trailer and tried the door. It opened, and warm air washed over me, smelling of cotton candy and the faint vanilla tang of magic. No glamoured assassins or teenage mutant fairy attack squad burst out of the trailer and jumped me, so that was good at least.

  “Hello?” I called, and entered.

  The dead woman lying facedown on the floor really clashed with the Liberace decorating aesthetic.

  Perhaps I should have been more shocked by the body, but I wasn’t. Maybe because I still felt numb from the events of the transfer. Maybe because I’d been raised around death, helping prepare and destroy the bodies of the dead in my family’s necrotorium.

  Or maybe I really was just stunned by the gaudy awfulness of the changeling’s tastes. It was like Rainbow Brite had been given a BeDazzler, a flock of shedding peacocks, and a credit card and told to go crazy.

  “Well, this sucks,” I said to the dead woman, meaning her death, not the decor.

  The body didn’t respond, which was a relief actually. Talking to the dead was one of my arcane gifts, but something I hoped never to do again, not least because it drained my own life away to do so.

  I rolled the body over and felt the unpleasant tingle of residual dark magic, like spiders made of ice crawling across my hand. Her head flopped ov
er, and she stared with an expression of frozen horror at the ceiling. A blood-soaked strip of linen covered in silver runes spilled from her mouth, revealing the space where her tongue should have been. Necromancy. Dark necromancy.

  “No. Damn it, no!”

  Felicity. Our family’s au pair before my exile. She might appear human, but she was a feyblood creature, a witch to be exact, though Mother had insisted she was a good witch. She looked older than I remembered, wrinkled as though she’d spent too much time in the sun, but it was her.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  The last time I’d seen Felicity, she pointed at me from an ARC witness stand and declared that I’d attacked her with dark necromancy. The day before that, I had found her unconscious and bloodied body on my bedroom floor. And the night before that, we were laughing over a game of Trivial Pursuit with my sister and brothers, making up ridiculous answers to the questions.

  I’d been made to relive those memories a thousand times in the Other Realm, all the confusion and hurt, the sense of betrayal and anger. But I’d had little choice except to deal with those feelings or go mad. So I turned my anger instead to the Fey who fed off of me, and convinced myself that Felicity had actually done me a favor, granted me a reprieve from the life of sacrifice and necromancy mapped out for me since the day my Talker gift manifested.

  I might not have forgiven Felicity, but I wasn’t obsessively plotting revenge schemes either. And even if I had been, she was supposed to be hidden away somewhere in the ARC equivalent of witness protection. At most, I’d hoped she would confess the truth someday, and clear my name.

  Instead, someone had now killed her, in “my” home, with dark necromancy. Most likely the same someone who attacked my transfer. Had he brought her here by force, or drawn her here with some promise of revenge or reconciliation with me? Either way, she was the perfect choice for a frame job given our history. But why? Why try to kill me and frame me? It made no sense.

  The bloody rune cloth meant her spirit was warded, so a Talker like me couldn’t get Felicity to speak again. And real enforcers might arrive at any minute, tipped off by my attacker or the release of magic. I didn’t have time to hang around playing Inspector Gadget.