The Necromancer's House Read Online Free PDF Page B

upset.”
    â€œSo you ate him and resolved to lie to me about it.”
    â€œI cannot lie to you.”
    â€œYou cannot lie to me and get away with it.”
    â€œIs same thing.”
    â€œIs not same thing. Is question of intent.”
    â€œI left him where he was. The door was open. He can stay, he can go, is up to him. Someone will find him. Maybe you? You want an old shitty dog?”
    â€œSalvador wouldn’t like that.”
    â€œNo,” she agrees.
    He lights his own Spirit and inhales deeply, exhales slowly, mouth closed, eyes closed, letting the smoke come out of his nose in a luxurious rush.
    Poison.
    Everything I enjoy is connected to death.
    â€œDid you ever get the feeling that something bad has happened, something just outside your control, and perhaps outside your understanding, which will set in motion a series of events that will lead to deep tragedy? And great loss.”
    She considers this. Draws smoke with difficulty because she has wet the filter. Lets it out of her nose, as he did.
    â€œYes.”

12
    As if summoned, Salvador walks downstairs carrying the soaked and reeking bedsheets from the master bedroom toward the laundry room in the basement. If the framed portrait of Salvador Dalí that served as his head could bear any expression other than the self-consciously crazed eyes of the surrealist, the stick-and-wicker man might raise an eyebrow. He loves to hear his name.
    As it is, he swivels his painted gaze at them on his way down, hoping to be called over, but, when he isn’t, continues dutifully down the steps on his military-grade prosthetic legs.
    Once in the basement, it is all Salvador can do not to spread the sheets out and roll in them; the basket at the center of him holds the salted heart of the border collie he had been before the magus revived him in this form, and that heart still gladdens at strong smells, particularly fishy or fecal ones. He inclines his flat portrait head toward the armful of bedclothes, reveling in their filth. It will be criminal to wash these delicious odors away, but he loves his master as only dogs love, and he sighs a canine sigh and opens the door of the washing machine.

13
    The Jehovah’s Witnesses come soon after the storm is over. The air is damp and the receding dark clouds in the east make their white shirts pop as they walk up the drive between the young maple trees. Andrew stands on his front porch with his leather coat on, knowing he looks and smells every inch the career sinner, combing out waist-length hair redolent of tobacco and myrrh. He frowns at a new white hair, plucks it, winds it around a finger.
    It will take them a moment to make it up the steep walk.
    He realizes he is about to sigh, recognizes impatience as a sign of entitlement, thinks he really should read another book about Buddhism and try to meditate. He has a date with being Buddhist, but he isn’t there yet.
    And here come two of God’s warriors, both of them African American, one in his sixties, one about twenty.
    At least they mean it, I’ll give them that. They wear out a lot of shoe leather doing what Jesus said to do. No Christmas. No Halloween. But this is a little like trick-or-treating. Do they eat candy? Do I even have any candy?
    The older one is slowing them down.
    That guy doesn’t need any candy.
    That wasn’t very Buddhist, and he’s not fat, just a little soft around the middle, and probably a grandfather, so give him a break.
    Maybe that kid’s grandfather?
    The elder raises a hand, smiles a winning smile.
    â€œQuite a driveway you have here,” he says. “You must be in good shape!”
    â€œI might be if I ever left. I’m a hermit. All I do up here is talk to God and wait for strangers to come so I can tell them God’s plan for them. Didn’t they warn you about me at the Kingdom Hall?”
    â€œWell, they did say . . .”
    â€œWhere’s