The Accidental Necromancer
An Inconvenient Guest

I put the gun in a cabinet that was over the washer-dryer, even though it took extra time. I didn’t want it to be lying out in the open, where anyone might pick it up.

I especially didn’t want Kathy picking it up.

I scrambled down the ladder.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Gren said cheerily. Well, that was a good sign

“I wanted to go upstairs and let you know,” Valeria said, “but Gren said not to disturb you, and that we weren’t to go through the portal unless you said it was okay.”

“Let me know what?” I asked. But as I looked around, I had a pretty good idea.

There was a prisoner in the cells again, all padlocked in. Kathy, in her little cocktail dress, barefoot, her face contorted with pain.

“She didn’t have any weapons,” Gren reported. “Unless you count the shoes. I took those away from her.” She dangled a pair of black pumps in her hands. One of the shoes had a broken heel. I noticed Gren was wearing a short skirt and a bra. I should have told her bras were underwear, I suppose. Or not.

The plywood that made my coffin into a table had broken like it had been part of a karate demonstration.

“They wouldn’t have fit soon, anyway,” Valeria said. “Her ankle is swollen, as is her other knee. I think she has a break.”

“Who are you people?” Kathy asked, loudly. I remembered she probably couldn’t figure out why a woman had come into the room, wearing Abel’s robe and some poorly fitting jeans.

“The paladins wanted to heal her,” Gren said. “But I figured it would keep, and this way we wouldn’t have to worry about her running.”

I got to the bottom of the ladder. “Very, uh, practical.” If Valeria and Talos couldn’t escape my little prison cells, I doubted Kathy could, especially the way she was grimacing, but I appreciated the value of redundancy in a system. “Go ahead and heal her.”

Valeria and Talos bumped shoulders, both heading that way at once.

Valeria backed off. “You do it,” she said.

Talos nodded, and approached Kathy.

“Who are all you people?” Kathy asked. “Where am I?”

“She keeps asking. But I figured we’d wait for you to give any answers.” Gren lifted the purse. “She had this with her, and she reached into it when I approached her, but there’s nothing that looks like a weapon in it. Just a phone, like yours. And some bits and bobs.”

She started pulling things out, and I recognized that one of those “bits and bobs” was my key ring. It had the keys to the padlocks on it, among other things.

“I’d like some answers myself.” I walked over to where Talos was. Kathy understood what we were saying, and she let him touch her ankle. It was indeed very swollen, but after Talos touched it, the swelling went down noticeably.

“That’s like magic,” Kathy said, wide-eyed. She looked up at me. “You’re another one of his women, aren’t you? You’re wearing his robe. What were you doing, hiding in the closet or something?”

Right, she didn’t know who I was. “I’m Abby. You’re Kathy, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I’d pieced a lot together now. I wasn’t sure I was right, but I thought I had the picture. I had been about to ask her a few questions about last night when she reminded me that she didn’t know who I was, and I mentally switched them to the third person.  “Was the point of the drinking and the blowjob to make sure Abel was sleeping soundly while you looked for his keys?”

“Well!” Kathy said, taking umbrage. But she didn’t deny it.

“Answer me when you want,” I said. I walked to the dresser, turned my back on Kathy and Talos, and put a bra and a cute little top on. I should really get a dressing screen, that would be easy enough to do, and would help break up the single, excessively large room. Hell, everyone could have their own private space. A few joists, some drywall…

“Bring your other leg where I can reach through the bars,” Talos said. “So I can heal that, too.”

I had been thinking of dismantling the cells, but maybe they were the sort of thing I needed to keep around. But by the time I got Abel’s pants off, and a pair of panties and snug jeans on, I realized there was no way I could keep Kathy prisoner.

It was quite possible she’d been seen coming over to my house. It was also quite possible that she had a safe call set up. “How long has she been down here?” I asked.

“Hours,” Gren said. “She kept screaming, which made it very hard to sleep. Noisy neighbor.”

“And nosy,” I murmured.

“Who are you people?!”

“You could try saying thank you to Talos. Talos, Kathy. Kathy, Talos.”

Kathy frowned, and then sighed. “You’re right. Thank you, Talos, for healing me. But I want to talk to Abel. Where is he? If I don’t talk to Abel soon, and get my phone back, things are going to happen, and you’re not going to like it when they do.”

“Kathy, that’s me,” I told her. If she had set up a safe call, the only person who could get me out of this jam was Kathy. I hated that, but that was the truth. “I know it’s incredibly weird, but I want you to remember that you just fell through – I presume you fell – through a gate from my basement into another place entirely, and that a paladin just healed your ankle and knee just by touching it. Magic works here, and that’s why here, I look like this. Everyone calls me Abby here, you might as well, too.” I handed her the phone.

“You’re just going to let me have this?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t actually work down here unless you have the wi-fi password. Did you set up a safe call?”

Kathy glanced at the phone. Checking the time, maybe. “Yes. If my friend Jane doesn’t hear from me in twenty minutes, she’s going to call the police.”

Jane might be hot. Get Jane to come down here and put her in the other cell. You could make them dance.

“I’ll give you the wi-fi password if you call Jane and tell her you’re okay.”

“Why would I do that? You better let me go. Or they’re going to find this place and have you all arrested.”

Sigh. Charm Person. I started unlocking the cell. “You can call the police later, if you think it’s a good idea,” I said. “But right now you need to listen to me explain what’s going on so you can make a good choice. I wouldn’t hurt you, Kathy. I’m your neighbor, and I’m your friend. You can trust me. The explanation is going to take a while, and I might have to show you some things, so for now I need you to call your friend and tell her you’re fine.”

“Oh.” Kathy looked at me for a moment. “You do have a very honest face. Okay, Abby. Abel. Whatever. I’ll … take a chance.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. She unlocked her phone, typed in the wi-fi password as I read it to her, and the she made her call. “Jane, I’m fine. No, I’m okay. I just missed your calls. I’ll call you back later. In two hours? Yes, fine. No, really, honestly, I’m a hundred percent okay. A perfect gentleman. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.”

I listened, but I was also thinking. I wanted to show her the forest. The crypt, enclosed as it was, and filled with all sorts of modern equipment, looked more like I had a vault underneath the basement than a whole new world, and it was very hard to insist that I had a vault with prison cells under my basement but was in no way up to no good. The forest, on the other hand, could not be in my basement.

What is your problem with solving things by killing people?

“Because it wouldn’t work,” I said aloud. It’d cause a police investigation, and that would be the end of the gate. Despite what Enash said, I’d have to at least try to destroy it before the police came. I’d have to figure out a way to do it with me on the Amaranth side, too. I had no idea how I’d do that.

“What wouldn’t work?” asked Gren.

I shook my head. I didn’t move the cell door quite yet, although I had it unlocked and a baby could push it over. I reached my hand through the bars.

“I’ll hold your phone for now,” I told Kathy. “And keep it safe.”

She handed it to me, somewhat to my surprise. Although maybe the way Gren was fingering her knife had something to do with that.

At the last moment I remembered an element of my morning routine that really needed to happen before I showed Kathy the forest. Showing her the zombies might not bolster my case. “Do you like coffee in the morning?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good, come here while I make coffee. Gren, Valeria, Talos, could you take out twelve planks for our friends to carry later?”

“Friends?” Valeria echoed. “That’s taking it a bit too far, Abby.”

“It’s a euphemism.”

“You can’t be Abel,” Kathy said. “That’s impossible.”

“I am,” I told her.

“But – what happens to all that mass? It has to be conserved, and if not, the energy produced would be enormous. You’re a lot smaller.”

“Magic, Kathy. It doesn’t follow the rules. Where did your gun go?”

“I don’t know, I reached for it and – what gun?”

I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“The magic that protects this world wouldn’t let you bring it here. You had it along, I presume, because you planned this all in advance.”

“You seem to know a lot.”

“You seem to know some things I didn’t think you did, too, because otherwise I assume you wouldn’t have hatched this scheme.”

Gren and the paladins finished their job before the coffee was ready, and I excused myself. “Just have to tidy something up out there.”

This time, Kathy looked when the doors were opened. “It’s… is that ... are those trees?”

“Yes. I’ll show you in a moment,” I said, and closed the doors behind me.

Alone outside, I looked around at the four zombies. “Okay, each of you pick up three planks, carry them to the designated spot, and then come back here.”

I waited a few minutes for the slow-moving former corpses. They didn’t smell any better as they aged, and they lurched when they walked. Not the right way to make a good first impression. Once they were out of sight I flung the doors open. “Come see, Kathy.”

“I still don’t believe you can be Abel. You’re too cute.”

“I’d tell him you said that, if he wasn’t me. He’s under the illusion that you think he’s pretty decent looking.”

“He’s handsome, you’re cute. There’s a difference.” She walked out into the light, and looked around. “What is this place?”

I admired her pluck. She had to be scared, but she was hiding it well. “It’s a whole different world. Where magic works. Where guns aren’t allowed.”

“It’s some kind of fancy hologram? A VR game?”

“No. Touch the trees, if you like. Sit on that stone wall, that I think used to be a guardhouse long ago. Breathe the air.”

The other three had come out too, although they were staying a distance back and letting me handle things.

Kathy took a deep breath. “It’s so clean.”

“They don’t have coal plants or cars or gas mowers, so yes, the air is cleaner. And it helps that you’re in the middle of a forest.”

She walked over toward a tree, barefoot, but stopped before she got there. “The dirt is soft under my feet. And the leaves go crackle. This is amazing.”

“Yes. But not amazing as in amazing special effects. It’s amazing that it exists at all, and that we can get there.”

“And this is your world? And you’ve chosen to be a girl here?”

“With a little extra,” Gren said.

“Well,” Kathy said. “You do you. I don’t judge, you know that. This is amazing. This is the secret you were keeping in your basement?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t drugs?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t white slavery?”

“I think that’s an offensive term these days, and no.”

“You weren’t digging a tunnel to get to a bank?”

“There’s no tunnel. Also, no nearby banks.”

“I have to tell Jane about this. She’ll love it.”

“You can’t tell Jane about this,” I said. “Who will Jane tell? Eventually the secret will be out, and the government will get involved. You think they’ll let me or you come here, after that? Or will it be all locked down for only a few people to know about?”

“Oh,” she said. “Good point.”

I hoped it wasn’t just a good point because she was charmed.

“I saw you once, Abby. I mean, the way you are now. You’re really Abel, aren’t you?”

“I am. That’s why I knew how last night went.”

“Well, I guess that’s a better explanation than that you were spying from a closet.”

“No, I’m definitely out of the closet.”

“And I saw her, too,” she pointed to Gren. “And her. She was tied up. That’s why I thought it might be a white slavery thing.”

“She, um, is into that sort of thing.” I saw Valeria blush, so I changed the subject. “I’m glad you didn’t call the cops.”

“I thought about it. But I had no evidence, and also, you just seemed like too decent a person. I wanted to trust you, but you have to admit you were acting suspicious. So I decided I’d find out for myself.” Kathy touched a tree, and ran her fingers along the bark. “It’s all real.”

“It’s all as real as you and me. Or Earth.”

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