The Accidental Necromancer
A Week in the Life of Abby

True to her word, Valeria didn’t ask lots of questions, and she was of some help. I got the work done in four hours, which wasn’t bad at all. It would have been faster, but Kathy knocked on the door at eleven. I explained the peephole to Valeria, told her to let only Kathy in and otherwise get me. Even Kathy was only a brief distraction, once Kathy knew that Talos was waiting to answer any questions she might have about Amaranth.

I asked Valeria if she’d like a kiss, and she turned her cheek in answer, so I kissed her there. She blushed. It seemed backward, to tie her up naked but be shy about kissing, but everybody was different.

I ran conduit from Earth to Amaranth, and by the time the day was done, I had much more power in the crypt, and the beer in the mini-fridge was still cold.

I gave Gren her phone. I gave her a little talk about what not to do on the internet, and hoped it would be alright.

All she really wanted was a camera and the ability to text me, anyway.

Kathy went up and went to bed.

It had been a long hard day, and I wanted to sleep in my own bed too, even if I’d rather sleep as Abby. My comment about Habitat building whole houses with unskilled labor had got me thinking. There was enough space in the clearing out in front for a cottage, at least. With windows, unlike the crypt. If I had a bed there, I could sleep there. It would probably be easier to build a cottage than to bore a hole for a window in the thick stone of the mausoleum.

I thought of asking Gren if she wanted to join me upstairs, but it would have been awkward in front of Valeria. So was the long tongue kiss and grope we ended up with, but maybe it was less awkward.

At ten-thirty, my phone chirped. I had it set to do not disturb, but “close friends” could get through that, and I’d put Jill, Sandra, Kathy, and Gren in that category. Xyla, too, although I hadn’t gotten her phone to her yet. I should get one for Val. And Talos. Anyway, I rolled over and looked. Gren. I hoped it wasn’t an emergency.

Nope, not an emergency, just a troll with great boobs who had learned how to take selfies.

“Very nice,” I texted back, and rolled over to sleep again

Midnight, it chirped again.

They were still very nice boobs. More front on, and her nipples looked harder in this one. I was going to have to tell her not to text me late at night unless it was urgent. For now, I simply moved her out of the close friends category and got some much needed sleep.

I had a few more pics to wake up to the next day, Monday. Kathy had to work, which made things easier in some ways. I had my regular lumber delivery, and had Val help me take it into the house and Gren helped get it to Amaranth. I took Val shopping with me after that, picking up mattresses, a full-size refrigerator for the tomb, and an induction oven. The mattresses we took to Amaranth right away, but the other things could wait.

Xyla came by, so I gave her a phone, too.

“Where am I going to put it?” she asked. It was a fair point that her normal outfit had no pockets.

“I want you to be able to reach me in case of an emergency,” I told her. “Gren has one, but I don’t want everything to be filtered through her.”

“Terrible texts,” Xyla said gravely. “Many messages.”

“The alliteration is only part of it, my love. What if she’s away?”

Xyla nodded. “Okay. Well, I’ll put it someplace safe.”

“And nearby. It only works if it’s close to the mausoleum, anyway.”

Xyla grinned, and disappeared into a tree. A moment later, she came back without the phone.

“That’s handy,” I said.

“No one but me can get it there. Unless they chop down the tree. In which case they will die the death of a thousand thorns.”

That sounded excruciating, but I was beginning to think that Xyla’s bark was worse than her bite – if only a little bit. “We’ll have to take it out to charge every once in a while. Every two days or so, if you leave it on and don’t use it. But probably every few weeks, even if you leave it off.”

In the end, she decided not to keep it inside the tree after all. We decided I’d get a waterproof holder for it, leave it outside the mausoleum, locked with a pass code, and we’d ask one of the paladins to take care of recharging it.

“I guess dryads and cell phones aren’t a perfect fit,” I said.

She grinned at me. “You know what is a perfect fit?”

“What?”

She took me to the place where we first made love, and showed me, and I got nothing done the rest of the day.

On Tuesday around noon, the lumber arrived for the stairs, and everyone except Xyla helped build them. Kathy, not until evening, but we kept going until we were done. I repaired the coffin table while I was at it.

Wednesday Val, Gren and I brought the appliances down, and got them working, and then I visited my jeweler friend to make sure I kept money rolling in to pay for everything. Wednesday night I asked Kathy to do a grocery store run to stock the fridge, and even though I’m sure she wanted to go wander around the forest, as she had the previous evenings, she immediately saw that it was a way she could make a contribution that Val and Gren, who were much stronger, couldn’t.

Thursday I put the stairs out of operation again as I added red oak treads to the utilitarian stairs we had built on Tuesday. If this was going to be part of my home, I wanted it to look nice. I also did some experiments, even though I hated the feeling of changing back and forth between Abby and Abel. On the way through the gate into Amaranth, as far as I could tell I still changed into Abby in exactly the same place: the moment all my body was completely under the puzzle. On the way back up, however, I could not only stay Abby while completely in the basement, I could now be about four feet away from the center of the puzzle, which I was pretty sure was farther than it had been the first time I noticed it. Walk outside that circle, and I changed back into Abel. Walk back in, and I still had to get to the stairs. It was a bit like a thermostat, where the air conditioning goes on when it gets above 76, but doesn’t go off until 73. There was a zone where whatever form I was in, I stayed in that form, just like the AC stays blowing or stays off between the two temperatures.

That was convenient, in that I didn’t like changing. If I put things within Abby’s reach, I could go up and down without the shift. But the expanding area was concerning, too. What happened when it covered the whole basement, or the whole house? Would it spread through the neighborhood?  Through the whole world?

As far as I could tell, the main effect would be where I could use magic, and where I couldn’t. But it was possible that it was bigger than that, and that people would discover system displays and classes. Or that everyone would be informed they were level zero. I didn’t know what the effects would be, but it seemed egotistical to think that the only effects that mattered were the ones that would be about me.

I had the stairs fixed by the evening, so Kathy and Talos explored the woods some more, and I enjoyed a quiet evening with Gren and Valeria. Valeria wanted to be tied up, naked, so I did that, and then I air-fryed salmon with paprika and pepper in the induction oven, along with some spinach and rice. Gren and I ate at the newly repaired coffin table, and I ended up feeding Valeria by hand.

I hadn’t realized that having a woman lick my hand repeatedly would turn me on, but there it was. She apparently really liked the spices on the salmon, or something.

“You two should really just fuck already,” said Gren. “Wouldn’t you like that Valeria? Beautiful bondage leading to sumptuous swiving?”

“Swiving?” I asked.

“To say screwing would be crass, and you know that I’m never that,” Gren said. “How about it, Valeria? Ready to do the nasty with our hot hostess?

I let Valeria answer for herself.

“I think you should probably gag me in the future, Abby,” Valeria said at last. “Who knows what I might ask for if allowed to speak freely?”

“Well, someone should fuck Abby,” Gren said. “Don’t say I wasn’t willing to share. Do you mind if we do it while you’re tied up?”

Valeria tried to look aghast, but what she said was, “Oh dear. And I’m tied up and can’t do anything about it. Oh my.”

So Gren and I made love with an audience, and then Gren watched as I untied Valeria. I couldn’t help but notice the juices all over Valeria’s thighs afterward.

She stood up, and turned her face toward mine. “Goodnight kiss?” she asked.

I wrapped my arms around her lovely naked body, and we kissed. I was conscious of the way her chest pressed against mine, and the feel of her soft skin and hard muscles. The kiss grew more intense as our lips parted, and she had this cute way of nibbling on my lip. “Thank you for tying me up, Abby,” she murmured.

“Do I always get a kiss like this for tying you up?”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes. I –”

The door creaked open, and Kathy and Talos walked in.

“Oops, are we interrupting?” Kathy asked.

“Valeria!” Talos yelled. “You’re naked.”

Valeria grabbed her clothes from the floor and ran to the other side of the stairs, which provided a little privacy.

“They were just kissing,” Gren said. “Still a voluptuous virgin, despite wanton wetness. Also, I’m naked too, thank you for noticing. That reminds me, Abby. I found this site, Only Fans, where you get some kind of currency and apparently they like to see women with tantalizing tits? But it wouldn’t let me sign up because I didn’t have identification proving I’m over eighteen. I’m over thirty!”

“You don’t look it,” Kathy said.

“Well, I’m not sure,” Gren said. “It’s not like I’ve kept track.”

“The blue skin and all would make for a niche audience, but I’m sure that niche would be enthusiastic,” Kathy said. “Abby, I was thinking I’d take tomorrow off work. And I’d love to see the troll village, if you can spare someone to take me there.”

Of course she wanted to see the troll village. She’d want to see all the things. “Alright. Gren, you may not have an Only Fans. I can’t do anything about the ID thing.”

“I looked it up, people make fake ones,” Gren said. “Please?”

“We could get in big trouble. No. Would you take Kathy to the village tomorrow?”

“Not if I can’t have an Only Fans,” Gren said, pouting.

Valeria re-emerged. “Talos could take her, right?”

“Sure, I guess that works,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Talos said.

“Well, I’m going along, then,” Gren said. “It’ll be the three of us.”

I wondered at Gren’s quick turnaround. Was she thinking that Talos and Kathy needed a minder? Surely not a chaperone, Gren wouldn’t think that way, but someone to keep them out of trouble with the trolls? Or was she just trying to arrange for Valeria and I to be alone for a day?

“Okay,” I said.

Friday after the others left I took Valeria to the sword and knife shop, to see if there was anything she’d regard as an upgrade. It was the longest drive we’d taken, and Valeria clutched the oh god handle the entire way.

“You don’t like cars, do you?”

“Well, I like the bit where the door is closed and I can’t get out.”

Right.

She preferred her own sword to the ones in the shop. She was used to the weighting, and thought Talos would feel the same. But she helped me pick out a knife for Gren and then pointed to some others for her and Talos. She also suggested a sword for Kathy; a replica Roman gladius, much shorter than my katana. Valeria said it would be easier to learn to use well. The same probably went for me, but I liked the aesthetics of what I had.

“How is it that you keep handing people the same little rectangle, and they give it back each time, but you get to walk away with so many goods?” Valeria asked.

I tried to explain the way computers kept track of money in banks, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to her, so I pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and said that rather than carrying it around personally, the bank kept track of how many I had and stored it for me.

“And the paper is worth something because it has this nice picture of this man on it?”

“Well, it’s worth something because people say it is.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Well, it used to be that you could exchange the piece of paper for a certain amount of silver, or gold.”

“Used to be?”

I shrugged. “Trust me, it works.” I think the discussion made me more uneasy than it made her, but as long as people kept giving me goods because I pushed a piece of plastic at them, I was going to roll with it.

We also went to another store to buy folding partitions for the crypt, so that the beds could be out of sight of each other, and to make a little area near the dressers for people to change their clothes in some privacy.

All the while, I was debating how to talk to Valeria about whatever was going on between the two of us. She didn’t ask anyone else to tie her up. That kiss had been lovely, and of course I wanted more. Should I push, because it seemed obvious Valeria wanted things she had a hard time asking for? I didn’t like the idea of being pushy. But I didn’t want to say nothing, either, when we could have a good adult conversation about it.

I was just using the screen to change into my black dress when someone banged on the door, then rattled it. I’d bolted it, since we weren’t expecting anyone back for a while. A look on the security screen showed Talos, looking frantic, and he appeared to be alone.

Valeria pulled the bolts, and I unlocked the door.

Talos had a cut over his eye, but it didn’t look too serious. He was out of breath.

“What is it?” I asked. “Where’s Kathy?”

“She’s been kidnapped!”

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