“Better check your horoscope,” Wrath warns the next morning before I’m even out of bed. The fact that he’s out of bed is alarming in itself. Normally I have to spray the bed down with holy water and pry him off like velcro.

  I tap the Ark app and scroll down to my sign.

  Ophiuchus - the famished serpent.

  That disturbing feeling of an endless, devouring oblivion is trying to drag you down again! Don’t look for help from that Leo in the crowd - they’re jealous of your power. Want to liven up the party? When those uninvited trolls try to ruin your special day, choreograph a dance number with your best friends. That’ll show ‘em!

  I barely have time to digest the horoscope before Wrath, reading over my shoulder, offers his opinion.

  “Think that means your party is going to be a success?”

  I groan and pull the covers back over my head. Why can’t my stars tell me I’m about to have a great day. It always seems like a thread of doom that I can’t help but pull on until it manifests.

  “None of that,” Wrath says as he helps me out of bed and leads me down into the kitchen. He makes me breakfast - by which I mean he puts the bagel in the toaster for me - but it’s enough.

  “Why did I let them talk me into this?” I moan. He looks entirely unimpressed and busying himself with the makeshift coffee maker.

  I eat my bagel dry, trying to think of reasons I can use to call off the gathering I agreed to. Maybe I can say my Dreadflix account was suspended. Or that the internet at the manor is bad. That’s believable, right?

  “You’re not going to lie your way out of this,” Wrath says, sounding unjustly moral. “Besides, it’s not like you promised to watch Nec-Romance with me first, or anything.”

  I turn to him. “Oh, is that it? You’re feeling jealous? This is Pox all over again!”

  “I’m not jealous!”

  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think when I watch him huff and cross his arms in front of him, though. For a demon he’s remarkably sensitive. “I didn’t even invite any of them over if you remember. Nico did and they all jumped on the bandwagon.”

  Wrath doesn’t immediately respond, but eventually he begins to ease up. “I guess it’s good that you’re making more friends. I’d love more time to spend on my hobbies.”

  “Hobbies? What hobbies?”

  “Oh, thank you for finally asking,” he says primly. “I have many hobbies that you’ve never bothered to ask about.”

  “Because you’ve never demonstrated a single one of them.”

  “Of course I have. Haven’t I scared that Dread-Ex delivery man so much he won’t even get out of his vehicle now?”

  “Terrorizing humans isn’t a hobby, Wrath,” I say, while taking a bite of my dry bagel.

  “Some would say it’s the only hobby.”

  I roll my eyes and finish my breakfast before getting ready for class.

  ***

  Freddie is already in the classroom by the time I arrive, and it looks like he’s been there awhile. Possibly since we left on Tuesday. He flips through a large, leather-bound tome with huge clasps on the side. The book is foreboding in its way, with strangely thick pages crinkled up the sides and a thick layer of dust along the cover. It definitely looks like something pulled out from one of the school library’s special collections. Rumor is there are thousands of books down in the undercroft that have been locked away from underclassmen for being too “radical” and “diabolical.”

  I eye the book one more time, and then Freddie. Interesting. As other kids come into the classroom they bring their conversations in with them, and the room is abuzz with the soft murmurations that have nothing to do with necromancy.

  Especially for the second class of the semester, he looks ragged and squeezed up. He’s not the sort of guy who can grow a full beard, so the facial hair that’s there is patchy and desperate like a teenager with something to prove. His outfit may very well be the same one he was in the other day, but now rumpled and sweat stained. There’s a twitch in one of his eyes and the hand that’s writing down notes trembles when not in motion.

  Being a teacher’s assistant is difficult work, or so I’ve heard, but this is a severe case. Freddie, though, doesn’t appear to notice me for once. It’s clear that he’s annoyed at the ambient conversation going on, as the line between his eyebrows grows thicker and thicker the louder the classroom gets. Finally he looks up, slams the book closed. It whoomps audibly with a crack that sounds like bones breaking.

  Yet he looks surprised when he looks up and sees us before glancing down at his watch. He huffs and looks around the room as if trying to find something to settle on before he finally announces, “For next week, pair up and write a paper on…” There’s a long enough pause that I wonder if he’s trying to think up an assignment, before he continues, “… the historical presence of necromancy in literature and the ways it has been interpreted.”

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  The words come out at a rush and he doesn’t look at anyone while he speaks. A couple of hands go up. Freddie drops back down into his chair and ignores everyone. Eventually, those hands drop down, despite a few confused faces in the room. Once the last hand is down, Freddie reopens his volume and returns to ignoring the rest of the room.

  That’s…weird.

  The sum total of our lesson for the day. He goes back to transcribing notes from the tome in front of him into something that looks more like a doll’s laptop. I’ve heard of eleven and thirteen inch laptops, but this might just be only eight or nine inches. I’m not sure how he manages to get any typing done on it, since even a single finger must be the size of two or three keys, but he seems to manage it somehow.

  Freddie is a tall and spindly sort, but I’ve never seen him with a laptop as small as that before. It makes him look practically gargantuan. And the way he’s acting… this is not the TA bully I’ve grown to loathe over the last three years. What could have happened in the last two days to grind him down so thoroughly. I don’t have time to dwell on it, though.

  Nico and I pair up again and he takes over the seat across the aisle from me. Isaac moved back a row and is now sitting across from Winter. We all start doing research on our phones about necromancy in literature, and carefully whispering information to each other.

  We’re busy on our phones when we hear a shout from the front of the room. Freddie leaps back from the teacher’s desk, and the entire room stares when Freddie’s tiny little laptop suddenly begins smoking, and a surge of flame licks up from the ports on the right side.

  No one moves for a long moment until Nico slides out of his seat, moves for the front of the room, and pours out Freddie’s coffee onto the smoking keyboard. The laptop hisses as a cloud of thick smoke is released, but a moment later it seems like the fire is out.

  Only one person isn’t relieved, though. Freddie gapes at Nico like he’s just committed an unforgivable sin. His voice comes out in raspy outrage. “What did you do?”

  “You’re welcome,” he says easily, then turns around and heads back to his seat.

  “Nice reflexes,” I say as Nico takes his seat. He flashes a grin at me, and I feel my face heat up. Meanwhile, the scent of burning rubber and metal fills the room, and most of the class begins packing up their things.

  “Maybe we should head to the library?” Isaac suggests and we debate for a minute or two before the group agrees.

  The Hollow Hills University Library is a giant gargoyle of a building on the south side of campus. It has enormous windows and a gaping maw of an entrance, with doors large enough to allow even the world’s tallest humans to clear it easily.

  Inside are bookshelves that stretch nearly ten feet tall, each row claustrophobically close to the next and diverting in different directions, creating a maze of knowledge. We head for the fourth floor, where there are study carrels and open seating areas for group projects just like ours.

  Then there are the undercroft floors. Rumor says that the building is eight stories: four above ground, and another four below. Most students never venture down that far. When we need reference materials that aren’t available in the normal stacks, they can be requested.

  “I heard that students who took Necro Pop and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis last semester reported him for some weird things,” Isaac confides, once we’re spread out at a four-person table.

  “You mean the stalking thing?” Winter asks, checking her phone. “That’s every semester.Everyone knows Freddie is a creep, but they can never prove it.There are cameras all over campus and he’s never filmed doing anything questionable. It’s just his behavior.”

  Stalking thing? I share a look with Nico. “Have you guys ever had class with him before? Freddie?” Winter and Isaac both shake their heads, and it’s Nico’s first semester at HHU so I don’t even look towards him.

  Weird.

  “I have a class with him every semester.” Though it sounds like I’m lucky I didn’t have to take that finance class about early 2000s pop music.

  “Maybe he’s obsessed with you?” Isaac asks, pulling some chocolate candies out of his bag. He takes a few, then offers the bag around to each of us before setting it on the table in the middle.

  “That’s what—” Wrath said, I almost finish, but cut myself off in time.“That’s what some of my friends have said before, too.”

  Winter taps a black fingernail against her lips. “I always heard he was into girls. It’s possible, though.” Her eyes flick up and down in my direction. “You’re pretty enough.”

  Isaac laughs and Nico scowls but neither of them say anything, so I clear my throat and try to change the subject. “We’re supposed to write about necromancy in literature. I guess Frankenstein is the main example, right?”

  “Is it?” Isaac cocks his head to one side. “Necromancy is bringing someone back from death, but Frankenstein’s monster is a bunch of bodies sewn together and then animated. He’s not the same person he was before. Or any of the people. He’s someone new.”

  “Besides, isn’t this class supposed to be about zombies? Recycling and the Living Dead. Necromancy is technically different.” She reads off of her phone. ‘Necromancy is a form of black magic where the caster entreats the dead to tell the future.’ Another discipline entirely.”

  “So it’s like people praying to the Twenty-Seven Club?” The list of musicians and artists who died when they were only twenty-seven has only grown over the last fifty years.

  “You mean all the dead musicians?” Isaac hmms and nods. “Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Basquiat, and Amy Winehouse? Supposedly you can ask them for tips and inspiration, but if they speak to you, then you’ll die when you’re twenty-seven.”

  “That’s not literature, though,” Nico points out. “Literature would be like… the witches telling the future to Macbeth.”

  “Maybe he meant reanimation and not necromancy,” I offer as an option. There were significantly more books about bringing creatures back to life, or animating versions of them, than there were about Winter’s definition of necromancy. Or at least more famous examples.

  “Do you want to be the one to ask him to clarify?” Winter asks skeptically. The table immediately goes quiet. None of us want to talk to Freddie if we don’t have to.

  One of the library’s pages swings by with a thick leather-bound volume that he drops down onto the table in front of us. The boy looks vaguely familiar - he’s shorter but thick and stout. I think I’ve seen him with other wrestlers in the student union. He definitely looks like he’s got some muscle strength.

  “Thanks, Sev,” Nico says, bumping fists with him.

  “No problem. See you around.” Sev’s got a deep voice and a hint of an accent, and there’s something about the way he walks. He’s got a wrestler’s shuffle where his head and shoulders stay locked in place, moving before any other part of him.

  At my side, Isaac has gone completely still, even his eyes locked in place in front of him. Winter eyes him curiously, but then passes a beaming smile up at Sev, who doesn’t seem to notice.

  How has Nico made friends this quickly? I’ve been at HHU for years and this is the first time I’ve had a conversation with anyone other than Isaac intentionally.

  Nico notices me staring and his eyebrows rise up. “What?”

  I shake my head, unwilling to admit that I’m friendless.

  “That’s Severn Reilly,” Isaac says in a hushed voice. “Do you think he knows we’re going to be married someday?”

  Winter openly snorts. “You’d have to talk to him first. You practically froze.”

  “I’m playing the long game,” he replies.

  “Won’t help if it takes so long he dies first,” Winter says. The lights hum as though they’re listening.

  Too bad we didn’t know just how right she is.