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T hey returned to the ruined chapel. Home, Ambrose supposed he should call it, for now.

He hoped Emery would seal himself away in his room again, giving Ambrose the opportunity to search out an e-reader and begin his reading endeavors, but Emery stoked a fire, poured himself a generous glass of wine, and sank into an armchair instead. Katzica put her head on his knee.

“Sit, would you?” Emery muttered, annoyed. “No need to stand sentinel. It’s some time before my next engagement. Sleep, if you can.”

Ambrose sat in the chair opposite but found it hard to doze. The comfort of the sitting room was an illusory sort. A crackle of tension gave it an anxious air.

“Now might be a good time to tell me more about your circumstances and what I can do to protect you,” Ambrose said.

“That is the purpose of this engagement,” Emery answered. “Easier to show you.”

He said nothing more in the intervening hours, and Ambrose found himself too apprehensive to sleep.

The clock over the mantel read quarter to three in the morning by the time Emery rose from his chair.

He wordlessly went to his chambers and emerged again in a black cloak with the hood drawn up, obscuring his face in shadow. He had a magpie feather in hand.

“I’m going to cast a spell that will render you silent. Can people still feel you when you do that invisibility trick of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Then be sure not to bump into anybody .”

The telltale magic curled around Ambrose’s throat, though gentler than before. This command had a chaotic element to it; Ambrose could not control other people’s movement around him. The magic only ensured he would try to avoid them. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere you aren’t supposed to follow.”

That much he’d gathered, but he supposed it was too much to hope for a crumb of detail.

Emery swept the feather across Ambrose’s body. The incantation settled uncomfortably over his spell-scorched skin, the witch king’s magic disconcerted by the signature of another. When he moved, his feet made no sound.

“Good,” said Emery. He put his hands into the folds of his robes. Ambrose thought he could feel those long fingers close around the finger bone of his old master. “Follow me.”

He transported them back to Bellgrave’s grounds, on a trail set into a steep bluff.

The path wended like a lightning bolt up the hill, lined with towering headstones twice the height of a man.

Emery led the way past ancient graves, cracked and creeping with ivy, their inscriptions illegible even to those who could read, each like doors set into the hill.

A necropolis. A city of the dead, all their houses quiet and closed.

At the top of the hill, Emery broke away from the path, venturing between headstones, which got progressively larger and more dilapidated. The grass crisped underfoot with autumn’s frost, but only Emery’s steps made a sound.

They came to a grave near the summit, so enormous it seemed less a tomb than a tower, angels carved into columns holding the lintel above the mausoleum door. Candles dimly lit the circle of people gathered there. Among them, Hellebore.

“Where’s your cousin?” she asked.

“Sleeping,” Emery replied. “Like the rest of us should be.”

“Shame. He’d make an interesting initiate.”

The word gave Ambrose a clue. He peered at the faces of the others gathered here.

Many looked like students, most younger than Emery and Hellebore.

One stood out due to the burn scars across his face, though he hung back from the rest. Another, a brown-skinned girl with a coat-hanger build and a cloud of curls framing her face, looked at Emery with mocking contempt.

“Too tired even for our Transcendent Rite, old man?” she said, as if Emery were thirty years her senior and not three. “I’ll make you a cup of tea and a bicky; you’ll be right as rain.”

“The rite isn’t momentous enough to stay awake for. I’d sleep through your funeral if I could,” Emery bit back.

“Optimistic of you to assume you’ll outlive me.”

“I’d normally agree with you,” Emery said, “if you’d been smart enough to listen. Now I expect stupidity will take you before old age catches me.”

Hellebore snorted. “Saoirse will run circles around you.”

The repartee gave the clear impression Ambrose was only hearing half the conversation.

The majority of the people present were—from their expressions—just as clueless.

Saoirse looked pleased by Hellebore’s compliment, but the rest of them shifted and stomped their feet against the cold while casting Katzica sidelong looks.

Even amongst peers, Emery was unsettling.

Distantly, a church bell rang thrice, an eerie dirge in the cold, quiet night.

On the third ring, the doors to the tomb swung open.

Professor Van Moor emerged, dressed in a robe similar to the ones Emery and Hellebore wore, though finer and embroidered at the edges with nightshade and bird bones.

Only his pale face was visible in the dark. He smiled.

“Hail, initiates, old and new. It’s a perfect Hallow’s Eve to welcome you, if a cold one. It’s warmer inside, so we shouldn’t dawdle. I’m sure you’re all eager to get to the important part: your Transcendent Rite.”

The words had the effect of drawing the silence taut. Several initiates, particularly the youngest, stood tall and attentive.

“There’s a bit of obligatory housekeeping before we can proceed.

As you know, the arts and skills for which you’ve shown unique talent come with an unfortunate caveat.

Most witches in our world misunderstand them.

Though all magic can pose a danger, the deathly arts are maligned by those who fear anything that reminds them of their own mortality.

So, to avoid their small-minded derision, we operate in secrecy. ”

He folded his hands. When he opened them again, the small skull of a bird lay in his open palm amongst sprigs of rosemary.

“To keep ourselves safe, all new initiates must make a pact of secrecy. Take a sprig and hold the skull, then repeat these words. I swear to tell no soul, living or dead, of the events which transpire within and without these walls that pertain to our esteemed guild. I promise to take its secrets to my grave and keep them long beyond it. Not even the veil could part me from this pact. On this I swear my life. ”

The words skated like spider legs over Ambrose’s skin.

That was no frivolous thing to ask of new initiates.

He was temporarily relieved to see many of them looked nervous and hesitant, but then Van Moor, looking sympathetic, said, “I know it’s a lot to remember, so you can repeat the words after me,” and they were all visibly relieved.

That alarmed Ambrose all the more. What powers did this professor wield, to lure these students into trusting him so thoroughly they would make a pact that killed them if broken?

More intriguing was the notion Emery must have made this same pact when he’d first joined. He didn’t seem the trusting sort. Had he not broken it by bringing Ambrose here? The wording of the pact seemed clear. He should have dropped dead by now.

Yet, he hadn’t. Ambrose puzzled over it. Though not a witch himself, his time at his king’s side had taught him about spellcraft. Such pacts had to be specific, the wording ironclad. As each student stepped toward the professor and took a sprig of rosemary, they repeated the words.

“I swear to tell no soul, living or dead…” said the first student.

Ambrose had been alive, died, and brought back. Perhaps the spell considered him neither? On that convenient technicality, he must fall outside the pact’s bonds.

Reluctantly, he adjusted his view of Emery. He didn’t trust him. He wasn’t even sure he liked him. But he was powerful enough to achieve a true resurrection and clever enough to exploit a loophole in this pact.

Ambrose would have to be cleverer still to escape him.

The witch king’s voice once again touched his mind with gentle affection. Your sweet nature could prove boon or bane. If he is so heartless as to be unendeared, then you must meet his brutality with your own.

Ambrose leaned into the voice as if he could warm himself by it against the frosty night. The magic twisted in his stomach. He didn’t want to use it, but if he had to …

He loved the witch king more than he hated killing.

The last student to step forward and take a rosemary sprig was Saoirse. She held it in hand and cast a defiant look over her shoulder at Emery. He met her eyes, but his expression was blank.

Saoirse said, “I know the words. I don’t need you to repeat them.”

Professor Van Moor gave an approving nod.

She recited the pact verbatim, missing not a syllable, and the rosemary sprig burst into emerald flames that winked out as fast as they’d come alive.

On the skull of the bird were now etched runic names for every pacted soul.

The professor tucked it into his sleeve and spread his arms once more.

“You all honor me with your trust. In return, I promise to teach you skills and spells our esteemed school could never bear to impart. Welcome to the Necromancers Guild.” His smile shone like silver moonlight on a lake.

Ambrose mistrusted most people, and Van Moor was no exception, but smiling like that, he could see why the students took such a shine to him.

He looked on them warmly and with pride, stoking the fires of their own desires and ambitions.

Each of them felt clever and talented under the focus of that smile.

They’d been selected for this. They were special.

Ambrose recognized it like they were all flickers of his own reflection from a long, long time ago.

“Follow me to your Transcendent Rite,” said Van Moor.

He turned and descended the steps of the tomb, and the students—starting with the youngest—followed.

Emery took up the rear and paused on the threshold for the barest second.

Ambrose spotted a rust-red vial in his hand, produced from within his cloak.

He touched his finger to the stone arch, stroking the ward spell with his magic.

Then the arcane collar tugged Ambrose forward like Emery had pulled his lead.

They descended into the dark.