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Chapter One

Axton

“Did you do that?”

I glance over at my assistant, Ricky, who is pointing at the dead body in my front yard.

“Did I…” I wave at the body. “Did I kill them and decide, ‘Oh, you know the best place to toss a dead body would be in my front yard’?”

He’s scrutinizing me like he can’t tell if I’m using sarcasm. “Yes?”

“Of course I didn’t kill them!”

“What about Hades, did he do it?”

I look over at the miniature horse who is currently sniffing the dead body. When every witch hits sixteen, they’re blessed with a familiar. My mother has a pretty typical black cat who is nice but nothing fancy, while my father has an extremely rare hound. When both of my siblings also summoned hounds on their birthdays, I never would have guessed that on my sixteenth birthday, I would summon a gray and white miniature horse.

Not even a regular horse that I could ride.

No.

A miniature horse.

A miniature horse who is currently pawing at the dead guy.

“Knock it off, leave the body alone before you contaminate the crime scene!”

Hades, who I’d given the name to in a foolish attempt to make him seem less embarrassing when I was a fragile sixteen-year-old boy, glances over at me. With a sassy head flick, he tosses his thick white mane before trotting off with a squeal.

“Someone clearly wants you dead,” Ricky says. “We had the death threat earlier in the week and now this.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You remember that seer who predicted the death of thousands at the hand of that elven necromancer?” he asks.

“Hmm… yeah.” Sometimes there are so many seers seeing nonsense that I tend not to believe things until I see them with my own two eyes. Although, in this case, the seer was Danielle, a very talented woman who hasn’t been proven wrong yet.

“What if you ask the necromancer to bring the guy back to life?”

“You think I should ask the necromancer who is going to be responsible for thousands of deaths to come over to my house and revive the dead guy in my front yard?”

Ricky shrugs. “I mean, you could take the body over there, but it might be a bit weird to show up with a body in tow.”

This is my first day off in what feels like weeks, and I really don’t have the energy to deal with this. “I’m going back to bed. Wake me when things are fixed.”

“You’re like… the designated hero. You’re supposed to be off saving people and stuff.”

“Sounds dreadful. I think a nap sounds better.” I don’t hate being a hero—it’s something that my family has done for generations—but sometimes I just want a good nap.

“Did you at least call the police?”

“That’s what I was forgetting,” I realize. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Hades, don’t eat the flowers!”

Hades glances at me and because I caught him in his act of evil, he sassily strikes the ground, like he’s daring me to come tell him that to his face. For how little the horse is, he’s sure packed to the brim with sass, but I still love him… sass and all. He tosses his mane again before wandering off to fuck something else up. While people on the outside might not understand our relationship, it’s obvious we both love each other. He just shows it by stomping and squealing at me when he doesn’t get his way.

Just as I turn to walk into my house, I feel a weird surge of magic flare up in front of me. With my hand hovering over the door, I can sense something there, but I can’t quite place it. I get the feeling that if I were to grab the doorknob right now, it would hurt me… could it even kill me?

Was the body a distraction? Or was it simply used to aid the spell that’s been placed on my home?

“Sir?”

“Don’t touch the door. Stay here and make sure no one touches the door; there’s a spell on it. Call in the body too. The door will likely hurt the next person who touches it… where does this damn necromancer live?”

“You know the old castle near the lighthouse? Rumor has it that he lives there. But please be careful. I heard that once people got wind of the seer’s premonition, people started going there in an attempt to stop him. He now enslaves them all as undead,” Ricky says, which is menacing enough.

“Well, if I don’t come home, you know where to find me… being some necromancer’s plaything,” I mutter as I head over to my SUV. I open the back and Hades jumps in. He has to keep his head down, but he fits well enough since I rarely go anywhere without him.

I debate heading to the park and taking a nap with the hope that when I wake up everything’s been fixed for me, but that has worked out in my favor all of one time in the past. And that time was simply because the issue in question died of old age before I arrived.

Coming from a line of witches whose sole purpose is to be the hero every storybook princess wants, I realized from a very young age that finding a princess and saving her was the last thing I wanted to do.

Buuuut I also don’t want to die. So that’s how I end up at the front gate of the large gothic-style castle. It’s quite fitting for a necromancer, and I question if I should have just waited for the medical examiner to help instead of going this route.

Getting out of the SUV, I leave Hades inside, fully feeling like the prestigious evil necromancer would take me less seriously if I had a tiny horse trotting after me spreading sass and mayhem.

I only make it to the gate before an undead looks over at me.

“Yo, my bro,” the man says.

I stare at the dead man and question how much of his brain was missing after he died. “I would like to see the necromancer.”

His happy-go-lucky attitude quickly turns to a scowl. “You’re one of those.”

“One of what?”

“Prepare yourself!” he declares.

“For what?” I ask, unsure what I said or did that instantly made him turn on me.

“Death,” he says before slowly backing away.

With that vague threat, I’m left standing alone at the gate. I wait there for a minute, looking for some way to get in before deciding that if I’m going to get answers, I’m going to do it my way.

Using a simple hand motion, I draw forth the wind and send it flying at the gate. The old rickety thing flings open, likely with more gusto than I should have inflicted on it.

I step inside a moment before cracks begin to form along the ground, spreading out all around me as a hand reaches out, like something out of a horror movie.

“I just want to speak with the necromancer,” I assure the dead as they rise from the cracks. Surely if the necromancer could summon all of them, he could pay attention to what’s happening out here and see that I simply want to talk . How hard is that?

When one of the dead men points his sword at me, I decide that it must be harder than I thought.

And when about fifty of them come charging at me, I realize that this necromancer is out to make my life even harder. But as I fight my way to the front door, absolutely none of it prepares me for the man sitting just inside.

The man who is destined to kill thousands. The man coated in darkness who could raise hundreds of dead with a single spell.

The man with his fluffy white hair, big eyes, and pink clothes…

Hold on… what?