The road down to the Silveropolis graveyard was as treelined and nondescript as every other. I wish I could say that there was something foreboding about entering its limits, about passing the wrought iron gates, but I’m a vampire. Graveyards were places of comfort to us. Some of us slept in them. Some of us used them for cute selfies. Don’t judge.
“I don’t like this,” I said. “If the Lorica’s in on this too, then it must be something big. Something’s brewing in Silveropolis.”
“Agreed,” Asher said. “And how did Bastion know about the blood moon already?”
Gil grunted. “Say what you will about Sebastion, but he’s not the type to blend in with the locals. One of the Lorica’s Mouths probably briefed him about it.”
“So there’s Lorica mages embedded in town, too?” I sighed, resting my hand in my chin as I stared out the window. “This just went from bad to worse. I really need that stupid Masque.”
The car rolled to a stop, then went still as Gil shut off the engine. “Then we’d better get moving. I don’t know why everyone needs this stupid Masque, but if it makes you happy, Asher and I will help you find the damn thing.”
I got out first, waiting for the boys to get out on the driver’s side, then slinging my arms across their shoulders.
“You guys are my best friends. You know that, right?”
Gil snorted. “I know that you’ll pitch a fit if we don’t help out, that’s for sure.”
Asher shrugged. “I’m curious about the Filigreed Masque, too. It’s not my problem if the vampire courts swoop down on you for failing to find it, but I guess it’s nice to feel like I’m helping. It’s like charity.”
They both grunted when I squeezed them tighter, a hearty hug, but also a gentle reminder that I could splinter their bones into tiny pieces. “My bestest friends. Bosom buddies. Let’s get going.”
There was no gate to jump, no real barrier to entry. The only cemetery in Silveropolis probably didn’t have a grave-robbing problem, and so was freely left open to the visitin
g public. It was a small town. Everyone knew each other. Nobody’s going in to deface your grandma’s headstone because they probably grew up a couple of houses away themselves.
It was quiet, in short, chilly, and perfectly still, apart from the wavering of untended blades of grass in the wind, the streaming of silver clouds across a bright moon. There was something so serene and sacred about cemeteries. Beautiful, even. Picturesque.
I pulled out my phone, turning on the camera. Gil swatted at my hand.
“This is no time to be taking selfies, Sterling. Have some respect for the dead.”
“Hey. I respect them a lot, okay? I like commemorating my visits. Doesn’t mean I don’t think that life is precious. Pssh.”
I took a couple of quick snaps – weathered stone slabs, the gleam of moonlight on a tree’s leaves – then stuffed my phone back in my pocket. I kicked at a pebble on the ground, lingering, letting Asher and Gil walk ahead of me. There weren’t any lies in any of what I’d said. Gil didn’t need to know. Nobody needed to know. I did this for me, to remember. When you’re a thing that lives forever, a parasite that feeds on blood and stolen secrets, you have to remember that everyone around you eventually dies.
My family, they were buried somewhere in a place not unlike the Silveropolis graveyard. A small town, overgrown weeds, forgotten headstones, abandoned memories. Some day, Gil and Asher would be buried somewhere, too. I hated to think of it. I fucking hated it. I bit down hard on the back of my tongue, the taste of my own blood flooding out the sadness, the pain of my own fangs deadening the hurt of imagined loss.
I pulled out my phone, snapping another picture, this time of Asher and Gil walking side by side. Just their backs, just two men walking away from me, preserved in pixels. I could do nothing to stop it. I would always be frozen in time, all while everyone I loved took another step away from me, another step closer to the grave.
The little Gil on my phone screen turned over his shoulder, glaring. “Will you put your fucking phone away?” he hissed, like the dead were about to rise up and confiscate it themselves.
“Fucking fine already,” I muttered, letting my phone fall from my hand into a jacket pocket, replacing it with a pack of cigarettes. I got what I wanted. I got what I needed. Gil didn’t need to know.
It wasn’t hard to find Uriah Everett’s grave. Silveropolis had few enough tourist attractions as it was, and Uriah’s remains probably came the closest in terms of any real historical significance. His tombstone rose twice as high as any other in the graveyard, kept clean and polished, a thick gray obelisk. His name was engraved along the front in somber capital letters, no gold leaf or any other ornamentation to decorate his place of eternal rest.
Asher lowered his head as we approached. I nodded at the obelisk. “What’s up,” I said, not really expecting anyone to answer. Asher threw me an icy glare.
“Sterling, could you not?”
I shrugged. “We have different ways of dealing with the dead. I talk to them like they’re functioning adults, at least, if they died as adults. You have a tendency to coddle them.”
He bristled, lifting his nose in the air. “You say coddle. I say it’s just a show of respect. I play nice with the unliving, and they play just as nicely back.” He knelt in the grass, Uriah’s journal still held close to his chest. Asher closed his eyes, then began to murmur. It wasn’t a prayer, that much I knew.
Asher Mayhew, polite late teen boy and immensely talented necromancer, got to where he was on the arcane power ladder by treating his craft with a slightly different approach. Okay, a wildly different one. The sweetness and charm he reserved for his interactions with the living were very much the same tools he used for manipulating – sorry, for entrancing the dead.
Other necromancers commanded spirits from beyond to do their bidding, bending them to their will. Not Asher. Asher could make a zombie his best friend, then convince the zombie that giving up brains and switching to a vegan diet was his idea to begin with. I’ve been alive for quite a long time, but I’d never met a nice necromancer. Not before Asher. There were so few of them in existence to begin with.
It was part of why we guarded him so closely. Asher was a great guy, but it was also nice to have someone on your team who could raise the dead for some quick backup in a fight. Hell, it was nice to have someone on your team who could conjure up his own entire sports team. I watched Asher as he incanted, wondering if there would be any merits to starting a zombie soccer league.