Page 56 of Professor and the Seer

“Do it. He can’t be allowed to ever return.” She whirled from the wizard as she whispered, “He’ll kill me for what I’ve done.”

“She’s right. I will.” The statement had me turning with startlement.

Reaper stood by my side, unseen by the lady as we both observed the past. A past the blank notebook remembered.

Rather than fear, I felt sorry for him. “You were tossed into another world because she lied to her husband.”

“She didn’t just lie to him. Her summoning was a trap to steal my power,” he growled. “The moment I touched her of my own volition, her perfidy came full circle.”

I thought of the collar that disappeared, a collar he’d put his hands on. Could it be so deviously simple? “You should have killed her the second she summoned you.”

The cloak on his body rippled in agitation. “Don’t think I haven’t regretted my weakness.”

“I can’t believe her husband believed her bullshit story.”

His chuckle emerged rusty and wry. “He suspected it was a lie, but his honor and jealousy demanded satisfaction. For that, he will pay along with her.”

“I hate to break it to you, but they’re most likely dead given this happened centuries ago.”

“She lives. Her theft made her immortal. Her husband lives as well because he was already a god. But I’ve had centuries to figure out how to punish them, and with your aid, that dream will soon become reality.”

“Hold on a second, you better not be thinking you can drag me and my sisters in on your vendetta.”

“You will aid me. It is the whole reason for your existence.”

“Um, we exist because Mom had sex with some rando dude,” I pointed out.

“I speak of your gifts. It took Apate a long time before the right conditions were met and she could pass on a blessing in my name to you and your sisters.”

“Apate as in the goddess of betrayal? Pretty sure she screwed you over again, because we’re not going to be your little revenge killers.” I said it even as I wondered. Mom worshipped Apate. Had she made some kind of deal involving us?

“Who says I need you and your sisters to kill?” Reaper scoffed. “I want that pleasure for myself.”

“Then what do you need me and my siblings for?”

“Finding her.”

Before I could tell him to shove that idea, I snapped out of the memory from the past into the present to find myself standing statue still in front of the archive doorway. The book I held suddenly turned to dust and crumbled to the floor, not that it would have protected me from the crackling cloud headed my way, its shape filling the entrance to the guarded room.

I retreated a step. Then another. I doubted I could outrun whatever came spilling out.

The amorphous mist coalesced into a shape, that of a man with a wide-brimmed hat, wearing an ankle-length coat over a ruffled shirt. I could even see a goatee, but the eyes were what terrified me most. Red pits that bored into me and held me still.

The spooky apparition approached, walking on air, his smoky feet not touching the ground. Just before he reached for me, someone yelled.

“Begone foul spirit!” A young man appeared by my side, hand outflung, white sparkles flying for the specter.

The ghost thing didn’t even recoil when the magic hit. He smiled. A terrible thing that almost made me piss my pants.

And then I did cry out as it reached for the young man who’d come to my rescue. A poor guy who screamed as the smoky arm elongated and grabbed hold and, before my horrified eyes, sucked the life from him.

The deflated body fell to the floor, and the specter, looking more solid than before, turned to me.

I didn’t need to see its grin to know I was going to die next.

17

John