Free Necromancer: A Novella by Lish McBride Page A

laughed but didn’t answer.
    I’d always been able to make Ash laugh. That seems like a simple thing to take joy from, but for me it was rare. Other kids made it look so easy. Not just laughing, but talking, playing, hanging out. I wasn’t good at it when I was five, and I’m even worse at it now at seventeen. The only time I ever got it right was with Ash. For some reason, she didn’t make me anxious. Didn’t make me feel like any second I was going to trip over my own shoe and embarrass myself forever. Maybe it was because, even then, she had the uncanny ability to not just accept, but glory in her own shortcomings.
    When I first met Ash she’d moved into a place a few houses down, and even though she’d only been there two weeks, she always had someone to play with. I’d lived in that neighborhood for most my life, yet I usually had to be both Batman and the Joker. There never seemed to be anyone around to fill the other parts. I didn’t mind, I was used to it really, but it was always kind of hard to capture myself and beat myself up all while I was doing the Joker’s evil monologues.
    One day I looked up from my new Batmobile toy, and there she was. The sun was behind her, so all I could see were inky pigtails and freckles.
    “What do you got?” she asked.
    “Batmobile,” I said.
    “Well, duh. I meant what one? That one looks different than mine.”
    “Oh.” Even at six I was old enough to know that different was bad. “I don’t know,” I said. “One of the old ones, I guess. My mom found it at a yard sale.”
    “Cool,” she said. “We should build a bat cave.”
    After that, I always had someone to play the Joker. At least, until she died from cancer four years later. I put all my Batman toys in a box after that and put the box under my bed, and that’s where they stayed until she started showing up again a few years ago. Then I began to find Batman under my pillow, Batman in my underwear drawer, and-my own personal favorite-Batman and Joker in compromising positions in the Batmobile. I found that one a little disturbing. Mostly because the last time I’d seen my Batmobile it had been in Ash’s coffin.
    I let my car warm up for a few minutes. I sat huddled in my sweatshirt, hunched over the steering wheel, doing my best to collapse in on myself for warmth. Ash breathed on the windows and drew little stars in the fog. I wished I could ignore the elements like she could, but then I supposed she’d paid the price for her little benefits.
    “Can we go now?” she asked.
    “You’re not working tonight, are you?”
    She raised an eyebrow. “Would it matter if I was?”
    I released the brake and backed out of the driveway.
    Ash, or Death as some probably called her, pushed open the door to the diner, her saddle shoes making clacking noises on the floor, her pigtails bobbing with her excited movements. Okay, Ash wasn’t Death-death, but she was as close to it as I had come. Still, I’ve always wondered if people are surprised when they see her instead of the traditional Death with the scythe. Are they disappointed? Relieved? I looked around at the people in the diner: some travelers, a random trucker, a couple groups of kids in all black, a rowdy group who’d obviously come from a bar, and a handful of couples out for a late meal. Did they know, on some level, that my Catholic-schoolgirl-looking companion was a harbinger of death? Nobody screamed and pointed, so I guess not.
    We pressed ourselves into a booth, the vinyl making a slick sliding noise as we moved to the end. I wasn’t that hungry, so I just got coffee and a piece of lemon meringue pie, even though I felt that, given the circumstances, a meringue was just too cheery. There is something almost optimistic about a slice of lemon meringue pie. I’m not sure why. Is it the bright yellow or the fluffy white topping? But I didn’t trust the cherry pie, and bread pudding just freaks me out because I can’t imagine bread as a part of a