Free The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman

escorts. He looooves the shit out of Vegas. And Cirque du Soleil. I think he saw Ka seven times. And Avenue Q. If someone was going to make him sleep with the fishes, they would have done it back in the day.
    Andrew blinks at the screen, rubs his chin.
“Sleep with the fishes”? Was that intentional? Does she know about Nadia?
    â€”Jesus, old man, you hang out with a rusalka? I didn’t know there were any of those in the west. WTF, he comes all the way to America to get drowned by a Russian mermaid?
    â€”Are you actually reading my thoughts over the Internet? And is this conversation veiled?
    â€”Facebook knows more about you than I do. And computers are my specialty. You’d be amazed ;)
    So saying, Radha appears in a box on the screen (half Iranian on her father’s side but she says Persian—pale skin, dark hair, she
is
a honey), showing her hands. Text nonetheless continues to scroll.
    â€”And I don’t have unveiled conversations, except on BS social media as a front. If I weren’t veiling this, I’d Skype you, because you type like a trained seal using his nose. I’m the go-to girl for like 40 of our sort . . . you think I’m going to let homeland security read this stuff? Try to print this conversation, I dare you.
    Andrew likes dares. He prints. The printer slowly whines out not text, but a photograph. Him on the toilet, pants around ankles, long hair down, reading a copy of
Timber Home Living
, his favorite magazine. The picture is from this morning, from the angle of the polished brass mirror over the sink. A corner of his cell phone winks on the toilet’s tank, just behind him, indicating the electronic fingerhold she used to get in. Normally brass mirrors are safe, can’t be used as gates like glass ones, but Radha is so good with electricity and currents that she was able to press the conductive metal into her service.
    â€”You scare me.
    â€”Thanks. So, look, you should know I picked up some magic around him. Strong. Not coming from him, but someone near him, maybe family. Maybe the niece. Some Internet chatter about a niece coming over to help look for him, but nothing specific. I think someone’s veiling on that end.
    â€”Someone stronger than you?
    Radha crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow.
    â€”I didn’t say that.
    When she uncrosses her arms, she has six arms, Shiva-style, the hands of which she stacks on her hips defiantly, her six elbows fanned behind her, making a sort of Persian seraph of her.
    â€”I dare you to get me info on the niece.
    â€”Not fair.
    â€”I double dog dare you.
    â€”What do I get?
    â€”What do you want?
    â€”Madeline Kahn.
    â€”Ok. I’ll open a trapdoor for five minutes. You know how it works, right?
    â€”Yeah, you send me a DVD of a movie she’s in, and I get five minutes to get her to talk to me. Only she doesn’t have to. She could tell me to go fuck myself and leave her alone.
    â€”Or she could freak out. No telling with the dead. Most likely she’ll use your time asking you about friends and family. You should probably Google the shit out of everybody she knew. And it’s going to be VHS. I haven’t figured out how to do it on DVD yet.
    â€”Better catch up, old man. Even DVDs are old-school now. What are you going to do when it’s all computer streaming? Which it is.
    â€”I guess you’ll take over.
    â€”I can’t open trapdoors. I tried. Plenty.
    â€”Then I guess you’ll have to go to a pawnshop and get a VCR.
    â€”For Madeline? Ok. And send History of the World. I want to talk to her in that Roman get-up. “YES! No,no,no,no,no,no, YES!”
    â€”Are you sure you don’t have a family member or friend you’d rather talk to?
    â€”I’m young. All of my friends are alive. Only dead family were crabby old grayhairs. One nice Grandma on Brick Lane in London just died, but I’d rather talk to Madeline Kahn.