The Necromancer (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 3) by Katerina Martinez Read Free Book Online Page A

familiar,” I said. I could barely recall the dream I had, though I probably had it written down somewhere. What I did recall, though, was the story I had written. In it, I was powerless to fight the darkness, but I tried anyway. Also, I did own a red cloak. I hadn’t used it in a while, but it was there, in my attic, hanging on a rack.
    “Indeed,” Collette said. “I could not believe I would ever do battle with another witch. I would never dream of being someone’s nemesis. And yet, we were enemies. Until I learned what ze dreams meant.”
    “What did the dreams mean?” I asked.
    “I was being told zat I would need your ‘elp.”
    “It sounds to me like we were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Why would we suddenly help each other?”
    “Because it was not me you were fighting.”
    A gust of wind shrieked through the cracks in the building. The front door swung open and a barrage of dead leaves flew in. I snapped upright and with a wave of my hand willed for the door to close—and it did. The leaves settled, the fire continued to crackle, and Collette was left stunned.
    “Zis is why I need your ‘elp,” she said, “Your sorceress magic is powerful, raw, and charged.”
    Sorceress? “I guess. But I’m new to all this still.” A few months as a True Witch didn’t count for much. I knew that.
    Collette took a deep breath and readjusted a strand of loose dark hair. “Do you know much about the realm beyond that which we see with our own eyes?”
    “The Nether?” I asked.
    “The Nether iz not truly a place. It iz a state of being for beings without a body. No. I speak of places. Realms which can be visited by those who know how to open ze doors.”
    “What exactly are we talking about here?”
    “I am talking about a place of pure darkness, where ze restless souls of the dead dwell. Waiting for their salvation. I am talking about ze Underworld.”
    “As in the Greek Underworld?”
    “Precisely.”
    “I know what I’ve learned from books. Almost every religion known to man has a story to tell about the Underworld; a realm of the dead.”
    “What if I told you zat some of them were true?”
    I narrowed my eyes. “The past months since my transition from human to witch have taught me that nothing’s impossible, but I’ve never come across the real Underworld before.”
    “It iz not a place one simply stumbles upon. There are gates and doorways, some natural, some man-made. When I became a witch a gate to ze Underworld opened before me and swallowed me whole.”
    My fingers were starting to go cold. I wondered if the fire was out but it was still softly cracking in the corner of the room, so I rubbed my hands together. “And you survived?”
    “I wandered the halls of the dead for days without food and subsisting only on whatever water I could find in ze cavernous underground, but ze Underworld changed me. I became infused with its power and emerged from a gate of my own creation, alive—yet changed.”
    “Changed? How?”
    “I brought something back with me. A shadow, coiled around my âme—my soul. It was powerful. It knew many secrets and lent me its power, but it was greedy. Treacherous. And on the night of ze new moon it ripped itself from my body, took a piece of my soul, and left me to die.”
    Collette, I noticed, spoke with her hands and was a theatrical person at heart. Her facial expressions were flawless and she spoke with such passion, I was hooked. It was like watching a movie. I had to remind myself that it was real.
    “So… now what?” I asked.
    “I am dying.”
    The cold came again, but this time it went for my stomach and sat there like a block of ice. “Dying?”
    Collette nodded. Her eyes started to glisten. “My shadow has been following me, ruining my sleep and stealing my essence. I grow weaker by the day. I cannot control my powers and I—”
    “Is that why everything’s… dying?”
    “Yes,” Collette said, “Ze bird, I was able to summon it but I cannot