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

restaurant. “Yeah,” he said, “Sheriff doesn’t know anything about it. He’s just calling up animal control now.”
    “Alright, thanks,” I said, without much thought. I had begun walking toward the crossing. Joe had tried to say something else to me, or maybe at me, but I had already crossed the road.
    Why I hadn’t paid attention on the way here? Were there dead birds on Apricot? I didn’t think so. I would have noticed. Wouldn’t I? There were so many there last night. But I also hadn’t checked the news out to see if it had been reported. I needed to start paying more attention.
    Then I saw it.
    The bird was tiny, no larger than the size of my hand, and completely stiff with rigor mortis. I stopped, knelt by it, and inspected its tiny body. Its plumes were a glossy dark blue and it had a white underside that was streaked with the same shiny blue. Its feathers seemed to shimmer depending on how you looked at it and its bill was so tiny and pointed I could have cried. The bird was beautiful, but it was also dead. And in death the colors on its body seemed somehow muted. The shimmer was fading fast and the white of its chest was turning into an ashen gray.
    The bird didn’t seem damaged or injured. It hadn’t flown into a wall or a lamp-post. It had just dropped from the sky, dead. So I picked it up and cupped it between my hands before continuing along the sidewalk toward the bookstore. I couldn’t see the sheriff’s car anywhere—maybe he had already left—but there were dead birds alright. Swallows, mostly, but many of them, scattered all over the sidewalk and the street. On top of cars and bins. It was like they had been shot out of a leaf blower in no particular order.
    It was ghoulish.
    I opened the bookstore, searched inside for an empty box—of which there were plenty in the back room—and went out into the street again to collect as many birds as I could. My heart broke for the little things. I hadn’t picked any of them up last night and I had no idea where they were now. For all I knew they had been tossed into a fire.
    These, however, I wanted to bury properly. In my garden. That was the right thing to do. It was the wiccan thing to do. From nature, to nature. So after I had picked enough of them up I took the box into the back room, stuffed the top with spare polystyrene foam and bubble paper, and sealed the whole thing up with duct tape. The back room was cold and dark. They would be fine in there until closing.
    But there wasn’t a box big enough, or duct tape strong enough, to contain my curiosity.
    I walked outside again and took a deep breath. The air was cold, but warming. The sky had gone from pale blue to sunny gold, and the breeze was gorgeous. Though, once more, something didn’t quite smell right. The bitterness came back again and bit me like it did last night, but it was heavy this time.
    Thick and cold. Like the clamor of death.
    With my eyes closed and my back against the closed door to the bookstore, I let my ethereal senses spill out of me and into my surroundings. The sounds of passing cars were muted now, as were the hushed whispers of passersby talking about the strange dead bird phenomenon and snapping shots with their phones.
    And above all the hushed noise, I could hear swallows chirping. In my mind’s eye I could see them flying around. Phantom lights in the shape of birds, darting out from the tops of buildings and circling back in again in a crazy dance only they understood. They were ghosts, of course. The echo of a thing that was once there and now wasn’t. The swallows still flew and sang in the Nether and that, at least, was comforting.
    But then the swallow song hit a sharp note, and they stopped singing. It was as if a cello had been plucked the wrong way, or a violin’s bow had skidded across the strings too hard. I winced from the noise and looked up to find them, but they were gone. Every last one of their lights, extinguished. Their crazy dance