My eyes narrowed. “Why should I care?”

“You always said my poor creatures were in a shocking state before you fixed them,” he reminded me. “Well, who do you suppose created them in the first place? And who wants to take them back now that they’re mended—now that he can see a use for them after all?”

Oh, no. No, no, no.

In the distance, the minion who’d visited me earlier was shuffling happily back toward the castle, a bit of mouse tail still dangling from her mouth. She gave me a happy green wave when she saw me.

I would have waved back, but my fists were clenched too tightly. “You can’t give them back,” I told him. “Not now. They were in pain, the way they’d been assembled. It wasn’t just sloppy workmanship. It was cruel.”

“Which was why I insisted on taking them off him when I could have easily raised my own instead.” For once, Leander’s face was free of any lurking humor; there was a hard look in his dark eyes, and it wasn’t directed at me. “I would very much like not to give in to his demands to have them back now. But there is a certain protocol to be followed in these situations—and if I’m going to have to fight a necromantic duel surrounded by an audience of our peers, I want my only ally at my back. Necromancers, I’m afraid, don’t always play fair.”

I closed my eyes for a moment of extreme anguish.

“Mouse, mouse, mouuuuse…” caroled the minion in the distance.

My eyes opened as my shoulders slumped. “Your duel really has to be fought at a ball?”

“That’s necromancers for you,” Leander sighed. “Terrible show-offs, most of them.” He brushed a speck off his pristine white shirt with one long, fastidious finger.

“Quite,” I agreed, meaningfully.

It wasn’t worth staying to point out the irony. That ball would take place on the night of the full moon, less than a week from tonight…which meant I’d have to hurry back to my workshop now to tackle my most intimidating design challenge in a very long time.

The problem with being a pariah to the local townsfolk was that dressmaking shops were out of the question. I’d already had to arrange for absurdly expensive delivery from a far-off, unsuspecting farm when it came to food and the other necessities of life, and the scowl of the deliveryman who brought them deepened with each new item that I added to our orders. Fancy silks or satins would never have arrived in time even if he’d agreed to transport such frivolities.

Luckily, I did have plenty of a different kind of material, and it was one that I knew all the way down to my bones…which I did not plan to surrender to any necromancers tonight.