“I’m not fixing any more of your creatures for free,” I warned him as I hesitated on the threshold. “You can’t trick me again.”

“I did try to organize proper payment.” He sighed wistfully. “If only someone had been kind enough to accept my social invitation…”

I let out a long-suffering sigh of my own. He and Dad were going to get on just fine, I could tell.

Still: “I don’t socialize,” I informed him.

“Neither do I, ordinarily. Won’t it be fascinating for us both to try?” He raised one jet-black eyebrow, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Unless, that is…you’re too frightened?”

My shoulders snapped perfectly straight. As my mech-squitoes swarmed furiously around me, I bared my teeth up at him in a ferocious smile. “Of course,” I said sweetly, “I’d be delighted to be neighborly.”

Bad neighbors had tried to kill me before, so I knew perfectly well how to deal with them. As my new neighbor’s low laughter wrapped around me from above, inciting a whole host of aggravating new sensations, I realized that dealing with my first good neighbor might be an even bigger challenge.

Still… As I recalled the wicked gleam in the necromancer’s eyes, my lips curved into a secret smirk of my own.

This time, I wasn’t missing any pieces of his puzzle…and for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to hold back a single jot of my own power. No more hiding behind window boxes.

Head held high, I stepped into the necromancer’s black castle, my own unnatural magical creatures buzzing around me.

Challenge most definitely accepted.

Deadly Courtesies

It was well past eleven o’clock at night and I was four cups of tea into a promising new invention when Dad called through the door of my workshop, “Mia! There’s an undead creature here for you.”

Groaning, I set down my best sketching pencil and my chipped old teacup and hunted deep inside my soul for patience.

Unfortunately, I’d run out weeks ago. I’d always known it was a dangerous idea to be neighborly, even with the most respectable of neighbors. But I’d had no idea of just how aggravating an unrespectable neighbor could be…even after we’d formed a reluctant alliance against all those disapproving nearby townsfolk who would have preferred to chase both of us away forever.

I don’t believe in burning down houses just because their inhabitants happen to do things a bit differently from me. But three weeks of acquaintance with Leander Fabian had left me ready to tear my hair out with vexation—and it had nothing to do with his scandalous necromancy.

“I’ve already fixed every one of his minions!” I growled. “They can’t have fallen apart again already.”

Dad didn’t answer. But then, he’d never believed in stepping between me and my own challenges.