The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman Page A

circumnavigating the stone birdbath, jogging it past the flagpole, but Salvador has been mowing Andrew’s yard for the last few years, and Andrew’s feet aren’t practiced at taking the turns. He leaves hand-sized patches of taller grass and then has to double back for them; he looks at the shorn front half of the yard and it strikes him funny because it looks just a bit like Karl’s squared-off old-man crew cut.
    Karl watches him from the porch for a second.
    Wants to shout “Need anything?” at his daughter’s strange AA friend, but knows he’s on the wagon like Anneke and all Karl has that isn’t beer is cheap Pick & Save orange juice just this side of brown or tap water just this side of clear, water that tastes like . . . what the hell does the water here taste like?
    Not water.
    Goddamn Niagara Mohawk anyway.
    Karl Zautke hasn’t been feeling well lately, his lymph glands swollen up like acorns, his breath short. Not bad enough to go to the hospital, but bad enough that Anneke is coming every other day now instead of twice a week.
    She does his dishes, cooks two days’ worth of food for him, does his sour laundry.
    But does he even try to take care of his flagging health?
    Karl drinks his Pabst Blue Ribbon, enjoying the yeasty, cold, carbonated bite on his tongue. It’s a good, simple beer for when you’re thirsty, not one of these perfumey, pumpernickel microbrews queered up by guys with sideburns.
    Anneke has her big suede work gloves on, balanced on an aluminum ladder that has seen better days, shearing branches from the maple tree that had started flirting with the shingles on the west side of the house. She totters just a little, rights herself. Karl sees this, puts down his beer, comes over, and holds the ladder.
    â€œDaddy,” she shouts, just loud enough to get over the mower’s chop. She points her gloved finger at the front door, meaning he should retake his place on his sagging chair, but Karl holds the ladder stubbornly, breathing hard through his nose and smiling at her. She doesn’t like how red his face is.
    It does feel steadier.
    If Karl Ernest Zautke is anything, it’s solid.
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    They sit on the porch, the three of them, Karl mopping his head from time to time with a kitchen towel. Karl Zautke is just a little too big for the wicker chair beneath him; Andrew has been watching it collapse in slow motion for a year and a half. Anneke would get him a new one except that she knows Karl finds half-collapsed things comfortable.
    Dad.
    My same Dad but old now.
    Sick.
    Doesn’t drink like he’s sick.
    Dad’s on his third beer, and Anneke has told herself she’ll just pluck from his hand the next one he dares to open in front of her.
    Karl senses he’s on the last beer he can get away with and knows better than to test her. Settles into his buckling throne.
    Andrew feels mismatched sitting on his folding chair, sharing the porch with the two outsized Teutons, like a visitor from a fine-boned, nut-brown little tribe that mows the conqueror’s lawns and fetches them PBR against their doctors’ orders.
    Anneke and he can’t share their vulgar wiseasseries in front of Karl, so Andrew confines himself to the practical.
    Karl doesn’t feel comfortable talking about his illness or the day-to-day problems it creates in front of Andrew. Anneke enjoys having her favorite men together, and if they don’t know how to connect, that’s their problem.
    â€œCar running okay?” Andrew asks.
    Karl drives a Jeep Cherokee Andrew has bewitched to keep from breaking down, and has further bewitched so it will come to a safe stop if the driver passes out. Andrew has a real gift for cars, knows how to improvise automotive magic, massage it into their axles and chassis, synthesize it into their gears and skins. He knows very well the Jeep is running smoothly, but he never knows