Page 56 of The Rut in the Road

I sighed. “I’ll move him,” I said, taking a step toward Victor’s box.

“You don’t have to do that,” Raj said, one hand snagging my arm. “He’s… fine.”

I gave him a look that I intended to communicate that I didn’t believe him.

His lips twitched. “It’s weird,” he admitted. “And a little creepy.” He glanced over at Victor, who was chewing on the side of the box. “Although he is also weirdly cute… in a creepy way.”

The sound of teeth on cardboard was oddly loud in the small space.

“Is he… in pain?” Raj asked, then.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “He doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of upset.”

“What would you do if he did?” he asked, still watching Victor.

“Release him back into death,” I replied, my voice quiet because I found myself feeling oddly protective of the tiny undead rodent.

“You don’t want to do that?” Raj asked, turning his attention from Victor to me.

I grimaced. “I—I feel responsible for him, I suppose,” I admitted. “It’s my fault he’s… reanimated, so now I have to take care of him. Make sure he’s not unhappy.”

“How do you tell if a rat is unhappy?” Raj asked. He looked back over at Victor. “And do living rats and undead rats react the same way to unhappiness?” He grimaced. “Is he even… the same rat he was when he was alive?”

I turned to look at him. “How would I know?” I asked him.

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “You’re the necromancer,” he replied, once more studying Victor. “Are people the same if you resurrect them?”

I swallowed. “No, they aren’t,” I answered him. “At least according to both Mason and Archie. They’re… more complicated.” I didn’t correct his assumption that I was a necromancer. I still didn’t fully understand what Mason had been saying about me actually being a life-caster rather than a death witch. After all, the first magic I’d ever done had been to kill my uncle. One would assume—as I had—that meant I was a death witch.

“What does that mean?” he asked. “‘More complicated’?”

“I’m honestly not sure,” I admitted. “But they were both pretty adamant that I shouldn’t do it, especially not until I figure out what I actually did.”

“But resurrecting rats is okay?”

“I didn’tmeanto resurrect Victor,” I told him, feeling my cheeks flush. “I just… feel bad about making him dead-dead again, since he seems pretty content being undead.”

Raj drew in another long breath. “I—feel like this requires more research into the mental state of the resurrected,” he said. “Because I’d like to know whattheythink about it.”

“I don’t think a rat can tell us that,” I said softly, although it was a good question. “But Mason thinks I might not be a death witch.”

“Doesn’t raising the dead make you a necromancer?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. Necromancers are warlocks. It’s a different kind of magic. I’m a witch.” I grimaced. “Just… apparently not a death witch.”

“You raised a rat from the dead,” Raj said, sounding surprised. “How are you not a death witch?”

I toyed with the hem on my shirt. “He thinks I might be a life-caster,” I explained. “But that because of… everything, I had to learn the other side of it, death magic, in order to survive.”

Raj appeared to think about that. “How would we know?” he asked.

“Mason is going to work on that,” I replied.

Raj nodded. “Okay,” he said. His stomach growled. Then he looked back down at Victor and scrunched up his nose. “Can we go out for dinner?” he asked.

I sighed,pushing fried rice around on my plate with a fork. Part of me wanted to have the manual dexterity to eat with chopsticks—like Raj could—but I felt like the frustration of failure while hungry probably wasn’t something I needed to add to my life at that particular moment. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told Raj, who had just brought up the impending trial at which we would both be expected to testify.

He echoed my sigh, although instead of using his fork, Raj used his long fingers to grasp a piece of shrimp with the longbamboo sticks, making it look easy. “You’re not ever going to want to talk about it,” he replied, his voice soft. “But we need to.”