Page 4 of How to Woo the Undead

“Hyacinth? You like that name?” Sebastian’s mask bowed inward then out with his breathing.

“Can I have the same name as a flower?” she asked.

“My dear, you can have any name you want.”

“Then I wish to be named Hyacinth.” Hyacinth nodded to herself, returning her gaze to the mirror.Hyacinth, that’s my name. This is the face of Hyacinth.

Chapter Two:

Austin

Ibrokeher.Itwas the only thing on his mind as he loomed at the end of the hall. Lord Sebastian brought her out of the laboratory yesterday to rest in bed. Unlike other projects, it was imperative that this one have time to rest. Other projects didn’t need sentience. Unlike Austin, Carl, or Moonpie, most of their projects needed regulations. Rules and strict routines, things that made those creations more like machines than people. Austin was made to be people. Carl and Moonpie were made to be free-roaming, free-thinking pets.Which is just people but with less responsibilities, oh to be an undead cat that spends half the day in the arms of my Lady Rosemont.

The pretty dead lady would need to be a people.

Person?

Sapient.

Which was harder to do than the creations he was used to up until that point. Thus, the worry that he broke her…because why did she scream like that?He looked down into her face, watching her eyes clear up and her veins fill with color, and she screamed. A high-pitched sound that echoed in his ears even hours after it stopped. Sebastian said it was normal, butAustin wasn’t so sure. Not even their creations made for vicious purposes screamed like that.

So…I have broken her.It’s hard to be gentle when one is seven feet and four inches tall with narwhal horns for tusks and the might of a rock giant. Maybe if Sebastian made him out of weaker stuff, he’d be less inclined to break things.But that’s not what I was made for…

The door to the bedroom, where Sebastian laid her down to rest, cracked open and Austin lurched forward. His hands warmed nervously. Forced to wipe them on his trousers, he studied the doorway for a long moment, expecting Sebastian to return with another shake of his head.She’ll wake when she’s ready.

But when she emerged, Austin panicked. Scrambling hand over ass as a mountain giant sized person is not easy, but he managed to fly out of the hallway and down the stairs into the Lab.Before I break her again.His heart thundered in his chest, pumping the thick ichor used for his blood through his veins. Adrenaline kicked in and made his limbs weak as he rounded one of the many worktables.

Idle hands, Austin!He needed something to do. Something to focus on. Panic made his eyeballs itch and his stomach filled with fluttering beasts. Austin dove, elbows deep, into the junk trunk, pulling out arms and legs like they might hold his attention. It was only when a shadow passed behind the trunk, blocking out one of the overhead lights, did he glance up.

“Austin?” Smith asked, head cocked ninety degrees to the side with his hands tucked behind him. The slender lawyer was dressed in a simple pair of slacks and a red button up that was left open at the top three buttons. A faceless being with sharklike teeth filling a broad smile, pale as moonlight with divots in his not-face like there would be eye sockets if Smith were made of flesh and not nightmares. Despite all of that,Smith was never scary to Austin. Smith leaned in closer. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he laughed with a pitiful excuse for a lie. “I am searching for inspiration, like Lord Rosemont says.”

“Hmm, and so that herd of elephants I heard earlier wasn’t you?” Smith chuckled, crouching down behind the trunk. Austin sighed, closing the lid with an elbow. Pulling one of the many cleaning rags off the work bench to the left of him, he brushed off the clumps of sinew covering his fingers.

“I broke her, Smith.”

“Broke who?”

“The dead woman.” Austin hung his head.

“Really? I thought Lord Rosemont said you found her? Murdered? That’s what I wrote in her contract.” Smith folded his long, noodly arms over the junk trunk.

“No, that’s true. I meant when she wokebackup. I’ve broken her. She saw my face and screamed, Smith. Doesn’t that mean I broke her? Or at least scared her?” Austin folded the towel into a neat little triangle and tucked it away on one of the many shelves hiding the pair from the rest of the laboratory. Lord Rosemont’s lab was a long, rectangular room with a massive crystal pane window at the front. It was full of marble tiles and stainless steel. Long tubes for revitalizing corpses gurgled with a rainbow array of colored liquids inside them. Pipes ran up the walls around them into the rest of the house. Despite how much it was used, the laboratory was always spotless.

We’re necromancers…not necromessers.

“Ah,” Smith hummed as he nodded thoughtfully. “Or, and this could very much be me playing the Lich’s advocate here, Austin…this dead woman is simply a new spirit who has suddenly become sentient, and screaming is exactly what every creature does upon realizing they can function autonomously.”

“Really?” Austin scrunched his face, glancing up at Smith before returning his gaze to his dirty fingernails.

“Well, think of babies. The second they’re born,they scream.” Smith dropped down to sit beside Austin, his back to one of the many worktables in the lab.

“How do you know what babies do?” Austin teased, swiveling his head to stare at the man plopped beside him.

“I know many things, that’s my job,” Smith retorted with a giant, shark toothed grin up at Austin. “Why would you assumeyoubroke anything?”

“Well, mostly because my face was thefirst faceshe saw,” he grimaced. Returning to the dirt smudged under his trimmed nails, he picked at it with one of the many sewing needles he kept on the shelves under the worktables. “Smith, can someone die from fright?”