The Necromancer's House

by Christopher Buehlman

New Orleans in June is a sort of bright, dangerous sauna whose steam seems to come from the crotches and armpits of its citizens;

He can’t free them but he can make them dance. Oh God he wants a drink. The house is quiet with a quiet that television and music are powerless to interrupt. The night groans by on rusted wheels.

Everybody’s best days are behind them. The world has become a playground of idiots and zealots, where the ever shrinking center of reasonable men must work harder and harder to keep the lights on and the bombs from going off.

An echo is a very important thing; symmetry and repetition are the very knees of science and magic and creation. Creation is binary.”