The next weeks passed quickly. After the first, painful few days a routine of sorts began to form, much to Vision’s surprise. Rook sent her shopping with Selene. They left with more clothes than she’d ever had before in her life, and each piece was individually finer than anything she’d worn before, even at Gretta’s. She had been encouraged to jog in the courtyard at the back of the house, stretch and get used to her new body. On the third day, Rook’s man Aden approached her to offer her reading lessons. Upon discovering that she could already read, the servant had directed her to Rook’s library. By the end of the week she had a consistent schedule of exercise, learning and intermittent boredom but she hadn’t seen Rook or Malone again since the day they’d risen her from the dead.

She was eating her breakfast with her nose in a book about post-war economics when she was startled from the pages by a loud thump. Looking up, she saw that Rook had appeared to throw a heavy tome on the table in front of her. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“I want you to read this,” he said.

She pursed her lips together and tapped them theatrically to show that she hadn’t forgotten how he had stolen her voice. Rook rolled his eyes.

“Read it or you can find somewhere else to live. You’ll find that you will struggle without a necromancer, in that body. Speaking of which…” he drew a vial from his robes, “Here.”

Eyeing it suspiciously, she waited for him to pull the stopper. Then, she sniffed at it cautiously. A powerful, cloying, copper smell wafted forth, and she gagged. Rook smiled unkindly.

“You need to drink it, or your body will decay.”

She shook her head.

“I’m deathly serious. It’s… well, in layman’s terms it’s concentrated life-energy. Most souls are not compatible with most bodies and they need to be helped along to keep working. Even with my help, this one will only last you a few years, at most.”

“Why is that?” she asked, curious despite herself.

He tapped his lips with his index finger, considering her.

“Bodies and souls are not one and the same, but they are very closely interconnected. Think of bodies like clothing. Most items of clothing will not fit you perfectly, unless they have been made for you. Unlike with clothing when it comes to bodies, anything less than a perfect fit will cause… leakage. Life force cannot be utilised properly, so the vessel to wears out and dies, as it originally should have. It’s different with compatible bodies but there are few enough of those.”

“How few?”

“You might have been housed successfully in your mother’s body, with no deterioration,” he said with a shrug, “but short of that I doubt a perfect fit exists for you.”

She frowned, “What about my brother?”

“That might work, it might not.”

“So, is it to do with how similar a body is physically to your first one or is it to do with being related?”

He tilted his head, “That is a good question, with a complex answer.”

She sighed in exasperation and he held up a finger.

“You have a lot of questions, I know. I’ll offer you a deal. You drink the vials and read that book, and I will sit down with you and give you your answers.”

Without dropping her gaze, she grabbed the vial and downed it… and immediately spluttered and retched as the taste registered. Rook laughed.

“What is this stuff?” she gasped.

“Mostly blood,” he admitted.

With a grimace, she looked down at the book. Her eyebrows rose to her hairline as she realised that it was about physical magic. She flicked through the pages, feeling her mouth drop open.

“I’m not a mage,” she protested, “and if I was, I’d be a necromancer.”

His expression was impassive.

“Reading it won’t kill you, in either case. Do you accept the deal, or not?”

She closed the cover and reached out to shake his hand, “I accept.”