The Necromancer's Curse

Chapter 1

Jay regretted saying yes to a second date. He felt bad about it the moment the thought entered his head, but he couldn't help himself. Eric had been blabbing on and on about restaurant choices for what? Ten? Twenty minutes? And he just wanted him to stop. As much as Jay was contributing to the conversation he could have just put his phone down on the table and let Eric ramble on, but that would have been rude. So, instead, he had grabbed some paper that he had laying around on his desk and started scrawling down notes about what he meant to do with the short movie he was working on right now. While he thought, he played with the worn leather bracelet on his wrist. Zoning out like this was rude too, but at least he'd hear Eric when he was inevitably invited back into the conversation.

The thing with Eric was, that Jay had really enjoyed himself on their first date, despite it not being the best. There had been a lull in the middle of their conversation that he hadn't been quite comfortable with, but it wasn't enough to not give Eric a second chance. He just really didn't want to have dinner with Eric again. They could see a movie or do literally anything else, but Eric had vetoed the movie idea and Jay wasn't about to spend his creative energy coming up with a good date idea for a guy that didn't consider movie dates good dates. In fact, Jay wasn't sure he even wanted to be dating a guy who didn't like going out to see a movie together. He understood what Eric had said about not being able to talk and get to know each other during a movie, but he would also have loved to reply that sometimes you learned a lot about each other by not talking. That is, if he had been able to get a word in edgewise. Eric really didn't understand the word 'quiet'.

Jay's eyes kept flickering to his computer and the video he'd paused to talk to Eric. On the screen was a picture of Ki, frozen in mid-motion. It was blurry, his blue hair flying as he turned his head towards someone standing off-screen. Jay's friends had helped him shoot the film a couple of weeks ago and editing it had been fun. Emily had gotten some of her friends from drama club involved, and so the acting had been much better than what Jay was used to from his basketball friends or his other non-drama friends that usually were down. None of them were on par with professional actors, of course, and Jay couldn't wait to get to college, graduate, and do this stuff professionally, but he enjoyed doing this too. Honing his craft so he was ready when things reached a whole other level.

The clock in the corner of the screen said 8:30. Still two hours until Ki got off work and Jay could call him. They did that sometimes when Ki couldn't come by because of his sick mother. They'd put their phones on speaker and then Jay would work on his films and Ki would curl up on that big leather arm chair the Nakamura's had in their living room, a book in his hands, and then they'd both occasionally talk to each other when they had something interesting to say. And otherwise they'd be silent. Silent, but present.

"Jay?" Eric asked.

Jay froze, caught off guard. "Yeah, I'm here, I'm-"

Something knocked against his window. He swiveled around, nearly knocking his glass of water over as he pulled his legs off the desk. A familiar dark figure was crouching in front of his window, and he scrambled up to let her in.

Holding his phone between his head and his shoulder, he fumbled with the latches of the window. "I have to- My mom just came in, something has come up. I gotta go. I- I'll call you back tomorrow, and then we can figure this out, alright?"

"Okay?" Eric agreed skeptically.

"Okay. See you." He hung up before Eric could say anything else and gestured exasperatedly at Cam, currently climbing through his window. This was the first time in the three years that they had been friends that she did this, and he didn't quite know what to do with it. She could have just rung the doorbell. His parents would have happily let her in while he got downstairs.