Chapter 6
June 14, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island
Owein sat on the edge of his bed, where Fallon had collapsed, exhausted from her long trip to Portsmouth and back to fetch a doctor. Merritt would be all right, albeit in pain and somewhat immobile for the next several weeks. Necromancers, with or without healing magic, were hard to come by and expensive, meaning Merritt would have to recover the old-fashioned way.
Necromancers. Owein’s left hand formed a fist even as his right pulled the blanket up over Fallon’s shoulder. Her linen dress had been left outside somewhere, likely drenched from the torrent, so she wore his clothes. They fit her lengthwise, though the shoulders of the shirt were too wide. Regardless, she was dressed, she was warm, and she was safe. They were all safe , for now.
Owein smoothed back a dark tendril of hair from her face. A soft sigh escaped her, but her eyes didn’t open. Thank you, he thought, as though he could push the words into her mind the way he used to do with Merritt.
After rising carefully so as not to wake her, Owein stepped out of his room, closing the door softly behind him. He heard Mabol downstairs with Beth, playing as if nothing had happened. Oh, to have the memory and the trust of a child again. Owein wouldn’t mind forgetting about the wreckage outside for an hour or so. Wouldn’t mind believing it wouldn’t happen again.
Merritt and Hulda’s door stood ajar, but he rapped on it softly with a single knuckle. The doctor had left only a quarter hour ago; Merritt lay in bed, propped up with every pillow he owned. His right arm hung in a sling, which was bound to his bare chest with a copious number of bandages. Dark bruises were forming all over his clavicle, across his chest, and onto his shoulder. His hair was damp and combed back, his eyes tired. Owein picked up scents of iodine and chamomile in the air. Hulda sat next to him, chair flush with the mattress, her lips tight and her forehead crinkled. Upon hearing Owein’s knock, she pushed up her glasses and straightened.
“How under is he?” Owein asked, noting the assortment of medicines and cups on the bedside table.
“Not narcotized enough to avoid lecturing you,” Merritt croaked, and Owein imagined his tone would have been sharper had he not been dosed with pain medication. “You’ve been hiding a woman ?”
Owein blinked. “We’re going to talk about that, and not Silas?”
Hulda flinched.
“One thing at a time.” Merritt’s hand closed around Hulda’s, as though he sensed her discomfort. “Fallon. She’s the Druid from England?”
“Ireland, but yes.” Owein closed the door softly and approached the bed, leaning against the post at its foot. “She came back with us after we left.”
Hulda stiffened. “That long?”
“She comes and goes.” They’d remarked on occasion about not being able to find Owein’s third dog, but when Owein hadn’t acted concerned, neither had they.
Merritt started to shake his head, then hissed through his teeth and held still. “And you decided it wasn’t necessary to tell us?”
“Her choice.”
“Your ability,” Merritt countered.
“We’re . . . concerned,” Hulda said carefully. “Your contract . . .”
Guilt and uncertainty drew down from Owein’s chest like someone had opened a drain in his pelvis. He folded his arms. “What about it?”
The two exchanged a look. “Owein.” Merritt’s voice took on a careful note. “You haven’t ... that is ... have you two ...”
Owein raised an eyebrow, waiting. A soft blush crossed Hulda’s nose.
Ah.
Merritt cleared his throat. “That is, have you two ... um ...”
Owein put him out of his misery. “Had intercourse?”
Hulda’s flush deepened.
Merritt snorted. “Forward, as always. But yes.”
“No.”
Hulda let out a long breath. “Then you’re not romantically involved.”
His heart thudded against his ribs. Glancing out the window, Owein murmured, “I didn’t say that.”
The two were silent for several heartbeats. Merritt tried, “Owein ...”
“She saved your life,” he said, softer, drawing his eyes back to his nephew, who had become more of a father in the nearly five years they’d known one another.
Merritt sighed. “So did you.”
Hulda shook her head. “It couldn’t have been Silas.”
To Hulda, Merritt asked, “He wasn’t the one you had a vision of? Yesterday, at dinner?”
Hulda had foreseen this ? And hadn’t mentioned the patches of white hair, the madness in his eyes, the threat he posed?
Yet Owein’s rising frustration abated when Hulda shook her head. “No, it was someone else. Someone younger and more hale.” Slipping her fingers under her spectacles, she rubbed her eyes. “I would have much preferred to have seen this . I’ve let my practice slip. If I’d been more vigilant—”
“You wouldn’t have known who he was,” Owein offered.
Lowering her hands, Hulda countered, “I might have seen that he was dangerous. Our children—” Her voice cut off, and she swallowed.
Merritt squeezed her hand. “They’re safe.” His blue gaze found Owein’s. “But Silas—”
“The magic alone.” Owein had been thinking on it, and the more he thought of it, the more certain he felt. “He had the same innate spells. Didn’t he?”
Hulda paused. Nodded.
“I ... smelled him.” Owein adjusted his position against the bedpost.
Merritt’s eyebrows drew together. “Smelled him?”
A shrug. “Silas Hogwood put me in that dog’s body. I know his scent well. I notice things like that still. Smells, sounds. Things I picked up on before. His body wasn’t Silas’s, but his smell was. And this.” Lifting a hand, Owein combed through a hank of his own colorless hair. “This is because this body wasn’t originally mine, just like how the dog spotted white when I lived in it. And Silas—that stranger—his hair looked like the dog’s.”
“But it wasn’t all white,” Merritt tried, doubt creeping into his voice. “Silas has been dead for four and a half years. He can’t have suddenly taken over a body. Right?” He looked at Hulda for confirmation.
“It wasn’t just at the roots,” Owein said. “I think he’s been in the body longer, but the original spirit is still in there, like with me and the dog.” He shuddered. “There was something ... wrong about him.”
Hulda scoffed. “There has always been something wrong about that man.”
“Even so.” He pushed off the bedpost and slid his hands into his trouser pockets. “He was ... insane. In a different way. The look in his eyes ... You didn’t get close enough to see the look in his eyes.”
His gaze found the window again, searching the darkening gray sky beyond it, as though it might have the answers he sought.
Quiet seconds ticked by before Merritt spoke again.
“Regardless, thank you.” A slip of emotion leaked into his voice. “Without you ... we’d be dead without you.”
“I didn’t realize,” Hulda added, not looking at him, “how strong you were. I mean, I knew you were, but I didn’t realize ...” She let the sentiment trail off.
His hands clenched into tight fists in his pockets. “Not strong enough.” He blew hair out of his eyes. “That’s something else that proves to me this was Silas. He came here . Barely anyone knows this place exists, let alone that it’s inhabited. No one has a reason to come uninvited. But Silas knew. He knew we were here, and he attacked. What for, if not revenge?”
Hulda’s skin turned a dull shade of white.
“And he’s still alive .” The words ground out of Owein like stubborn peppercorns. “I let him get away.”
Merritt countered, “You didn’t let him—”
“Which means he can come back,” Owein interrupted. “We’re not safe here.”
“Maybe”—Hulda’s voice was a near whisper, and she held Merritt’s hand so tightly her knuckles went white, too—“maybe he realized he’s outmanned. Maybe he won’t return.”
Owein frowned. “Are you willing to bet your life on maybes? Their lives?”
He needn’t specify whom he meant. They all knew: Mabol, Hattie, Ellis, Henri. They were innocents.
If only Owein had pushed a little harder, thought a little smarter, moved a little faster. If only he had shrunk the man’s collar enough to cut off his head, or sent a tree branch through his torso. If only Owein had killed him, then this cold, brewing fear in his belly wouldn’t be there.
He rubbed just below his sternum, as though he could massage the anxiety away.
Owein hadn’t been enough.
“We need to file a police report,” Merritt said. “We can go tonight.”
Hulda blinked rapidly, fighting tears. “ You are not going anywhere. You need rest.”
“I need to protect my family.”
Hulda opened her mouth to speak, but judging by the redness growing around her eyes, she didn’t trust herself to do so with dignity. Instead, she looked away.
“I’ll keep watch tonight,” Owein offered. “Me and Baptiste.”
Hulda nodded. Owein didn’t comment on the tremor coursing down her arms. She was trying to be strong. He let her.
Owein returned to his room, closing the door behind him. More so to give Fallon privacy and not start Hulda worrying over the fact that there was a woman in his bed than for anything else. He glanced out the window, then formed a new one in the wall, the size of his hand, just so he could scan the north shoreline again. It’d be dark soon. He could go out and ... what? What preparations could he possibly make against a wizard who could heal himself on command and break things with a thought?
He should be glad for the toll of magic. Not even a healing spell could abate the forgetfulness, nausea, and stiffness consuming Silas. He’d been stiff as the boat when he fled. One more spell and he wouldn’t have been able to run at all.
Toll. Magic.
Licking his lips, Owein’s gaze fell onto Fallon, curled around his pillow, then his desk.
He crossed the room and sat, pulled out a clean piece of paper, and began to write.
Cora,
I need your help. Silas Hogwood is back. It’s complicated, but I know it’s him. He’s taken over the body of someone new. He attacked Whimbrel House today. Merritt got hurt. I don’t know when he’ll return, only that he will. He isn’t right in the mind. He’s evil, pure and simple.
Cora, you know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. I held him off, but he got away. He’s going to come back. But if I had that conjurer’s bead from the Tower of London, I could defeat him. If I didn’t have to bear the consequences of my own spells, I could protect my family.
I know it’s dangerous. I was there. But please, Cora, please help me. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know who else to turn to.
Please respond quickly.
Yours,
Owein
Merritt didn’t feel the need to point out that tomorrow was Sunday. That wasn’t to say the watchmen wouldn’t do their jobs on the Sabbath, but they wouldn’t be in the office to take a report, and they’d hesitate to come all the way out to the island to patrol, especially given that the attacker in question was a powerful wizard and they were not. Would Merritt even be believed if he claimed it was Silas Hogwood? He still wasn’t entirely sure he believed it, but Owein was so convinced, and the magic ... the magic was right.
But Hulda didn’t need the extra stress. She looked ready to unravel. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. Stiffness limned her every movement, and she had begun cleaning her spectacles obsessively.
Merritt lay in bed, useless, unable to rest and unable to do anything else. Even with the drugs the doctor had given him, everything hurt . The only break was his collarbone—a very important and interconnected bone—but there were bruises everywhere. Those he couldn’t see, he could still feel. Even wiggling his toes hurt.
But he would have let the crazed wizard shatter him into a thousand pieces if it had meant protecting his family.
Mabol ... When he’d seen Mabol out there, he’d lost his wits. He’d ceased thinking and just attacked . Like a rabid dog. He’d been so scared. Terrified.
It’ll be okay, the dog—Fallon—had said to him, pressing her muzzle to his shoulder. Keep breathing. He’s almost gone.
Hearing her voice in his head had shocked him nearly as much as his breaking bone had.
Well, one thing at a time. Tomorrow was the Sabbath. That would give him another day to heal. The following day, Hulda would sort it out. Merritt would go to town with her, doctor’s orders be damned.
He didn’t dare turn his head, so he merely strained his eyes to see his wife standing at the window now, Ellis on her shoulder, having just fed. Hulda absently patted the babe’s back and stared out into the night. Baptiste had put up some torches; Merritt could just see the outer halo of their glow from the bed.
His memory rewound to that night nearly five years ago. Silas Hogwood had shattered the dining room window, leaving Baptiste with a concussion and nearly killing Beth. He’d taken Owein and Merritt. Merritt had woken once slung on the back of a horse and again in that dark, dank basement, tied up like a hog. He’d thought he was done for, but Hulda had rescued him, wearing only her underthings. Silas had found them. Merritt had knocked him out with a crowbar. A blow hard enough to kill, and it did.
And yet Silas Hogwood hadn’t died.
A thought came to him then, one that startled him enough to zing through his broken clavicle. He and Hulda had returned to that run-down place, searching for signs of Silas, and found none. But Merritt had also visited the local town to interview the watchmen. He’d spoken to one at a mill. What had he said?
“‘Wasn’t the same after that,’” Merritt whispered. He was surprised he remembered at all ... but his mind tended to hold on to enchanted serial killers who wanted to kill him.
Hulda turned from the window. “What?”
Merritt shut his eyes, thinking. Trying to picture the face of the man he’d interviewed. He couldn’t quite, but he remembered the mill and the noise. “There was a watchman.” He spoke carefully. “One at Marshfield. He said ... He said ...” Another watchman had acted strangely? Something like that. “His friend went into the building with him, but he wasn’t the same afterward. Hadn’t seen him for a long time.”
What had been his name? Merritt would need to check the report. He couldn’t recall.
Hulda drew closer, rubbing their two-month-old’s back. “Marshfield? From ... then?”
“Yeah. When I investigated around the area, during the mess with Baillie.” The hysterian lawyer was locked up behind bars and certainly wasn’t going to be a problem for them anytime in the near future. Then again, Merritt had thought the same about Silas Hogwood.
“I wonder,” he added, and left it at that. Strong wizards, wizards like Owein, could fuse themselves to houses upon their death. Silas was a strong wizard, and he was also a necromancer. Could he have fused his spirit with a body in Marshfield? Was Owein right on that matter? No other explanation made sense. He couldn’t fathom any other explanation.
Merritt’s thoughts pulled back to the watchman. It niggled at him. Felt wrong, which meant it might be right. But it wouldn’t help to dwell on it now, so he carefully wiggled the fingers on his right hand. “Guess I’m not writing for a while.”
“You can dictate to me if you need to.” Hulda lowered Ellis from her shoulder and cradled the babe’s head in the crook of her arm, then sat on the chair beside the bed. Set her jaw, then started to cry.
“Hulda.” He very carefully reached over with his left hand. Grazed her knee. “Hulda, we’ll work it out. We’ll leave, if we have to. Nothing is worth our lives. Not even Whimbrel House.”
She nodded, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “I know. I know. I just ... I wish we were done with it. Why are we never done with it?”
He ran his thumb over her knee. “Because God knew I was stuck in my plot and thought to throw some novel fodder my way, I imagine.”
She swatted at his hand. Adjusted Ellis so she could hold her in one arm, then clasped Merritt’s fingers. “At least he didn’t break your sense of humor.”
“Yes. I feel nothing if not hilarious right now.” He winced. He’d inhaled too hard.
Hulda wilted. “You should take the laudanum. It will help you sleep.”
“I’d rather be alert.”
“And do what? Jest from your bed?” The words had a hard edge, but it wasn’t meant for him. Just stress. “Take it. I’ll run through my exercises, see if I can sense anything. And ...” Her eyes watered again.
He squeezed her hand.
Shaking her head, she said, “I just realized tomorrow is the Sabbath.”
He offered a weak smile. “Let’s hope Silas, or whoever he is, still fears God.”