Chapter 7
October 30, 1846, Boston, Massachusetts
Five Years Ago
Silas had nothing.
The watchmen had cleared out the run-down house in Marshfield. His contact with BIKER had turned on him, then conveniently vanished. News of his demise had likely already reached England, but that didn’t matter; his estate had been seized when that woman had him imprisoned. Financially, he was ruined. Magically, castrated. He still possessed his innate spells, even after losing his body, but he’d lost so much.
He mourned his water spell, the first he had absorbed from an enchanted house. The one that allowed him to preserve his donors. That, too, had been tethered to his first body. Unless he found another trapped inside an inanimate object, his ability to collect others’ sorcery was gone.
His best chances lay in England, Europe. He’d be free there. No one would search for a dead man, especially not one wearing a new face. And yet as he approached the docks in South Boston, another sharp spike radiated through his skull, forcing him to double over. He ground his teeth, clutched his head—
No, not again.
Silas blinked. No docks in sight. Not even the ocean. Where on God’s earth was he? Shivering in a field somewhere. Twilight. Lights in the distance might have been a farmhouse. A few trees—
I will kill you, he thought loudly. I will rip your soul apart fiber by fiber, and when I find a better body, I’ll roast yours like a pig on a spit and serve it to the bottom-feeders.
Mistake. He shouldn’t have tried to talk to Charlie. Talking to Charlie gave Charlie power.
Agony radiated in his bones. Silas dropped to his knees and grabbed fistfuls of icy grass, fighting back against the rising spirit. That feeling of fullness overwhelmed him, like his lungs continued to suck in air far past the point of bursting. His vision doubled, tripled. Memories replayed behind his eyes, too fast. Some his, some not. A woman giving birth. Riding horses through a hayfield. Smashing his brother’s skull against the mantel at Gorse End.
“ Stop it! ” he screamed into the descending night. He beat his forehead against the earth once, twice, three times. More. Again and again, until the pressure lessened. It never abated, never gave him true relief. He’d forgotten what it felt like, to be only himself in a frame of flesh. Forgotten what silence sounded like.
He had to get to Europe. Steal away on a boat, steal a ticket, offer his rare spells in employment as a common man if need be. He had to get out , and he had to get better. Surely there were other necromancers who could free him, but only those in England could possibly have the power—
Charlie’s whispers echoed inside Silas’s ears, folding over one another until they were only nonsense. Unending nonsense. Unrelenting nonsense .
“Die!” Silas screamed, and slammed his head harder into the earth. “I. Want. You. to. Die!”
He smashed his head until his nose bled and his brow split. When he woke again, dawn lit the sky.
And Charlie was still there.