Wizard of Most Wicked Ways (Whimbrel House #4)

Chapter 14

July 4, 1851, Waynesville, Ohio

The kinetic tram took them as far as Philadelphia before shutting off for the night; Fallon found a barn nearby with dry hay where they could stay until morning, though Owein slept fitfully at best. They boarded the first tram in the morning, riding it clear to Baltimore. With luck, more of the enchanted lines would eventually branch out west, but the magic needed to run them died out a little more every day. There would be plenty of people in England who could enchant the lines, but the United States was so stubbornly independent Owein didn’t know if such assistance would be requested anytime soon.

Silas Hogwood would have been able to enchant them. That thought rankled him during the train ride west. A ride that felt too slow, compared to the tram. Fallon kept to her hawk form, which meant she couldn’t talk to Owein. While she got a few curious looks from other riders, it might have been for the better. Owein didn’t know how to structure his thoughts into sense. He should have brought a book.

They took a steamboat from Pittsburgh toward Cincinnati, hopping off at Wilmington to avoid going too far south. Owein grabbed the last meat pie from a vendor closing shop. He quickly discovered a general lack of available transportation in these parts, but he managed to grab a seat on the last stagecoach heading north for the evening. The night coach required an extra charge, which Owein paid, and he boarded alone alongside a number of businessmen. He managed to finagle a seat by the window and leaned into it as the coach pulled away from its station. The coach had traveled about an eighth of a mile before Fallon swept through the air and landed on the ledge beside him.

“Is that a hawk?” someone asked behind him, but Owein ignored him.

“I’m not sure there’s a stop for where we want to go,” Owein murmured as he pulled a paper map from his pocket and opened it. “There’s a town called Waynesville on the route. Is that close?”

Fallon studied the map with her left eye, then nodded.

Owein held the map in front of him and watched the scenery pass by. He’d expected Ohio to be drier than Rhode Island, but moisture thickened the air. It was hot during the day. Uncomfortably so. Owein had never been this far west, only read about it, so he took the time to absorb what he was seeing, while the setting sun still allowed him to see it. Ohio was full of hills and farms and trees, and the farther north they traveled the smaller the towns got, until there were great swatches of untouched land between them. It was strange, looking out as far as he could in any one direction and not seeing the ocean. A little claustrophobic, in a way. It churned up old anxieties he used to have about leaving Blaugdone Island and punctuated the unfamiliarity of it all. He’d mention that, when he told Cora about this place.

The darkening skies unnerved him, but Fallon remained present, her sharp hawk eyes constantly scanning the countryside. The stagecoach did, thankfully, make a stop near Waynesville, where only one man boarded. Owein slipped away, the wings of a gray hawk beating overhead.

“Should we wait?” he asked when she flew down to his arm. They’d see better in the light of day, but the night would conceal them. In truth, he’d rather move than wait for dawn holed up somewhere, which would likely just be his back to a tree. They weren’t near any hotels or the like. The prospect of their somewhat illegal future activities also suggested they might use the cover of night.

Fallon expressed agreement by pecking at his collar, as though pulling him. As soon as he started off, however, he heard a muffled voice coming from his pocket.

Owein froze for two heartbeats before remembering what Blightree had given him. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out the slender stone of selenite, the communion rune on it glowing faintly.

“Owein? Are you well?” came the necromancer’s voice through the rune.

Pressing his thumb to the symbol, Owein replied, “I’m surprised this works at such a distance.”

“Distance? Where are you, precisely?”

Owein needed to be more careful with his words. Fallon bristled, puffing out her feathers. She agreed.

“I’m well, Blightree.” He took his thumb off the rune and turned to Fallon. “Is there a way to turn this off?” He couldn’t have the old man’s voice sounding off in his pocket when he was trying to be clandestine.

“I’ll be assured, then,” the stone replied. “Be careful. And good luck. With what you’re doing, I suppose, but mostly with Hulda. You’ve certainly riled her.” He chuckled softly, and the rune dimmed out, leaving the pale crystal quiet.

Owein let out a long breath. “We should hurry.” From another pocket he pulled a handkerchief and wrapped the stone in it, hoping to muffle any further communication. It seemed Blightree hadn’t shared their conversation with the others. Perhaps he’d kept silent out of loyalty to Oliver, but whatever his reasons, Owein silently thanked him for it.

He turned, facing northwest, wishing for a light but picking his way forward as twilight settled over the land. He dug into his bag, pulling free Fallon’s dress, but he walked about a mile before giving it to her.

When she was transformed and clothed, she said, “When Hulda went, she did so in a two-wheeled carriage. A covered one. It was just waiting for her outside the town.” She gestured to their right, where a few lights marking Waynesville glimmered. “There’s a partial dirt road that leads up to it. It’s not a very well-trodden path, but if we keep this way, we’ll connect to it, eventually. It’s pretty flat. Should be fine. No wolves. Only four guards.” She smiled.

Owein picked up his pace. “You didn’t mention guards.”

“Why would there not be guards?”

He nearly tripped on a snake hole. “You’ll have to carry me back if I break an ankle.”

So they walked. For a while. It was too dark for Owein to check his pocket watch, but the trek felt both quick and eternal, his pulse swift in his veins. Fallon transformed once more to scout ahead, then returned, forcing them to slow when her knees malformed from her magic.

“Stop here,” she said when the moon was high. They were on the other side of a hill, a million stars glimmering overhead. “There’s no cover after this. The guards will see us. Or they’ll see this.” She rubbed his white hair. “It’s like a candle out here.”

“How far?”

“Three-quarters of a mile. But if we go around this way”—she gestured westward—“we can get a little closer without being seen.”

“Or burrow underneath.”

She paused. “What?”

“I think I can dig into it.” He stretched his fingers, one by one. “Then we won’t have to worry about a door, or alerting the guards.”

“Oh. Okay.” She considered. “Let’s go around first.”

“Agreed.”

They walked slower, quieter, Owein always keeping his ear toward the facility he only spied once, when they crested a hill. It was a shadowed patch on shadowed land, inconsequential. Easily missed, if one wasn’t looking for it, which hopefully meant the guards didn’t see a lot of action, and wouldn’t be searching for it. Small, as Fallon had claimed. Owein had always pictured it being at least as large as the Bright Bay Hotel, where BIKER used to be, but from here, the facility appeared smaller than Whimbrel House.

They followed a natural ditch off the facility’s west side, which Owein made larger with a cocktail of resizing and discordant-movement spells. Fallon whispered to him while he worked, reminding him of what he was doing when he became confused, occasionally massaging a growth or malformation from the alteration spells. She asked if she should transform into her dog self to help dig, but it was faster his way, even with the breaks his body forced him to take, and her words helped him more than her paws would. It was easily past midnight by the time they’d dug upward and hit concrete. Owein melted it away, revealing only blackness on the other side.

Fallon climbed through first, then lent a hand to Owein, whose exhausted body felt like pie dough. He brushed off his clothes as best he could. Listened. They were in a cold room, the outlines of furniture around them. Two doors, one behind them, one on the far right wall. No men stationed in this room, but there were likely some stationed outside it. Maybe even the guards weren’t allowed to see the secretive work BIKER did, only protect it.

Fallon toed away on her bare feet, her movements silent as water. After a moment, she said, “I found a light.”

Owein didn’t respond. An enchanted lantern burst to life to his right; he’d been expecting a candle. Fallon cooled the spell down to a mild simmer and looked around. The room was a little larger than the living room at Whimbrel House, with cabinetry along almost every wall. A few freestanding shelves, a table, a granite-topped sideboard. A cylindrical tank on the nearest wall reached clear to the ceiling.

“Keep it away from the doors,” he murmured. “They might see it through the cracks.”

She shielded it with her body.

Owein stepped toward the large tank; it was hard to see without bringing the light over, but it was full of some sort of fluid and ... body parts.

His stomach roiled.

“Let’s hurry.” Anxiety spurred him to action. He avoided the tank and crossed to the far door first. Locked, but from the outside. Any guards inside the facility might have a key.

“Office,” Fallon said as he turned back. She was on her hands and knees, peering under the other door with the light. “That’s what this looks like.”

She stood and handed him the light, which he took to the sideboard, where several short stacks of papers lay. He was a better reader than she was, and it quickly became evident that there was a lot to read. Everything was well organized. He tested the drawers of the sideboard. They were locked, but the bolts melted beneath his touch. He pulled out folders and papers, scanning through them. A lot he didn’t understand. Columns of numbers with abbreviations unfamiliar to him, tables and charts with the same.

Movement outside the hallway door. Fallon stiffened. Owein eyed the door, focusing on it before shutting off the light spell on the lantern. Then, eyes unused to the dark, he reached toward the door and enlarged it with a spell, slowly, delicately pinching it tightly against its frame.

After a moment, Fallon asked, “What did you do?”

“Kept him from getting in,” he whispered back, reigniting the lantern to its lowest setting. “Help me.”

Fallon moved into action, silent as a ghost, running her hands over cabinets, checking under tables. Owein filtered through the rest of the papers, reading the tops of documents:

Plasma proteins before and after exposure to invisible light

Comparative blood smears in magically + v ? persons of genetic relation

Proofs on blood typing

Spectrophotometry report 01851.04.11

Results of genome distilling phase four, Patient A

He pulled that one out and brightened the lantern. More columns, more numbers, but handwritten at the bottom it read, This is the most promising reduction we’ve had. Change in relative magical categories estimated to increase 0.43–0.81 per gram. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. Not Hulda’s. Myra’s?

The next page had a single column of numbers, with a list of chemicals and the percentage used in ... what? The distillation of magic from Patient A?

Who was Patient A?

He couldn’t follow everything, but this fit with what he’d gleaned from Hulda over the years. Synthesizing—or distilling?—magic, but the research was still young. Complex, but young.

“Owein.”

Fallon had whispered, but in the quiet, it seemed to echo off the walls. Owein turned and found her kneeling by the far wall, in front of a wooden cabinet with long, narrow drawers. She had the center bottom drawer pulled open. “What do you think these are?”

Owein shut the drawers he’d been searching and used a restore-order spell on the locks before crossing the room in four strides and crouching beside her. The drawer was cold—cold enough to be enchanted, but he didn’t take the time to search for a rune or ward. It was packed with a stiff material, with cutouts for narrow corked beakers that reminded him of ingredients kept at a perfumer or apothecary. He pulled one out; the contents were almost silvery in nature. A little rosy. In tiny script he read, Patient A.

Fallon opened the drawer beside it and found more vials, but these were full of clear liquids. Above that—

“What is this ?” She pulled out a short beaker attached to a needle, with a stopper that looked like it had been made to compress its contents. Handed it to Owein. It was empty, with little measurement markers on the side.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one.” It looked medical. He pulled and compressed the plunger a few times. The needle was hollow. Something for administering a liquid beneath the skin?

He shared as much.

“So they are experimenting on people.” Despite their hopes for finding a physical solution for stopping Silas, Fallon looked sick at the thought.

“I don’t think so. The pages I looked at made it seem like they were too early in the process—”

A key clicked in the lock of the door Owein had trapped in its own jamb. A man mumbled on the other side, turned the knob sharply, then hammered his fist on the door.

“Time to go.” Fallon hurried back for the hole.

Owein followed her, but not before he grabbed one of the silvery vials and a needled syringe. He needed to know more about what they were, and the best way to find out was to go straight to the source.

Which meant, even though a restore-order spell sealed up the hole in the room’s cement floor seamlessly, Hulda Fernsby was going to find out exactly where he had been.

Because he intended to tell her.