Wizard of Most Wicked Ways (Whimbrel House #4)

Chapter 15

July 7, 1851, Providence, Rhode Island

Hulda repinned a lock of hair on the side of her head for the third time that morning as she bounded up the steps. Slowing down a moment would prove more advantageous to the task, but she was behind in her work on all fronts and couldn’t spare the time for such a worldly thing as beauty. So she did her best and arrived at the second floor of BIKER headquarters out of breath and feeling far more irriguous than she would have liked. Ellis, strapped to her chest, slept soundly.

Miss Steverus stood at her desk beside the door to Hulda’s office, speaking to Mr. Mackenzie from the Queen’s League of Magicians, a soft flush across her nose. She startled when Hulda approached them.

“Hold any messages, would you?” Hulda asked, switching her black bag from one aching shoulder to the other and passing a nod of politeness to Mr. Mackenzie. In addition to him, two local watchmen were posted outside. “I need just an hour to—”

“I thought,” Miss Steverus interrupted, which was very unlike her, “you might like to know that I locked the office while you were away.”

Hulda paused halfway to the door. Smoothed out her skirt with her free hand. “Thank you. Might we keep it that way until our guest leaves? And perhaps you can divert Mr. Mackenzie’s attention elsewhere.”

The Scottish man grinned. “It’s quite diverted already, Mrs. Fernsby.”

Miss Steverus’s blush deepened, and she took to rearranging what looked like a stack of telegrams.

“I’ll go fetch some tea,” Mr. Mackenzie offered, and headed down the stairs to the small kitchen on the first floor.

“Locking the office” was the code for a visit from Myra Haigh, the previous director of BIKER, whom the world believed to be dead. And while the woman did work with the dead at BIKER’s facility in Ohio, she was still very much alive, as was proven yet again the moment Hulda opened her office door.

The Spanish woman was dressed smartly yet dully, equal parts sophistication and the desire to go undetected amidst the general populace, which she had done for the last several years with alarming efficiency. She met Hulda’s eyes with the confidence of a woman twice her age. “I want to help.”

Hulda shut the door behind her and strode to her desk, which was cluttered with dice and divining sticks, and dropped her large bag in one of the two chairs seated before it. “If you know of a way to assist the Genealogical Society for the Advancement of Magic while maintaining the privacy of our clients, I would love to hear it.” Indeed, she’d just rushed back from a meeting with Elijah Clarke, the head of the organization that sought to pair up men and women of wizarding lines in an attempt to preserve magic—a less efficacious program than the one the British monarchy had established, but alas, such was the price of individual freedom. It hadn’t gone well. “Otherwise, I’m curious what news you have from Ohio that brought you all the way here when you have use of a very expensive communion stone.”

Myra frowned. “Do not be obtuse.”

Sighing, Hulda loosened the straps around Ellis and, very gingerly, lowered the infant into the baby carriage parked in the corner behind her desk. “You are helping by running the facility and being a listening ear when I need advisement on BIKER business. This is not BIKER business.”

Myra scoffed. “If Silas Hogwood isn’t BIKER business, then why confide in me about it?” She pulled the fist-sized communion stone previously mentioned from her jacket pocket and waved it at Hulda as though it were a pie with a finger hole in it, and Hulda the perpetrator. “I want to help. Silas’s involvement with you is, in part, my fault.”

“Indeed, it is,” Hulda agreed, perhaps too hastily. But it was Myra Haigh who’d helped work, in secret, to release Silas Hogwood from prison, and who had brought him to the Americas in the hopes of benefiting from his healing spell. Myra Haigh was one of the reasons Silas continued to live. And Silas was the sole reason Myra lived as well.

Hulda sat, then toyed with a cube-shaped brass paperweight on her desk. “You need to be monitoring the facility. And do keep your voice down; there’s a queen’s magician outside the door.”

Myra snorted. “He is not paying attention to us, believe me.”

Hulda clucked her tongue. “As you can see, the Queen’s League of Magicians, as well as local law enforcement, is handling the situation here. We are well protected.” Hulda knew they were, but she didn’t feel it. Her worry had not abated. If anything, Owein’s sudden disappearance had pejorated her stress. Supposedly he was apprenticing with the millwright again, but why would the boy—the man , she mentally corrected—leave for the purposes of personal finances when his family was at such risk? It was unlike him. And he hadn’t provided a means of communication, nor an address at which he might be reached. And yet Mr. Blightree, of all people, seemed completely unconcerned by the matter.

Her stomach ached, and not for want of food.

Myra, unsurprisingly, did not back down. “Tell me what you’ve—”

“They’re trying to trace him. Charlie Temples, the man whose body Silas is using as some sort of macabre puppet.” She shuddered. “There has been no suspicious activity since Owein drove him away. I’d like to think we’re done with him, but experience tells me otherwise.”

Myra pressed a crooked finger to her lips and paced the width of the room, to the bookshelves and back. “I should assist them. A mind-reader goes a long way in law enforcement.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It was my first occupation, working for the constabulary,” she went on. “I can move quickly, gleaning from the men in the area. I don’t mind going into the darker parts of the city—”

“And meanwhile be arrested,” Hulda pushed in. “Or have you forgotten that, should you return to the world of the living, you have outstanding warrants for your arrest?”

Myra waved the statement away like it were a bad smell. “A steep fine at worst, surely.”

“Surely? You read minds, woman, you don’t control them—”

A soft knock sounded at the door, clipping the conversation short. Miss Steverus poked in her head, keeping the door pressed to her shoulder. Myra backed up a few steps, ensuring she wouldn’t be seen by anyone in the lobby. For a person so willing to make herself known moments before, she certainly shied away from prying eyes.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Fernsby,” the secretary murmured, nodding once to Myra, “but there’s a man here to see you. I asked him to wait outside, but he says it’s urgent.”

Hulda and Myra exchanged a quick glance. Any guest would have had to check in with the watchmen outside before entering. “Urgent how?”

“He wouldn’t tell me, but I can try ...”

Her words faded as Hulda waved. “Let him in. Myra, occupy yourself.”

Frowning, Myra took a book off a shelf and thoroughly buried her nose in it. Miss Steverus backed away, and the door reopened to reveal a man in well-worn but tidy clothes, albeit too large on his frame. His dark beard was oiled and combed, as was his hair, perhaps a little too much so, like he was trying hard to impress. But what really stood out about him were the white patches running unevenly through the locks—an almost sickly splotching of youth and age.

Hulda’s stomach sank into the tips of her toes as Charlie Temples closed the door behind him and compressed its handle with a spell, ensuring it wouldn’t open again.

Owein stretched his arms overhead as he walked through Providence, shaking off the lethargy of the weekend, though he’d slept decently well last night; public transportation was either slow or nonexistent yesterday, it being the Sabbath, so his choices had dwindled down to taking a break or walking. He couldn’t fly like Fallon, however much he wished he could, for more reasons than saving time traveling.

It felt strange walking with her now. She was human again, dressed simply by the kindness of a farmer’s wife who’d shared Hulda’s reservations about her altered clothes. The woman had even gifted Fallon a pair of shoes, though Fallon had left them behind. No point in taking something I won’t use, she’d said, but she had pressed a kiss to the toe of each shoe in a show of gratitude the elderly couple would never witness. Owein had fixed the older couple’s horse trough on the way out, though. Hopefully that would prove helpful.

Regardless, Fallon walked down the street in a dress fashionable enough for the times, her hair in a long braid down her back, her chin up with a confidence so many people lacked, despite the strange looks they both got. At this point, they were used to it. And it was invigorating, walking beside her like that. Just two normal people strolling down a city street. The sun was high, bringing out the scents of the street, both good—baking bread, women’s perfume, full-crowned trees—and bad—horse manure, sweat, a whiff of urine. Owein’s nose was not what it used to be, but he could just detect the separation of the subtler scents, even if it was more from memory than ability.

Fallon’s arms moved in a relaxed swing counter to her steps; after they crossed a street, Owein caught her hand at the back end of a swing, lacing his fingers with hers, and earned himself a smile. He basked in it for another two blocks, until BIKER headquarters, two stories tall, gray brick, and unlabeled, came into view. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out all at once. Hulda was not going to be happy. Probably the least happy Owein had seen her during the time he’d been human again. But he could weather Hulda. He’d done so time and time again.

“You don’t have to come in.” He nodded to the watchmen out front; he’d been one of the first stationed at Blaugdone Island after the attack, and he recognized both of them. Owein led the way to the back door, surprised there wasn’t anyone watching it . “She might get ... loud. And verbose.”

Fallon shrugged. “You’ve never seen Morgance angry. Nothing is more terrifying than that banshee on a rampage.”

Owein smirked, trying to imagine the motherly Druid he’d met in England on a warpath. He couldn’t quite picture—

The door whipped open just as he reached for it, nearly snapping off his fingers. Sadie Steverus, BIKER’s secretary, barreled into him, nearly knocking him over. Her hair was coming out of its pins, and frantic lines marred her pale face.

Grabbing her shoulders, Owein asked, “Sadie! What’s wrong?”

She blinked, seeming not to recognize him at first. Tears filled her eyes. “He’s hurting them—”

It was all Owein needed to hear.

He released the woman and bolted into the building, almost immediately tripping over a man’s body—the other watchman. Heart in his throat, he zipped up the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time, barely registering another fallen man in blue and the broken teapot crunching under his feet. He whirled up one, two stories. His lungs heaved as he reached BIKER’s main floor. Nothing was out of place, but he heard shouting and a loud thump from the other side of Hulda’s office door. He ran to it and grabbed the handle, but it jammed. One pulse of a random subterfuge spell had it exploding in a firework of brass. He shoved the door open.

His eyes found Myra Haigh just as a cubical paperweight flew off Hulda’s desk and through Myra’s torso with the power of a cannonball.

Blood sprayed. Owein’s limbs turned cold, his ears ringing, as Myra’s dark eyes met his. She collapsed to the ground slowly, like a reed starved of sun.

Hulda, on the other side of her desk, screamed. The perpetrator, the same man who’d attacked them on the island, turned around, wild eyes framed by white-splattered hair.

Ellis, lying in the baby carriage in the corner, began to wail.

Owein roared, feral, and launched himself at Silas Hogwood, both physically and magically. His discordant-movement spell seemed to only ruffle the man’s clothes—that damn luck spell!—but his fists struck Silas’s chest before Silas kinetically shoved him backward into the bookcase-lined wall. Owein just caught Fallon shouting when a breaking spell snapped the bookshelves, sending wood and books avalanching onto him.

Heart thundering in his skull, Owein shoved at the pile with chaocracy, hardly noticing the loose nail digging into his leg or the pain radiating from his shoulder. He couldn’t use too large a spell, not with innocents in the room. The confusion passed quickly—he just needed out . Another discordant-movement spell sent the books flying away just as Fallon, now a dog, latched on to Silas’s forearm. Panic expanded from every organ in Owein’s body. In the corner, Hulda cried, “Please hurry! Please!” into a communion stone.

Silas grabbed Fallon by the back of her neck; the dog whined as a life-force spell sucked away her energy.

Owein snapped. Vision red, he charged from the rubble and slammed bodily into Silas, sending them both to the ground. Owein’s elbow snapped one of Silas’s ribs, but before his fist could collide with the man’s jaw, another kinetic spell shoved him up and over, slamming and pinning him into the far wall, arms and legs outstretched. He gasped like a bull had sat on him. Struggled against the pressure, but it didn’t relent.

Owein didn’t need the crutch of movement to use magic, though; it was all pageantry, anyway. Chaocracy flooded from him, seizing the fallen books, sending them dancing and zipping and jumping. Yet that luck spell of Silas’s was strong enough that every random projectile missed him. One smacked Fallon’s rump, but she didn’t seem to notice. She lay on the floor, awake and breathing, but hazy, weak.

Joints stiff as wrought iron, Silas turned on Hulda, advancing on unbending legs. She clutched Ellis to her chest, shoulders heaving, eyes red. She picked up an ink jar and threw it at him. It collided with the side of his head. The blow did nothing to stop the madman’s advance, but it did distract him enough that his kinetic hold on Owein dropped, sending him tumbling to the floor. A sharp pain zipped up his ankle, and a glass vial of silvery liquid fell from his pocket, landing a few inches from his hand.

Breath catching, he snatched it, decision already made.

Owein hit the floor.

Fallon couldn’t get up.

Ellis squirmed and cried against her collar.

Myra ... her blood was pooling in the carpet. She didn’t move.

All Hulda’s nightmares were coming true ...

How had she not seen this?

Had Silas started here, or ended here? Had he already been to Blaugdone Island and murdered her babies? Her husband? And now he’d come around to BIKER to finish what he’d started?

Her eyes shot from Owein to Charlie Temples—Silas Hogwood—sending a tear running down either side of her nose. She had no words to speak, no means of stopping him, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t give her the opportunity.

“Please,” she wept, “s-spare the baby. Sh-She’s done nothing—”

Silas’s head jerked hard to the side. He winced, gritting his teeth.

Hulda quickly set Ellis on the floor, under the desk, her little limbs flying in protest. Standing, she said, “Charlie Temples! Please, if you can hear me—”

An invisible hand clenched around her throat, cutting off air and blood. Her neck threatened to snap as it lifted her off the floor, until her toes didn’t quite touch. Face and lungs burning, she clawed at it, but there was nothing to grapple with. She stared at him, barely hearing him mutter, “One less parasite on my mind,” when the white splotches on his black beard fuzzed, and in the pattern she saw Blaugdone Island sprawling before her ... no, before Silas . She was Silas, and through his eyes she saw herself running toward Whimbrel House, her green skirt whipping behind her, surrounded by billowing fog, one of Owein’s dogs, or perhaps Fallon, pushing her faster—

Silas came to the island. She was alive. But the others, where—

The invisible hand winked from existence. Hulda dropped to the floor, hip thudding, palms slapping. Air clawed through her swollen windpipe, refilling her lungs. She didn’t remember Silas letting go. Didn’t—

Get up! Gray rings danced in her vision. A groan, a thump, a shout—she crawled forward, wheezing, placing a hand on Ellis’s chest and willing her to calm—if she could only be quiet, Silas might forget about her. She peeked around the edge of her desk.

The carpet, still soaked in Myra’s blood, came alive, ripping free of its tacks, and lunged for Silas. Owein—Owein was on his feet again! Maybe they had a chance. Maybe they—

She felt for her communion stone. Where had she dropped it? Where were Mr. Mackenzie and the watchmen? Had Sadie reached help?

Were they already dead?

The sound of the carpet tearing into a dozen pieces with a breaking spell was like a knife scraping across a china dinner plate. She hissed and flinched. And Owein—Owein stood there, blinking, intoxicated by the stupor so much chaocracy dealt him. Move, Owein!

Silas came to first. Though his arm struggled to bend, he forced it, pushed back his coat, and pulled out a pistol. Aimed it at Owein.

Hulda screamed.

Gun.

Gun.

Move! Owein’s brain screamed a splinter of a second before Silas shot. Owein lunged just in time, the bullet lodging in the wall behind him. He grabbed Silas around his knees and knocked him down like he was tying a hog. The hand with the gun hit the hardwood floor. Silas dropped the weapon, but his other hand swept up, knife clutched in the fingers, and sliced through Owein’s suspender, shirt, and pectoral. Blood seeped into Owein’s shirt, but he didn’t have the opportunity to worry over how deep it was. Silas swiped again.

Owein caught the man’s arm and wrestled him down, pressing weight into his wrist in an attempt to pin him. Owein wasn’t a large man, but he knew hard work, and Silas had starved Charlie Temples nearly to the bones. Silas’s coat sleeve had ridden up; his arm was thin, his body weak, yet he resisted, his free hand battering the side of Owein’s head, his legs trying to kick out from under him. Owein readied a spell to open the floor beneath them and—

—and Silas started to scream.

He hollered like a branded calf, eyes wild, body bucking. Owein pushed him down, trying to control him—

The smell .

The rank scent of rot, of bad meat left in the sun, burned Owein’s nostrils. He looked down to where his hands had pinned the arm of the hand holding the knife. Beneath Owein’s grip, Silas’s skin had putrefied. Before Owein’s eyes it was decaying, blackening and curling, the rot seeping down to the muscle.

The shock of it stilled him enough for Silas to land a good blow on his jaw. The madman threw him off, scrambled to his feet, and bolted for the far wall. Hulda screamed again as wood and brick shattered under Silas’s sole chaocracy spell, and then the wizard leapt right through the hole.

No. Not again. Owein would not let him get away. He wouldn’t be haunted by this man ever again .

“Owein!” Hulda cried as he launched himself toward the hole. It was two stories up; below, Silas picked himself up off the street and limped away from the main road, toward tree cover.

Owein jumped. As he did, he pushed out his spell of restoring order. It seized every piece of rubble and began sucking it back into its rightful place, yanking brick and mortar from the ground upward. Creating uneven stepping-stones for Owein to pick his way down, quickly . He nearly tripped over his own feet when he did, and he landed hard on the ground, his ankle protesting. The building sealed up behind him, and ... and ...

He squeezed his eyes shut. Smelled rot on his hands.

Silas.

Owein ran for the trees.

Police whistles sounded outside. Hulda uncovered her head. Owein had sealed the wall.

Hulda bolted for Myra and grabbed her cold hand. Her friend’s broken chest barely moved.

In her peripheral vision, Hulda saw Fallon stand up and shake herself, but her focus remained on Myra, whose breaths were short and quick. “We’ll get you a healer. Blightree is here. He can help you.” Tears fogged her glasses.

Myra’s eyes shifted by minute degrees, like she was trying to find the source of Hulda’s voice. “T-Two souls, in there,” she whispered, pale lips barely able to form the words. Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. “One ... larger ... than the other—”

“Shhh.” Hulda looked for something to stanch the blood, but she knew it was no use. Only magic could heal this. Only Blightree could—

“Ne ... ver ... read ... such ... a strained ... and broken ... mind.” The last word was a soft exhale of breath. She didn’t take it back in.

“No, please.” Hulda held Myra’s cold fingers to her cheek. “Oh, Myra, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

A brown hand reached forward and closed Myra’s eyes. Fallon had her dress in hand but hadn’t donned it yet. In the back of Hulda’s mind, she knew Fallon should dress quickly. The police would be here any moment. Yet she couldn’t find the words to say it.

Half a dozen tears ran down Hulda’s cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut. Squeezed Myra’s hand. It shouldn’t end like this. It couldn’t ... This couldn’t be real.

Stifling a sob, Hulda blinked and looked away from the morbid hole in her dear friend’s middle. When she did, she noticed something on the ground that stopped her cold. A syringe, and a vial containing silvery dregs from the laboratory in Ohio.

Both were empty.

Owein’s stomach seized.

He could just make out Silas’s dark coat ahead of him. He blinked sweat from his eyes. If he looked away, he would lose him. Owein couldn’t lose him. He would catch up to Silas Hogwood and tear him apart. With his bare hands if he had to.

Bile pushed up his throat. He spat it out, never breaking focus. Nausea was a side effect of necromancy. Did Oliver Whittock have spells in his blood after all? Had the serum activated them? Had—

A sharp pain radiated through his thigh, from the place where Owein had stabbed the syringe. Not from the punctured skin, but the bone beneath. He faltered. Gritted his teeth and ran harder. Pain wasn’t a side effect of magic. He could push through pain—

His vision doubled. He blinked, nearly colliding with a tree. Searched for Silas—no, which way had he gone? This way? Or that—

Fire lanced through his chest, up his neck, and into his skull. Cold sweat broke out on his skin. His stomach knotted hard enough to pull him down; he stumbled, dropped to his knees, and vomited onto the ground.

No, no, no, he pleaded, then heaved again. His limbs started to shake, and his head ... something was splitting open his skull.

One spell. It was one new spell. His body shouldn’t be revolting like this.

But his body disagreed.

He threw up a third time, vaguely noting the taste of blood before the world went dark.