Wizard of Most Wicked Ways (Whimbrel House #4)

Chapter 19

July 9, 1851, Boston, Massachusetts

The small chapel was situated in South Boston, away from the bustle of city life, not far from the little home Myra had abandoned when she went into hiding. Nothing bore her name—not on the death certificate, not in the hymns, not on the lips of Owein’s family, who made up the bulk of attendees at the quiet funeral. They, and a few members of the Queen’s League. Myra Haigh was already dead, or so the world believed. It didn’t make her second death any easier for those who’d known better.

Owein glanced to Beth, who sat to his left on the hard, wooden pew. He was beyond happy to reunite with her, if only for the day, but the funeral squashed the joy and relief until they were hardly recognizable. She and Hulda had both worked for Myra and known her personally; they took her murder the hardest. Hulda especially, since she’d seen it happen. Owein had seen it, too. His mind had a hard time piecing it together, the way Myra had died. As though the sky and the ocean had switched places. Still, it would be burned into his memory for as long as he had one.

He thought about the first time he’d met Myra. He’d caught a glimpse of her shortly after Silas Hogwood had pulled him from the house and shoved him into his terrier’s body, but he’d formally met her on a dark Boston street in late winter, standing with Merritt at a light post, fueled on hope that she would find them. The cobbles had smelled like rain and horses.

Merritt was the first person to have heard Owein “speak” in over two hundred years, Myra the second. Locked without words for so long, having someone who could truly hear him had been monumental. She’d talked to him as a person, not an animal, something even Cora had struggled to do. For that, he would always be grateful to Myra Haigh. For that, he would miss her and forever regret not getting to BIKER ten seconds sooner. Ten seconds would have made all the difference. But, as Fallon had whispered in the dead of night, Owein couldn’t turn his life inside out for ten seconds. Still, sitting there in the chapel, he counted in his mind, one to ten. So brief. So monumental.

Dropping his gaze to his hands, he opened and closed his fists. Fallon, to his right, reached over and smoothed out his fingers, patterning her brown against his white. She said nothing. They all just sat there in the quiet chapel, taking in its heaviness and its peace. Everyone who wanted to speak had already spoken. Even Mabol and Ellis seemed to feel the reverence of the moment, though Hattie started to squirm in her mother’s arms. Henri hadn’t come; the Babineauxs had left him with Beth’s mother.

Leaning back in the pew, Owein closed his eyes. He still felt weak. Fatigued, like he’d only just ended an entire day of harvesting work. But he was recovering. Nearly there.

And when he was, would he be strong enough?

A creaking floorboard had him cracking his eyes just in time to see Jonelle, still in her blue uniform, slip outside. Fallon resumed playing with his fingers; Owein turned his hand over and knit it with hers.

Moments later, Jonelle returned, this time without taking care to minimize noise. “They’ve found him.” She didn’t yell, yet in the silence, her voice pierced Owein’s ears. He stood first.

“Him?” he asked at the same time Merritt said, “Silas?”

Jonelle nodded, and shivers like October rain drizzled down Owein’s body. Jonelle’s eyes went for Mrs. Mirren and Lord Pankhurst. “They’ve corralled him at Prudence Island.”

Prudence Island was in the Narragansett Bay, west of Blaugdone Island. The traps had worked. Owein dared not breathe, for fear it would somehow break the hope threading through the church.

“Prudence,” Hulda whispered, clutching Merritt’s hand in her own. She unfocused for a moment, contemplating. “Then it must be Charlie who comes to Blaugdone Island in the fog.” Her body visibly relaxed.

Gooseflesh rose across Owein’s arms.

Mrs. Mirren rushed for the door. “Loren, stay with the family, just in case.”

Lord Pankhurst nodded.

“Let me come with you.” Owein stumbled into the aisle. “I can help.”

But Jonelle shook her head. “You’re not in good condition yet, Mr. Mansel, and you don’t have the training. We’ve got him. Please, stay.”

She didn’t wait to see if he’d agree; she and Mrs. Mirren left, leaving a different kind of silence in their wake. A tense silence, uncomfortable with worry yet limned with promise.

Owein’s hands resumed their fists.

“We should leave,” Hulda said. “Not back to Blaugdone,” she stated obviously. “Myra’s home is close by.”

Baptiste said, “Beth and I will go to her mère .”

Hulda nodded. Owein slouched where he stood. It was safer for Beth and Baptiste there, away from the Fernsbys, but he hated being apart from Beth. Like Myra, Beth had always seen him as human and treated him as such, even when their communication had been limited to his flimsy efforts of pointing at a printed alphabet. Perhaps she sensed this, magic or no, because she met his eyes then, carefully stepped around Fallon, and embraced him tightly. He returned the hug, holding on as though it would be the last time he saw her. She always fit so small against him; even when this body was new and only fourteen, Beth had been smaller than him. But her spirit was large, surrounding him like the arms of a mother, one he knew better than his first.

He knew he’d see her again, but anxiety loved to play tricks on the mind, even one as old as his.

Beth kissed one of his cheeks and patted the other. “Please don’t do anything stupid,” she chided him. Glancing to Fallon, she added, “Make sure of it.”

Fallon nodded. The Babineauxs gathered their things and left without fanfare.

Coming to himself, Owein offered the Fernsbys help with the children. Merritt handed him Ellis, half-asleep and sucking on her thumb, and Owein put the babe on his shoulder and patted her back by habit. They filed slowly from the church, Hulda leading the way to Myra’s abandoned home. It would be a long, stiff walk, but Silas had fled Boston. Hulda had foreseen tonight’s dinner early this morning, the lot of them still in their mourning clothes, with no imminent threat.

Still, as Owein passed a sapling beech tree, he reached out and grazed the pads of his fingers over the leaves, pulling inside himself in a way he hardly thought about anymore. Just to know. He needed to know.

The three bright-jade leaves he touched blackened, curled inward, and fell from their branch. His stomach gurgled in protest, but the side effects of the serum remained undetectable.

Blue, blue, blue. Too much blue in a bed of green.

Three men in blue, two in gray, approached him, hands on guns or guns drawn, the threat of magic clicking in the air. Queen’s League. They’d always wanted him. They still wanted him. Silas’s head pulsed with it.

He’d docked his stolen boat a mile away. The island’s rocky coast was at his back: a nine-foot drop into the sea, but one of the blue uniforms guarded that, too, with at least two soldiers in a boat, watching him in the bay. Air burned his throat as Silas sucked it in and out of his lungs. His arms, legs, and back were stiff from kinesis, his brain addled from—

Too much blue in a sea of green. He couldn’t focus. Too many trees. Too many people. Too many eyes, looking at him. They were bars, bars, bars, caging him in.

Grabbing the sides of his splitting head, Silas roared, his flesh pebbling under stolen clothes, his rotting arm smelling sour.

“Stand down, Silas Hogwood,” a familiar and commanding voice bellowed. “It’s over.”

Voice. He knew that voice. Silas turned around, only to hit a wardship spell. He growled and turned back, scanning the fleshy bars closing in on him. His eyes didn’t want to listen to him today. Pushing his fingers to his eyelids, he forced them to open wide, forced himself to take in his pursuers.

He hesitated on one, the oldest of the lot. He knew that man. The man said something else, but Silas didn’t hear it. He was too focused. His fingers began to tremble, his eyes burned, but Silas forced the eyes to look at him until he understood. Blightree.

“Cousin.” His voice didn’t sound like his, nor like the other’s . It resonated raw and feral, soft and sharp at once. Silas laughed then. Something about the situation was funny. Something he’d examine later. But he laughed so hard he bent over wheezing with it, and the soldiers exchanged uncomfortable glances. He always made them uncomfortable.

“You won’t take me ,” Silas hissed, and launched forward, only to have another wardship spell fling up before him. He smashed his chest and nose into it at the same time a warning shot exploded the ground at his feet. The woman who’d fired moved the muzzle to point at his forehead.

“Hold,” Blightree ordered. The gun didn’t move, but it didn’t fire, either. “Let me free him.”

Free him. Yes, free him! All Silas wanted was to be free—

The other stirred inside him, pushing against Silas’s ribs and skin. Silas gritted his teeth so hard he chipped a molar, trying to tamp it down. Trying to bury it yet again. Why won’t you stay dead?

Silas looked away. He shouldn’t have done that. Suddenly two men were at either arm, restraining him, and the wardship spell boxed in his head and neck and hips and feet. Silas writhed, pinching his skin, contorting muscle, slamming against the wardship spell until blood flowed freely from his nose. Iron and salt tickled his lips as Blightree approached, wild grasses breaking under his footfalls. Still, Silas squirmed.

“I will heal Charlie after,” Blightree murmured to the others, “once I have recovered.”

The other leapt up. “ No! ” Silas bellowed, thrashing between his captors while wrestling with that damnable spirit. “No no no no no no no!”

The older man’s thick fingers pressed to Silas’s chest. Silas screamed, the sound reverberating between the invisible walls around his head. He thrashed as the heat of necromancy dove past clothes, skin, blood, muscle, and bone—into the soul itself. Felt it wander and grip and tear —

He fell limp, supported only by the men and the spells. Breathed deeply, sharply. Sweat beaded on every inch of skin, making him cold beneath the summer sun. Then he fell to his knees, moisture from the flora seeping into the fabric of his trousers.

“Charlie?” the necromancer asked.

It took him a moment to orient himself. To remember. To wiggle each finger at a time. Each finger, his. The noise, silenced. The pressure gone. The relief, like being at the bottom of the ocean these five years and finally resurfacing ...

“Y-Yes,” he coughed. “My . . . head . . .”

The wizards on either side of him let their hold slacken. That was their second mistake.

A breaking spell shattered the lingering wardship walls. Kinesis sent the wizards flying, one slamming into a tree, another flung into the bay. Bullets fired, but he flared luck. They missed. He had enough focus left to grab Blightree by the collar and pull his face right up to his own.

“You pulled out the wrong soul, cousin ,” Silas spat.

Now, he would return the favor.