Page 4 of Heir of Uncertain Magic

He could see her fighting a smile. “You are a rake,Merritt.”

He placed a kiss atop her hand. “Let me escort you. I’ll carry your bags. I need to see McFarland anyway.” McFarland was his editor, also based in Boston. Merritt needed to turn in the ending of his book.

“I’ve only one bag,” she countered, but her disposition softened all the same. Her eyes dropped to their still-entwined hands, and somberness crossed her features. “And what of Cattlecorn?” she asked.

His stomach sank. Perhaps it would be better to have Hulda out of the house so she could stop reminding him of his unwanted responsibilities. “What of it?”

“Merritt.” She frowned. “You’ll never gain control of your power if you don’t ask for help. I don’t know any communionists who can step in. And there’s the matter of your family.”

Pressing his lips together, Merritt released her hand and leaned back in his chair, balancing on its back legs. Hulda hated it when he did that, but she made no comment. “I did write a letter.”

“To your mother?”

His gut churned sour. “To Sutcliffe.” He’d tried again and again to write to his mother, whom he hadn’t seen or spoken to in thirteen years—not since his father’s machinations to disinherit him. But every time Merritt tried, he couldn’t get past her name. He just ... couldn’t. He’d triedRose, and he’d triedMotherand a slew of others, but regardless of the greeting, his brain would go blank or his lunch would threaten to crawl up his esophagus. He justcouldn’t, and he wasn’t sure why.

For some reason writing to Sutcliffe, a man he knew by occupation and little else, was easier.

“That’s good. You posted it?”

He ran a hand down his face. “Beth can post it.” Or he’d just burn it and pretend he’d never learned the sharp truth of his past. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t.

“You’ve not posted it? Isn’t Fletcher coming this weekend to accompany you?”

“Post is quick,” he offered.

Where is it? I’ll give it to her.A tail whapped the floor.

“No.”

“No?” Hulda asked.

Merritt lowered the chair onto all four legs. “No to Owein.”

“What did he say?”

He waved his hand, exhaustion pulling on him.

Why not?

Rubbing his forehead, he mumbled, “Turnoff.”

Hulda’s lips pulled into a sympathetic frown. Owein whined beneath the table, sending a shard of guilt through Merritt’s middle. Dogs couldn’t talk, making Merritt the only outlet Owein had to be heard. Surely he couldn’t fault the boy for speaking as much as he did. The “boy” who was technically a couple of centuries Merritt’s senior ...

“I’ll see if I can find a tutor,” Hulda suggested. “For the communion, and for the rest.”

Communion, wardship, chaocracy. Those were the magics tied up in Merritt’s blood. He’d love to get rid of the first. He’d still seen no sign of the last.

Merritt pulled his hands from his face. “How does one find a tutor? Magic is so diluted ...”

She scoffed. “I do havesomeresources. In the meantime, reach out to Sutcliffe ... and see what you can learn from your uncle.”

Merritt glanced down at the dog. He kept forgetting he and Owein were technically related. How many “greats” was Owein again? Seven? Eight? “Owein doesn’t have communion spells.”

The table turned a bright shade of purple as the mutt showcased one of the spells hedidhave—alteration, or the magic of shape-shifting and metamorphosis. Because they shared a bloodline, Merritt’s and Owein’s magic should, theoretically, overlap. Wardship and communion came from elsewhere in the family tree, according to the records Hulda had pulled from the Genealogical Society for the Advancement of Magic. And while Merritt had no spells in the school of alteration, Silas Hogwood had been equipped with a spell of intuition, and he’d declared Merritt to possess chaocracy magic. Spells of order and disorder, which Owein, his umpteenth great-uncle, had used to make Whimbrel House a living hell before they reached a truce with one another. Something Owein’s parents had passed down their line, thoughifMerritt had any of it, his magic wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. Magicwas a finite resource, after all, and there were too many nonmagical folk in his genealogy.

A headache was starting to pulse behind Merritt’s forehead. Feeling Hulda’s eyes on him, he said, “I’ll go with Fletcher.” His best friend also hailed from Cattlecorn. Having him tag along could make this ... easier.

But Merritt still didn’t want to go. He never said it aloud, but if penning a letter to his mother—and he made a livingas a writer—made him sick, the thought of returning to New York made him positively miserable. He tried to mentally walk himself through it—packing a bag, buying a ticket, getting on the train and off the train, walking through town ... but he could never finish the narrative, even just in thought. There was a thick, adamant wall there, too tall to climb and too wide to walk around.

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