Page 43 of Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

Because he intended to tell her.

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 listeningear 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’tfeelit. 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—theman, 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. “Therehas 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? Youreadminds, woman, you don’t control them—”

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