Page 56 of Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

Mrs. Mirren rubbed her eyes.

“Sorry,” he offered weakly.

But she shook her head. “I don’t mind at all, Mr. Mansel. The company helps pass the time.” She offered him a grim smile. “I’m not sure. I suppose ... Forgive the grotesque metaphor, but imagine you’re holding a knife, and you have to stab someone else, or stab yourself. Which would be easier?”

Owein grimaced. “It wouldn’t be right to—”

“Ethics aside,” Mrs. Mirren pressed. “I mean the physical act itself. It’s easier to stab the other person. We hesitate when it’s us. We know it’ll hurt. We know we control the knife. We have to overcome a different kind of mental wall to perform the act that doesn’t exist when we perform it on someone else.” She considered her own words a moment. “I think it’s like that, anyway.”

“So,” Owein proceeded carefully, “it’s like being in a ditch. I can lower the rope to get you out, but I can’t lower the rope to myself.”

Mrs. Mirren snorted. “That is a much more suitable metaphor. Yes, I think it’s like that. If it weren’t”—her gaze shifted to the window—“I don’t think Silas Hogwood would have stayed where he was.” She inhaled deeply and let it all out at once. “And now that it’sonlyhim in poor Charlie’s body, I ... I don’t know. None of us do.”

Owein chewed on the inside of his cheek, mulling that over. Noticed, again, the dirt under his fingernails. “Mr. Blightree’s sister ... That’s Oliver’s mother?”

Confusion weighed down Mrs. Mirren’s forehead a moment before understanding lifted it. “Oliver Whittock, yes. Abitha Whittock. She can’t fix this”—she gestured to Blightree—“but we’ve reached out to her regardless. Though I doubt the queen will send her. Too risky, to lose both of her necromancers.”

It took a beat for Owein to recall that he was now a necromancer, too. How strange. “Are there not others?”

“There are always others.” Her voice hardened slightly. “But not like Mr. Blightree. Not like Silas Hogwood. They have a rare combination of necromancyandkinesis that not even Mrs. Whittock possesses. Despite the royal family’s best efforts over the years, the magic is dwindling. My parents’ marriage was arranged based on spells alone, and yet I am still nothing compared to my grandmother.” She allowed herself to slouch. “The necromancers you’ve encountered, Mr. Mansel, are some of the strongest in the world. A few more generations, and they will cease to exist. At least in the way we know them today, and no amount of breeding can stop that.”

Unless BIKER’s technology proves successful, repeatable.He picked at the dirt wedged beneath his thumbnail. She was right, though. By the time BIKER’s experiments solidified enough to make a difference, magic would have faded even more. But Owein didn’t need to worry about magic later, only magicnow. He’d give it all up to stop this madman from hurting his family. But that wasn’t a deal he could make. So instead, he would take more. As much as this secretive BIKER chemist could give him.

He shuddered, remembering the agony of the vial he’d taken in Providence, the serum derived from Silas Hogwood’s corpse. He’d have to be careful with the next one. He had to plan for anything.

He had to save them all.

“Mirren,” a muffled voice sounded in her pocket, and she reached inside to retrieve a column of selenite. “There’s a company from Connecticut asking for instructions.”

It took Owein a moment to place the voice as Lion’s. It was the most he’d ever heard the man talk.

Mirren pressed her thumb into the communion rune on the stone. “A whole company? Here?”

“Just a commander. Relegated here by the federal government. East side of the island.”

“I’m coming.” Mirren slipped the communion stone into her pocket and gave Owein a tight smile. “I’ll be back.”

Owein nodded, and Mirren left the room, leaving him, once again, alone with Blightree.

Letting out a long sigh, Owein picked up his teacup, swallowed a few dregs, and set it down again. Maybe he should bring it to Hulda and see if she foresaw anything in the leaves. He glanced out the window, spotting Pankhurst down below, leaning against a post of the porch railing, lighting a cigarette. A hawk swept by, but it wasn’t Fallon. Red hawk, perhaps? Owein didn’t know his birds of prey particularly well.

Turning away, he leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face. He should probably try to get some sleep. His bones ached with weariness, but his mind ran circles like a fox-chased hare, over and over in the same tracks until the pattern threatened to drive him to insanity. Maybe he’d dig out Hulda’s recent notes on etiquette and study them, just to focus on something else. Maybe he’d reread Cora’s letters, again.

“Wish I had your thoughts,” he mumbled, glancing at the sleeping Blightree. “After me, you’ve lived the longest of all of us. There’s wisdom in your kind of age.”

Not so much in Owein’s. He’d spent so much of it tethered to one place.

He sat for a little while longer, until his back started to ache. Then he stood, stretched, and looked out the window again, scanning the island and the sea beyond as had become habit, seeing nothing untoward. He stepped closer to Blightree, listening to the clawing of his breaths, and sighed. “If Oliver had healing powers, the serum didn’t jump-start them,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Reaching down, he gripped Blightree’s exposed hand. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Then startled when Blightree gripped him back.

His pulse sped when he felt magic, hot and quick, shoot up his arm and into his chest. The room shifted out of alignment, its colorsmuting into shades of gray. Owein felt himself falling, yet at the same time surging upward—

It stopped, all at once. The grays froze, the movements ceased.

And Owein saw Blightree lying in his bed, yet sitting up at the same time.

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