Page 69 of Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

Chapter 25

July 15, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island

Owein’s senses weren’t the same in a house as they were in a mortal body. He could see, but not with the vividness of eyes. Hear, but not with the keenness of ears. Taste and touch were gone, but he could detect aromas as though they were being drawn for him, distantly, on the reverse side of a piece of paper. Everything was there, but muted, and his senses were limited to the structure of his new body. He had no heart to feel the sorrow of it, but sorrow had always been a spiritual thing. Though it weighed heavily on him, he moved quickly, precisely, ensuring he wouldn’t hurt the injured and fallen. Settling over his old foundation, he pulled boards and beams and struts apart, fitting them back into place with the largest restore-order spells he’d ever cast. Not a single one addled his mind, because he had no physical mind to addle. The rooms separated in cracks and pops, stairs swung back into place, shards of glass reorganized themselves into windows, seaming together until not a fissure remained to whisper of past damage. Broken furniture glued back together and flew through reopened spaces to its designated rooms. Beds remade themselves, books hopped onto shelves, clothes whistled their way back into drawers. Even the pages of Merritt’s latest manuscript shuffled into order,or at least as orderly as the author had kept them in the first place, which wasn’t very.

Owein straightened the portrait of a long-forgotten relative, recemented the toilet bowl, and set the breakfast table. He’d started a boy who couldn’t say goodbye, driving his spirit into the walls of his family home. Then he’d been a dog, then a boy again—a different boy—and a man for a short while. Now he was, in an ironic sense, home again. Home forever, but at least it was a forever where he could watch over his family for generations to come, until the hurt of it all grew too much and he let the world weather him down, until the walls splintered and the roof caved and he was once again a free spirit, bound by nothing but air and heaven.

The last snaps of wainscotting and breaths of reconstituted paint were his farewells. His consciousness flitted to his bedroom, righting the spilled inkwell and straightening the doorframe, then, one by one, reorganizing all of Cora’s letters. He realized with heavy dismay that he’d lied to her. He never would write her back, would he? Never say the things he wanted to say.

Without meaning to, the paint on the ceiling began to drip, drip, drip—

A strange plunging feeling overwhelmed it. Would have stolen his breath away, if he’d had any to steal. Startled him, because he wasn’t supposed to feel such a physical and grossly familiarsinking, not as he was. But he felt it, swift and sudden as a winter gale.

Owein’s soul was sucked from his bedroom. He flashed by the hall and down the stairs, through the wall separating the reception hall and the dining room, out the northwest corner of the house itself.

He hit his body all at once, feeling as though a horse had fallen atop him. Ithurt. His ribs, his backside, his legs, and most of all his head, radiating heat from a gash above his brow that thumped in a relentless three-note pattern.

Like the draw of a blacksmith’s bellows, Owein breathed in a searing lungful of air and opened his eyes to a red-rimmed blue sky. Blightree’s face over him was so pale he looked like a ghost. One hand pressed to Owein’s chest, the other clutching a communion stone. The old man smiled at him, the slightest ticking up of the corner of his lips, before he collapsed against Owein’s shoulder, never to breathe again.

Chapter 26

July 21, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island

Oliver Whittock’s mother didn’t come.

Despite what the others had said, Owein had still supposed she might have, since William Blightree had been her brother. But Queen Victoria sent another necromancer among the members of the Queen’s League, perhaps the oldest woman Owein had ever laid eyes on. She was small, pale, with hair white as his own, with a mousy disposition but shrewd eyes. She checked the bodies, all of them—Blightree, Mirren, Lion, and what was left of Silas. She put her warm hands on Owein’s cheeks, turned his head either way, then healed the scabbed-over gash on his forehead. Her eyes looked sunken after, like they might roll back into her sinuses. Owein had been the last on her list, having somehow received the fewest life-threatening injuries, despite hurting from toe to crown. Merritt and Jonelle were walking again.

The necromancer dealt with her nausea as regally as a person could, throwing up in private, grimacing in silence. Had Owein possessed a physical body for the same amount of time, perhaps he would have handled his own magical consequences similarly. Though, ever since the serum took hold ... he had handled them better. That was, it seemed he could domorebefore the same effects took hold. His spells still cost the same, but they were larger now.

To think his powers were still only a fraction of what magic once was ... it awed him. Hulda hadn’t asked about any changes regarding his second dose of serum. For now, Owein chose to keep them to himself.

He thanked the British necromancer quietly before approaching the coffins near the dock. They weren’t ornate; the fallen would be buried in their homeland, honored with a grand funeral, or so Pankhurst promised. Much more aesthetic coffins awaited them. But Owein knelt beside Blightree’s temporary resting place and set a bouquet of honeysuckle and wintergreen atop the lid. He wasn’t embarrassed by his tears; that wasn’t why he turned away from the others who lingered. He just wished for a moment alone with his uncle.

“You saved me twice,” he whispered, running his hand along the wood grain. Blightree had heard the commotion of Silas’s attacks from the Babineauxs’ home, possibly even through the communion stone Owein had brushed. The spiritually split man had crawled from that house to Whimbrel, on his elbows and knees, by the look of the tracks. Lisbeth hadn’t helped him. She hadn’t known; she’d hunkered in the cellar with her equipment until Hulda had the thought to retrieve her. He crawled, he suffered, and he gave up the last of his life so that Owein might have his. “I promise I won’t waste it.” A tear struck the coffin lid. “I promise I’ll live and fulfill all the wishes you had for both of us—Oliverandme.” He took a deep breath, alleviating the sore lump in his throat. “I will carry on your legacy all my life. My great-grandchildren will know your name.”

He knelt there in silence for several moments, leaning on the coffin, until Pankhurst’s gloved hand lightly rested on his shoulder. “It’s time, lad.”

Rolling his lips together, Owein stood, nodding silent thanks to Mirren and Lion both before stepping back. Pankhurst extended his hand. Owein took it.

“I look forward to working with you.” The man offered a wan smile. He released Owein’s hand, and when the stevedores came for Blightree’s coffin, Pankhurst helped carry it onto the ship. Owein noticed, with some comfort, that he left the wildflowers where they lay, careful not to let them fall.

“Thank you,” Owein whispered to the wind.

The accompanying necromancer returned to the ship, giving Pankhurst a simple nod before she boarded—a gesture, he explained, that meant she could not sense any extra spirits anywhere on the island. Silas Hogwood was well and truly gone.

Once that business had concluded, the Brits boarded. Fallon approached him as the ship pulled away from the island’s meager dock. She wrapped her arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder, saying nothing. Merritt and Hulda came up behind them, respecting the reverence of the moment as they all watched the English steamship cut through blue waters until the eye could no longer discern it between the sky and the sea. The island lay serene around them, bearing its own scars of battle that Owein could right, if he wished to. Yet he wasn’t ready to erase what had happened, not yet.

It wasn’t until he turned away from the coast that Owein caught sight of a modest boat sailing in from the mainland. Shielding his eyes, he squinted. Hulda let out a shuddering cry, and at the sound, Owein recognized them instantly. Eyes tearing, he shivered with relief. It bubbled up his throat in the form of laughter, inundating him.

The Babineauxs and the children had finally come home.

Three weeks later, Owein sat out on the rocks near the south coast of the island, close enough to hear the rustle of gentle waves, far enough to avoid their splash. He held a book on his knee, a new one—a collection of poems by William Wordsworth. The book was his, paid forwith his own money, so he marked up each poem, underlining what he liked, circling what he would study, and printing notes in the margins. He had to, more frequently than he would have liked, move the book closer to his face to read the fine type—an issue he’d had since that last fight with Silas Hogwood. The necromancer had sealed his wounds, but his eyesight hadn’t quite recovered from the rifle blow to his head. A whimbrel piped nearby, and a cedar-scented breeze stirred his sun-heated hair, which was due for a trim, though Owein could not bother himself to get it cut, even when Beth offered to do it for him.

He heard a grunt of exertion and glanced up, spying his three-and-two-thirds-year-old niece climbing over the rocks and boulders toward him. After dog-earing the page, he closed the book of poetry and set it aside, spine against the clover, and waited with the patience only a man nearly 228 years old could muster.

Mabol selected a tall rock, sat upon it, and smoothed her skirt. Moved to fluff her hair, but Fallon had braided it for her that morning, and there was nothing loose to fluff.

Grinning, Owein asked, “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

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