Page 58 of Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

Owein’s lip twisted upward. “I’d be happy to.”

Blightree smiled, but it faded. “I’m losing my hold,” he confessed, and through distant ears, Owein heard the man’s stomach gurgle. “It’s very tiring, my dear boy.”

“I understand. I’ll come back, after you’ve rested.”

He nodded. “I would like that.”

Another, swifter falling sensation engulfed him, spinning the grays of the room into black.

Owein opened his eyes to the white bedspread pressed against his face. His knees ached where they pressed into the hard floor, and his right shoulder blade zinged as he lifted his head. His hand still clasped Blightree’s, but the necromancer’s grip had gone lax.

“Thank you, Uncle Will.” Owein carefully pulled his fingers free. “Somehow, I’ll save you, too.”

Chapter 23

July 14, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island

Lisbeth, no last name given in introduction, revealed herself as a woman in her late thirties with light-brown hair nearly the same shade as Merritt’s, pulled back in a tight bun meant for utility and not fashion. She had soft features but a severe presence, which Owein found he liked. Or, if not liked, preferred. He wanted this done and over with, and Lisbeth seemed very much like a person who could achieve that.

When she arrived, on a boat she’d driven herself, she smelled of chemicals and spoke to no one but Hulda. Only under Hulda’s direction did she allow Owein and Merritt to help her with her luggage—two hard, oversized suitcases and another softer one, which she’d insisted she carry herself. When Lord Pankhurst approached to offer aid, Hulda herself said, “This is BIKER business exclusively.”

Pankhurst put up his hands as if in surrender and stepped back, frowning only once he had his pipe in his mouth, watching thoughtfully as the group directed Lisbeth and her things to the Babineaux house. She set up in the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She spent nearly an hour in there with Hulda before allowing Owein inside.

Owein started when he saw his own femur on the countertop, cleaned nearly to a polish. The scents of decay had been strippedcompletely. When had she dismantled his body? When had she cleaned it? What else ... had she done to it?

His stomach tightened. It shouldn’t bother him. He knew it shouldn’t bother him. This was his plan, his corpse, but something about having a stranger dabbling with his bones without his knowledge felt deeply personal. Vulnerable, like he stood before her naked and she was wholly unimpressed.

“Sit here, please.” Lisbeth gestured to a chair she’d pushed against the far wall, away from the laboratory equipment she’d arranged on Beth’s dining table. It looked similar to what Owein had seen at the Ohio laboratory, though he couldn’t name most of the apparatuses. But Owein sat, slow to pull his eyes from the piecemeal workshop, his heart beating harder than it should.

He wondered what his mother would have thought of all this.

“Are you ill?” Lisbeth asked, lifting a small scalpel from a tin of water and shaking it dry.

Owein’s gaze shifted to her face, but she didn’t meet his eyes. A dog barked outside, but the distance made it difficult for him to determine which. “Pardon?”

“Are you sick, feverish, anything that would be a concern for this process?”

“No.”

“Good.” She fiddled in a bag for something. “I need some blood for the solution.”

“We’re not related by blood. He and I.” He tipped his head toward the femur.Not anymore.

“I’ll work with what I have.” She rolled up his sleeve to just above his elbow. He expected her to grab a bowl for bloodletting, but instead she pulled out a syringe very similar to the one he’d stolen from the facility in Ohio. She held his arm out as straight as it would go; poked him once, then twice, before pulling back on the plunger and drawing deep-crimson blood from his vein. Owein watched in horridfascination. The sting had him thinking of the first time he’d felt pain after Silas pushed his soul into the body of a dog. He hadn’t been able to feel pain as a house. Even when Merritt had tried to light him on fire, he hadn’t feltpain, only a deep sense of panic and uncertainty, for what would happen to him if the house burned down? Would he linger in the ash, or finally pass on?

Thinking of that body—the terrier’s—left his throat feeling thick. Being a man was far better, yes, but he missed that dog. Wished their tale together had unraveled differently. Wished the poor beast had lived.You were a good boy.

He blinked. Lisbeth had finished and bound his arm with a small bandage. She set down the syringe nonchalantly on the table and strode over to the femur, poking it with a frown.

Owein grasped his arm, putting pressure on the wound. “Can you do it?”

She shrugged. “If nothing else, the information will prove fruitful.”

“How will it—” he began.

“No,” Lisbeth interrupted, short and simple. “I will not answer any questions you have. Ask Mrs. Fernsby. You may go.”

He nodded, though she didn’t see it, and let himself out. Pankhurst lounged in the front room, sweet-smelling smoke from his pipe curling to the ceiling.

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