Page 18

Cora,

I need your help. Silas Hogwood is back. It’s complicated, but I know it’s him. He’s taken over the body of someone new. He attacked Whimbrel House today. Merritt got hurt. I don’tknow when he’ll return, only that he will. He isn’t right in the mind. He’s evil, pure and simple.

Cora, you know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. I held him off, but he got away. He’s going to come back. But if I had that conjurer’s bead from the Tower of London, I could defeat him. If I didn’t have to bear the consequences of my own spells, I could protect my family.

I know it’s dangerous. I was there. But please, Cora, please help me. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know who else to turn to.

Please respond quickly.

Yours,

Owein

Merritt didn’t feel the need to point out that tomorrow was Sunday. That wasn’t to say the watchmen wouldn’t do their jobs on the Sabbath, but they wouldn’t be in the office to take a report, and they’d hesitate to come all the way out to the island to patrol, especially given that the attacker in question was a powerful wizard and they were not. Would Merritt even be believed if he claimed it was Silas Hogwood? He still wasn’t entirely surehebelieved it, but Owein was so convinced, and the magic ... the magic was right.

But Hulda didn’t need the extra stress. She looked ready to unravel. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. Stiffness limned her every movement, and she had begun cleaning her spectacles obsessively.

Merritt lay in bed, useless, unable to rest and unable to do anything else. Even with the drugs the doctor had given him, everythinghurt. The only break was his collarbone—a very important and interconnected bone—but there were bruises everywhere. Those he couldn’t see, he could still feel. Even wiggling his toes hurt.

But he would have let the crazed wizard shatter him into a thousand pieces if it had meant protecting his family.

Mabol ... When he’d seen Mabol out there, he’d lost his wits. He’d ceased thinking and justattacked. Like a rabid dog. He’d been so scared.Terrified.

It’ll be okay,the dog—Fallon—had said to him, pressing her muzzle to his shoulder.Keep breathing. He’s almost gone.

Hearing her voice in his head had shocked him nearly as much as his breaking bone had.

Well, one thing at a time. Tomorrow was the Sabbath. That would give him another day to heal. The following day, Hulda would sort it out. Merritt would go to town with her, doctor’s orders be damned.

He didn’t dare turn his head, so he merely strained his eyes to see his wife standing at the window now, Ellis on her shoulder, having just fed. Hulda absently patted the babe’s back and stared out into the night. Baptiste had put up some torches; Merritt could just see the outer halo of their glow from the bed.

His memory rewound to that night nearly five years ago. Silas Hogwood had shattered the dining room window, leaving Baptiste with a concussion and nearly killing Beth. He’d taken Owein and Merritt. Merritt had woken once slung on the back of a horse and again in that dark, dank basement, tied up like a hog. He’d thought he was done for, but Hulda had rescued him, wearing only her underthings. Silas had found them. Merritt had knocked him out with a crowbar. A blow hard enough to kill, and it did.

And yet Silas Hogwood hadn’t died.

A thought came to him then, one that startled him enough to zing through his broken clavicle. He and Hulda had returned to that run-down place, searching for signs of Silas, and found none. But Merritt had also visited the local town to interview the watchmen. He’d spoken to one at a mill. What had he said?

“‘Wasn’t the same after that,’” Merritt whispered. He was surprised he remembered at all ... but his mind tended to hold on to enchanted serial killers who wanted to kill him.

Hulda turned from the window. “What?”

Merritt shut his eyes, thinking. Trying to picture the face of the man he’d interviewed. He couldn’t quite, but he remembered the mill and the noise. “There was a watchman.” He spoke carefully. “One at Marshfield. He said ... He said ...” Another watchman had acted strangely? Something like that. “His friend went into the building with him, but he wasn’t the same afterward. Hadn’t seen him for a long time.”

What had been his name? Merritt would need to check the report. He couldn’t recall.

Hulda drew closer, rubbing their two-month-old’s back. “Marshfield? From ... then?”

“Yeah. When I investigated around the area, during the mess with Baillie.” The hysterian lawyer was locked up behind bars and certainly wasn’t going to be a problem for them anytime in the near future. Then again, Merritt had thought the same about Silas Hogwood.

“I wonder,” he added, and left it at that. Strong wizards, wizards like Owein, could fuse themselves to houses upon their death. Silas was a strong wizard, and he was also a necromancer. Could he have fused his spirit with a body in Marshfield? Was Owein right on that matter? No other explanation made sense. He couldn’tfathomany other explanation.

Merritt’s thoughts pulled back to the watchman. It niggled at him. Felt wrong, which meant it might be right. But it wouldn’t help to dwellon it now, so he carefully wiggled the fingers on his right hand. “Guess I’m not writing for a while.”

“You can dictate to me if you need to.” Hulda lowered Ellis from her shoulder and cradled the babe’s head in the crook of her arm, then sat on the chair beside the bed. Set her jaw, then started to cry.

“Hulda.” He very carefully reached over with his left hand. Grazed her knee. “Hulda, we’ll work it out. We’ll leave, if we have to. Nothing is worth our lives. Not even Whimbrel House.”

She nodded, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “I know. I know. I just ... I wish we were done with it. Why are we never done with it?”