Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

Chapter 5

April 7, 1827, London, England

Silas’s mother was dying.

She hadn’t opened her eyes for two days. Her breathing was raspy and shallow, her face sunken and pale.

It wasn’t a surprise. She’d been steadily declining for years. Her light had become so dim Silas wondered if he’d notice when it snuffed out completely.

Deep down, he knew he would.

Clenching and unclenching his hands, he glanced to his mother’s door. Christian had just left the bedchamber. Silas had already turned the servants away and locked up behind them. His mother wouldn’t make it to the end of the week. Maybe not even the end of the day.

It was, in a way, a mercy to test this on her.

In January, Silas had found an enchanted cottage in the Cotswolds, a simple house imbued with the elemental spell of controlling water, inhabited by an aging owner who didn’t mind, or didn’t notice, Silas’s snooping about. Reliving that night with his father, Silas had worked through the spells in his blood—spells he’d learned were just the right combination to take. Necromancy to connect to life force . . . a house wasn’t a living thing, of course, but magic was. Chaocracy to break up the magic and reorder it. Kinesis to move it from vessel to vessel—house to him. The process with his father had been angry and quick. With the house, it was calculated and careful.

And it had worked.

A house wasn’t a living thing, which meant it couldn’t die. That cottage in the Cotswolds still stood and would continue to do so for some time. So while his father’s death had zapped his spells from Silas, nothing could take the elemental water spell from his person. As for the resident . . . modern plumbing or a housemaid would replace what he had lost.

Now, one of the most powerful necromancers in England lay dying in bed before him. And when she died, her magic, carefully bred and cultivated, would die with her.

Unless Silas’s new theory proved correct.

Silas possessed one alteration spell from his paternal line—the ability to condense, to shrink. The cottage had given him the ability to control water. He’d tested it again and again, alone, and felt confident he could use it here.

Magic was tied to the body. So if he could preserve the body, the magic would live. In a sense, his mother would live on. In him.

He glanced to the door again. Listened. No sound of anyone coming or going. He glanced at the old clock on the mantel. The second hand seemed too loud.

Removing his gloves, Silas took one last long look at his mother before laying his hands on her, one on her forehead and the other on her chest. Necromancy first. He carefully wound the spell down, finding her magic, gathering it, holding it. It took much longer than it had with his father. Because there was more to be had, perhaps, but in his experimentation with the cottage, he’d also realized he’d stolen only a fraction of his father’s magic that night outside the stables. To collect all of his mother’s ability would take time.

He glanced at the door as nausea curled through him—the counterbalance to necromancy. Would someone come by, despite his orders? Test the lock? If it was Christian, how would he explain?

Focus. The second hand tick, tick, ticked. He shifted to chaocracy and broke his mother’s spells apart—he’d inherited a portion of most of them, which made it easier. He truly had to focus here, for chaocracy caused confusion, and if he faltered, he might lose her magic forever. Too much time passed before he felt ready to shift to kinesis to transfer the magic, his joints stiffening the longer he pushed the spell. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the exertion, but—

Yes. His body trembled as new magic burned within him, strengthening existing spells, lending him new ones that hadn’t been inherited. The nausea intensified. Where was he? Focus. He had to finish. He had to—

Mother. But she was dying, anyway. He reminded himself she was already good as dead.

Water. Shrink. Condense. His mouth dried as he worked, and a strained mewing escaped his mother’s throat. He felt his shoulders mutate as his mother’s body gradually warped and shriveled, taking on a dark-green cast. His bones enlarged and pushed against skin as hers waned and withered, until the spells could pull nothing more out of her.

Blinking dry eyes, Silas grounded himself. Remembered where he was. What he was doing. The clock on the mantel said . . . but surely two hours hadn’t passed . . .

His mother was unrecognizable. Not only as herself, but as a human. Her body was dark and ghastly, about the length of Silas’s forearm, and wrinkled as a fingertip after an hours-long bath. Her limbs had sucked into her body, leaving little flaps behind. Her face had caved into itself until there was no longer a face at all.

And the new spells, her magic, still burned brilliantly within him.

He’d done it. A sharp chuckle ripped up his throat. He’d done it.

Footsteps in the hallway brought him back to himself. He grasped his mother and wrapped her in one of the clean towels left by the side of the bed. Loosened the buttons of his coat to hide his malformed shoulders—that side effect would pass in time, but any who saw it would know he’d done something. Timing his escape carefully, he fled the room for the wine cellar, where he could stow away his mother and better preserve her.

Once he returned, he would need to act shocked and confused that the body was gone. He could never explain to anyone what he had done.

No one would understand.