He shrugged a shoulder, hope building in his chest. “You could pack a bag. Send for the rest.”
A small smile flickered on her mouth. “I’m not sure that would be . . . appropriate, given the circumstances.”
He deflated. “Of course.” He glanced to the hotel. “Then where will you go?”
Rubbing the back of her neck, she said, “My sister’s, I suppose. She lives not terribly far from here. Until things . . . sort.”
He shifted his weight to his other leg. “And when will they sort?”
She picked at her hem. “I’m not sure.”
An open carriage rolled by.
“Do you still have your communion stone?” he asked.
She patted her bag. “Of course.”
He nodded, unsure what else to say, or what to do with his hands. “Well then.”
She checked her posture. “I should . . . get my things together before Myra returns.”
“Probably a good idea.”
“But I’ll leave a note.”
He smiled. “Also a good idea.”
They stood there awkwardly for another moment before Merritt finally turned away, taking the road toward the dock. He glanced back once. Hulda was still watching him.
Is she not coming back? asked a youthful, clipped voice in his head.
He started. A man on horseback was coming his way, so he quickly crossed the road, Owein following at his heels. It took him a second to identify the voice as the dog’s. “Um.” He wasn’t sure what to do with this magic business. He wasn’t sure he believed it. Perhaps he would be persuaded by the contents of this file . . . a file he had no desire to read. Yet. But despite the strangeness of the conspicuous second voice in his head, heaviness replaced surprise. He glanced back a second time, but didn’t see her.
“I don’t know, Owein,” he admitted. “I don’t know.”
It took three days for Merritt to open the file Hulda had bequeathed him. The first bit was a family tree, with the name Nelson Sutcliffe underlined.
Merritt stared at it. Cattlecorn was a decent-sized place; he’d half expected not to know the man. But he knew Sutcliffe. Constable Sutcliffe, that was. He had a wife and three sons younger than Merritt. His . . . brothers?
He looked at the notes underneath; it took a minute for him to figure out they were magic markers. If this was taken from the Genealogical Society for the Advancement of Magic, the markers made sense. His eyes scanned the branches, noting the Chs, the Ws, and, in one line, Cos. Communion. That seemed to be the most prevalent in the family line. It was communion that had led him to Owein’s grave marker. Which meant . . . what? That the grass and reeds were speaking to him? He’d had the same experience when looking for Hulda in the dark. And then those mutated things in Silas’s laboratory . . .
Merritt shuddered and pulled his mind back from the cringe-inducing memories, refocusing on the pedigree. Sure enough, Nelson Sutcliffe’s paternal line traced back to the Mansels, though Owein’s name wasn’t recorded on this document. He took a moment to pen it in.
Merritt’s eyes dropped back to Nelson Sutcliffe. “Let me get this straight,” he said to the page. “You had an affair with my mother, who had me, and my father knew about it. Which was why he was such a boor to me all my life, but either because of social pressure or perhaps some semblance of conscience, he waited until I was eighteen to bribe my sweetheart to seduce me and fake a pregnancy, but in the meantime you, what, looked up my grandmother and gave her this house to make amends?”
He threw down the papers and sat back in his chair. The door to his office creaked, and the sound of sniffing told him it was Owein. Unless Baptiste had gotten hit in the head harder than he thought.
“I should write a memoir,” he said to the dog. “Though no one would believe it was true.”
What’s a memoir?
He still wasn’t used to the voice in his head. It was happening more and more frequently, which meant somehow Merritt was getting the hang of a communion spell trapped in his blood. “It’s an autobiography with oomph,” he answered.
From what Merritt understood, Owein would stay a dog indefinitely . . . until he died, in which case he could inhabit the house again, so long as he passed away on Blaugdone Island. Not that Owein was eager in the slightest to inhabit the house—he enjoyed having a body again, smelling, touching, tasting things, which he couldn’t do in a frame of wood and brick. That, and Merritt’s communion spells only worked on plants and animals—if Owein were to transfer back to the house, they’d lose that outlet of communication.