Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

“There you are.” She pressed the tip of a well-manicured nail to the name Horace Thomas Mansel. His birth, christening, and death dates were neatly printed beneath his name, followed by brief handwritten notes on his calculated magic. His wife’s name—Evelyn Peg Turly—was beside his, her information arrayed in a similar manner, though her christening was marked as unknown. These records were made well after the family’s passing, so their magical potential must have been estimated. Ch14 was penned under Horace. Co6? beneath Evelyn.

Ch was shorthand for chaocracy, which the house certainly had. Co was shorthand for communion, which, thus far, Hulda had not witnessed. However, the question mark suggested uncertainty.

“And a Crisly,” she said, following a line to Horace and Evelyn’s firstborn child. She and her children had been buried in Baltimore—it appeared she’d gotten married and moved off the island, which explained why her grave marker wasn’t with the others. All daughters, indeed.

Crisly likely wasn’t the wizard of the house, despite her magic markers. Baltimore was too far away. Unless the records had gotten it wrong and Crisly had died and been buried at Whimbrel House. It was a possibility.

Crisly’s younger sisters matched the graves: Dorcas Catherine and Helen Eliza, the latter of whom had died at the age of four. She was also likely not the wizard they were searching for; magic typically manifested closer to puberty, though Hulda had begun experiencing flashes of divination when she was ten.

Chewing on the inside of her lip, Hulda traced the family line backward, to their English records. Here, she thought, tapping her finger on a great-aunt who had Al2? scrolled beneath her name. Alteration, two percent, estimated. The house had alteration. Hulda should attempt a calculation of her own and mail it to Mr. Clarke when this was finished so he could update his records. Either this aunt had possessed a greater amount of magic than was listed or one of the other Mansel ancestors had possessed some, either unknowingly or without any record. It wasn’t uncommon for magic to skip generations and remanifest later—it was all a trick of the bloodwork. Regardless, the magic must have originated from somewhere, if their wizard had so much of it.

Both Horace and Evelyn had magic in the blood, which suggested their children might have been stronger than either of them, making Dorcas Hulda’s prime suspect. Regardless, she had full names, which meant a successful exorcism. She just needed to purchase the supplies.

“Sorry,” she whispered to the faded names before folding up the paper. “But it isn’t my choice.”

She left the box on the table—heaven forbid she catalog it wrong and have it lost for the next person. As she walked through the darkness toward the stairs, her mind pulled back to Portsmouth.

Yes, sleeping on the matter had calmed her nerves somewhat. But the sighting of that man, that “doppelgänger,” still bothered her. She was in town, she had time . . . perhaps she could do some research on the Hogwoods while she was here. If only to find a logical source of comfort. While the Hogwoods were English, the Genealogical Society had imported records from all over, Europe especially, so they might have what she sought.

Hulda returned to the shelves, taking her lamp with her. Her feet felt like anvils as she browsed names, each passing letter sticking to her brain like it was coated in tar. She finally paused at the box she wanted, but instead of taking it to her table, she rifled through it then and there. She sighed in relief when she found the correct line—a great-great-somebody had immigrated to the States in 1745, bringing his records with him.

The Hogwood family line was extensive, their family tree much larger than the Mansels’, the writing smaller and more compact. Fortunately, she need only lower her gaze to the past fifty years to find his name: Silas Hogwood. He had one brother whom she had never heard of, and his family’s magical line was well documented, not a single question mark in the lot.

K12, N24, Al6, Ch6. Kinetic, necromantic, altering, and chaocratic spells were all innate in his bloodline, and there was a chance he had a scratch of augury. A great deal of magic for any one person to have, likely from the purposeful breeding of it. His mother’s pedigree certainly focused heavily on necromancy.

Hulda shuddered. A man born so powerful, rendered more so by the clever thieving of others’ abilities . . . How had he figured it out? But surely the constable had destroyed all his batteries.