Wizard of Most Wicked Ways

Book 4: Whimbrel House

by Charlie N Holmberg

Genres: Gaslamp; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

When dead enemies rise, grave matters of the heart, mind, and body clash in the fantastical fourth Whimbrel House novel by Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Charlie N. Holmberg.

Whimbrel House is changing. Merritt and Hulda are raising a family. Owein has signed a marriage contract with the magically compatible Lady Cora, a heavyweight of British nobility who's an ocean away. And the lovely shape-shifting druid Fallon makes a distractingly fetching friend for Owein. But another change is in the air, and this time it's something wicked.

The greatest wizard of the millennium, Silas Hogwood, is back—after five years dead. New body, same foul scent, and driven by madness and revenge. Owein, fearing he isn't strong enough to fend off Silas, seeks Cora's help and influence in England. Alarms ringing, Queen Victoria dispatches her League of Magicians, including her personal necromancer, to aid in Owein's defense.

As magic, both good and evil, converges on Blaugdone Island, Owein realizes how harrowing the forces against them are. Combating them will require some digging—literally—for half-formed secrets of magic Hulda doesn't want him to have. But no promise, lock, or government red tape will keep Owein from doing what's necessary to protect those he loves. One way or another, Silas will only take Whimbrel House over Owein's third dead body.

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Release date: March 4, 2025

Publisher: 47North

Print pages: 269

Sample

Chapter 1

June 13, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island
Age was a peculiar concept for Owein Mansel.
He’d been born in 1624, and been spiritually conscious ever since,
which technically made him 227 years old. However, the majority of
that time had been spent embodied in a house on an island off the
coast of Rhode Island, and houses were, by definition, not living. Of
those 227 years, only sixteen had been spent as a human, so one might
argue sixteen as his age. However, the body he now occupied—which

had previously belonged to a boy named Oliver Whittock—was physi-
cally eighteen, as of five months ago. And so, when anyone asked after

Owein’s age, he usually said that: eighteen. Though, truth be told,
Owein generally avoided the conversation altogether, as he preferred

keeping to that very same island that bore the house he’d once con-
trolled, along with the handful of persons he considered family, only

four of whom he was actually related to (by the blood of his first human
body, not his second).

It was the second of these related persons who interrupted his read-
ing of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by climbing over the

jagged rocks off the southern coast with courage only a three-year-old
could muster. Mabol Fernsby was three in every sense of the word,
and would be turning four two weeks before Christmas. Though, as

Christmas was still six and a half months away, Mabol had the tendency
of insisting she was, specifically, three and a half.
Owein glanced at the current page number before closing the book

and resting it on his knee, patiently waiting for his nine-times-great-
niece to pick her way over a boulder twice her size. She then, with-
out fanfare, sat atop it, smoothed her skirt, and fluffed up her hair,

unaware, or uncaring, that doing so only made it look more unkempt.
Like father, like daughter. The waves of the sea rolled softly behind her,
blue as her eyes.
Owein smiled. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I will tell you,” she said, her voice high and sweet. “But read first.”
Owein patted his book. “This is not the best novel for children.”
She waited, unblinking.
Sighing, Owein opened the book. “‘This trait of kindness moved
me sensibly. I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of
their store for my own consumption, but when I found that in doing
this—’”
“No,” Mabol said simply, and removed herself from the boulder,
beginning to pick her way over stones and clover back to the house,
which was only a distant square against the late spring flora of the
island. Owein had settled closer to the Babineauxs’ home, which, from
this vantage point, made a slightly larger square framed by wild willows.
“That’s it?” Owein asked.
“I came,” she grunted as she jumped over a stone, “to tell you you
got a letter. Mrs. Beth brought it.”
Closing the book once more, Owein stood. Only one person
ever mailed him letters with any sort of regularity; although William

Blightree did reach out on occasion, he usually did so through tele-
graph. A little whistle of glee zinged through his chest. “And you didn’t

bring it to me?”
Mabol, however, was too focused on her task to respond.

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Shoving the book into the back of his waistband, Owein caught up
to the child in two strides and grabbed her under her arms, eliciting a

shriek of delight as he swung her up and set her on his shoulders, catch-
ing her scent of butter and gingerbread. She wrapped her arms around

his head like a crown, ensuring his hair would be just as mussed as hers,
not that it mattered. Owein’s hair already looked strange, which was
one of the reasons his age often arose in conversations with others. After
his soul had been moved into this body, the roots had grown in white,
and white his hair had remained. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were
white. The same thing had happened when he’d worn the skin of a
terrier, though only in patches. Likely, he thought, because the terrier’s
spirit had shared that body with him, albeit dormantly. Nothing like the
minute he’d spent sharing Merritt’s body, where it had felt like the flesh
would burst apart from their mutual holding of it. He still dreamed of
that pressure, that strangeness, from time to time. Owein wondered
if the happenstance had created Merritt’s first white hairs or if he was
simply getting old.
A whimbrel flew off as Owein came bounding down one of the
well-worn paths on the island. Off to the north, a deer peered at him,
watching with lifted ears and wide eyes, unmoving, determining only
after he passed that he was not a threat. Whimbrel House grew in size,
the late-spring sun glinting off the blue shingles of its roof, which made
its yellow walls (he’d made them yellow some forty years ago, though
experiencing color as a house was different than experiencing it with
actual eyes) all the brighter. The railing on the porch had been newly
painted white, the cherry door freshly polished. Chickens clucked from
their coop off to the side of the house, and two quick yips from his
dogs, Ash and Aster, announced their enthusiastic greeting of his return.
The brother and sister terrier mixes—Owein had a fondness for the
breed—rushed from the porch, bounding and panting. Ash sniffed his
feet while Aster jumped on him, nose nearly colliding with Mabol’s
right foot.

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“Down!” she called, though the command went unheeded. “Down!
Down!”

“They’re all right.” Owein squeezed her chubby calves. Nearly trip-
ping over Aster’s backside, he let out a gruff bark, and both dogs retreated

to the porch, suddenly more interested in each other than in him.
Owein was not notably tall, but he pulled Mabol off his shoulders
before entering the house to prevent any chance that she had grown and
thus might whack her head on the doorframe. She ran inside, through

the lightly but tastefully decorated reception hall, and left into the green-
trimmed living room. Owein listened for a moment, cocking his head

when he did. As a dog, he’d been able to move his ears separately, and
that keen, directional hearing was something he still missed. Regardless,
his human hearing picked up the sound of footsteps, and he followed
them through the rectangular dining room with its glass-faced hutch and
the smaller, modest breakfast room to the kitchen with its dark hickory
cabinets, where Beth had a large bowl on her hip and a whisk in her hand,
seemingly unaware of the smudge of flour on her dark cheek.
“Letter for me?” Owein asked, only then wondering if Mabol had
fibbed. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d done so to get his
attention, but given her distinct lack of interest in him upon entering
the house, it was unlikely this time.
Beth glanced up. “Oh! Yes. I put it on your bed.”
A sudden clash of metal announced Baptiste, squatting in front of
the oven. “It is still not hot enough! Why are you so cruel to me?” He
smacked his hand against the exterior of the stove.
Beth set down her bowl. “Do you want me to fetch more wood?”
Sighing, Baptiste stood, towering over both of them. “No, wood will
not do. I need . . . what do you call it? The whoosh with the blacksmith?”
Beth smiled. “Bellows?”
“Bellows. I need bellows, then I can do a proper gratin dauphinois.
This . . . this will have no caramélisation.” He pulled out a hot pan of
thinly cut potatoes in cream and dropped it unceremoniously on the

Charlie N. Holmberg

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stove. He glanced at Beth again, then leaned over to wipe off the flour
smudge with his thumb. The warmth in his eyes as he did so made
Owein feel like an intruder, so he silently excused himself and wound
back to the stairs, taking them two at a time up to his room.
He nearly ran into two children bustling by him, one who could barely
walk and one who could barely run. The latter, Hattie Fernsby, giggled
loudly as she went, her bottom half completely naked. She took after Hulda
more than Mabol did, with her darker hair and hazel eyes. The former,
Henri, was a perfect mix of both his parents: dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair.
His recent mobility made it hard for the Babineauxs to stay on top of their
tasks, which often led to him falling under Merritt’s easygoing care.
Beth and Baptiste had gotten married a year and a half ago, though
only Owein had been able to attend the wedding. Hulda had just given
birth to Hattie, making attendance difficult, as, thanks to ridiculous
marriage laws in the United States, the Babineauxs had been forced to
travel to Canada for a marriage license.
“Hattie!” Merritt came out of the nursery with a diaper in his hand
and a rag over his shoulder. Seemed the second Fernsby child had been
mid-change when she’d decided to take off with her favorite accomplice.
Owein stuck out a hand and, with an alteration spell, pulled up the
carpeting in the hallway, creating a soft wall that both children collided
into. A faint stiffness emerged between his fingers; alteration spells liked
to kick back by altering the body of those who cast them, and this one
had warped his knuckles. He commanded the carpet back into place,
increasing the stiffness in his hand, but it would go away in a moment.
Merritt, more frazzled than usual, said, “Thank you,” as he collected
the half-naked toddler and carried her under his arm like a chicken.
“Hulda home yet?” Owein asked. Ellis, the third and youngest
Fernsby child, would be with her, as she wasn’t yet weaned.
“I imagine not, if you haven’t seen her.” Merritt ducked into the
nursery. “Miss Hattie,” he went on, “you have a very lovely behind, but
we must keep it covered—”

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Owein slipped by the nursery, which had once been Hulda’s bed-
room, to his room, which had once belonged to Beth. It was a simple

room—Owein didn’t care for ornamentation or fanciness, though he
occasionally changed the color of things when he got bored. At the
moment, his bedspread was navy, his small writing desk rose pink. His
armoire was darkly stained cherry; Merritt had made it for him shortly
after their return from England a few years back. He’d never changed
the color of it, and never would.
Owein picked up the thick letter on his pillow. Turned it over. Sure
enough, the wax seal on the back signified it came from England.

Sitting down, he opened the four-page letter to familiar, pictur-
esque handwriting, tightly written but neatly spaced. He wondered if

Cora, to whom he was betrothed, wrote slowly to keep her letters so
uniform or if they merely flowed from her fingers that way.
Dear Owein,
I have seen the wet-plate collodion photographs! They are

remarkable. So bizarre that something used as a surgical dress-
ing can render the face of any person on canvas. I will see if I can

get my hands on one and send it your way. It lacks color, and
so the finished product is not as satisfying as a true portrait,
and yet it feels more real than a painting. There is no margin
for error or artistic interpretation; the result hinges entirely on

how that person looked, felt, and posed in the moment the cam-
era pointed at them. If one were to find a way to mix the two

mediums, to create photographs in vivid, lifelike colors, I think
art as a whole would die out. Which would be terribly sad, and
yet I find myself incredibly interested in the possibility. Perhaps
someone will sort it out in our lifetimes, and we might be able to
witness the phenomenon together.
Charlie N. Holmberg

6

Cora went on about the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
in Hyde Park, which she had attended with her mother, then updated
him on her family, who seemed mostly unchanged, though relations
with her sister, Briar, and the baron had improved since Owein had
last seen them. Over four years had passed since he’d seen any of them,
Cora included, and he wondered how much she had changed, if at all.
That is, of course she had changed; she too had grown older, no longer
a thirteen-year-old girl but a young woman of seventeen. She, surely,
had changed. She seemed less soft spoken, but that could have been
her openness in letters to him, not to people in general. He wondered,

glancing back to the top of the first page, if she would send him a pho-
tograph of herself. He had no likeness of her countenance, not even a

little portrait. Portraits were expensive, but Cora’s family was incredibly
wealthy. Then again, from Owein’s understanding, portraits were often
sent during courtship or marriage negotiations, and their impending
marriage had already been negotiated, signed, and sealed.
Owein pushed that thought aside as he continued reading. Thinking
of the marriage contract, and of his very near future, made his chest too
tight, like the air had grown dense around him. It wasn’t that he didn’t
like Cora. He did, regardless of the mess that had occurred at Cyprus Hall
in 1847. She hadn’t been too keen on being engaged to a dog, and had
reacted somewhat . . . violently in her attempts to avoid the betrothal. But
betrothed they were, and Cora had been declared the ward of her cousin
Queen Victoria herself for a few years following the incident.
Cora had started writing to him about a year after his return to
Blaugdone Island, and their letters had gradually increased in frequency
and length over three years’ time. He knew her well now, and he liked
what he knew. Still, it felt strange, forming a friendship with someone
who lived an ocean away, and until last year had been kept under very
strict regulations as the queen’s ward. But, or so she said, Cora had since
proven herself. She was well, though often frustrated with the pressures
of nobility. Even when she didn’t outright say as much, Owein could

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sense it in her letters. She used less punctuation when frustrated, and
her tight penmanship grew even tighter.
I will request a copy of Frankenstein and read it. I think I shall
be able to do so before your next reply, so feel free to share your
thoughts on the novel straightaway. I’ll let you know if your
theories are correct.
He could hear her smile in those words. Did her voice still sound
the same, or had it lowered a note or two? Would it be strange for him
to ask?
His knuckles popped back into place.
Please take care of yourself, and send my best to the Fernsbys
and Babineauxs. I really would love to see your island. With
my own eyes, not in photograph or portrait. You paint such
a beautiful picture with your words. It must be enchanting.
That reminded him. Letter still in hand, Owein crossed to his
armoire and opened the right door, pulling open the topmost drawer
to retrieve a copy of Beowulf. Opening the cover, he found the pink
corydalis he’d pressed there after Cora’s last letter. He’d pressed it flat,
and it was dry as paper; if he wrote an especially long letter and folded
it around the buds, they might be shielded from the travel to London.
He set the dried flowers on his writing desk and finished reading.
Sometimes I go into the woods and close my eyes and pretend
I am anywhere other than England. France, Canada, even
China! (Don’t laugh.) But more and more often, I try to imag- ine myself in Narragansett Bay, hearing the ocean lapping
against the edges of the island, smelling clean air scented with
sea and not smoke from a thousand stacks. For some reason,

Charlie N. Holmberg

8

I can’t fathom a sky that wide and endless. I can’t imagine so
much open space and freedom.
Her penmanship got a little tighter there.
So please, bask in it all for me, and send your thoughts across
the Atlantic. Call it wishful thinking, but perhaps I’ll catch
them in a dream and see your world through your eyes. In
truth, Owein, the very idea of it makes me feel renewed.
Yours,
Cora
He smiled softly at the letter, rereading the end of it, wondering
where she had written it, and if she’d done it all in one sitting. Their
missives had been very cordial in the beginning. There had been a lot of
remarking on the weather. Over the last year or so, however, Cora had
started conversing less like an aristocrat and more like a regular person,
as though all of a sudden she had realized no one else would see her
words, and that he would hardly judge her for them.
Owein had never been one to guard his words. Not that he could
recall, anyway. But formality was contagious. In the beginning, he’d
struggled to be himself, too.
In the beginning, he’d still been sorting out just who he was.
He pulled out the chair to his desk, then grabbed his inkwell and
shook it by his ear—empty. So he slipped out of his room to Merritt’s
office, catching the delighted giggles of two toddlers wrestling as he went,
and stole a brand-new vial from Merritt’s incredibly tidy desk. Incredibly
tidy, meaning Beth had been in here recently and Merritt hadn’t had the
chance to unleash his chaocracy upon the thing again, and Owein wasn’t
referring to the man’s weak but present magical ability of chaos.

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Finally seated, Owein started his letter. He never really knew how
to address Cora; it gave him pause each and every time. She was, by all
means, his fiancée, but it felt strange to call her that. He’d initially started

with Lady Cora, as she’d addressed him as Mr. Mansel. There was a dis-
tinct difference, in his opinion (and Hulda’s, as she’d made it very clear in

one of their numerous, painstaking etiquette lessons), between addressing
a woman as dear versus dearest, the latter far more emotional and . . .
promising. Not that it mattered; he was already promised. And yet it felt
strange to say dearest. Then again, it felt strange not to.
He wished he could see her again, in person. Perhaps in doing so,
he could set his thoughts to rights. Figure out why his heart fluttered a
little as he wrote, simply, her name atop the page: Cora.
His handwriting wasn’t so neat and perfect as hers, but he wrote
neatly enough. He’d worked hard on making it neat. Granted, anyone
who had Hulda Fernsby as a teacher would strive for neatness if only to
keep her from lecturing on it. That woman had ingrained ten years of
education into him in the space of three.
And she wondered why he spent so much time with Beth.
Smirking, he touched his pen to the paper, ready to start his

thoughts on Mary Shelley’s work, but his eyes drifted back to the par-
tially folded pages of Cora’s letter. He could hear her voice in those

words, he swore, though she possessed no sort of communion spell or
otherwise to enchant the parchment.
Ignoring the spot of ink left by his hesitant hand, Owein described
Blaugdone Island again.
Today the sea is especially curious about what lives on the land;
the waves crash hard on the steep southern side of the isle in
an attempt to jump into the grass, only to slither back down,
leaving minute bits of salt in their wake. The deer like it; they
lick the stones near the coast often. I wonder how the deer
got here, if someone, long ago, maybe before my time, placed

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them here to hunt, or if the deer wandered over just before the
island separated from the continent, forever stranding them
in the bay. It sounds like a sad story, but it’s not; until recently,
they had the entire island to themselves, free from predators.
Baptiste doesn’t hunt them anymore, either. Even he knows
the place would be melancholy without fawns every spring.
There are a lot of saplings about, their leaves growing big,
the oncoming summer coaxing them into deep greens, almost
emerald-like. And the flowers are in bloom. The breeze passing
through them smells like perfume, a mix you couldn’t find on
any woman’s neck. These flowers won’t smell strongly, but it’s a
little something to help you see it, Cora. And you will, someday.
He glanced at the pressed flowers. A paltry gift for an English lady.
Yet he was certain she would love them.

He went into a little more detail, naturally going into the construc-
tion on the lighthouse nearby, before moving on to Frankenstein. By the

time he’d finished with his thoughts on the novel, he was five pages into
the letter and his hand was cramping. Leaning back, he applied pressure
to his thumb to stretch the tendons there.
One of the dogs barked outside. Newcomer, the sound relayed.
Take care, Cora. May your skies be wide and blue.
Here he was, talking about the weather again. He snorted and
signed his name, the O and M overly large, but he liked the look of it.
He’d just finished folding the tome of a letter when he heard the barking
again. Pausing, he tilted his head. He could tell, somehow, the slight
difference in timbre between Aster and Ash, but this one sounded a
little off, a little different, a little foreign. It made his chest flutter.

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Grinning, he set the letter down and moved to the window, open-
ing it with a shove. Down below sat a dark-colored dog that looked

somewhat similar to a terrier mix, her nose pointed to his window. The
dog barked once more before taking off to the east.
“It’s about time,” Owein mumbled to himself, the gentle words a
contrast to his quickened pulse. He left the window ajar as he returned
to his armoire and opened the bottommost drawer, grabbing a linen
dress shoved in the back of it. He stuck it under his arm before opening
the side of the house with an alteration spell, the siding warping and
waving into a narrow slide, which he took down to the ground. After
sealing the hole back up, he walked eastward with a stiff spine and
awkward crick in his neck, moving toward the coast, around a copse of
trees, and onward to where a natural drop of about seven feet formed.
By the time he slipped down it, his body had righted itself again.
The dog waited for him, furry tail wagging in anticipation, ears
perked.
“You were gone awhile.” He pulled out the dress, scrunched it up
in his hands, and slipped the collar over the dog’s head. “Wasn’t sure
you were coming back.”
He turned around. The breeze swept by, just as he’d described it—a
floral, earthy scent no one could ever hope to bottle. It smelled like
rose and columbine and mud and sea, with a thousand other notes too
subtle to describe but too potent to ignore.
“I always come back, a chara.”
Owein turned, meeting the gaze of a woman transformed. ...