Page 20 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

Waldemar gradually came to, panting over a body. It was a man – ‘was’ being the operative descriptor. Now, it was something sticky and fragmented, spread across the cobblestones. Poor chap, thought Waldemar. I must’ve gotten a spell out, after all.

He glanced down to confirm his own wellbeing, and shrieked. “Oh no,” he said. “Oh no, no, no!”

In the passage of a second, he understood his situation. And, with his sobriety rather innovatively restored, he had the presence of mind to dash across the street, throw himself at a brick wall with arms far too long, and nails too sharp, and haul himself up, as easily as a squirrel, to the narrow, slanted roof. There, he arranged himself like a gargoyle, and cast his baleful gaze over the ruined figure below.

“Gods,” he murmured, lowering himself to the shingles. He’d left his billfold down there, tucked into his coat pocket. And his pinky ring, set with a bloodstone that he thought was rather dashing. He always made sure to gesticulate with his left hand so as to flash the ring. The badge stabbed through his coat breast was of value, too, as it denoted him a witch. He could also retrieve—

THE HAND.

Waldemar yelped and shuddered, dislodging a roof tile. “Oh no,” he muttered again. “No, no, no.”

The ghoul whose body he now inhabited had been marked with instructions. Fabric didn’t cover his monstrous body, but runes did, dancing and wiggling, and – for him – as easy to read as words on a page. As he twisted this way and that, scanning them, Waldemar began to laugh. “It wasn’t supposed to eat me!”

Necromancy was not Waldemar’s specialty, but he knew enough about ghouls to under stand the stupidity of his situation. Any sufficiently powerful witch could rouse a ghoul from a corpse. It would wake with only trace memories of its former life – a blank slate, ready to be re-cast. If fed the brain of a human, the ghoul could take on that person’s appearance and mannerisms, disguising itself while remaining a mindless slave to its master. If the ghoul were to eat a witch, however, an unnatural melding occurred. A witch was too dangerous a meal, too overpowering in their magic and personality. The result wouldn’t be a ghoul mimicking a witch, but rather, a witch inside of a ghoul. Or possibly, a ghoul that thinks they are a witch inside of a ghoul. Academics had yet to reach a consensus.

Waldemar pondered the matter, tapping his chin and sighing heavily, before ultimately deciding that he did not care.

He wanted his pinky ring.

As he crawled lizard-like back down the wall, his talons catching the irregularities in the brick, he snickered again. The ghoul had been layered with three instructions: to kill Waldemar (WITHOUT consuming him), to detach a hand, as evidence, and to return the grisly trophy to its master. The first task, the ghoul had failed at. The second two, Waldemar intended to complete with glee. “Oh, won’t you be surprised,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Won’t you be so, so surprised to see me!”

Waldemar found himself drawn to the stench of offal, like a bumblebee to a flower. Squatting over his former self, he inhaled and let out a cry of satisfaction. This ghoul business wasn’t half-bad; pleasure, at least, proved easy to come by.

Across his chest, runes wriggled with greater insistence. “What was it you wanted, hmm? A hand?” Waldemar took hold of his former wrist, and was briefly mesmerized by the floppiness of the arm, before bringing it to his mouth and beginning the detachment process. It occurred to him how perfectly natural it felt to be using his teeth in this manner. “There we are,” he cried, popping it free. “There’s a boy.”

Waldemar tugged off the ring, before tucking the rest under his armpit for safekeeping. His ghoulish eyes saw well in the dark, but night still drained the ring of color, dampening the bloody flecks in the black, polished stone. He attempted to slip the ring onto a pinky, frowned as it slid off, then, in a stroke of genius, shoved it onto a thumb. Nothing else of his old body called to him – but the instructions did, pinching at him like fingers.

He swapped his gory trophy to his mouth, then launched himself at a wall once more. The runes tugged him along several roofs, past streetlamps clogged with moths. It pulled him past the River Tamesis – subdued in the night, with none of the polluted stench the sun would bring. It pulled him through increasingly familiar intersections.

“Oh,” he said, and the bubble of rage in his heart burst. What came out was soft laughter. “Of course it was him! Who else? And this fool has me trailing blood all the way to his manor.”

The thought of officers rapping at his door come morning had Waldemar hooding his eyes with pleasure. But no. That would leave Beadle locked away, and inaccessible for further torments. Instead, Waldemar took an abrupt turn, even as the runes turned fish-hook sharp at his disobedience. If he pleased, he could dismiss them with a spell of his own. But he let the pain twist and jag as he crossed the river, danced along its shore, and smeared the hand against a wall as though it were a quill pen, before leading the trail out to the docks.

That accomplished, he stopped and cast his spells. First: to cloak his sight and sound. Second: to peel all traces of him from the air. There would be no shed skin or hair or sweat, nothing for the authorities to follow. Thirdly – and purely for show – he imbued his body with buoyancy. Light as a cloud now, he hopped, the simple motion propelling him like a thrown ball, arching through the air to land lightly on a rooftop. Skipping and hopping, he continued this way, roof to roof, until the summoning hook felt less like breathing past broken glass, and more like a gentle hand at his back. His eyes were hooded again, though he did not realize.

To think, earlier that evening Pietro had scolded him for insufficient evidence! ‘What do you actually know’, he had said.

“I know that he’s killed me,” Waldemar answered aloud, staring dreamily up at Lambert Beadle’s manor. “I know that he’s waiting, even now, for his filthy creature to deliver news of its success.”

Ward runes rippled in sheets across the Beadle manor, in excess of normal precautions. Lambert Beadle was afraid of something. “Of me,” Waldemar crooned. “Or at least, he will be. Very soon.”

Scarce hours ago, he’d have found the wards as impenetrable as a stone wall. Now, as a summoned creature, he could pass through his master’s wards as though they were his own. Even knowing this, Waldemar hesitated at their perimeter, unable to stop himself from reading some of the nastier consequences of the defensive magic squirming at his toe-tips. With a snap of his fingers, he dismissed his own spells, just in case. Then, he took a deep breath and stepped inside the web of magic.

The runes failed to close their hooks about him. Waldemar exhaled in a rush, which turned into a whoop of laughter.

Moonlight dulled Beadle’s red-painted door to mauve – as it had the blood across the cobblestones. “Say,” he said, “I left behind quite a scene, didn’t I?”

Shrugging, he hoisted himself up onto the windowsill, and from there maneuvered through leaps and claw-walking to an upper-story window, propped open with a book for his arrival.

Waldemar’s skin tingled as he shimmied through the window. It was the feeling of goosebumps, pimpling across his arms and neck. He fell to the floor, then rose, standing in the dark room with reverence. He would’ve taken his time, if he could, pawing through undusted shelves, upending desk drawers and tapping for hidden compartments – but a sound from the neighboring room made him freeze.

Someone had cleared their throat.

The noise came again – an hrmmph – and Waldemar straightened from his crouch. Conscious of the click of his claws, he walked on his heels, his toes curled upward. In the end, there was little point to his stealth, as he stepped through the doorway into a fire-lit room and came face-to-face with Beadle.

Lambert Beadle sat in a salon chair, its elegant legs outspread in a comical contrast to his own hunched and twisted posture. With his head bent toward the paper in his hands, his receding hairline was on full display. Waldemar quivered in delight. Yes, he thought, let every curl of that stupid blond hair fall out! And let birds shit on your bare, shiny scalp!

Beadle tensed as the ghoul took another step forward, but did not other wise acknowledge its presence. He held the letter to his face and inhaled, deeply. More letters wobbled on a side table, stacked haphazardly. Waldemar couldn’t help but grimace. Had he really sent that many?