Chapter 1 #3
“Well—never tagging along with you on Friday nights, I cannot say.”
He didn’t feel up to the conversation about why he would never sleep with a woman and skip town, not after growing up as the result of such circumstances. He simply downed the rest of the scotch in his glass and held it out for a refill.
Martinelli poured a generous amount. “You getting inundated with requests from the townspeople?”
He gave the man a what-do-you-think look. “Enough to keep me occupied until the end of time. It’s not just the town, it’s the entire county. Plus the occasional resident of neighboring counties, hoping I won’t notice.”
“What’s next on the to-do list?”
“Why? You want to help me eradicate the hibernating aphids from Mr. Sederey’s farm?”
Martinelli finished his drink and grinned again. “OK. Lead on, Omnimancer.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m serious. C’mon.”
Peter wondered whether Martinelli was conducting official reconnaissance to see whether he was really omnimancing. Well, he was. Just not the jobs that could be done behind closed doors. And he couldn’t think of a downside to a tag-along, so off they went to help Mr. Sederey.
Once the demarcation stones were in place, Peter gestured to Martinelli. He wanted to help? He could cast. Even after the walk, Peter still felt buzzed from the scotch.
A moment later, they both gaped at Martinelli’s results. The field had turned an alarming shade of orange.
“Uh,” Martinelli said. “Is that a … side effect of killing the bugs?”
Peter couldn’t take his eyes off the soil. Holy heck, what if they couldn’t get that spell off? “No. Do you think you could—”
Martinelli hurriedly cast the generic reversal—which only worked on spells you’d cast yourself, and occasionally not even then—and they both heaved sighs of relief as it took effect.
Martinelli was the first to start laughing. It was a while before they could stop.
“You were hazing me, weren’t you,” Martinelli said, poking him. “Admit it.”
“No, I swear I wasn’t. But next time you’re about to tell me that omnimancing isn’t rocket science …”
“Hah! Noted. Also—you take it from here, thanks very much.”
After they’d dealt with the bugs, Mr. Sederey rushed over to plead for help with his calving heifer in distress. It was off-season and the vet was out of town. Yes, of course they’d do their best.
A lot of trial and error later, Peter had blood and calf poop up to his shoulders and a grin that probably rivaled Martinelli’s. The calf was alive. The mother, too. They’d done it. The spells had been only marginally helpful, but they’d done it.
“Stay for supper,” Mr. Sederey urged. “The missus is getting an early meal on the table right now.”
Peter turned to Martinelli. “Can you?”
Martinelli hesitated, then shrugged. “Why not.”
“Need to call your wife?”
He shook his head. “Visiting her mother.”
Martinelli gingerly pulled leaves from his coat, which was sun-yellow in contrast to Peter’s midnight blue, and cast a cleaning spell over them both.
After that, they had a lovely meal with the farmer, his wife, their three teenage sons and a daughter who looked to be about the age of Beatrix’s sister.
None of them seemed unnerved to have two wizards at their table. Perhaps people were getting used to him. A cheering thought.
When he and Martinelli walked back to the overgrown Victorian on the town’s highest hill, stumbling in the twilight over the uneven pavement and joking about it, he felt so good. Happy.
Martinelli elbowed him. “Are you interested in Lillian Sederey?”
He needed a second to remember that was the daughter’s name, and then he laughed. “No! She’s, what, twenty? Far too young.”
“Oh, far too young.” Martinelli snorted. “Bushwa. What are you, whippersnapper, all of twenty-six?”
“Thirty-three, thank you very much.”
“A perfectly respectable age gap. She seems nice. If you’re going to stay …
” Martinelli stopped halfway up the driveway, turned and looked down Main Street, the soft glow of fading sun and Christmas lights showing only the beauty, not the boarded-up stores or decades-old cement.
“If you’re going to stay, you should find someone to take care of you. ”
He didn’t want someone to take care of him. He wanted Beatrix. God help him.
“Are you going to stay?” Martinelli looked at him, and if the question was on behalf of Army superiors, the man’s face showed no sign of it. “Do you have any plans to come back?”
Whatever the reason, the truth would do. “Absolutely none.”
Martinelli nodded. He continued up the driveway.
Peter caught up with him. “What, no more appeals to my better judgment? No cracks about bugs and cow gunk?”
Martinelli’s smile was tinged with something that wasn’t humor. “I get it now, boss. I didn’t before, I admit, but—I had fun today. I can’t remember the last time I had fun at the Pentagram.”
Peter said nothing. The thought of his last six months there, and at the test facility in New Mexico, choked off any response he could have given.
“And out here,” Martinelli said, “you get to save animals instead of sacrificing them.”
They crested the hill in silence, Martinelli’s tan DeSoto coming into view—the reason Peter had had no advance warning of the arrival. Spellcasting detection charms did not detect wizards driving sedans into Ellicott Mills.
“I can put you up for the night if you’d rather not drive back. Or give me two reds”—Peter held out a hand for the leaves he knew Martinelli would not cough up—“and I’ll teleport you and your car home. Like an actual wizard.”
“I now have to do all the teleporting to and around the test site, I’ll have you know. The miseries your scurrilous desertion has brought upon me.” He grinned. “I like to drive, and it’s only six o’clock, so no need to give me a bed—but thanks.”
“Anytime.”
Martinelli clasped his arm, got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. And Peter made himself ask the question.
“Are you chief weapons developer these days? Is it official?”
Martinelli rolled his eyes. “They’re still considering their options, the philistines.
You know how the Army is. Turns out Franck’s quite ill, so their options aren’t that impressive”—Peter’s heart leapt at that, and then he immediately felt bad for taking pleasure in poor old Franck’s bad health—“but they’re hyper-focused on other leadership changes at the moment.
Did you know that Mercer retires next week? ”
News to him. Probably not good news. Lt. Gen. Mercer had seemed at least a bit uncomfortable about the turn the weapon had taken.
“Who’s the new overseer?” he asked, trying to project unconcern.
Martinelli shrugged. “Some buddy of the vice president’s.”
Peter hadn’t seriously thought the Army would come to its collective senses about the weapon, but he must have been unconsciously hoping, because his stomach sank. The vice president was a hawk’s hawk.
“I listened to you, you know,” Martinelli said. “I asserted myself. I gave them a dozen reasons it should be me replacing you.”
It wasn’t possible for his stomach to sink further, so it writhed instead. He should have told Martinelli to get out of that nightmare. Instead, he’d practically ordered the man to dig himself in deeper because Martinelli wasn’t clever enough to uncover what he, Peter, had done.
It was a betrayal. No way around it.
“Good luck,” he croaked.
He watched Martinelli wind down the long driveway and disappear around the curve. His state of mind was such that when he finally noticed that his stomach was zipping with something other than wretchedness, he knew immediately that what he felt wasn’t his emotion.
Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, Beatrix was a mass of nervous excitement.
He really, really hoped that didn’t mean what he thought it meant.
Joan grinned back at them as the results of the last spell on their to-do list prickled their skin like a sudden chill.
“It worked?” she asked. “The bathroom’s protected?”
“It worked,” Beatrix said, all but the tiniest remnants of her earlier tension gone. “You’re really good at this.”
Joan’s high-wattage smile faded a bit, and she sat on the closed toilet seat. “I’m exhausted. Does that get better with practice?”
Ella gave Beatrix a look that needed no translation. Tell her. Tell her that spells—leaves and words and body positioning—were difficult because they were the wrong way to go about it. That women could bend magic differently—more powerfully than wizards.
But that was the promise of the method Beatrix had stumbled onto.
She’d tapped it twice under trying circumstances, to amazing effect.
She’d had dramatically less impressive results since then, and Ella’s weren’t much better so far.
They’d hoped to skip spells altogether with Plan B, negating the unfortunate need for leaves in the dead of winter.
But it was clear now that the magic they’d codenamed “knitting” (“women’s work,” Ella had cackled) wouldn’t be ready for a while. And they couldn’t afford to wait.
“Beatrix?” Joan said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, breathing deeply, pushing the building panic down. “Sorry. This will always be taxing, but it does get easier with practice.”
Joan nodded. “OK. So now I—what, find other women to teach, women I trust, and tell them to do the same?”
“Only people who aren’t part of the League,” Ella said. “And don’t say anything to make them think this has some connection to the group. Also, no one should tell the people they’re recruiting who recruited them.”
“And they need to be brave,” Beatrix said. “Brave enough, at least, to be willing to go to Washington and be part of a mass public demonstration of women’s magic skills.”
“And just recruit two women,” Ella said. “Each of them should teach just two more, and so on.”
Beatrix tapped the sink to reinforce the point. “That’s very important. Only two.”
“Each recruit should report back up the line if there’s a problem, and if it’s something that can’t wait, you should call us—but remember the phone is bugged, so just say, ‘I promised to let you know how my sister is doing, and I’m afraid she’s still ill.’”
Joan’s expression was grave, but she didn’t object. “What if it’s the middle of the day?”
Beatrix bit her lip. “Then call me at Omnimancer Blackwell’s. It’s almost always me who answers the phone anyway. But in that case, say your sister is ill, and could I put her on the omnimancer’s list.”
“Did you get all that?” Ella asked, shooting Joan a sympathetic look.
“Call if there’s a major problem, say my sister is ill. Don’t tell the recruits this has any connection to the League, or who recruited whom. Pick brave women, no more than two.” Joan cocked her head. “But wouldn’t three or four speed things up?”
“No! Imagine the consequences of telling the secret to someone who shouldn’t be trusted.” The hard rock of Peter’s anxiety and dismay twisted in Beatrix’s stomach. “Be very careful.”
“Be paranoid, actually.” Ella’s smile was grim. “Assume you’re being watched, just in case.”
Beatrix was getting so used to being paranoid that it seemed like second nature.
And now, as Ella handed Joan the parcel of leaves they’d brought, Beatrix clutched the pomegranate in her pocket and fought against the paranoia that urged her to put Joan under a Vow.
Vows closed loose lips, it was true, but they were a corrupt magic.
They used you against yourself. The very idea was so distasteful, so easy to abuse, that even the magiocracy thought them beyond the pale. She never wanted to turn to them again.
And yet here she was with a pomegranate. Just in case.
“Any other questions?” she said after they ensured that Joan had sufficiently hidden the leaves.
Joan bit her lip thoughtfully. “No, I … oh, wait, yes: How did you figure all this out?”
Her words hung in the air a moment. Beatrix swallowed convulsively as a warning from her Vows ghosted up her throat.
Ella cleared her own throat. Her Vow prevented her from talking about Peter’s role, too. “Research. Trial and error,” she said.
But Joan, too-quick Joan, was already leaping ahead. She stared at Beatrix. “Your town omnimancer—is he on our side?”
Quick as lightning, the pomegranate was out of the pocket, Beatrix’s lips forming words of persuasion.
In three minutes flat, she and Joan were standing in interlocking circles of demarcation stones, Joan looking down at the piece of paper with the neatly penned paragraph that would rob her of a portion of her free will.
“I see,” Joan murmured. “You took one of these, too.”
Then: “Ic gehāte,” she said. I vow.
And Beatrix couldn’t tell whether her own Vows had compelled her to do that, or the feelings for Peter that were not hers, or simply her need to protect him—assuming that, too, wasn’t manufactured. She didn’t think it was. But she really couldn’t know.