Chapter 2
In the beginning, the linked dreams were impossible to distinguish from reality. Now, Beatrix needed only a few seconds to tell the difference. The colors were brighter. No dust, no dirt, presumably because their subconscious minds saw no reason to fill those details in.
And she was lying on Peter’s bed, hair unpinned. That sort of thing was a dead giveaway.
“Beatrix,” he said, leaning over her, voice serious, brow creased, his queue of magic-silvered hair glinting in the low light. “Are you—”
He faltered as she began unbuttoning her dress. He said nothing more as she slowly stripped. He reached out a hand for her but snatched it back and shifted his gaze to a point several feet above her head.
“Beatrix. Are you telling women about magic?”
He’d asked every night. Every single night after the one in which he’d nearly died, she’d discovered how much deeper her magical abilities ran and she’d made the mistake of confiding in him.
And because it was practically impossible to hold back in here, she couldn’t say, “I’ve changed my mind, I won’t be doing that after all.
” Some part of her wanted to tell him. With effort, she’d managed every night to keep her answer to a simple, truthful, “No.”
Now, with an even greater effort, she repeated that answer. Because she hadn’t told women.
Not yet.
“Oh,” he said, the word whooshing out like a relieved breath, his eyes meeting hers.
Explanations—the full story—pressed to get out. She bit her tongue, hard, tasting blood.
“Forgive me,” Peter murmured, and oh Lord, that made it worse, but then he kissed his way down her jawline and trailed his fingers along her bare arms and when she opened her mouth, nothing came out but an incoherent sound. “I can barely manage to care about that here, Beatrix.”
She could tell him the truth. Explain the whole plan, argue her case in this in-between land, while he was as susceptible to her as she was to him. She wanted them to be on the same side. She felt the absence of his faith and support as if they were organs she could barely function without.
But she was silenced by the memory of how he’d looked at her when telling women the truth about magic was all she intended to do.
“I love you,” he whispered, sounding as miserable as she felt.
She said the words back to him. True and false at the same time, and never before had that seemed more apt.
Beatrix avoided Peter at church the next morning and hustled out the moment Mrs. Sederey played the last strains of “Trust and Obey,” slipping into her coat and threadbare scarf as she walked.
“Ella and I have some errands to run, so I’ll just drop you all home and we’ll be off,” she said in what she hoped was a casual way to her sister and Rosemarie, in the back seat with Miss Massey, their lone non-League tenant.
“Oh—I’ll come with you,” Lydia said.
Beatrix glanced at Ella, unnerved. “Um …”
“For once I don’t have anything scheduled,” her sister said. “And you know, I feel like I’ve hardly seen you except to say good morning and good night.”
Beatrix couldn’t remember the last time, outside of birthdays, that Lydia suggested doing something purely to be together. Months ago, at least. Did she suspect? Had Peter said something to her?
“Unless … you don’t want me to tag along,” Lydia said into the too-long silence, and the disappointment sounded genuine.
“No, it’s not that,” Beatrix said, heart twisting as she grasped for a reasonable excuse.
“It’s that she promised she’d help me with a family problem on the way.” Ella, bless her quick mind, turned in her seat to look back. “I hope that’s OK.”
“Oh—yes, of course,” Lydia said, voice even. “Some other time.”
“I’d like that,” Beatrix said automatically, wondering the next moment what she’d say to her sister if they spent an entire afternoon together.
You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you that Omnimancer Blackwell is in love with me.
Also, we dream in tandem. Something to do with making Vows to each other.
Speaking of which, my Vow considers it a problem that I don’t love him back, so it’s warping my feelings to the point that I can hardly tell how I feel anymore.
Oh, and we’re permanently trapped by our Vows now, so the only way out is death.
She almost laughed at the thought of that conversation. Almost.
Lydia, Rosemarie and Miss Massey slid out of the car when Beatrix stopped by the front door. Then she and Ella were off, Ella letting out a joyous whoop.
“Thank you,” Beatrix said. “Very clever.”
“Smarty-skirts Ella at your service,” she said. “My father always called me that, and I hated it. Can you give me some words of comfort to resolve that family problem?”
Beatrix grinned at her as she slowed to turn onto Main Street. “Take it as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t the term, it was the tone.” Ella sounded too honestly aggrieved for it to come off as a light-hearted comment, but before Beatrix could come up with a response, Ella fished the lunch box from under her seat. “Would you like your sandwich now or when we get there?”
“There” was the Annapolis boarding house managed by Clara Daniels, treasurer of the League’s Anne Arundel County chapter. Beatrix drove by a circuitous route that ensured no one tailed them, just in case. After that they went to see Marilyn Zuckerman, the Baltimore County chapter vice president.
Both said yes. Both took a Vow.
It was a terrible risk, recruiting members of the League—this group that proclaimed its opposition to magic in its very name.
But the young women who joined because Lydia’s message resonated with them saw the organization as a means to more rights, not a way to beat back an evil practice.
And they were the people she and Ella knew best. It seemed more dangerous for her to approach women who weren’t League leaders.
What friends, really, did she have outside the League at this point?
The voice in her head that sounded like Peter whispered, This is madness.
She pressed the whispers into the anxiety-rock in her stomach and drove. Three down.
“One more,” Ella murmured.
Their final target for the first wave of Plan B was Dorothy Yamaguchi, a senior at Hazelhurst and now second-in-command of the League’s state chapter, after Lydia’s election put Rosemarie in the lead role.
Dot was sharp and trustworthy, like the rest of the women—and she lived in Philadelphia when school wasn’t in session, which meant she could start the ball rolling there.
While school was in session, though, Dot lived in a campus dorm with a roommate. A roommate, reportedly, with a beau who took her out on Sunday afternoons and did not bring her back until lights-out.
But when they knocked on the door, the roommate answered.
“She’s not here, sorry,” the girl said, her arms full of dresses. “Best to try tomorrow—she’s got three papers due in the morning. Probably won’t leave the library ’til then.”
Beatrix sighed. Christmas was Friday. Most of the campus would hightail it out of town tomorrow afternoon. She’d wanted to catch Dot before the young woman went home.
“Will she still be here tomorrow night?” she asked the roommate, who’d turned to toss the clothes haphazardly into a suitcase.
“Sure, her train’s on Tuesday. Mine’s tonight, though, so if you don’t mind …”
Ella grinned on the walk back to the car. “Far fewer people on campus tomorrow. Even better.”
Beatrix smiled back, but it wasn’t better.
She’d planned it this way for a reason. When Peter asked her that question tonight, there would be no way to wriggle around it.
Why yes, Peter, I have been telling women about magic.
Oh, and teaching them, too. And you won’t believe what we’ve asked them to do!
She’d counted on being done today. If he called on her Vow to him when she was finished, it wouldn’t matter—she hoped.
But now he might be able to keep her from recruiting Dot.
And without her, Ella couldn’t do it. What League leader would agree to something so explosive behind Lydia’s back without her sister attesting that it was necessary?
She needed Dot’s out-of-state connections.
She chewed over that as they drove home, the news program on the radio unable to keep her attention for more than a few seconds at a clip. Government offices will be closed Thursday and Friday for Christmas … Snow is expected … Roads in need of repair …
Then she heard “the Abbott administration” and focused.
“… as tensions with Canada continue to mount,” the newsreader said. “The Pentagram says it has received credible reports about attempts to recruit and embed spies.”
Anxiety, like a spell, pinged along her nerve endings. Not anything that would affect the League, no. But a hyper-vigilant Pentagram might cast a closer eye on a top-secret weapons researcher who left under unusual circumstances—to work as a small town’s omnimancer for free.
As she pulled into the garage, the voice coming from the speakers switched from the grandfatherly newsreader to the clipped tones of Vice President Draden.
“Let this be a warning to Canada: We will not stand idly by while foreign aggressors seek to undermine—”
Ella switched the radio off. “I do so love shutting Draden up,” she said. “Shall we?”
That night, as the rest of the house readied for bed, the two of them crept to the dining room—the one part of the property, save the third-floor bathroom, with spells to keep what was said inside it from being overheard outside.
“So—we’ll try Dot immediately after work tomorrow,” Ella said.
Beatrix, still wondering if she would be able to, heaved a sigh. “Why are our Vows allowing us to do what we’re doing?”
Ella blinked. “Well,” she said, with the air of a dancer en pointe in a minefield, “one way of looking at it is that it’s what we ought to be doing to protect Lydia.”
“Yes, or—”
“Or it only proves that our intentions are good, yeah.” Ella frowned. “You’re worried about our dear omnimancer, aren’t you.”