Chapter 8
The rest of December, what little was left of it, went by without further visits from Garrett or other unexpected tension—simply being constantly watched. Except there was nothing simple about that. It upended Beatrix’s life.
Conversations in the house, ones not staged for the minders, were all but limited to the weather and housekeeping. They ate meals in near silence, Christmas dinner included.
No more black-humor chats with Ella on the walk to work, either. They couldn’t rule out the possibility that a wizard might be following them: Garrett, Morse, anyone.
Even the omnimancer’s mansion wasn’t immune.
Peter pounced the moment she set foot in the place, casting the revealing spell on every inch of the house before he let her get to work.
Any time they opened the door, he repeated the procedure all over again.
He began scheduling his outside omnimancy work so it didn’t coincide with her shifts.
On the occasions he couldn’t avoid it, he dropped the spell on the house, squeezed out the door in a way that made it impossible for anyone else to squeeze in, then recast it from the outside.
Inside his house, though, she could go about her day without fear that someone was watching or listening.
Amazing that this place she dreaded to enter just a few months ago was now her sole oasis in a desert created by the magiocracy.
And though she couldn’t see Peter without a jolt of guilt, it was dulling with repetition.
She owed him the truth, but not at the expense of her sister’s life.
By the first weekend in January, her feelings of guilt had diminished to the point that she was tempted to go to his house that morning, without any work requiring it.
She ate breakfast, trying half-heartedly to talk herself out of it.
But the pull was undeniable. She wanted to see him, and now that Vow-created emotion was joined by an equally strong but real desire to get the hell out of her house.
Halfway through washing the dishes, she made up her mind to go.
“What? What is it?” Lydia, a towel in one hand and a plate in the other, stared at her.
Beatrix blinked. “Sorry?”
“You looked so happy all of a sudden, I …” Lydia’s eyes flicked up to where they knew the audio recorder above the sink was, then down to the dish in her hands. “I just wondered what you were thinking of, that’s all.”
Did she smile so infrequently? More to the point: When was the last time Lydia smiled?
She ought to bring her sister along. She ought to have thought of that in the first place.
“I’m just happy that it’s not quite so cold today,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Come on a walk with me.”
“Oh …” Her sister’s voice was heavy with regret. “I’d like to, Bee, I’d really like to, but I have so much to do.”
Beatrix didn’t know exactly what work her sister had planned that day because they couldn’t effectively talk about it.
But nothing was stopping her from writing a note to Lydia in a room without a camera and asking how she could help.
She hadn’t thought until that moment about what it cost her sister to be stuck in the house during winter break while she and Ella escaped to the relative freedom of their jobs.
Lydia put the last plate away and walked to the sitting room, where she now wrote her speeches, letters and other materials because there were no unblinking tele-vision cameras there.
Beatrix dried her hands in the kitchen, glancing at the door that led to the sitting room, then at the one that opened onto the back yard—the first step to Peter’s house. Ought vs. want.
Ella bustled in, coat on, holding her stuffed-full school bag in one hand and Beatrix’s own work coat—the one Peter bespelled to be like the sort worn by wizards—in the other. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
What Ella had in mind other than getting out, she didn’t know. Of course, that was reason enough. She shot another look toward the sitting room, torn.
“Well, come on,” Ella said, grinning.
Rosemarie walked into the kitchen at just that moment. “Going somewhere?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Ella said. “If you’ll be here?”
One of them had to stay with Lydia at all times to protect her. She’d never learned to spellcast—Rosemarie had put her foot down; Lydia was president of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, after all.
Rosemarie looked as if she wanted to put her foot down now, too. She shot Beatrix, and only Beatrix, her patented look. (Where was the fairness in that?) But then she merely crossed her arms and said, “Naturally I’ll be here.”
Beatrix promised herself she would spend time with Lydia later. For now—oh joyous deliverance—she was outside, crunching over frozen leaves and into the forest with Ella. Snowflakes fell lazily around them, decorating the underbrush.
“I’m sorry you have to work today,” Ella said.
Her tone was bright, the one she used when faking it for the bugs, which saved Beatrix from blowing the charade with a puzzled, “What?”
“Me too,” she said instead, glancing at Ella. What was she up to? Ella’s eyes danced, her lips curled in a smile that promised mischief.
“I’ll keep you company,” Ella said. “It’s a Saturday—Omnimancer Blackwell has to at least allow you that.”
Beatrix faltered, looking at Ella with a wild surmise. Did she mean—was she really planning to do magic experiments right under Peter’s nose?
When they reached his house, Beatrix rapped on the door in her usual way. A muffled sound of rapid footsteps followed, and Peter flung it open, pulling them in and slamming it shut. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing that wasn’t wrong yesterday,” Ella said. “We just—”
“Wait,” he said, and went around the house, lighting it up eerie red, checking for trespassers.
After he’d revealed the last room, he slid the demarcation stones into the pockets of his coat. “All right, now tell me.”
He looked at her, but Ella answered. “We need to practice.”
“Practice what?”
“Magic, of course. If we don’t keep our protection spells up to snuff, then Lydia—”
“Yes, I’ll set up a room for you,” Peter said, and Beatrix had no trouble catching the meaning of the anxious look he gave her. He was afraid she might have a panic attack. She breathed as deeply as she could, afraid herself, feeling the beginnings of tightness in her chest.
He led them to an empty bedroom on the second floor, at the far end of the hall from his, and cast a series of spells, one to light up the space and the others to protect the walls, ceiling and floor.
“Leaves are in the basement—take what you need,” he said. “Do you want my help?”
“No, we just need the repetition.” Beatrix managed a smile. “Thank you.”
He peered at her. Did he suspect? Could he feel the guilt rippling over? But all he said was, “And you’re all right—you’re really all right?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice, the now-familiar breathless feeling getting worse and worse. Go. Please go.
“Carry on, Omnimancer,” Ella said, making shooing motions, and he left with one glance back.
Beatrix caught her breath, panic receding. Ella tossed her bag in a corner and murmured, “That went well.”
“You’d like him, if you gave him a chance,” Beatrix whispered back.
“Says the woman under a compulsion to like him.” Ella winced. “Sorry, that was tactless.”
But true—unfortunately true. Still, in fairness to him, she felt it necessary to say, “We owe him a lot.”
Ella raised a challenging eyebrow. “He owes you more.” She pulled a leaf from an interior pocket of her coat and cast the spell that would keep sound from escaping the room.
“Anyway, he’s a wizard, Beatrix. They’re all the same in essentials.
They’re used to getting exactly what they want, and it’s a problem for you if you’re standing in the way. ”
Hard to argue, considering that a man who always gets what he wants was her initial impression of Peter when he came back to town.
It was only once she knew him better that she changed her mind.
Since that largely happened after the Vows, she had no way to tell how much of that reevaluation was her true opinion.
Then she noticed Ella’s pinched, faraway expression—the face of someone stuck in their own unhappy thoughts. Instinct made her ask, “Ella … have you stood in the way of what a wizard wanted?”
Ella gave a start. The jaunty grin that touched her lips a second later looked forced. “Every day since I joined up with you Harpers.”
“That’s not—” Beatrix shook her head. “You know what I mean.”
The grin turned into a grimace. Ella looked up at the ceiling, giving Beatrix the impression that she was trying not to cry.
“Ella,” she said, seriously concerned.
“It’s just … embarrassing. That’s all.” She pulled a face, looking more like her normal self. “The summer I turned eighteen, a wizard asked me to marry him—and I accepted.”
Beatrix knew she was gaping. She tried to get her expression under control.
“He was handsome and a few years older than I was, and I thought, because I’d spent a couple years in school with him and our paths intersected occasionally afterward, that I knew him.” Ella shook her head. “But I didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“I actually got to know him and called off the engagement. Oh, how astonished he was. No one had ever spoken to him that way. His father was an important man! I would be sorry, oh yes, I would come begging him to take me back.”
Ella said this in her usual puckish way, and Beatrix laughed.
“Then my father threatened to disown me if I didn’t,” Ella said. “And that’s when I left home.”
It wasn’t funny anymore. Beatrix caught her hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.”
Ella shrugged, looking away. “It was a relief to go. Anyway, you had your own problems at eighteen.”
That was true. But losing both parents as a teenager and having the family finances handed to her in tatters had to be balanced against years of love and support before that.
“Well, less talking, more magicking,” Ella said, never one to wallow. “Let’s not waste this amazing opportunity.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t it help to talk about—”
“Nope. Water under the bridge. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I say we pick a spell and stick with it as long as we’re here. Really focus. What should it be?”
That wasn’t a hard choice. “Spell detection. If we can sense spells without casting one …”
Ella nodded because the appeal was obvious. For Plan B. For protecting Lydia from a wizard under an invisibility spell. For simply coping with life in their house.
Ella pulled a gnarled crabapple out of her pocket, used a leaf to turn it invisible and tossed it across the room. “First one to figure out where it is wins.”
An hour in, Beatrix decided to call it. “I have no idea where the thing is, and I’m a minute away from seeing crabapples everywhere I look.”
Ella, sitting on the floor a few feet away, flopped onto her back with a groan. “I suppose we’d have to stop soon anyway, or our oh-so-kind host would get suspicious.”
Beatrix handled the twinge this brought on by dipping into an interior pocket where her leaves were hidden, one that magically didn’t bulge despite its contents, and aiming protection spells at the ceiling, each wall and an expired beetle in a corner.
At least now they hadn’t told Peter an absolute lie.
“I still say we just need more practice.” Ella scrambled to her feet. “You know, I could try in my room. Only an audio recorder in there, after all.”
“That we know of!”
“Well, in the forest, then. We could practice in the clearing, as long as it’s not visually obvious magic. No leaves, no spellwords—who’s to know?”
Beatrix shook her head. “Any wizard who wonders why we’re standing there silently for long stretches and thinks to cast the spell-detector after we leave, that’s who.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ella sighed. “You know, the magiocracy’s really putting a crimp in our efforts to get rid of them. I’m beginning to think they don’t want us to succeed.”
Her expression of wounded indignation was so funny, Beatrix couldn’t help but laugh.
“We’ll think of something,” Ella said, lips upturned but eyes dark and serious. “We always do. Speaking of which …”
She picked up her school bag, opened it and pulled out one cleaning rag after another, like a comic magician, which just set Beatrix off again.
“Well? What do you think?” Ella said, showing off her now-empty bag.
“Planning to dust in here?”
“I wanted the bag to look full when we came in. Here,” she said, holding out the rags, “put these in your oodles of pockets, and we can use the bag—”
“—for leaves,” Beatrix said, no longer laughing.
“Which our omnimancer so generously offered us.”
Beatrix, filling the bag in the basement a few minutes later while Ella acted as lookout on the ground floor, considered that Peter hadn’t, after all, put a limit on that offer. But he surely hadn’t expected they would take two hundred leaves, let alone the use each would be put to.
She cast a mournful glance at his remaining stock, piled in its magically preserved state in a corner of the basement.
It already looked far smaller than it had at the end of summer.
And she would need to steal many more before spring brought new life to the bare trees.
She would have to take six hundred additional leaves just in the next week alone, in time for their check-in visits with Joan and the other two first-wave recruits—Dot was still out of town.
It would have been better—far, far better—if they could have waited until late March to launch Plan B. Or until they’d worked through their problems with knitting, at which point no leaves would be necessary at all.
But they couldn’t afford to wait. And she couldn’t afford the second thoughts she was having, which were almost certainly not really hers anyway. She would just have to think about something else.