Chapter 9
Shave-and-a-haircut.
Peter snapped out of his extended meditation on the defensive potential of runes, heart kicking up instinctively at the knock—but of course it wasn’t Beatrix. Beatrix was one floor down with Miss Knight, spellcasting.
Martinelli?
Whoever it was, Beatrix and Miss Knight would have to stop. They couldn’t risk a wizard slipping invisibly in. He ran to the stairwell and found them already at the bottom of it, clearly thinking along the same lines.
“Expecting someone?” Miss Knight said.
“No,” he said, reaching the landing. “But that doesn’t stop people from coming.”
He glanced through the peephole. Sure enough: Martinelli. He couldn’t help but smile as he opened the door. “We must stop meeting like this.”
“I was planning to drive to Baltimore, but then I thought, ‘Why visit a middling city when I can go to a completely insignificant town?’”
“Actually,” Beatrix said, “Ellicott Mills is the most significant small town in the country.”
“Oh?” Martinelli looked at her, cocking his head. “Why? You have the world’s largest ball of wax?”
“No.” Her lips quirked. “We have an omnimancer.”
Martinelli grinned back at her. “A very good point.”
“Miss Harper, this is Wizard Martinelli.” Peter gestured his direction, recollecting as he did that she probably recognized the man.
Martinelli featured prominently in the memories he’d shared with her during a linked dream.
But just to do the expected thing, he added, “Wizard Martinelli used to work for me.”
“With,” Martinelli said with mock outrage. “With him.”
“And Miss Harper picked up where you left off,” Peter said to him.
“Deputy director of omnimancing?” Martinelli suggested.
“I’m the omnimancer’s assistant.” Beatrix glanced at Peter with that wonderful crooked smile of hers, the one that made him feel as if they were both in on the same joke, before turning her attention back to their visitor.
“Women aren’t allowed to be deputy directors, you know. Pandemonium would ensue.”
Martinelli chuckled at her wit, but Peter had to suppress a wince. “Assistant” was a grossly unfair title for her. If anything, he was her assistant. Measured by requests filled, she was more the town’s omnimancer than he was. And no one—no one not under a Vow—could ever know.
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you,” Martinelli said to Beatrix, adding, “And you, Miss …?”
Peter, recollecting that Beatrix and Martinelli were not the only ones in the room, hastened to say, “Miss Knight, Miss Harper’s friend.”
He expected a biting remark, perhaps something about how Ellicott Mills couldn’t survive the excitement of two wizards in its borders at once, but Miss Knight simply nodded at Martinelli.
Then she turned to Beatrix and said, “We’d better get going, don’t you think?”
When the door closed behind them and Peter surreptitiously restored the shielding on the house, he turned back to see Martinelli wearing his insane grin.
“I see how it is now,” Martinelli said.
“Uh—”
“No wonder you’re not interested in Miss Sederey.”
Oh no.
Martinelli poked him in the arm. “How long have you been besotted with her?”
“I’m not—”
“Beautiful girl, Miss Knight.”
“Miss Knight?”
Martinelli’s grin went even wider somehow. Peter groaned. He’d walked right into that.
“No, of course not Miss Knight,” the impossible man said. “Miss Knight could have done the tarantella in the altogether while singing a rude song, and you wouldn’t have looked away from Miss Harper.”
“There’s nothing between me and Miss Harper,” he said, trying to make it a calm statement rather than a heartbroken declaration. “She’s an excellent employee, and I do not prey on employees.”
Except in dreams. He walked to the receiving room, wanting a few seconds to compose himself.
“So lay her off and marry her,” Martinelli called to his back.
Peter swung around. “How would you have felt if you’d been a woman and I tried that on you?”
“If I were a woman, I wouldn’t have been working on weapons development for the Army,” Martinelli said—and that was true, but it made Peter even angrier.
“Not because they wouldn’t be capable.” He glared at Martinelli. “Because we don’t let them. We restrict them at every turn and say, ‘Just get married and have kids, there’s a good girl.’”
Martinelli flinched.
Peter slumped in his chair. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to rant at you.”
“I was joking, I swear.”
“I know.”
Martinelli sat in the other chair, grimacing. “But you’re right, it was an idiotic thing to say. I don’t think your Miss Harper is the sort to …” His eyes widened. “Wait—Lydia Harper?”
“Her sister.”
Martinelli leaned forward, staring at him incredulously. “Were you perhaps unaware of that fact when you hired her?”
“No.”
“You asked the sister of the woman running the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, the crucking Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, to assist your omnimancy operation.”
No, because he hadn’t asked, had he.
Martinelli squinted at him. “Were you already in love with her?”
Peter shook his head, knowing that was as good as an admission that he now was. “I’m telling you, she’s an excellent employee. I had to guilt-trip the mayor to let her go. And no, Miss Harper has not forgiven me for that.”
Martinelli’s expression was a tug-of-war between pity and exasperation.
“Enough about me,” Peter said. “What brings you here again? Caught the omnimancing bug?”
Martinelli snorted, then shrugged, looking around the room. “Had the weekend to myself, thought I might as well deliver a few calves.”
“What about Mae?” Peter said, pulling Mrs. Martinelli’s name from the recesses of his memory.
“Still visiting her mother. Put me to work, boss.”
Peter nodded. “All right. I’ve got another farmer to help out, but first I want to check on Mrs. Clark.”
He sketched out her situation on the way, relieved to have a distraction from the thoroughly ruined love life he couldn’t fully explain. But when he knocked on the battered apartment door, Beatrix opened it.
He could handle himself when she came to work, when he saw her at church, even when she showed up on weekends, announcing herself with that knock. But on the rare occasion he saw her completely unexpectedly—with no time to brace himself—the swoop of his heart threatened to send him sprawling.
“Oh,” she murmured, grasping the doorframe, looking into his eyes.
She blinked and stepped back, letting them in.
“Omnimancer!” Mrs. Clark got up from her chair. “So good of you to come by.”
“Do you feel well enough to stand?” he asked, focusing on the immediate concern.
“Well—I can stand, and that’s a decided improvement.” Mrs. Clark smiled at him as she sat. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
He nodded, relieved. “I’m going to cast a diagnostic spell and check your progress.”
The spell wasn’t bright green, but it wasn’t a full yellow like before, more a mix of the two.
“You’re definitely getting better,” he said. “Keep taking that brew until it’s finished.”
“Absolutely.”
He glanced around the room—trying to ignore the echoes from his past, the memories of where furniture had been and which pictures had hung on the walls.
“Where’s your family?” he asked.
Her smile widened. “Out making snowmen. Beatrix convinced my husband that I was in good hands.”
Beatrix. It stung that he wasn’t allowed to call her that in public, would never be allowed to. But it was good for Mrs. Clark that she was on a first-name basis with someone who would watch out for her as zealously as he would, and without the barrier of gender and wizardry between them.
“You are indeed in good hands,” he said. “You will tell us right away if you have any further problems? Promise?”
Mrs. Clark promised. He and Martinelli left. The moment they reached the street, Martinelli gave him a meaningful glance.
“Miss Harper never once looked away from you,” he said.
Peter’s ridiculous heart jangled in response, as if that mattered a whit.
Martinelli had paused, clearly expecting a response. Getting none, he said, “I really think you should—”
“No,” Peter said, wishing he could explain. “Trust me.”
Martinelli raised his eyebrows, but he said only, “OK. I always have.”
The guilt Peter had staved off about telling Martinelli to go for his job rushed back.
“So what’s the farmer’s problem?” Martinelli asked.
Focus. “He’s adjacent to the Sedereys’ farm. Take a wild guess.”
Martinelli grinned. “Aphids. Give me first crack at ’em—I’ll get it this time.”
He did, too. He whooped, and Peter said, “I’ll make a half-decent omnimancer of you yet,” followed by several creative insults from Martinelli, and they finished up the rest of the fields, laughing as they went.
“Thank you,” Mr. Kirkland said in his quiet way, shaking both their hands. “I sure do appreciate it, Omnimancer, Wizard Martinelli. I tried everything else, and nothing worked.”
Aglow in the warmth of doing a good deed, the two of them retraced their steps back to the main road.
“Ho there, Omnimancer!”
Peter looked in the direction of the call and saw Mr. Sederey leaning over the property-line fence.
“Could I impose upon you to give my calf a look?” the man said.
Peter headed for him. “Anything wrong?”
“I don’t think so, but—well, I’d feel better if you glanced at him.”
“All right.”
Peter scaled the fence, grinning as Martinelli followed, huffing and quietly cursing, having probably never done it before in his life. They tramped through the snow to the barn.
The calf was the picture of health. Peter cast the diagnostic spell on it, just to humor Mr. Sederey, and the animal glowed green.
“That’s a load off my mind,” the farmer said. “Now, let me give you some lunch.”
“Oh, no, that’s not necessary—”
“We so enjoyed your company last weekend, the both of you,” Mr. Sederey said. “Please stay.”
How could they say no to that?
So they walked to the farmhouse and stamped the snow off their boots, Peter inhaling the lovely smells of pot roast and potatoes.
An instant later, Miss Sederey was at his side, beaming at him. “Hello, Omnimancer! I’m so awfully glad you’re here!”
Before he could formulate a response to that excessive enthusiasm, she’d slipped her hand around his arm and led him to the table.
From her seat right next to him, she proceeded to single-mindedly smile and dimple and chatter at him.
How very interesting it must be, wizardry.
How exciting that he’d worked at the Pentagram.
How noble that he came home to help his town.
Oh no.
He hadn’t thought anything of the faked ankle injury because he was sure that had been arranged by Beatrix.
And it had barely registered when Miss Sederey stopped by Thursday afternoon to tell him how much better she felt, thank you ever so much, Omnimancer, because his mind had been full of electronic bugs and Garrett.
The girl was interested in him. Or, more likely, given that she hardly knew him, interested in his status as an unmarried wizard.
He caught Martinelli’s eye, widening both his own. Help. Martinelli raised his eyebrows in a what-did-you-expect sort of way and said, “Miss Sederey, would you like to hear about the Wizardry Academies?”
“Oh,” she said, her face showing her dilemma. Martinelli was the wrong wizard—already married and older to boot. But there was no polite way out of it. “Yes, please.”
Martinelli went into great and amusing detail, from the crazy spell-enhanced football games to the instructor who marooned his fourteen-year-old charges on an island and made final grades dependent upon getting off.
Miss Sederey nodded and giggled, but the first question she got in edgewise was aimed at Peter. “Did the two of you go to the same academy?”
“Bless you, no,” Martinelli said. “I went to Los Angeles. He went to Arlington.”
He then expounded on how the Los Angeles academy was in every way superior to Arlington, making Peter laugh, and followed that up with a treatise on the oddity of attending wizardry college and graduate school in the same place you studied basic spells and geometry. And in that way they got through lunch.
“The things I do for you,” Martinelli said in a mock put-upon way as they walked home.
Peter elbowed him. “You enjoyed that.”
“OK, I did.” Martinelli grinned. “It was especially entertaining to watch your face as it dawned on you why the Sedereys invited us to eat with them two weekends in a row.”
Peter sighed. “What am I to do? I can’t very well say, ‘So sorry, Miss Sederey, but I’m desperately in love with Miss Harper.’”
“Henceforth you will be too busy to accept invitations to eat there, and you will do whatever you can to limit your time with Miss Sederey. In an unfailingly polite way.”
“Sounds like you’ve had plenty of experience.”
Martinelli glanced away. “I’ve only been married for seven years, whippersnapper. How have you not had wizard hunters after you before?”
Peter shrugged. “Never went in for the sort of places they congregated in D.C. You know I only showed up at social events when the Army ordered me there.”
They walked for a moment without saying anything, a pickup truck rumbling by the other direction.
“If you see no future with Miss Harper, you really ought to try to fall in love with someone else,” Martinelli said quietly. “For sanity’s sake.”
He really ought to for Beatrix’s sake. Free her from this disaster of a quasi-relationship. Let her have her true emotions back.
But how on earth could he fall in love with someone else when he would keep seeing the woman he really wanted night after night?
“Sorry if I’m overstepping, boss,” Martinelli said into the silence, eyes on the trees ahead of them. “I mean, what the hell do I know.”
“No, it’s good advice,” Peter said. “I just don’t think I can do it.”