Chapter 10 #2
“Are you all right?” Peter asked. “Shouldn’t you have someone with you?”
“Rosemarie’s just down the street. I convinced her that no harm would come to me if I popped up here for a few minutes.”
The ironic humor Beatrix would have infused those words with was nowhere to be seen. This Miss Harper was serious, always serious. But then, it took an unusual sort of person to see anything funny in the Harpers’ lives.
“Won’t you come in?” he said, and checked the house as quickly as possible, deeply curious why she was there.
She got right to the point when he returned to the receiving room. “I have a favor to ask you.” She sighed. “I have nothing but favors to ask of you, I realize.”
“Only because wizards have targeted you,” he said, settling in the chair behind his desk. “I doubt very much that you would be asking a wizard for help otherwise.”
She leaned forward in her seat. “You shouldn’t feel you have to say yes.”
“Ask and we’ll see.”
For a few seconds, she said nothing. Then: “I’d like you to check on the League leaders I rely on most to make sure they haven’t been co-opted by the magiocracy.”
Oh. He grimaced before he could stop himself.
“Right,” Miss Harper said, getting to her feet. “I’ll say no more.”
“No, sit down,” he said. “I haven’t decided yet, I’m just trying to think this through. You want me to spy on your key supporters?”
He expected she would object to having it so baldly stated. But she took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”
“You doubt you can trust these women?”
“After what happened with our treasurer, it seems the height of foolishness to assume no one else has taken that kind of deal.”
He nodded, seeing her logic. It was only thanks to the Vow the treasurer belatedly took that they found out what she’d done.
Beatrix, Miss Dane and Miss Knight were similarly under Vows to protect Lydia, but none of the other League leaders were.
Any one of them would be perfectly able to turn informant if they chose.
“And, I suppose, it’s possible that some of them may have been bugged,” she said.
“So you want me to see if there are any troubling signs. The remains of spells in their homes, for instance?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it.”
He pictured himself breaking and entering, creeping invisibly around strange houses—putting himself at risk, again, for the Harpers. Then he imagined the harm the magiocracy could inflict with just one well-placed turncoat.
He’d promised Beatrix to do what he could to keep her sister safe.
“All right,” he said.
“You’ll—you’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” Miss Harper clasped her hands together, and it was odd to see such a grateful expression on a face so much like her mother’s. “Thank you a hundred times over. I do understand what an uncomfortable task I’m asking you to take on.”
A terrible thought occurred to him. “Please tell me no one from your house is on your list. You don’t expect me to tail Miss Knight or Miss Dane around?”
Or Beatrix, dear God.
“No, no, I trust them completely,” she said.
He nodded, relieved.
“They couldn’t inform on me if they wanted to, after all.” Her lips quirked. A joke. A joke from serious Lydia Harper. Perhaps she was more like her sister than he’d given her credit for. He grinned back at her.
“Here’s the list,” she said, handing over a piece of paper with ten names and addresses.
“Does the order matter?”
She shook her head. “Whatever you prefer. The times of day I listed with each one refer to when they’re likely to be out.”
Helpful. Also suggested a certain ruthless efficiency.
“I can only go during the evening or on weekends,” he said. “I don’t like to leave your sister alone in this house.”
“Oh, I didn’t think of that.” Miss Harper took back the list, produced a pencil from her handbag and added additional times beside the several names that only had work hours attached.
“Joan Hamilton will be a challenge because I don’t know her schedule outside work.
I think you’re best to go when we have a League meeting on the twenty-fourth. ”
He nodded.
“One more thing.” She hesitated. “Please don’t tell anyone you’re doing this. No one.”
“Not even—”
“No,” she said.
“You don’t trust your sister?” he murmured. Did she know something he didn’t?
“It’s not that.” She looked troubled. “These women are our friends. It’s painful, asking you to spy on them. I don’t want this weighing on Beatrix—she would see it as an invasion of privacy, I think.”
Yes. Especially considering that he’d put her through it already. He would have to do everything he could to keep this assignment to himself, dreamside.
Miss Harper rose. He got up from his seat to see her out.
“Omnimancer,” she said, pausing at the front door, “you must let me try to even the scales. Surely there’s something we could do?”
Well, Miss Harper, perhaps you could talk your sister into loving me. Or figure out how to neutralize the weapon I made—how about that?
No sooner had that bitter joke crossed his mind than a realization hit him like a thunderclap: There was another way to ensure Project 96 would never be used. Major political change. Exactly the sort of change the League had a chance, small but real, to get.
Lydia Harper was his Plan B. He had never thought of it that way before. She might, in fact, be his only hope.
“Succeed,” he told her. “Just succeed.”