Chapter 12
Sue opened the door herself this time. When Beatrix exclaimed at how much better she looked, Sue broke out her quirk of a smile, the one that always looked more ironic than genuine. “Nothing like being unable to get out of bed to make walking around seem like a major accomplishment.”
Beatrix laughed, Sue’s smile widened into something less sharp and they sat in the tiny living room. The Clark boys wrestled on the frayed rug near their feet, giggling.
Beatrix looked around. “Anna’s back in school?”
“Yes.” Sue shook her head. “She missed eight days. Eight. I couldn’t persuade her to go back any earlier.”
“She was worried about you.” If staying home from school could have kept her own mother alive, she never would have gone back, as much as she loved it.
Sue closed her eyes, letting out a whooshing sigh. “I don’t want her to get behind. I want her to finish school and make something of herself. Like you.”
“Oh,” Beatrix said quietly. She cleared her throat. “I never thought I’d made much of myself. Now, my sister—she’s a semester away from finishing college.”
“But you sent her.”
Beatrix smiled, the joy she’d felt when she handed Hazelhurst the last payment earlier in the day filling her up again. She’d made it by the skin of her teeth—just $110 left in the savings account. But she’d made it.
“No, that’s mine!” Tommy yanked a wooden toy car out of his little brother’s hands and gave him a push.
Beatrix started to rise, glancing at Sue for direction. “Should I …?”
“Owwwwww!”
Evan bit Tommy. Then Tommy hit Evan.
“Boys!” Sue pushed to her feet and dragged them down the hall, depositing the toddler in her bedroom and the four-year-old in the bathroom. “No biting. No hitting. Do not come out until I get you.”
Evan wailed from the bedroom.
“No crying!” Sue called over her shoulder.
She slumped into her chair, looking far less healthy than she had just a minute earlier.
“Tough age,” Beatrix murmured.
Sue stared at the floor. “I only wanted one.”
What could you say to that?
“It’s not that I don’t love them all.” Sue wrapped her arms around herself.
“I do. I honestly do. But three is … I’m barely managing, Beatrix.
Soon I’ll have four, and you know it won’t stop there.
I wish there was something I could do.” Color crept into her still-pale cheeks.
“Besides the obvious, which wouldn’t be fair to Daniel. ”
“There ought to be something,” Beatrix said, frowning. “It’s criminal that there isn’t.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Beatrix’s outrage about the situation and zeal to tackle it rising by the second. There had to be a way.
“Well,” Sue said heavily, “I’d better make the boys lunch.”
Beatrix rose from the couch with her, grasping her hand and squeezing it. “Don’t lose hope,” she murmured.
She chewed over the problem on the walk back, and the moment she finished her work for the day, she ran up to Ella on the second floor, ideas pouring out. A brew. Something to interrupt ovulation.
Ella frowned.
“I don’t think we ought to go down that road, Beatrix. It’s a good idea, a great idea,” she said, holding up her hands, “but it would take ages to work out. And we’d need—what, hundreds of lab animals to test on? Thousands? Not to mention that neither of us are medical researchers.”
Beatrix sighed.
“We have to focus on the plan for now,” Ella said.
So they tried yet again to find the invisible crabapples, and yet again they couldn’t.
Ella, dropping the spells once they’d given up, suggested they try protecting the fruit instead, knitting-style, something they’d managed to do before.
But five minutes later, Beatrix stared at the mangled remains of her apples, all of them crushed by the force of her insufficiently focused—or perhaps too focused—mind.
She would never be able to knit this spell on her sister.
Ella’s apples, by contrast, glinted with the sheen of protection that had actually protected.
“I’m hopeless,” Beatrix muttered.
“You’re under a great deal of stress.” Ella gathered the apples, whole and in pieces, into her bag. “Anyway, look on the bright side: You’ve got plenty of power to draw on.”
The telephone rang.
“Be right back,” Beatrix said, dashing for the kitchen.
“You’re off the clock, you know,” Ella called out.
“He can’t hear the phone in the attic.” Beatrix picked up the receiver. “Omnimancer’s house!”
“Beatrix?” The voice on the other end was tinny, but the strain in it came through nonetheless. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it is. Can I help you?”
“It’s—it’s Joan.”
Beatrix grabbed hold of the counter, heart revving up, lungs tightening. She knew what had to come next, but it still felt as shocking as a dunking in ice-cold water when Joan said: “My sister—my sister isn’t well. Could you put her on the list?” Her voice cracked as she added, “Please?”
Beatrix gulped air, trying to push the distress into a tiny ball, to contain it before it set off a panic attack. Or before Peter sensed something was wrong.
“Yes,” she said. Steady. Artificial. “Right away.”
As she hung up, Ella clattered into the kitchen and grabbed her arm. “C’mon, c’mon, we’ve got to head home in fifteen minutes.”
“Ella …” The dread in her voice must have been clear because Ella stopped tugging and looked at her in concern. “That was Joan. Her—her sister …”
“Oh my God.”
“We have to go—”
The attic door creaked. Peter’s footsteps echoed on the stairs like gunshots—he was coming down fast. Beatrix had just a moment to glance at Ella before he rounded the bend.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
She could tell him. She could beg for his forgiveness and help.
“Panic attack,” she said, the lie stealing her breath, nearly making the statement true. “I’m—I’m—”
“Wait, don’t try to talk.” He fetched her a glass of water. “Can you drink that?”
She sipped at it, trying to think, to be calm. They had to get to Baltimore as soon as possible. Therefore, they had to get home now. Her car was there, in the garage.
“I need to go home,” she said.
He nodded.
“I don’t think I can walk it,” she said, eyes on the glass, on her hands, on anything but him. “Could you drive us?”
Of course he said yes. She spent the short ride home with her eyes pressed shut, trying to hold back burning tears.
Ella ran into the house to give Rosemarie an excuse for why they were rushing off unexpectedly, leaving Beatrix on the porch with disjointed thoughts and inadequate lungs. When Ella burst back out the door, they ran to the car without a word.
The old sedan didn’t start on the first three tries—Beatrix had a horrible moment of thinking that now, now was when it would finally give up the ghost—but the fourth attempt worked, and she drove them in the gathering darkness to Baltimore.
Joan met them at the door with red eyes and a grim look. They rushed to the bathroom, heels clicking in time like a particularly ominous clock.
“One of my recruits told me that one of her recruits broke the rule—the rule about only two people,” Joan said, voice low and urgent. “This woman decided to recruit four.”
She paused, and Ella let out a whooshing breath. “Is that all? That’s not too—”
“No.” Joan swallowed. “The fourth prospective recruit thinks it’s her duty as a citizen to inform the government.”
Beatrix stared at Joan, too horrified to speak. Ella broke the terrible silence with a question: “I don’t suppose she took a Vow?”
Joan shook her head.
“When did this happen?” Beatrix said, forcing the words out.
“This morning. I called as soon as I found out.”
Joan choked back a sob, and as she tried to compose herself, Ella muttered, “Thank God all the recruiting beyond the first wave happened outside the League.”
“No, that’s just it! That’s the worst part of it all!” Joan grabbed Ella’s arm with one hand and Beatrix’s with the other. “The recruit who broke the rule is a League leader—and her so-called friend is convinced this is a League effort!”
What happened, as far as Joan had been able to piece together, was something Beatrix saw in hindsight that she should have anticipated in a small state with an even smaller pool of highly educated women.
Joan avoided tapping League members. But she couldn’t tell her recruits to do the same without mentioning the League, and they’d asked her not to do that, so she didn’t.
As bad luck would have it, one of Joan’s recruits was best friends with the vice president of the Harford County chapter, a woman whose heart was in the right place but whose head was not.
Whether the bad prospect she’d tried to recruit had already made good on her threat, the vice president had no idea.
“What are we to do?” Joan said, wringing her hands.
Beatrix nearly followed suit. “Ella?”
“I don’t know!” Ella pressed her fingers to her temples. “We need to sit and think. There must be a way out of this.”
Beatrix could see only one. “Joan—could you give us a few minutes?”
Joan bit her lip but left the bathroom without protest. Beatrix turned to Ella. “We have to tell him.”
“Who do we—” Ella’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh no—no, no, no.”
“If she’s already made the call, she’s going to expect a wizard. Our only chance is to give her one.”
Ella’s expression went from defiant to animated in the blink of an eye. “Yeah—yeah! But why stop at one when we can give her two? Wizard Smith”—she pointed to herself—“and Wizard”—she pointed to Beatrix—“Some-Other-Name.”
Beatrix stared at her. “Ella, you’ve managed illusions on your dress. Your dress. You can’t make us look like wizards!”
“The hell I can’t.” Ella tore the pins from her hair, letting her thick, dark braids fall down her back, and undid the plaits at a rapid clip. “Look for ponytail holders. Try the drawer there. Quick!”
Beatrix searched the drawer, then the shelves, and finally found two tucked in a corner. “Here, but I don’t think—”