Chapter 13
The terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that had washed over from Beatrix’s panic attack was not in a hurry to subside. An hour after he dropped her off, Peter was on the brink of going back to check on her when the mayor knocked on his door.
“Everything all right?” he asked Croft, ushering him into the receiving room.
“Oh yes! Perfectly all right. I was just coming to invite you to dinner on Saturday—I hope you can make it?”
He liked Croft. And the man had no daughters, sisters or sisters-in-law, to the best of his knowledge, so he said, “Thank you, yes. That is,” he added, more as a joke than an actual inquiry, “as long as this isn’t a matchmaking attempt.”
“Um,” Croft said.
“It … isn’t, is it?”
Croft’s face went from rosy to beet red. “Well, my wife’s niece …”
Peter pressed his hands to his eyes. “Does every family in town have designs on me?”
Croft gave a sheepish laugh. “Probably.”
“Mayor—this is getting out of hand. Feelings will be hurt. What can I do?”
“Pick someone.”
Peter groaned. “Why is this just happening now? I’ve been in town for months.”
“Early on, we sort of figured you had picked someone.”
“What do you mean?” he said, knowing exactly what the man meant.
“You insisted that no one but Miss Harper would do.”
“Because she’s an excellent employee! You know that better than anyone. Did everybody think I was preying on her?”
“No, no,” Croft said quickly, then amended it with, “Well, not anyone with sense. We just thought you were soft on her.”
What did it matter? He was now. And as a matter of fact, he had been preying on her—just not in the way some in town were thinking.
“Anyway,” Croft said, “we did eventually figure out that you’re not trying to marry her, and then you ate with the Sedereys twice … ”
“Doesn’t everyone realize I have no source of income? Washington didn’t assign me here, you know.”
Croft shot him a don’t-be-stupid look. “You’re a wizard. You’ll never have trouble.”
Peter saw many, many dinner invitations in his future. His face must have betrayed his feelings because Croft said, “Isn’t there anyone in town you’d like?”
“I hardly know anyone.”
“That’s what dinners are for,” Croft said, in the patient manner of a parent talking to a small child. “To get to know people.”
“Look—I …” He paused to pick his words with care. “I fell in love with someone. It didn’t work out. I’m not over her.”
Croft’s face showed his sympathy. He clasped Peter’s arm. Then he said: “Best thing for that is to find someone else.”
Peter tipped his head back and stared heavenward.
“So—about dinner …” Croft said.
“I’m not coming, Mayor.”
“You’d really rather wallow here by yourself?”
Of course this would be hard for Croft to understand. He didn’t have all the relevant information. He couldn’t have it. And asking him to pass on the word that the omnimancer didn’t want to woo anyone because he was brokenhearted would be guaranteed to increase the town’s collective efforts.
“I appreciate the invitation, and please thank your wife very much for it, but tell her I’ve decided that I’d best not eat with anyone,” he said. “It would create the impression that I expect it—like my predecessor—and too many people in town can’t afford dinner guests.”
He thought Croft would argue. Instead, the mayor nodded, lips twisting in a sad smile. “All right, Omnimancer. If that’s what you want.”
But as he walked to the door, he added: “People will find other ways of trying, though. Mark my words.”
Peter shut the door, shaking his head. If he refused to accept invitations and mostly stayed in the house, he didn’t see what the town could do. He stood in the hallway, trying to decide whether to go check on Beatrix or get back to work, when someone else knocked at the door.
A girl of perhaps nineteen or twenty stood on the porch, smiling brightly at him. Not an auspicious beginning.
“Hello, Omnimancer! Could I please make a request?”
“Yes,” he said cautiously. “What do you need, Miss …?”
“Hennessey. My mother suffers from headaches, you see, so I thought I would ask for a remedy.”
He didn’t relax—she looked entirely too happy about her mother’s headaches. “I may have some headache brew in stock.”
“Splendid!” The girl hopped in without waiting for an invitation and closed the door behind her.
He didn’t like this at all. He thought about tossing her out and making her wait on the porch, but on second thought that seemed over the top.
He instead strode to the brewing room at a speed just shy of running for his life and rummaged through the bottles full of Beatrix’s work, nearly breaking one in his haste.
There—headache brew. He turned, rushed from the room and promptly collided with Miss Hennessey.
“Oh!” she said in what seemed like exaggerated surprise, her hands on his chest. She looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Oh, my.”
She planned that. She must have been standing in just the right spot to be out of his line of sight so she could walk into him as he came out. He stepped back and held the brew out to her, trying not to scowl. “My apologies—here it is.”
“Oh, thank you, Omnimancer!” She looked up at him through her eyelashes again. “My family would be honored if you would have dinner with us. Would tomorrow be convenient?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Hennessey, but no,” he said.
Her smile flickered but recovered. “Then simply name the day!”
“No, but thank you.”
Now the smile was gone. “You’ve eaten with the Sedereys. Twice. Are we—are we not good enough for you, Omnimancer?”
He would have taken the wounded tone at face value if this entire visit hadn’t been a calculated performance.
“As I was just telling the mayor,” he said, “I’ve decided not to accept any more invitations—from anyone in town—to avoid the perception that I will favor people in a position to give me a meal.
Had that occurred to me earlier, I would never have accepted the Sedereys’ invitations, as kindly meant as they were. ”
She apparently had no ready plan for this. She merely said, “Ah.” He took the opportunity to slip past her and open the door.
“Good-bye, Miss Hennessey,” he said firmly.
She left—though not without smiling at him, and thanking him, and passing by too close to him. He shut the door a bit harder than necessary.
For crying out loud, would he have to question the true intent of every request for help from here on out? There had to be a solution for this. But what?
He was afraid the ridiculous problem would fall from his lips as soon as he got dreamside, but when he arrived there, it went right out of his head. Beatrix sat on the bed, face in her hands, chest shaking in noiseless sobs.
He put his arms around her, feeling helpless. What could he say? Everything’s all right was a bald-faced lie. He finally settled on, “Do you think your panic attacks are getting worse?”
If anything, this made her more upset. “Oh,” she moaned. “Oh oh oh.”
“Has something happened? Can I help?”
She made no answer for a moment. Then she said, “I’m not dayside Beatrix.”
“What—”
“I don’t want to talk about her or think about her or have anything to do with her!”
He almost asked why, but the answer occurred to him in time. There was only one difference of opinion between daytime and nighttime Beatrix. One fought against the Vow’s effects. The other didn’t.
Then she kissed him, which proved the point. What had Miss Knight said? That he was driving Beatrix insane?
When he could manage it, he said, “What sets off your panic attacks?”
She blinked at him, thrown by the interruption. Her lips, half-open and reddened from kissing him, were so tempting that he leaned in to kiss her again before catching himself.
“Stress,” she said.
“Over your sister, in all cases?”
She hesitated.
“Over me, too?” he suggested.
She looked down at their intertwined hands. “Yes.”
He closed his eyes, feeling sick. “What if the panic attacks are the Vow’s way of forcing the point?”
She said nothing, and her silence seemed like an answer.
“I hate that thrice-damned Vow,” he cried out, leaping off the bed and pacing the room. “I don’t want you to feel compelled to love me! I don’t want that at all!”
“No, I—I don’t think the Vow is giving me panic attacks because I’m fighting that compulsion,” she said. “And I know how you feel. I don’t doubt that for a moment.”
She held out a hand. He took it, sitting beside her.
“What can I do?” he asked.
She sighed and gave an expressive shrug.
“Beatrix—should I try to fall in love with someone else?”
He could hear the breath catch in her throat and knew he’d said the wrong thing. Perhaps it would have been all right to ask dayside. Dreamside, never. Dreamside, she wanted him without reservation.
Her voice trembled as she said, “If you think it would free you from—”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured, putting his arms around her, pressing his face to her hair. “I don’t want anyone else. I can’t imagine wanting anyone else. I just wish there were a way we could both get out of this circle of hell.”
“There’s no out,” she said. “Only deeper in.”
She unbuttoned his shirt, pressing her lips to his skin as she uncovered it.
For a little while, sensation overpowered all else.
But when they lay amid the untucked sheets later, he could think of nothing but the harm he was unwittingly doing her, and the tears running down her cheeks were proof that she was contemplating the same thing. They needed a distraction.
“Let’s go back to the beach,” he said, grasping the first one that came to him.
“What?”
“I know that experiment didn’t end well, but the beach was the good part of it,” he said. “Come on, show me how. Do you just picture what you want?”
She exhaled. “Start with one part. Pick something in the room to turn into a single piece of the setting.”
“Like the ocean?”
“Right, or the sand, or the sky—one thing. Imagine your item transforming. If you imagine hard enough, it will. And once you’ve got it going, the rest is much easier.”