Chapter 17 #2
Ella gave a grim shake of the head. “That wouldn’t help.”
They rode the elevator to the tenth floor in silence, walked out into an empty hallway and rushed into Joan’s apartment while the getting was good. Joan pressed them into the bathroom as soon as they’d crossed the threshold.
“Problems?” she said, understandably misreading the cause of their grave expressions.
“No—we got them,” Beatrix said. “The full fifteen hundred, thanks to your contribution. That should get us to spring.”
Joan beamed, then frowned. “Then what’s wrong? Something’s obviously wrong.”
Beatrix glanced at Ella, but Ella’s eyes were squeezed shut as she concentrated on undoing the illusions on them.
“We saw the vice president’s son at the shop,” she said cautiously. “Was a bit of a shock …”
Joan grimaced. “Freddie Draden is always a bit of a shock. Be glad you were disguised as men so he didn’t try to feel you up.”
That was one surprise too many. Beatrix sat heavily on the edge of the tub. “Don’t tell me you know him, too?”
“We go to some of the same parties,” Joan said, shrugging—as if to suggest it was nothing of consequence that she was invited to parties the vice president’s son deemed worthy of attending. “He’s lived in Baltimore for almost a year, you know.”
Beatrix leaned forward, propelled by a surge of hope: “Do you have any idea whom he’s dating?”
“Sure.” Joan rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask me why she’s dating him, though.”
“He came to the shop to purchase an abortifacient that could endanger her life. Can you tell her not to drink a thing he gives her?”
Joan frowned. “But Betty’s not pregnant.”
“You’re—you’re sure of that?”
“Certain. Maybe he was ‘entertaining’ someone on the side, or—oh.” Joan groaned. “Oh, Betty.”
Ella, without opening her eyes, said: “She’s taken wizard hunting to the extreme?”
Beatrix gripped the tub. “Please tell me she’s not pretending to be pregnant in hopes of forcing an offer of marriage.”
“I think that’s exactly what she’s doing,” Joan said. “She admitted it, all but—‘Oh, I can get him, don’t you worry about that.’ I thought it was a joke. I was in the middle of ticking off the many reasons she ought to stop seeing him, and I’d just said he was playing around with her.”
“Wizard hunters aren’t quite as bad as wizards,” Ella said, opening her eyes and surveying her back-to-normal face in the mirror, “but I have nothing but contempt for those sorts of women.”
“Betty isn’t that sort of woman,” Joan said. “No, really! She graduated top of her class at Smith. She’s always struck me as someone who wanted to do things.”
“Ambitious?” Beatrix asked.
“Yes, just like us.”
“If you narrow someone’s options to nurse, schoolteacher, secretary or wife,” Beatrix said, “you’ll get Bettys who aim their ambition at powerful men, or in this case the son of one.”
Ella looked decidedly unsympathetic. Joan sighed.
“So what do we do?” Beatrix said, glancing between them.
“Sounds like they deserve each other,” Ella muttered. “Let them sort themselves out.”
“Maybe I can talk some sense into her,” Joan said.
“Tell her that people who get in the Dradens’ way tend to regret it,” Ella said.
Beatrix swallowed, dread spreading its tendrils in her chest. What did Draden—Vice President Draden—have in store for them? Even if the cameras were a sign that he preferred ruining their reputations to more drastic action, what would he do when months went by with no material?
“Hold still,” Ella said to Beatrix, “and I’ll put your face back to normal.”
As she waited, Beatrix listened to Joan count out a quarter of the leaves and tried to put the vice president out of her mind.
What filled it instead was Betty, attempting to trick a man who didn’t love her into a marriage built on a lie, and Frederick Draden, attempting to solve his problem by endangering her life.
It made her feel so tired and sad. No wonder Garrett had been charmed by her dislike of his profession.
When all the illusions were gone, they drove slowly on still-slushy roads to deliver leaves to other Plan B lieutenants: first Marilyn Zuckerman, then Clara Daniels. They’d have to wait on Dot Yamaguchi, due back in town at the end of the week for spring semester.
Neither Clara nor Marilyn had heard of problems from downstream recruits. But Ella’s somber expression as they walked back to the car to make the trip home worried Beatrix.
“You don’t think it’s going well?” she asked.
Ella managed a smile. “Sorry, just thinking about something else. Nothing to do with that.”
And finally, Beatrix realized what she should have seen, the connection she should have immediately made. Frederick Draden—handsome, well-connected, objectionable Frederick Draden—was the ex-fiancé.
“Ella,” she whispered, “what is Frederick to you?”
Ella, in the middle of opening the passenger door, stopped dead. “What?”
“He’s not just your old neighbor, is he.”
Ella sank into the seat, looking so forlorn, so unlike herself, that Beatrix wished she could take the thoughtless question back.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting in her own seat. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Ella put her face in her hands, her laugh all sharp edges. “I like to pretend there’s no connection at all, more fool I. Oh, it was awful to see him.”
“You were just eighteen,” Beatrix murmured. “And you had the good sense to break the engagement.”
Ella, still covering her face, gave another laugh, this one bordering on hysterical.
“Listen, we don’t have to talk about it.” Beatrix shifted, patting her arm. “Just don’t feel you have to keep this bottled up. You’re my best friend. Let me help shoulder your troubles sometimes.”
Ella leaned into her. “Thank you. And I will, just—not right now. Later. We can talk about it later.” She breathed in, breathed out and put herself back together—like an illusion, only faster.
Lips quirked, eyes sardonic. “I have a daily limit on how much I can tolerate talking about wizards, you know. I get cranky.”
And Beatrix finally understood that Ella’s indefatigable humor wasn’t armor so much as the scab over a wound, painful to take off.
“Later,” she agreed.
Peter looked at the names on Lydia Harper’s list, determined to make more progress. Out of ten, he’d visited the homes of only two.
Dot Yamaguchi was out of town until the following Saturday, but he decided to put her last. Her dorm room was where he’d spied on Beatrix. Going back would be painful.
He could check on Marilyn Zuckerman—oh, wait, he’d missed the notation that she had family visiting through Monday.
Next weekend, then. Clara Daniels? No, that would be tricky, she ran a boarding house.
Try during Sunday services—10-11 a.m., Miss Harper wrote.
Rev. Hattington had extracted a promise from him to provide the after-service pastries tomorrow, so—next weekend for her, too.
And Joan Hamilton, she of the uncertain schedule, would have to wait until that Sunday as well, when the League meeting would keep her and all the other local leaders safely in Ellicott Mills for two to three hours.
That left the less conveniently located people. He sighed and trekked off to Westminster on narrow country roads, discovered nothing of note and got back five minutes before Martinelli turned up on his doorstep.
“I’ve come to collect,” the man said. “You’re taking me to dinner.”
“You really think I never go anywhere, don’t you,” Peter said. “It didn’t once occur to you to call first?”
“Nope. One-stoplight town.” Martinelli opened the door of his DeSoto. “Let’s go, Omnimancer.”
Peter reset the spell around the house and got in. Martinelli drove them to a restaurant in Baltimore, a tiny Little Italy pasta house.
“This is how you’re collecting?” Peter cast his eye over the prices on the menu. “Cheap date.”
“Well, seeing as how the town isn’t paying you …”
They had a good time. They always had a good time together. But the increasing worry that Martinelli was here as a spy, not his friend, tinged the proceedings, despite his deep-seated desire to acquit him.
This was Martinelli’s third unannounced visit in less than a month.
(Yes, but he had a reason this time. He was here to get repayment for a big favor.) He kept popping in on weekends—surely by now his wife was back from her mother’s?
(Well, when else could he come? Wouldn’t it be more suspicious if he showed up in the middle of a work day?) He’d never visited even once before Peter left his job.
(Because they saw each other sixty hours a week at work, damn it, wasn’t that sufficient?)
Peter swallowed his last bite of food, wishing the paranoia would go down as easily.
“I’ve been giving your predicament some thought,” Martinelli said.
He blinked at the man, befuddled.
“Miss Harper,” Martinelli clarified, shooting him a what-else-could-I-mean look.
“Oh. Right.”
“I don’t think it’s hopeless. And more importantly, you don’t think it’s hopeless.”
Peter laughed despite himself. “Really? Do go on.”
“If you like omnimancing, you could put in for an actual assignment. Or you could do any manner of job in or outside D.C. Why else would you stay in Ellicott Mills for no pay if not from the hope that Miss Harper will succumb?”
The question hung there for an overly long moment. Was this a trap?
“See, I knew it,” Martinelli said. “And I think you’re right. After all, I was determined to hate the young whippersnapper who took the job I wanted a few years ago, and that lasted all of, what, two months?”
“Well, you’ve never stopped insulting me, so there wasn’t much of a detectable difference …”
Martinelli flashed his wacky grin, but then his expression turned abruptly serious. “Don’t give up hope. I mean it. Hope is all we have in this patchwork life.”
Peter could do nothing but nod. His tongue felt thick and his eyes prickled. How could he question Martinelli’s friendship? Of the two of them, who was by far the worse friend?
After Martinelli dropped him off at home, however—after he’d brushed his teeth and laid in bed and allowed himself to hope just a tiny, infinitesimal bit—it struck him: He’d never mentioned to Martinelli that he wasn’t getting paid for his work here.
But the magiocracy knew it.
Try as he might, he couldn’t explain that one away.