Chapter 22 #2
“I know, I know, it sounds unbelievable,” Martinelli said, misunderstanding Peter’s shock, “but it happened to both the other pairs—these were men who had never wanted other men before. The first ran off with each other—left their wives, left their jobs. A few years later, when one of them died and the other had an instantaneous ‘what was I doing’ awakening, the agency suspected the Vows. They checked their records to see if anyone else had made them simultaneously, discovered another pair who had done so just five months earlier and had them burn their contracts. I tracked them down later. They’d been on the verge of leaving their wives for each other.
But the instant the contracts were destroyed, bam—back to normal, or some semblance of it. ”
“What on earth did they Vow?”
Martinelli shrugged. “They were agency wizards. Standard agency Vow—each pair just happened to make it to each other, which wasn’t standard. Oh, and then the first pair took a Vow about some financial transaction they were cutting on the side.”
The room was spinning. Peter closed his eyes. The one thing he hadn’t questioned was that he’d fallen in love with Beatrix—that he had, of his own volition.
He waited until he thought he could ask a question without breaking down. Then he said, “Did their Vows have anything in them that could explain what happened beyond merely exchanging them with each other? Language about safeguarding their wellbeing, or something of that sort?”
“No.”
He opened his eyes to see Martinelli looking at him with such pity that he immediately closed them again.
“You’re sure,” Martinelli said, “you’re a hundred percent sure you can’t destroy the contracts?”
“Yes.” Peter sighed. “There will be no back to normal in this case.”
“Maybe the third Vow counteracts that part of the effect. If you’re not feeling it yet—I mean, you’re desperately in love with your Miss Harper, that’s a good …” Martinelli trailed off.
Peter opened his eyes just in time to see the dawning look of shock on Martinelli’s face. He thought of the terms of the Vow Martinelli had taken—to keep secret what he, Peter, told him tonight—and rushed to get it on the record first: “It’s Miss Harper I exchanged Vows with.”
“You Vowed to her and she Vowed to you?”
“Yes.”
“Just to be, you know, absolutely clear: You taught her how to cast a spell?”
“Yes.”
“And it worked?”
“Eventually,” Peter said, truthfully enough. It had taken Beatrix several tries the first time.
He’d just admitted to felonies. He braced himself for the blowback.
Martinelli gave a low whistle. “That’s fascinating. Shouldn’t be possible, of course, and I’d really like to know how you did it, but—more to the point—why did you?”
Yes. Why. “She took a Vow to do me no harm because I’m paranoid. I took a Vow to do her sister no harm because Beatrix Harper has a perfectly justified distrust of wizards.”
“And she’s fighting the effects—that was what you meant, wasn’t it, when you said she would never love you,” Martinelli said.
Peter nodded.
Martinelli tapped the arm of his chair. “You know what happens to men who fall in love with men, the ruin they face. Don’t you think the two pairs I told you about fought against it? But the Vows win all fights. They’ll win this one, too.”
“God, no,” Peter said, the words bursting out. “I’ll have to leave—I’ll just have to leave and pray that some distance will help.”
Martinelli sat up. He looked alarmed. “Don’t do that.
No, I mean it! You bound yourselves together with a Vow—lots of Vows—and every fiber of your being and hers is intent on seeing this through.
If simply revowing can drive a wizard insane, what do you think will happen to you and her if you’re halfway across the country? ”
Peter slid further into his chair. If he ran, they were doomed. If he stayed and was arrested, doomed.
“Drink,” Martinelli advised, so he did. He drained his glass and poured them both another.
“Feel free to tell me to go to hell,” Martinelli said after a while, “but … what is it like?”
“Like … the most powerful, unsettling feeling you can imagine. It’s hard to be in the same room because the urge to touch her is so strong.” He shook his head. “I should have realized she wasn’t the only one under a compulsion.”
How would he feel about her if not for the Vows?
Would he even like her at this point? He thought of Plan B and his anger about it flared back to life like a poorly smothered fire.
But it sputtered as he remembered her anguished face and what she’d said.
I didn’t want to keep this from you. I just didn’t know what to do.
It was hardly the day to be upset at her for Plan B, in any case, when the job he’d made her take had nearly gotten her arrested.
He swallowed, throat raw. No mystery about how, if not for the Vows, she would feel about him.
Martinelli swirled the bit of wine left in his glass. “The other wizards hardly wanted to talk about it, so here’s what I’ve been wondering: Is it just physical desire, this feeling for each other?”
“No,” he said. “No, it goes far beyond that. There’s a connection—I feel what she feels and vice versa.
And the dream state … it cuts through the usual ways you separate yourself from other people.
You say what you think. It’s hard to hold back.
” He paused. “She knows me. She knows me in a way that no one else ever has or could, and I know her in the same way.”
Martinelli cocked his head. “Isn’t that the very definition of love?”
Peter gave a wan smile. “Well, that’s why I never questioned that I did love her. But it’s a fabrication. You must see that makes all the difference.”
They drank some more. Then they walked unsteadily into the kitchen to get a late dinner—should have eaten first, definitely should have eaten first—and this time Martinelli accepted when offered a bed.
“Lemme borrow your phone first,” he said. “Need to call in sick. Sick of the whole operation.”
Peter snorted. “Here’s a tip: Don’t say that.”
Martinelli laughed and almost fell getting up from the table.
But once on the line, he sounded perfectly sober and said he expected he would be in just an hour or two late.
They sat in the kitchen a while longer, bracing themselves for the trip up the stairs, and finally made it without an accident.
He got Martinelli settled in a spare bedroom. Back in his own room, he returned the contracts to their hiding place under a floorboard. There would be no use in running now.
He went to bed dreading what he would have to tell Beatrix.
As Lydia, Ella and Rosemarie gathered with her in the sitting room, Beatrix passed around a note with a fraught question: Do you think it was an accident?
No one needed her to clarify what “it” was. Lydia nodded. Rosemarie gave a weary shrug. Ella shook her head, frowning.
Think—is there anything else about the afternoon we should know? Rosemarie wrote.
Beatrix realized with a start that she’d told only Lydia what Garrett had said about the not-actual attempt on her life. The original paper was gone, burned, so she wrote the explanation out again. Ella and Rosemarie looked at it with identical expressions of shock.
But then Rosemarie took the pen and wrote, It does explain why nothing like that incident has followed. And we know for a fact that they’re trying to find something to discredit us.
We need to concentrate on that, Lydia wrote. I think we can put these worries about my safety behind us.
For the second time that day, Ella grabbed the pen from her hands. No! Huge mistake! Morse is Draden’s wizard, and I’m telling you, if they can’t stop you by ruining your reputation, they’ll arrange a tragic “accident.” We can’t lower our guard!
The old panic pricked at Beatrix. This could be the day echoed in her head. But she took a deep breath and the panic subsided. She’d let the supposed assassination attempt hijack her, press her into decisions she never should have made. She wouldn’t let fear control her this time. She wouldn’t.
Lydia, taking the pen back with a small frown, wrote: I can’t live my life this way. I refuse. They’ve shown that they plan to bury us in scandal, and we should treat that risk with the seriousness it deserves.
Ella put her hand out for the pen, obviously intending to argue, but Rosemarie got it first. We’ll discuss it later. Time for bed.
That left Beatrix with no distraction from the question that most of her fears now centered on: What would become of Peter? Would the next day be the last she saw him in real life?
The relief she felt when she landed dreamside and he said he’d decided to stay was intense but brief. So much could still go wrong. She held him, trembling, as they discussed the call to the police she would have to make the next day.
Then she told him what Garrett had admitted about Lydia.
“What?” he said, looking furious.
“I know,” she murmured. “But how are we supposed to know if he was telling the truth that time?”
He slumped onto his back, his scowl softening into a thoughtful frown. After a while, he said: “I can’t think of a reason he’d lie about this. It doesn’t do anything for him—quite the opposite.”
“Ella insists Lydia is still in danger.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Garrett was in a far better position than Miss Knight to know the magiocracy’s intentions, don’t you think?”
She exhaled. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed to hear him refute Ella’s warning. She reached for his hand and impulsively kissed it.
“Beatrix …” He swallowed. “There’s something I must tell you.”
He was an unwilling narrator, judging by how frequently he stopped and how little he looked her in the eye. She listened in blank astonishment as his evening revealed itself.
Martinelli’s certainty that separation would be dangerous for her and Peter—perhaps drive them insane—was chilling but not a complete shock. Worse, somehow, was what he’d learned about the few others who had been in their predicament.
Peter didn’t draw conclusions about what it meant. But it was obvious.
“Then … you don’t love me.” She couldn’t disguise the strain in her voice. “Everything we’re feeling, both of us, is a lie.”
His gaze was on the ceiling. “So it would seem.”
No part of this should have broken her heart. There was nothing rational about the way she was taking it. She searched for something to say and came up with, “Is it better for you, knowing we’re in the same boat?”
“No. It’s worse. The whole mess is still my fault, and I would much rather have the satisfaction of knowing that my feelings are mine.” He looked at her then, the two of them separated on his bed by a few inches of physical space and this massive revelation. “How does it make you feel?”
Dayside, she probably would have managed a calm answer that obscured her emotions. But they weren’t dayside. She burst into tears.
He pulled her to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over until she cut him off with a bruising kiss to make him stop.
In every “sorry” she heard sorry I don’t love you, never loved you, never will.
She popped stitches in his pants in her haste to get them off—fake pants in a fake reality, fake lust coursing through their fake veins—and wondered if the Vows had already driven her mad.