Chapter 23
When she woke up and tiptoed downstairs, she found her sister in the sitting room, pen and paper in hand. She looked at the message Lydia had written: What has OB decided?
Beatrix stared at her. Did Lydia know about dreamside? She couldn’t. Could she?
He told me about the dreams. What did he say last night?
Beatrix, whiplashed between surprise that Peter let the secret out and guilt for not telling her sister in the first place, took the pen back. He’s staying.
Her sister relaxed. Thank goodness!
Beatrix sank onto the couch, the paper lying forgotten on her lap, as Lydia started breakfast. Her sister’s happy relief brought an uncomfortable question to mind: Did Lydia have feelings for Peter?
She wondered if Peter would have returned them, if not for the Vows.
After a moment, she tipped her head back and squeezed her eyes shut.
Could there be anything more ridiculous than jealousy over feelings her sister might or might not have for a man who contractually could not return them, and whom she loved purely because of spells gone wrong?
Good God, the police would soon be investigating Garrett’s death.
Peter might be arrested. She had real things to worry about.
A tap on the shoulder. She opened her eyes. Before her stood Ella, attention caught by the paper in her lap.
Uh oh. She picked it up, the side with the messages to her chest, and hoped Ella hadn’t seen what it said. But Ella took a notepad and pen from her workbag and wrote, What is Lydia talking about? What dreams?
And then, as Beatrix hesitated, Ella added a postscript: It’s the Vows, isn’t it.
Beatrix nodded. She should have told Ella long before.
She should have told her sister long before, and Rosemarie, too, because they were all in this together.
The explanation she wrote out for Ella included almost all the key elements: the simultaneous dreams, the ability to (more or less) control what they said and did, the absence of other people.
As soon as Ella finished reading, she narrowed in on what had been intentionally left out: What happens there? What does he do?
She didn’t want Ella to know—didn’t want her blaming Peter, didn’t want to acknowledge that her own force of will was so weak. But before she could write down a half-truth about how they mostly talked, she was undone by the blood rushing hot to her face.
Ella’s eyes widened. Her lips tightened.
“Breakfast!” Lydia called.
It’s not what you think—not exactly—I’ll explain later, Beatrix scrawled out desperately and dashed into the confused muddle of everyone trying to sort out eggs, toast and drinks.
Ella handed off the coffee to Rosemarie and Lydia with an uncharacteristically grim expression and stood with her back to the table, staring at the still-steeping tea on the counter, clutching her workbag with a death grip.
But a minute later when she gave Beatrix her cup, she looked as if she’d come to terms with the news.
“It’s OK,” she murmured, squeezing Beatrix’s shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
No time for explanations after breakfast—Beatrix had to rush back upstairs to pin up her hair. Then they had to leave. She was crossing into the forest, trying to work out what she could safely tell Ella, when Ella said, “Are you ill? You look pale.”
She did feel off. Not ill, but wrung out, which was little wonder. She turned to answer Ella and her head spun. She stumbled. If not for Ella’s quick reflexes, she might have fallen.
“Beatrix?” Ella peered at her. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you.”
Yes. Yes, she was. She leaned against Ella. Her eyelids felt so heavy. But she had to get to Peter’s—she had to call the police.
“We’d better go home,” Ella said.
That was a good argument. Yes, they had better go home. She turned and swayed.
Ella took her by the arm. “This way. I’ll help you.”
They barely made it back, her legs moving under duress. Ella got her into the sitting room and onto the couch, helping her out of her coat.
Rosemarie clattered down the stairs. “What’s wrong?”
Beatrix tried to say she was OK, just unaccountably exhausted, as if she’d been awakened in the middle of the night and all she wanted to do was go back to sleep. But Ella said, “She’s ill!” And that was a good point. She was ill. Obviously.
“I’ll call a doctor,” Rosemarie said, voice weighted with some emotion Beatrix couldn’t identify.
There was someone else they ought to call, wasn’t there? “Om …” Beatrix swallowed. It was so hard to talk. She was so tired. “Om … omniman …”
“Hush,” Ella murmured, “you need to rest.”
Beatrix’s eyes fluttered closed.
She heard Lydia’s voice, felt her sister’s cool hand on her forehead. She heard Rosemarie saying something into the telephone. Then Ella said, “I have to go, but the doctor’s coming, it’ll be all right, I promise—sleep now, that’s the best thing.”
Yes. She would go to sleep, and everything would be all right.
Peter stared blearily into the coffee he didn’t want to drink, cursing himself for over-imbibing the previous night when he needed his wits about him today. Martinelli, who’d had even more, was somehow managing to scramble eggs.
The man passed him a heaping plate. “Eat and you’ll feel better.”
Peter glared at him, but he did feel a bit less awful after finishing the food.
“See, I’m often right.” Martinelli’s grin was fleeting.
Peter thought of how his friend’s life was coming off the rails and wished he could do something for him.
“If you need a reference”—he paused, saw how ridiculous that was and added—“from a wizard who tossed it all to go work for free on the bottom rung of the bureaucracy, then good luck to you. But I will gladly give it. I’ll even say you’re the most acceptable scientist I’ve ever known. ”
Martinelli laughed.
“And come over anytime.”
“Thanks. That means a lot, boss.” Martinelli paused with his last bite of egg halfway to his mouth, searching Peter’s face.
“Look … I know I can’t fully comprehend how it feels, being caught the way you and Miss Harper are.
But it seems to me you have two choices: Make the best of it, or don’t.
For all intents and purposes, you love each other. What do you gain by fighting it?”
“It feels like giving up to do anything else,” Peter said, understanding in a bone-deep way now—not just intellectually—why Beatrix had refused to surrender.
Martinelli nodded. “Sure. But think about it. Think what you’d do if you’d been pushed into an arranged marriage. If you’d pick ‘try to find happiness together,’ then you know what to do here.”
He stood and held out a hand. Peter rose to take it, no arguments on his lips because he had none to make.
“God knows,” Martinelli murmured, “that happiness is a hard-won commodity in any circumstances.” He drew Peter in for a one-armed hug. “You’ll be OK, whippersnapper. Hang in there.”
“You, too,” Peter said, almost unable to get the words out. “Don’t give up on Mae.”
“I haven’t.” Martinelli swallowed. “You know, quitting might help. All those long hours—it must have been so lonely for her.” He sighed. “So long, on that cheerful note.”
“Wait,” Peter said, coming to a decision. “Just a minute.”
He strode to his desk drawer in the receiving room and removed a document he’d written earlier but had yet to sign. I, Peter William Blackwell, being of sound mind and body, do hereby will all my possessions to Beatrix Jane Harper …
He owed this to her. No matter how he truly felt.
“Would you be my witness?” he asked.
Martinelli raised his eyebrows, but he nodded. They each signed. Martinelli patted him on the back, and they walked silently to the door.
One step shy of it, Martinelli stopped. “Good heavens, I nearly forgot. Do you know who Miss Knight is?”
“Sure,” Peter said. “She lives in town. Miss Harper’s friend—you met her a few weeks ago.”
“No, I mean, do you know who she really is?”
Peter’s heart jolted. “What?”
“She reminded me of someone, you know, one of those ‘I’ve seen that face before’ moments, and it was bugging me, and then I heard something the other day and—”
“Martinelli! Who is she?”
“Marbella Draden. The vice president’s daughter.”
He stared at Martinelli, gripped by panic. “What?”
“Yup. A friend of mine is in the Secret Service. Apparently they’re under orders to not keep an eye on her beyond knowing her general whereabouts. Extremely unusual for a typic child of a VP.”
“Why in blazes is she masquerading as ‘Ella Knight’ and campaigning against wizards?”
Martinelli shrugged. “If my friend knows, he isn’t telling. You have any idea?”
“No,” Peter said, pressing a hand to his forehead.
He locked up behind Martinelli and strode to the brewing room, mind racing.
He knew there was something off about her, he knew it—he’d even thumbed through his copy of American Wizards to look for Knights, but there weren’t any, and that had seemed to be that.
Now he plucked it from the bookcase and paged to Draden, James.
The book was seven years old, published when Draden was a U.S.
senator. On one of the pages devoted to him was a large photo of the man, lips turned up in a slight smile that seemed to be mocking him.
On the other was a photo of his family: fashionable wife, handsome wizard son and a daughter with upswept dark hair, dark eyes and a serious expression—a daughter who, now that he was looking for it, was unquestionably Miss Knight.
Good God.
She was under a Vow. Did that safeguard them?
If Draden’s daughter was here in a long-game play, where the purpose was not to extract information but to influence them—get them to cause their own problems—how well would the Vow defend against that?
Would it work at all if the contract was signed with a false name?
He had to tell Beatrix right away. It was imperative that they figure out what to do. He glanced at his watch to see if it was almost eight and realized with a start that it was twenty-one minutes past the hour.