Chapter 2
The train rumbled northward as she looked through the help-wanted pages, distracting herself from thoughts of Peter by brooding about how desperately she needed a job.
Before, she and her sister had managed on the patchwork but livable income of her paycheck plus the rent from Rosemarie, Miss Massey and Ella (not Marbella, she refused to call her Marbella).
Now, Rosemarie’s rent was all they had. Miss Massey, who’d roomed with them so long and so quietly, had reluctantly moved out a week earlier to care for the children of a newly widowed cousin in Hagerstown.
And Ella—Ella was the reason for Peter’s coma and Beatrix’s once-ordered life lying in tatters around her.
With Lydia’s final tuition bill paid, they could make do with less, but not this precipitous a drop. She’d done the math. In eight days, they would spend their last dollar.
She needed to find a job in Baltimore, Washington or Annapolis. Despite the expense of the train rides, those were her only options, with her car broken and no one in Ellicott Mills hiring.
She circled an ad for a receptionist, realized she’d applied for it already and crossed it out. She worked her way through the “Employment for Ladies” page—really three-quarters of a page—without finding a single job she hadn’t already tried to get.
She scowled at it. Then, for fairness’ sake, she flipped through the “Employment for Gentlemen” pages (there were three of those) and scowled at them, too. They were full of far more interesting positions—doctor, research scientist, translator, legislative aide …
Her breath caught. Wanted: Legislative aide for Maryland Senator Mitchell Gray of Ellicott Mills. Start immediately.
Whoever took that job would help Gray shepherd the bill to repeal the Twenty-fifth Amendment—to revoke the requirement that only magic-users could hold national office. He’d better find someone good.
With a sigh, she read the rest of the newspaper front to back, looking for something she didn’t find, had not expected she would find, but obsessively looked for every day—some sign of Ella.
The county school board had said it was in the dark about where their former teacher had gone mid-semester.
The state Department of Education had said it had no record of any other school hiring her.
The county police took note of the fact that Ella had packed up her things before disappearing and were not inclined to treat it as a missing-persons case.
Beyond poring over the paper, Beatrix had run out of ideas.
Where was she? Was she still in the grip of madness, plotting murder and destruction?
“Ellicott Mills!” the conductor bellowed. Beatrix stuffed the paper into her bag and hustled off the train.
Normally she took the shortcut home, through the forest, but that required passing by Peter’s dark, empty house. She couldn’t stomach it. She walked the long way around instead, arriving at her own house with aching legs.
Lydia met her at the front door with a question in her eyes. Beatrix shook her head. They each knew what they meant. There was only one question to ask when she arrived home from visiting Peter, and—day after day—only one answer to give.
“I’m sorry,” her sister murmured.
Dinner was somber. Afterward, Lydia hooked her arm through Beatrix’s and said, “Let’s go for a walk. I could use some fresh air.”
It was dark and cold outside, but the house was full of the magiocracy’s listening devices. Out they went.
Lydia said nothing until they were halfway down the path through their fallow backyard garden. Then she said, “I’m going to withdraw.”
“From what?”
“College.”
Beatrix stopped dead, but before she could say a word, her sister added, “We’ll get three-quarters of the money back, and we need it—it’s the only solution. I’ll withdraw, and we’ll both look for work.”
“Lydia, it’s your last semester! We’ve worked so hard for this, and to stop now—”
“It’s just a delay. I will finish.” Lydia sounded as determined as ever. “But this time I’ll earn the money to pay for it.”
“How will you work and run the League? And push for Gray’s legislation? And finish planning the march? You can’t do all this at once!”
The national Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, deftly transformed by Lydia and Rosemarie into the force pushing for an end to wizards’ death grip on American politics, was holding a march in Washington in June.
Together, the march and the typic-rights legislation consumed Lydia.
Beatrix couldn’t imagine how that organizing could continue just on nights and weekends.
Her sister gave a wan smile. “You’ve had too much to do for years. It’s time for me to take on my fair share. You know it is.”
“You have done your fair share,” Beatrix said, taking her sister’s hand. “You have. I’m sorry I ever made you feel as if you haven’t. But the money we won’t get back if you withdraw—that’s six months of savings. You have to give me more time to find a job, please.”
Lydia shook her head. “The deadline is tomorrow. I can’t wait.”
With no other arguments to marshal, Beatrix said, “Rosemarie won’t stand for it.”
“She says it’s my decision.”
“Lydia—”
“Bee, this is the only option we’ve got. I won’t let us starve.”
Beatrix tried to catch her breath, an echo of the panic attacks she thought she’d conquered. She was powerless to help Peter, to find work, to stop any of this from happening—
No.
“I’ll be back,” she said, and dashed for the road, her sister calling after her, “Bee? Bee!”
The trip took about fifteen minutes. Striding in the now total darkness, she rehearsed what she would say and avoided the occasional car. But when she arrived at Senator Gray’s house, she found it as dark and empty as Peter’s.
She sank onto the porch, unable to face the walk back.
Of course he wasn’t there. The legislature was in session—what had she expected?
She was just considering whether there was any gain in waiting when a pickup truck came around the bend in the road and, to her joy and anxiety, pulled into the driveway.
Straightening her spine, she walked to meet Gray.
“Miss Harper?” He slammed his door and frowned, which seemed a bad omen, but quickly added, “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed a laugh that would surely sound insane. What wasn’t wrong? “I saw your ad for a legislative aide and wondered—what happened to Mr. Vance?”
Gray’s frown deepened into a full-out scowl. “He skipped out on me without so much as a two-weeks’ notice, that’s what happened to him.”
“Why?”
“To ‘spend more time’ with his family.” Gray gave an expressive snort. “The man isn’t even married!”
“The wizards got to him?”
“Obviously.”
She tamped down the reflexive fear this prompted, the apprehension that her sister really could be at risk. She knew where that fear took her. She would not be so easily led down that road again. Voice steady, she asked: “Did they threaten him, do you think?”
He shook his head. “No, he seemed happy—they probably paid him off. Now I have to find a replacement on top of everything else! With seven-and-a-half weeks left in the blasted session!”
Beatrix breathed in and slowly exhaled. “Hire me.”
Gray rolled his eyes. Not a promising beginning. “I assure you, I will find an aide and keep pushing on the legislation. Don’t think you have to babysit me, Miss Harper.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I want you to hire me because I think I’d do an excellent job.”
This time, he laughed. Worse and worse. “Miss Harper, there has never been a lady legislative aide, and I doubt there ever will be. This is a job for a man.”
There was a great deal she wanted to say to that. With effort, she merely said, “Oh?”
Gray shifted from one foot to the other. “Well—yes.”
“Why, exactly?”
“It—it just is.”
“I certainly hope you’re using more persuasive arguments when you’re trying to convince your colleagues to vote for your bill,” she said.
“There’s literally never been a lady—”
“There’s never been a typic elected to Congress in our lifetime, either. Sometimes change is good.”
She smiled. He crossed his arms.
“You have no political experience,” he said.
“Oh, come now, Senator!”
“Fine, you have no legislative experience. You’ve never organized a press conference or researched policy or rounded up support for a measure.”
“Do you recall the excellent coverage in the Star about how the magiocracy tried to ruin Lydia’s conference?
I convinced Helen Hickok to write about it.
And the conference itself—the only reason we had a place to hold the all-important vote is because I found it at the last minute.
I did most of the research for Lydia about the best way to undo the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
And I’ve gone with her to meetings with legislators to persuade them that your bill is in their interest.”
She let that sink in, then added, “I’m basically doing this job already. Don’t you think it’s time to put me on staff?”
Gray said nothing for a moment. Was he changing his mind? She looked at him, heart thudding in her ears.
“I can’t, Miss Harper,” he murmured. “I’m having a hard enough time convincing some of these senators that getting rid of the Twenty-fifth isn’t a ruse to put ladies in charge of everything. ‘Better wizards than females,’ etc. etc. Think how it would look if I hired one.”
“For one of the least powerful jobs in the General Assembly!”
He gave an expressive sigh. “It’s not about reason. It’s about how it makes people feel.”
She couldn’t very well argue against that. Wasn’t that the way politics always worked? Wasn’t that why women were treated the way they were, generation after generation, for no logical reason at all?
“I desperately need this job,” she said, hating that she was doing this—reduced to begging. “Please. If you don’t hire me, Lydia will drop out of Hazelhurst.”
He stared at her. “What? Why would she do that?”