Chapter 2 #2
“Because we’re about to run out of money. If she withdraws tomorrow, she’ll get most of the semester’s tuition back.” She closed her eyes, wishing she could block out the entire conversation as easily. “You’re my last hope.”
“Oh—oh, I see. I’m sorry, Miss Harper, I don’t know why I didn’t think about the financial implications for you when Omnimancer Blackwell had to be hospitalized.
I’ll … help you find something. One of the assembly’s secretaries is leaving the middle of next month to get married—I’m almost certain I can get you that job. ”
She sighed and made herself look at him again. “I appreciate it, Senator, I do. And I will wholeheartedly accept that assistance. But Lydia’s dropping out tomorrow. She just told me her plan, and I can’t talk her out of it. Either I have a job offer tonight, or she won’t graduate this spring.”
She knew this was neither here nor there to him. He didn’t care whether Lydia finished her education. It made no difference to his Twenty-fifth campaign, and if anything, having the chief instigator and supporter drop out of college would leave him better off with his sexist colleagues.
“Thank you all the same,” she said, turning to go.
“OK,” he said heavily. “You can start tomorrow.”
She swiveled, staring at him. “What?”
“But you will be a secretary, do you understand? Technically you’ll be filling the open position, but you will not be my aide, and as soon as we can get you into an actual secretarial slot, you won’t be reporting to me.”
“Yes,” she murmured, thrown by his change of heart—however grudging. “Absolutely. Thank you.”
“It’s a ridiculous waste of money and time for your sister to withdraw now,” he said, frowning at her as if she had been in favor of the idea. “How do you Harpers get me into these messes?”
With appeals to emotion rather than reason, apparently—not that she’d done it intentionally.
“When should I be at work tomorrow morning?” she asked.
“Eight.” He heaved a deep sigh. Then he gave a groan that made clear how little this plan suited him. “Meet me in the Senate cafeteria.”
“Yes—thank you again,” she said, and hurried off lest he change his mind.
She spent the first part of her walk home buoyed by overwhelming relief.
But the reason for Gray’s decision to help began to eat at her.
It seemed implausible that there wasn’t an unstated, obvious one hiding behind the explanation he’d given.
And the more she thought about the plan he’d laid out, the less overjoyed she felt about it.
An unneeded secretary, that was what she would be.
Meanwhile, he would have none of the day-to-day help he required for the uphill battle to repeal the Twenty-fifth.
She slipped into her house, unseen except by the invisible tele-vision camera the magiocracy had pointed at the door, and ducked into the study to look at train maps so she could plan her route to work. And that, too, was a letdown.
She would have to take the B&O almost to Baltimore, then catch the B&A.
And because the magiocracy had not gotten around to repairing the track from Annapolis to Washington, which apparently required money instead of magic, she would have to retrace her steps to get to Peter.
She’d be lucky if she saw him an hour a day.
If the magic she was trying to infuse him with every time she held his hand really would bring him out of his coma, if only she gave him enough of it, then she needed to spend more time with him, not less.
That assumed, of course, that the life energy the weapon stole was the same as magical potential, as Peter once hypothesized.
And that magical potential was the same as magic itself.
And that she could transfer raw magic from her body to his.
This was the muddy puddle’s worth of hope she was left with, full of ifs and assumptions. Still, that puddle was all she had.
Could she move Peter to the hospital in Annapolis? Would they agree to take a transfer patient with no apparent way to pay?
She sighed. One thing at a time. She wrote a brief explanation on a piece of paper and went to find her sister, who proved to be sitting on their parents’ bed, looking younger than her nearly twenty-one years with her arms around her legs and her auburn hair hanging unbraided down her back.
Lydia read the note, her face expressing the surprise and joy she could not make audible with the magiocracy listening in.
Oh, Bee! she wrote. This is incredible!
Beatrix nodded, glad she had not included what it would cost her. She didn’t want Lydia to decide she should drop out of college after all.
That’s not to suggest I’m surprised Senator Gray hired you, her sister added. You’ve been so essential to our success.
Beatrix swallowed, blinking back tears. It was still a bit unexpected to hear—or read—such words from her sister, after years of being taken seemingly for granted. They’d used up (and then burned) many pieces of paper in the last few weeks, trying to put their relationship on a better footing.
This was not the easy friendship she’d had with Ella, before the literal explosion. But she and her sister understood each other better now, were both trying harder, and that was a blessing she did not discount.
But what about Mrs. Thomas? Lydia asked, referring to Gray’s secretary. Surely she hasn’t left?
Beatrix took her pen back and wrote a fuller explanation of what had happened. She finished by adding: He’s doing this for you. He wants you to graduate.
She looked closely at Lydia as her sister read these words. Lydia looked surprised, with no blushing cheeks or other sign of romantic attachment.
Still, Beatrix knew better than to assume. Do you have feelings for him? she asked.
Lydia shook her head. We’ve never once talked about anything other than the business at hand. You don’t think he has feelings for me, do you?
Beatrix raised her eyebrows. Unclear, but you’re beautiful and he’s probably not immune. Be careful, she added after a moment’s thought. Some men don’t take no for an answer, and he’s just put you in his debt.
Lydia wrapped an arm around her. With the other, she wrote: He’s not Garrett.
Beatrix closed her eyes. Wizard Theo Garrett, before his death at Ella’s hands, kept coming back after she—Beatrix—turned down his offer of marriage in terms that should have left no doubt about her feelings.
Then he discovered her illegally casting spells.
She would marry him and testify against Peter, he declared, with prison as the unstated alternative.
Later, after the police inaccurately concluded that Garrett was to blame for Peter’s near-death, they told her he’d forged her signature to obtain a marriage license and might have been planning to drug her to get her to the altar.
The man he had once seemed to be was not the man he was. Who knew what Gray might do?
Lydia nudged her, and she realized her sister had been writing while she was worrying. You won’t go to work you-know-how—you’ll take the train, right?
Right, Beatrix wrote.
Teleportation, as they’d previously discussed, was out of the question. Too many opportunities to be discovered. There would be no second escape from a prison sentence for felony magic use.
That was a perfectly good reason, but Beatrix had another that she couldn’t bring herself to explain.
She never again wanted to work magic that didn’t rely on leaves for fuel.
The women-only casting that she and Ella had codenamed “knitting,” no external fuel required, was simply too dangerous.
Her skin itched as she thought about it.
She felt a scream building in her throat.
She wrote a message about getting ready for bed and escaped the room.
When she lay down later, alarm set an hour and a half earlier than normal, she tried to calm herself. She needed a restful sleep.
But nightmare versions of Ella and Peter invaded her dreams.
“It’s all your fault,” this Peter croaked, blood dripping from his mouth.
“You showed me how to knit,” Ella cried, eyes wild, hair matted, “and look what it’s done to me!”
Peter groaned. “I warned you. I told you we had no idea where the fuel was coming from.”
“I’m the fuel, it’s me, me,” Ella screeched, leaping at her.
Beatrix ran, the naked limbs of trees catching at her as she stumbled through the forest. Finally, she sank to the ground, shivering.
Helpless as she was to keep variations on this theme from replaying night after night, she knew even now that this was a dream—the real nightmare was that the accusations from these figments of her imagination were probably true.
Peter and Ella reappeared, moving fast. As she staggered away, she heard him calling to her, voice thin and oddly distant.
“Beatrix! Beatrix!”
Something about it made her stop and turn. The next instant, the Peter-that-was-not-Peter bowled into her, his eyes the fathomless sockets of a skeleton as his skin slid off his face.
She jerked up in bed, mercifully awake. The alarm was ringing.
“Bee?” her sister said, hoarse with sleep.
“Yes?” She could hear the tremble in her voice.
“You were screaming.”
“Bad dream,” she murmured, feeling her way out of the room in the dark.
By running full tilt, she managed to get to the Senate cafeteria with two minutes to spare. Gray was already there, sitting alone at a table with a cup of coffee. He sighed when he saw her. Perhaps he’d been hoping she wouldn’t show up.
After he looked around, clearly checking that no one was in earshot, he murmured, “You recall my office is bugged?”
She nodded. “I won’t talk to you about anything important there.”
“You’re not to go there at all.”
She blinked at him. “Senator—”
“You’ll only be on my staff for a few weeks. It’ll be easier for everyone if no one notices.”
“I’ll be on the payroll. Someone will notice.”
“Nevertheless,” he said grimly, “don’t come into my office, avoid talking to me in public and do not identify yourself as my secretary.”
She took a deep breath and smiled. “How would you suggest I get work done on your behalf?”
That was one detail to which he apparently had not given any thought. After a moment, he consulted some paperwork and made notations. “Here—this week, attend the hearings I circled and take notes.”
“All right. And get them to you … how?”
He hesitated. “I’ll pick them up from your house after work.”
“My house is also bugged, remember. And there’s a tele-vision camera aimed at the front door.”
He scowled. “Fine, fine! I’ll meet you here at 5. Give them to me then.”
She nodded and stood to go. “The first hearing isn’t for two hours. Should I go to HR first?”
“Wait until 8:30. I need to explain matters to the payroll chief.” He downed his coffee. “The ID they’ll give you—don’t display it. Just act as if you’re here as a regular citizen.”
Good God. “Yes, Senator,” she said, and left.
Seven hours later, ID squirreled away in her bag like contraband, she trudged back to the cafeteria with pages of notes she doubted Gray would even glance at. She sat at an empty table and tried to think of something useful to do with her remaining time on the clock.
She started by making a list of senators sitting on the committee that would have to give his Twenty-fifth legislation a thumbs up before the full Senate could vote on it.
She added brief intel about their political backgrounds and what they’d said to the League on the matter—most claimed to be on the fence.
Then she outlined a recommendation for a joint press conference with the Sugarworkers, who’d told Lydia they would come to her June march on Washington in large numbers.
Gray’s arrival nine minutes late felt like an eternity of waiting, as anxious as she was to go so she could get to Peter. She would miss the train she’d hoped to take, shrinking her hour at the hospital to forty-five minutes.
“Here are the notes,” she said quickly, “and here—”
“Shhh,” he admonished her under his breath. “Don’t talk. Just go.”
In an equally quiet voice, she said, “I simply wanted to point out there’s also some research here for—”
“I thought I made clear that you are not an aide.”
She mastered the urge to snap. She could not do without this paycheck.
“Oh, perfectly clear,” she murmured. “I’m just the sort of secretary who wants her employer to succeed, despite all the forces lined up against him.”
Including his own idiocy, she did not add. She stalked out.