Chapter 6
He finally convinced her to go home. She argued, but he was right that she couldn’t take another night of half-sleep on that armchair. “I’ll be fine, truly,” he’d said, so she went—unable to fully quash the anxiety that something might happen to him.
She woke the next morning in a panic. No dreamside. She dialed the hospital with shaking, clumsy fingers, was transferred to his room and listened with mounting dread as the phone rang three times, four, five.
Then he picked up. “Hello?”
“Oh,” she said, visions of disaster evaporating. “Good morning! Are you … all right?”
“Yes.” The tiniest of pauses. “I made the mistake of taking a long nap in the afternoon, though, so I didn’t sleep well last night.”
That explained why they’d never intersected. They made arrangements for her to come down after lunch and she hung up, giddy with relief.
When she arrived at the hospital, she found Peter walking in his room with a cane, his back to her. He turned at the sound of her footsteps and gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Is something wrong?” she said, closing the distance between them.
He shook his head, lips twisting. “I’m alive, I’m on my feet, you love me—what could possibly be wrong?” Leaning in, he whispered, “Where is Garrett?”
No wonder he’d looked worried. That worried her, too. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Not in Ellicott Mills?”
With no way to know if they were being recorded, it was little wonder he didn’t say anything more specific. She couldn’t say what she otherwise would, either—his body is gone, and I think Ella took it—so she opted for “I don’t think so” instead.
They desperately needed to have a proper conversation, the sort possible only with magic protecting them from eavesdroppers.
“Here,” she said, handing him leaves she’d picked up at his house.
“Thank goodness,” he muttered, stuffing them into the pockets of his gray hospital robe. She wondered if some of his inability to sleep the night before had been the uneasiness of lying unprotected and alone in his room. Why was the WA so intent on getting him even after he’d come out of the coma?
A knock broke the silence. She looked around to find the wizard doctor in the doorway, his silver dreadlocks a shimmering shade off from his medical whites.
“Well, this is certainly a major improvement,” he said, smiling at them.
She gave him a cautious smile back. She hoped her instincts about him were right. “Peter, this is Wizard Hillier, who looked you over while you were in the coma.”
Hillier gestured out the door. “Feeling up to a short walk?”
The doctor chatted genially about Peter’s incredible recovery as they rode an elevator two floors up. He led them along a busy hallway and opened a door. “After you.”
The room inside had a view of the city that made her heart constrict. There, the Capitol. And just beyond, though she couldn’t see it, was the dingy park where Peter nearly died.
“Your office?” Peter asked.
Hillier gave a soft chuckle. “No, like all itinerants, I don’t get an office. But this one is between occupants, and I like the sunshine. Have a seat, Omnimancer, Miss Harper.”
They did, Peter slipping his hand into hers. He was alive and he loved her. She put the park out of her mind.
“Now, then,” Hillier said, producing a miniature Brown’s Lexicon from an inner pocket and handing it to Peter, “I’m going to cast a diagnostic spell on you. You can look it up first if you’d like, under ‘H’—”
“Hycgan gesyntu?”
“Yes.” Hillier looked amused. “I suppose you get a lot of call for that in your line of work as well.”
Peter nodded. “I would have cast it on myself already but didn’t have leaves at hand until just before you arrived.”
“That’s fortunate, actually,” Hillier said, “because you shouldn’t be casting spells for at least the next week.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“Why?” Peter asked, the slightest edge of a challenge there.
“You must give your body a chance to recuperate before taxing it in that way.” Hillier’s smile was gone. He looked serious. “I’ve had patients end up back in the hospital, seriously impairing their recovery, because they jumped the gun.”
She could see how that might be. She could also see how he might be making it up so Peter would have no way to defend himself.
Hillier leaned toward Beatrix, lips quirked.
“We wizards can be a wee bit insecure about our casting abilities, and inclined to make sure everything is all right. But,” he added to Peter, “there’s no need to worry.
I’ve never had and know of no cases involving wizard patients who found themselves unable to cast after a serious illness or accident.
Your body will thank you for holding off. ”
She was trying to think of a place where they could squirrel Peter away for a whole week to keep him safe when Hillier cast the diagnostic spell—and Peter took on a distinctly yellow tint.
Hillier frowned. “Make that two weeks before you spellcast again.”
She stared at him. Two weeks!
“Rest up,” the doctor said. “I mean it.”
Peter sighed. “I really don’t think—”
“Look,” Hillier said quietly, “I understand this is not ideal. Of course you don’t want to forgo magic even temporarily after being attacked by a wizard.”
Beatrix glanced at Peter to see if he would show any sign of surprise, but he did not, which suggested he had overheard at least some of the discussions she’d had with police about Garrett.
“Also,” Hillier added, even more softly, “important people have told me I am to inform you that you absolutely require twenty-four-hour care, and therefore ensure that you be transferred to the WA. Regardless of how you feel about it.”
She tightened her grip on Peter’s hand.
“So, while I don’t pretend to understand what is going on, it seems to me that you would be well advised to be on your guard,” Hillier said.
“Thank you,” Peter murmured. “Did the important people say why they want me at the WA?”
“They did not.”
“Apologies for a blunt question,” she said, “but why tell us this instead of doing what the magiocracy demanded?”
Hillier crossed his arms. “I didn’t go through medical school to have my advice dictated to me from on high, and I’m not going to assist in anything dishonest or unjust. I think you’ll find within the hour that Dr. Alvarez has signed your release papers.”
He was right, bless him. Fifty minutes later, the two of them walked out of the hospital into snow flurries, Peter gripping her arm with one hand and a cane with the other.
“Free!” she cried. “Oh, frabjous day!”
He nodded, rearranging himself so he could slip his hand into hers. “I owe you a great deal, Beatrix.”
She winced. At some point, she would have to tell him why she thought Ella did what she did. But she couldn’t now, and that was one conversation she was willing to put off.
“I love you,” she said instead. “Self-interest played a rather large role.”
He raised her hand to his lips.
On the train ride home, they considered in hushed undertones where he ought to stay.
His house, as long as he couldn’t protect himself from wizards, seemed a dangerous option.
Her house—with three unmarried women—was a nonstarter.
A boarding-house room outside Ellicott Mills, just temporarily?
But that would be no guarantee of safety, either.
“I wish we knew why the WA is so eager to have you,” she murmured.
“I wish they’d leave me alone and everything would come up daisies, as long as we’re wishing,” he muttered, “but yes, that would do for a start.”
“It’s about the League, isn’t it,” she said, still keeping her voice down. None of the people seated near them were wizards or appeared to be paying any attention to them, but it was impossible not to be paranoid.
He gave an eloquent shrug in answer to her not-quite question, but he didn’t argue the point. She well remembered the FBI agent telling him—before Ella’s attack, before the coma, before she knew for a fact that she really loved him—that the agency was worried about “radicals” like League activists.
Given how narrowly D.C. avoided disaster at Ella’s hands, the agent’s warning seemed more foresighted than she liked to admit.
But it wasn’t the League that had radicalized Ella.
What motivated her, other than whatever malign role knitting played, was the shocking mistreatment by her father, current vice president of the United States, after he learned her brother repeatedly raped her, got her pregnant and gave her an abortifacient that almost killed her.
Where was she? And what, what would she do next?
“Ellicott Mills!” the train conductor bellowed. A minute later, they were standing on Main Street, looking up the hill to Peter’s house.
“Omnimancer! Good heavens!” Pastor Hattington came bustling toward them, his shock of white hair as charmingly mussed as always.
“I had no idea—we thought you were still in a coma—appalling, of course, what happened to you—but it appears that our prayers have been answered! It’s so wonderful to have you back. ”
Peter’s smile might have been a mix of amusement (Pastor Hattington could never go more than a few minutes without declaring himself appalled about something) and appreciation for the earnest welcome. But she could no longer catch the echo of his emotions, so it was simply a guess.
“Thank you,” he said, shaking the pastor’s hand. “I woke up yesterday and came home as soon as I could.”
Within a minute, they had half a dozen people clustered beside them—exclaiming, laughing and, in the case of one little boy, dancing in circles around them.
She finally had to intervene. “Omnimancer Blackwell really must rest, as you can imagine, so I’d better get him back to his house.”
As they walked up Main Street, this kept repeating itself—cries of “Omnimancer!” and wide smiles and hand shaking. Mayor Croft actually teared up and pulled him in for a hug.