Chapter 9 #2
“Well, I’d just convinced her boss to lay her off so I could hire her,” Peter said, raising his voice to overcome the lack of a microphone.
“No one would appreciate that. And she and her sister had already been having mysterious problems with League organizing that they suspected were caused by wizards, so the fact that I’m—” He stopped and looked at her.
“Did you believe I was in town to undermine you?”
“Yes,” she said. “At first.”
“It’s a wonder you ever fell in love with me,” he murmured, no humor to it at all.
It went on like that for a long while. Question after question after question, asked outside multiple senators’ offices, the whole thing overlaid with the sense that Peter was pretending nothing was wrong between them. Just as she was.
Finally, outside the last office, they were down to just three reporters who hadn’t gotten their question in yet.
“Jonathan Ashburn, Chicago Daily News. How does it feel to be called the twenty-first century Romeo and Juliet?”
Ironic, that was how it felt, with a side of heartbreaking. She cleared her throat and went with “unnerving.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well,” she said dryly, “they die, you know.”
Peter threw back his head and laughed. It sounded so true—so unforced—that she caught herself staring at him. She desperately wanted to talk to him, actually talk to him, without an audience.
He leaned toward the reporters, as if to impart a secret, and said, “Romeo and Juliet were also half our age, I might add.”
The second-to-last man, eye-catching in a yellow fedora, called out, “Then what famous couple of literature are you like?”
She resolutely did not meet Peter’s eye. She knew he would be thinking the same thing she was. Hades and Persephone—not an answer they could very well give.
“We’re just Beatrix and Peter,” she said. “And honestly, we’re not interesting enough for all this attention. It’s the typic-rights movement that ought to interest everyone, because it’s been fifty years since typics could help run our country. It isn’t this way everywhere—”
“Canada, for instance,” drawled the man in the fedora. “Are you pro-Canuck, Miss Harper?”
She blinked at him, thrown by this. “I’m pro-American,” she managed. “As I’m sure you know, many of our allies allow typics to run for national office, and disaster has not ensued.”
“What do you think, Omnimancer?” asked the last reporter. “Doesn’t all this hurt your feelings just a bit, this typics vs. wizards stuff?”
“There’s nothing magical about politics,” Peter said. “Let anyone run for Congress or president, and may the best person win.”
“Anyone?” The drawling, fedora-wearing reporter smirked. “Even a woman?”
“Of course,” Peter said.
Beatrix’s heart sank. Gray’s warning about misogynist colleagues whose votes he needed rang in her ears.
“I’m sure, though, that Americans will want typics with experience,” she said, “and those are the men so capably running our states.” She swallowed, hoping it was enough—that clear endorsement of sexism.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lydia and other members of the League step out of the last office. The petition delivery was done.
“Senator Gray and Lydia Harper will answer any further questions you might have,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Let’s get out while the getting’s good,” Peter murmured as the rest of the press conference attendees milled about. She led him around a corner, glad to escape.
“Wait!”
It was Hickok, rushing up the corridor after them.
“I need to ask you something,” the reporter said. “In private.”
What now? Beatrix suppressed a groan, looked into the nearest meeting room and found it was empty.
“Come in,” she told Hickok, wishing the day would end.
Hickok got right to the point. “Have you been bugged?”
“Uh—what?” Peter said, unable to think of anything better.
“I’m hearing from League sources that Washington tapped your phone and placed recording devices in your house,” she said to Beatrix. “Is that true, and if so, why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
Beatrix glanced at him. He sighed. “Because we don’t have any evidence that would definitively prove they did it. A wizard was clearly involved—everything’s under invisibility spells—but Gray asked me how he was supposed to know that I didn’t put them in when we discovered he’s bugged as well. So—”
“Gray, too?”
“Office and house,” Beatrix said.
“What about your place, Omnimancer?”
He nodded. “My phone is tapped.”
Hickok gave a low whistle. Then she scowled. “How the heck am I going to confirm this?”
“Have you heard of a wizard named Morse?” Beatrix asked. “M-O-R-S-E?”
Hickok shook her head. “Who is he?”
“The one who bugged us. My house, that is,” Beatrix said. “He—”
The door opened without so much as a warning knock. The reporter with the yellow fedora strode in, an unhappy-looking photographer trailing him.
“I have more questions,” he announced.
Peter frowned. “The press conference is over, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, you’ll want to hear this.” Yellow Fedora smirked. “Unless you’d rather just read about it in my column tomorrow.”
Peter didn’t have the slightest idea who he was or what paper he worked for, but he had the air of a man who thought everyone knew his name. Asking would probably not help matters.
“Two words,” the man added. “Theodore Garrett.”
For a deeply unpleasant second or two, Peter thought he couldn’t breathe—that Beatrix’s panic attacks had found their way to him. Then he realized he’d simply been too shocked to make the attempt.
The reporter cleared his throat. “Do you remember anything about his attack on you, Omnimancer?”
“We really can’t place the investigation at risk by discussing—”
“How well did you know him?”
“I don’t think we should be talking about anything related to—”
“Are you afraid for Miss Harper’s safety?”
“Sir, I’m telling you, we can’t—”
“Why did you turn down Garrett’s offer of marriage, Miss Harper?” the man asked, swiveling toward her. “When did your feelings make the leap from one man to the other? What is it, exactly, that makes you so irresistible to wizards?”
Beatrix, who never backed down from a challenge, who always put her chin up and faced it head on, looked down at her hands with a stricken expression and said nothing.
Peter stood up, strode past the man and opened the door. There was so much he wanted to say, but less was more at this point. “Good day to you both.”
The reporter left with his sharp smile intact. His photographer cast a look over his shoulder that seemed to convey both an apology and a deep dislike of the man. Peter closed the door and locked it this time.
Hickok crossed her arms. “Is there anything else you’d like to mention? Perhaps you’re planning to run for president with Miss Harper as your VP?”
“If it wasn’t an ongoing investigation, we would have told you about it,” he said, feeling the inadequacy of this response.
“Omnimancer—”
“Why on earth do you think that journalist would disclose his scoop when you’re sitting here with a press badge pinned to your blouse and a notebook in your hands that says ‘REPORTER’ on the cover in all caps?” Beatrix asked.
That, by contrast, was exactly the thing to say. Hickok’s thunderous expression shifted to a bark of laughter. “I’m a woman, that’s why. And he’s no journalist—he’s a gossip columnist.”
“Who is he?” Peter asked.
“You don’t read the society pages, do you?”
He and Beatrix both shook their heads.
“A hundred papers carry his dreck—including mine, more’s the pity.” Hickok shook her head. “That was Roger Rydell.”
Peter groaned. He might never have read the man’s column, but even he was aware of Rydell’s reputation.
“Isn’t he the one who writes about Hollywood scandals?” Beatrix said blankly. “Why is he covering us?”
Hickok plucked a copy of that day’s paper from her bag and turned to an inside page.
There was the column, Roger Rydell Dishes the Dirt.
“‘Sometimes the juiciest stories aren’t in La-La Land. D.C.’s all abuzz about a wizard and his anti-magic paramour,’” Hickok read.
“Etc. etc., and then he signs off, ‘More to come from your correspondent on this salacious story. Much more.’”
“Oh God.” Beatrix’s voice broke. “This circus is never going to end.”
Hickok gave her a pat on the back. Peter couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t argue the point.
“I suppose this is Washington’s response,” he said. “Leak the Garrett story to divert attention from Gray’s legislation.”
“Well,” Hickok said, drawing out the word, “I hear Rydell is in deep with the L.A. police. Feeds them information about people if it’s too hot for him to publish, gets tips in return. I wouldn’t be shocked if he knows somebody who knows somebody in the D.C. police.”
He was inclined to argue, but it could well be true.
Hickok stood. “My deadline’s breathing down my neck, so if there’s nothing else you’re burning to tell me …”
“Wait,” he said, “this is—on background or whatever you call it, but we don’t think Garrett was acting on any sort of orders. He made Beatrix an offer of marriage, she refused, he stalked us. You can report that, if you really want to, but it doesn’t seem like your sort of story.”
“Not even a bit,” Hickok said, tossing her notepad into her bag. “But that’s exactly Rydell’s cup of poison.”
The door clunked shut behind her. He turned to Beatrix, wanting to say so many things and unable to let any of them out. Ten days—God damn it, how could they wait that long?
“Oh,” she murmured, head down, eyes shut. “Oh, oh, oh.”
He sat in the chair next to her, thought of putting his arm around her, considered Miss Dane’s warning, mentally told Miss Dane to stick it, and followed through. Her breath hitched. She looked up, their faces so close he would only need to shift an inch forward to kiss her.
He shifted back instead, sighing. Miss Dane wasn’t wrong—their actions would have a bearing on Lydia’s ability to lead the League and see her strategy through. They had to assume for now that nothing they did would go unnoticed, even in a locked room with no windows.
“It’ll be all right,” he said.
She turned her head away. But she remained pressed against his side until he recollected a minute later that they didn’t have time for this—for this simple act of dealing with a stressful situation.
They had to find her sister and bring her up to speed.
They would surely need to tell Gray, too.
Most of what he really wanted to discuss with Beatrix, on the other hand, had to wait.
Ten days. Ten. Every hour he went without spellcasting was harder than the last.