Chapter 13 #3
She darted to Peter’s desk and came back with a letter. “Read this.”
Peter knew what it was—not specifically, but the group it belonged to—even before Tanner said out loud, “‘Blackwell: How dare you do this to your own kind. You’re a’”—Tanner hesitated over the next word, then went with, “‘f’ing disgrace. I know where you live. Better watch your back.’ Signed, ‘A real wizard.’”
He hadn’t realized Beatrix knew about that. He hadn’t wanted to worry her, so he’d told Lydia instead. Evidently her sister thought she shouldn’t be kept in the dark.
The detective looked up from the plain white paper and its ugly contents. “You think—Garrett?”
Peter shook his head. “I’ve received a lot of letters like this recently, and they don’t seem to be written by the same person.
Different handwriting, different postmarks.
No references to Beatrix beyond a generalized assumption that I let my heart get the better of my head—put more crudely than that. ”
“I urge you to take this seriously, Detective,” Beatrix said. “Some people might dash off a threatening letter with no intention of following through, but all it takes is one.”
Tanner examined the letter for another moment. “I’d like to bring copies back to the office. Could you abracadabra up a set for me, Omnimancer?”
Panic gripped him. “I …”
“We need to go through the pile to make sure we haven’t missed any,” Miss Dane said, smooth as you please. Saving him. “They can bring the copies with them this afternoon.”
“Yes, Peter also received a lot of very nice letters thanking him for his efforts, so it’s … all a bit of a muddle,” Beatrix said.
Tanner nodded. “All right, thank you.” He held out his hand to Peter, who shook it, feeling like a fraud. A fake wizard. A fake victim—at least as it related to Garrett.
He saw the detective out, wishing to God that Miss Draden hadn’t killed Garrett, then recollecting that if she hadn’t, Beatrix would be sitting in prison. No, if he were going to get a wish, he would have to go farther back in time than that.
But why hadn’t Miss Draden tipped the police off? Did she intend to frame him later?
Miss Dane sighed. “Well, then—I suppose you won’t be able to come with us to the town-hall gathering, Omnimancer.”
That was at one o’clock in Baltimore. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you in the lurch.”
“It was the right decision,” Miss Dane said, giving him a nod he remembered from grade school—her rare flash of satisfaction over a student who’d performed to her exacting standards. “We’ll manage.”
But then she added, “We’ll all have to leave the house, of course. If you two need to talk, finish up quickly.”
Both he and Beatrix said “no” at exactly the same time. He glanced at her and they both smiled.
“We need time to discuss things in private,” he said. “We’ll stay here until we need to leave for Washington.”
“Omnimancer,” Miss Dane said, and he remembered that tone from grade school, too. Miss Disdain, they’d all called her behind her back. “May I remind you that appearances matter.”
Honestly—did Miss Dane care about anything but appearances?
He glanced at Lydia to see how she felt about it. She was conspicuously minding her own business.
“We need this time,” he said, barely restraining a snappish response. “It will be patently obvious to anyone with sense, once the press conference occurs, that we weren’t spending the few hours beforehand in any hanky panky.”
Rosemarie snorted. “Your mistake is counting on people having sense. However,” she added, holding up a hand, forestalling him, “I’ll say no more. A grown woman should be able to talk to her fiancé in private on occasion, never mind what some think.”
Beatrix leaned in and whispered in her ear. Miss Dane gave a tentative smile. “Well now,” she murmured. “I love you, too, dear girl.”
I love you to the moon and back, darling boy. His eyes prickled. Miss Dane was far less demonstrative than his nan, but the bonds between her and Beatrix seemed powerful all the same. He simply hadn’t noticed.
Miss Dane cleared her throat. “Good-bye, Omnimancer.”
“Peter.” He let it spill out before he could second-guess himself. “Please—I would like it if we could call each other by our first names.”
She looked surprised but inclined her head. “Very well, then. Peter.”
Off they went, Rosemarie—how odd to think of her in that familiar way—and Lydia. He locked the door and took Beatrix’s hand. “All these months I’ve seen the strategizing and disapproval but completely missed the real emotion behind it. I misjudged her.”
“Oh!” She laughed. “So did I—for years. It wasn’t until ... until your coma. That was when I realized she was trying in her own prickly way to mother me, and I needed to listen harder to what she meant.”
This image of Rosemarie Dane as a well-meaning porcupine made him grin. Then he recollected what they were supposed to be doing. Sighing, he turned to the receiving room.
It took only a moment to gather up the hate mail—he’d kept it separate, never mind what Beatrix helpfully told Tanner—and he was halfway up the stairs when it hit him.
Miss Draden couldn’t frame him—not anymore, not without fatally damaging Lydia’s movement.
Before, his help had been a secret. Now it was extremely public.
That was probably the only reason he wasn’t behind bars.
Under the cover of darkness in the spare room, he pretended to cast spells while Beatrix actually did so.
Once the room was safe and light, he watched her copy the threatening letters with lithe fingers, the magic making his gut twist. He lay down on the floor, eyes on the ceiling like the boy he once was, casting his gaze away from what he couldn’t have.
Not just magic. For now, at least, also Beatrix.
Eventually she murmured “awritan” for the last time. The sound of papers being stacked together followed, and then the rustle of her skirt as she lay down next to him.
“Did you catch all my conversations with Detective Tanner when you were comatose?” she asked. “Particularly the one where he first revealed that Garrett was their suspect?”
“No—by the time I could hear, you were clearly discussing something you already knew about. Better tell me everything, just in case.”
She tucked her head on his shoulder and unspooled the details, three of which he had in fact missed—the marriage license Garrett had obtained by forging her signature, the unsettling photographs taken while invisibly stalking her and the insistence to a colleague that he had a “plan” to make Beatrix his.
“I don’t know what that would have been,” she said, voice quiet, “but I don’t think anything good would have come from it.”
“God, no.” He shuddered. Perhaps Miss Draden hadn’t been quite so mad—in that one case. It was even the honest truth that Garrett had nearly killed him, just not on the day in question and not quite intentionally.
He took a deep, shaky breath. The mere memory of being affixed to his basement wall where Garrett had left him, unable to move as his own malformed spell slowly suffocated him, always stole the air from his chest. But even before Garrett had gone and he’d realized the true danger he was in, he’d thought he might die.
The look in Garrett’s eyes—the rage in his voice—
Still. Unstable and dangerous though Garrett seemed to have been, the fact remained that Miss Draden had killed him, and he and Beatrix were complicit because they knew and said nothing.
Now they would have to speak publicly about this mess of a case.
“Peter,” she said, “about the press conference …”
“We don’t need to say much.”
She let out a breath. “But what?”
They settled on a few things, pending police approval. Then the subject was covered, and he no longer had an excuse to delay telling her that he could not marry her on Monday—that he had no idea when he would be in a position to marry her.
The silence stretched out. He glared at the ceiling and tried to make himself say the words.
“Forgive an utterly stupid question,” she said, “but how are you feeling?”
He sighed. “Everything it is humanly possible to feel, that’s how I’m feeling. All at once.”
She said nothing for a moment, then laid a hand over his heart. “Peter, tell me truly, now that you’ve had more time to think about it: Has this changed how you feel about me?”
He shifted to look her in the eye. “No—no.” He traced her jaw wistfully. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
A tear sparkled in the corner of her eye. “O no,” she murmured, “it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”
Three months ago he’d said that to her, lying on another floor in this house, plucked by her shaking hands from death by suffocation. So much had changed since that night, but this much was the same.
“I know you inside and out,” he said, “and I will never stop loving you.”
“Oh,” she said, more catch in her throat than word, and for a moment they simply looked at each other. “I promise you,” she added, “that I will never stop loving you, either. But I will stop asking for continual reassurance about your feelings.”
He laughed. Then he remembered what he was supposed to be telling her. How could he bring it up now?
“There’s a reason I wanted that clarity,” she said, taking his hand. “You see, I have the sinking feeling that you no longer plan to marry me the day after tomorrow.”
His astonishment gave him away.
“Ah,” she said, her own face far less revealing. Was she upset? Angry? Resigned?
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to—I can’t.”
The sight of her lips twitching stopped him. The one reaction he hadn’t prepared for was amusement. “I see,” she said. “You are no longer of sound mind, perhaps?”
“Beatrix—”
“Or you’ve just now recalled that you’re already married. It’s the sort of thing one might forget.”
She was teasing him, trying to make him laugh again—and she succeeded, just a little. But it was a temporary diversion.