Chapter 18
The first bad news arrived at nine-twenty the next morning, delivered in an urgent whisper.
“We lost Rhode Island!” Joan, who’d just rushed up to where they’d gathered outside the office of a swing-vote senator, gasped in a lungful of air and added, “They voted no!”
Beatrix still could not look Joan in the eye, so she stared unhappily at her ear as Lydia asked, “Why?”
“They decided at the last minute that they didn’t want to be on the record supporting the effort because they rely so heavily on federal funding,” Joan murmured. “Which, I might add, didn’t seem to bother them on Friday.”
Beatrix glanced at Rosemarie, who had predicted just that sort of approach. At least they knew it now, when they still had a chance of doing something about it.
“Get word to League leaders in the other states voting today,” Rosemarie said to Joan. “Quick.”
The rest of them flew around the building, grabbing League activists by the elbow before they crossed into senators’ offices. Deploy funding plan. Go, go, go.
Then Joan returned, looking shell-shocked. “We just lost Texas.”
Beatrix bit back a curse. “Funding?”
“No! It turned on some obscure rule involving the state’s oil production.”
They hadn’t finished digesting that—and deciding what, if anything, they should do about it here in Maryland—when Dot barreled down the hallway. “Massachusetts!” she said, her face leaving no doubt what she meant by that. Massachusetts, the sure-thing state, had voted no.
“Six senators switched their votes, six,” Dot said, voice hard. “All spouting the same ridiculous line about national security, and how they couldn’t let their political ambitions hinder it.”
If Maryland went the wrong way, they would be a single state short of failure—and California could easily be it.
What could they do in the final hour they had left?
What lesson could they take from their losses today except that the wizards had a different playbook for each state, and who knew what they had in mind for this one?
Lydia sent everyone off to try to counter the national-security argument with as many senators and staffers as they could buttonhole while the clock ticked down. “The magiocracy might try it more than once,” she said.
But Beatrix, who had to spend the remaining time with Gray, rushed into the Senate chamber behind him with a chilly sense that the Wizards Smith, those nameless members of the dirty-tricks squad, had something else up their sleeves.
She took one of the seats along the wall, where the aides sat, and looked up into the packed visitor galleries, trying to calm her jangled nerves as the Senate clerk confirmed the quorum.
After a moment she found her sister and Rosemarie in a middle row, surrounded by other League members.
Peter, though, wasn’t there. She scanned the seats, looking for him but unable to distract herself from the question to which they would soon know the answer: What had the dirty-tricks team done?
Just like that, she was overwhelmed by the memory of Garrett and his dirty trick—the near-assassination of her sister, designed to look as if it had been intended to succeed.
She could feel the panic attack coming on.
Gray was speaking about his bill and she couldn’t concentrate on his words.
She remembered suddenly that Ella had insisted Lydia really was in danger, that the magiocracy would eventually turn to violence, and God, she couldn’t breathe—she couldn’t—
Then she caught sight of Peter. He was standing in the upper gallery at the other end of the room from the one in which Lydia and Rosemarie sat, leaning against a wall in a way that telegraphed a complete absence of panic.
Her terror ebbed enough for her to get a lungful of air.
With it came rational thought. Ella had made her pronouncement not long after killing Garrett and shortly before attempting to kill Peter; she clearly wasn’t in her right mind at the time. If they panicked, Washington won.
She breathed in and out, calming down, focusing just in time to see Senate President William Dixon take the floor.
He was scowling.
“Gentlemen,” he boomed, “I do believe we’re being played for fools.”
The buzz of whispers stopped. Everyone looked at him. And Beatrix knew this was it—what Dixon was about to say represented the magiocracy’s gambit.
“These ladies”—he gestured behind him toward the visitor gallery where most of the League sat—“say this legislation is about typic rights. But this is just their first move, gentlemen. Let me show you what they have in mind for all of us.”
He brandished a piece of paper like a weapon. “‘I, Peter Blackwell, relinquish any so-called coverture rights over Beatrix Harper …’”
She stared at him in utter shock as he read the rest of the short contract in a highly outraged tone. How did he—how did the magiocracy—
“‘Ridiculous laws to the contrary!’” he repeated.
“These ‘ridiculous laws,’ may I remind you, are our laws, which have served our state well, promoting proper behavior and well-regulated families! What other laws do Omnimancer Blackwell and his coterie of neo-suffragists find ridiculous? In what other ways would they warp our society? Listen to me, gentlemen, when I say that those of you imagining yourselves gaining the ability to run for national office are being used as the instrument to take away your hard-won rights as the head of your own family!”
She looked at Gray, whose face matched his name. Say something, for heaven’s sake!
But he didn’t. It fell to one of his co-sponsors, a senator from Baltimore, to ask, “And where did you get that document? From the wizards, I suppose, who could have just invented it from whole cloth?”
“No, Roger Rydell gave me a copy this morning and asked for a comment,” Dixon said.
“And where did he get this?” the Baltimore senator said.
“I don’t care where he got it from if it’s the real deal,” Dixon thundered.
She was just about to yell out “it’s not, it’s a fake,” damn the rules against aides speaking up, when Dixon said, “And I see the omnimancer up there, so let’s settle this right now, shall we? Ho, Omnimancer!”
There was a scuffling sound as everyone on the floor turned around, and she knew she’d missed her chance. If she tried to answer for Peter, that would only look worse. She stared at him with her heart in her throat.
“Did you sign this document?” Dixon demanded as Peter walked to the railing and looked over it.
Say no. No!
“Yes,” Peter called down, “and there’s nothing wrong with—”
“That will do,” Dixon said.
And it did. When the senators voted, the measure failed by a substantial margin.
As they stood in the hallway afterward, Beatrix still too much in shock to feel all that she knew she soon would, the news hit: California voted no, too.
It was over.
They had lost.
The drive home was quiet. But once they were in the bare second-floor brewing room, spells cast, it all came gushing out like caustic floodwater.
“What on earth were you thinking?” Rosemarie bellowed at her.
“I didn’t—” she said.
“Had you taken out a front-page ad declaring your intention to emasculate every last man, it wouldn’t have been much worse!”
“I didn’t—” she tried again, but now Lydia had taken over. “You know the wizards are watching us! This contract you made Peter sign, this completely unnecessary contract—Bee, how could you have been so foolish?”
“I didn’t ask him to do it!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “I didn’t, and I don’t know how the magiocracy found out about it—” She turned to him. “You didn’t show it to anyone, did you?”
He frowned. “Of course not. Only you.”
“The point is that these words should never have been put on paper,” Rosemarie barked at him.
Lydia threw up her arms. “Exactly!”
Beatrix, unwilling to go that far, turned to him and asked, “Why didn’t you tell them it was a fabrication? Why?”
He was staring at them, mouth open. “Let me see if I understand this. You”—he gestured at Rosemarie and Lydia—“think I shouldn’t have drawn up the contract at all, and you”—gesturing to her—“think I should have lied about it?”
“The wizards must have broken into our house to copy it in the first place,” she cried. “Don’t tell me I’m immoral for saying we shouldn’t have helped them discredit us!”
He pressed his fingers to his temples. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.
Look—you want women to have equal rights, you’ve spent years on the effort, and now you’re all suggesting that what I did to ensure my wife would not have her rights violated by me was a horrible mistake I should have disavowed. ”
He paused, as if to let that sink in. Then he snapped, “Are you pressing for women’s rights, or aren’t you?”
All her earlier misgivings about not rocking the boat, not saying anything that would upset misogynists, rushed back at her.
Rosemarie simply looked annoyed. “Typic rights will help everyone. For the last hundred years in the fight for women’s rights, we’ve lost ground. You saw what happened today—the mere hint of equal rights and we’re done. So kindly refrain from telling us where we went wrong.”
“What happened today is what you get when you make your true aim a secret instead of being upfront about it and convincing people on your own terms,” Peter said, voice cold.
Rosemarie scowled at him. “Don’t be na?ve.”
“I don’t see how that’s any more na?ve than assuming that if you allow typics to run for national office, more rights for women will magically follow!”
“I think we’d better go.” The steel in Lydia’s voice made Beatrix rush to comply. They all needed to cool down, that was clear.
But she couldn’t get the spells undone quickly enough to prevent Rosemarie from getting in one last dig.
“If you felt so strongly that we were going about this the wrong way, you would have said it before,” she snapped. “You’re just desperately trying to cast the blame off your own shoulders.”
Peter’s jaw hardened. Beatrix all but pushed Rosemarie and Lydia out the door, heartsick, and ferried them home without saying a word. When she returned, she found him sitting on the porch with his arms around his knees, looking beaten down.
“Peter,” she began, then trailed off. He’d meant well—so very well.
He sighed, gesturing behind her. “I think that’s Gray.”
It was. She watched with mounting anxiety as the senator’s pickup truck advanced up their driveway.
They’d been separated in the post-vote scrum of reporters and she couldn’t find him afterward, so she had no idea what he’d said to the inevitable questions about whether he would try again.
She didn’t want to have this conversation with him—not so soon, and certainly not without Lydia.
And then there was the matter of her job.
Peter pushed to his feet. “I’ll be in the greenhouse.”
“Stay—please?”
“I can’t imagine that would help,” he said, but he stood beside her, shoulder to hers, a physical support.
“Omnimancer, Mrs. Blackwell,” Gray said as he stepped down from his truck, face impassive.
“Senator,” she said. “Please come in.”
“No, this won’t take long—and if the wizards want to listen in,” he said acerbically, “they’re welcome to it. Because I’m done.”
Her heart sank. “Senator—”
“No, I’m not doing this again.” Gray shook his head for emphasis. “Not next year, not ever. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get run out of the Senate, but regardless—never again.”
“We wouldn’t be starting from scratch,” she pleaded. “The measures passed in other states don’t expire—we have a whole year to show people that what happened today was a misleading diversionary tactic—”
“No, no, no. I ran on family values, Mrs. Blackwell! I don’t know what I was thinking, getting involved with you radicals!
Every day, a new scandal. You’re not persuading me again, and furthermore”—she winced, knowing what was coming, powerless to stop it—“your services are no longer required. Effective immediately.”
She watched him go, unable to respond. Why on earth was she surprised? Why had she expected anything else from him?
She couldn’t bring herself to look at Peter, silent beside her. She’d convinced him they should marry immediately, assured him they could get by on her salary. She should have realized how easily it could all come crashing down.
Then she saw Sue, running toward them across Main Street. “Oh,” Beatrix gasped, and rushed to meet her, heart clenching, Peter at her heels. The baby must be ill. Or one of the other children. Or Daniel Clark was injured. Or—
“I just heard about the vote,” Sue said, taking her hands. “Oh, Beatrix! I’m so sorry—I want to do something, and I don’t know what that could be, other than give you a hug because you look like you desperately need one!”
Sue threw her arms around her and Beatrix no longer could hold back the hot, angry tears. Their work ruined, her job lost, all in the space of a few hours.
“There, there,” Sue murmured, and Beatrix was forcefully reminded of Ella. There, there, she’d once said, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, besides utterly failing and going to our graves knowing the wizards won, of course. I suppose there’s that.
At the time, it had made her laugh. Now she clutched Sue and wept.
“I’m just about to put dinner on the table,” Sue said after a moment. “Come over and eat with us—please do.”
“Oh,” she said, voice catching, thinking of the Clarks’ tight budget, “we wouldn’t—wouldn’t want to impose—”
“Fiddlesticks,” Sue said. “We’ve plenty of food tonight.”
As Beatrix opened her mouth to accept, Peter muttered, “Oh, God, now what?” She turned and saw her sister and Rosemarie walking quickly down Main Street toward her. Lydia had something in her hands. It looked like a letter.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, gripped with a dizzying certainty that she knew the answer. “What is it?”
“The hospital bill.” Lydia’s face was twisted with worry. “I opened it without noticing it was addressed to you, and—oh, Bee, it’s bad—”
Peter rushed to the mailbox and returned with an identical envelope in his hand. They looked at the bills together—a his-and-hers set, one figure (hers) equal to an entire year of Lydia’s college tuition and the other …
“We’ll never be able to repay this,” Peter said, an unnatural calm to his voice that was worse somehow than if he’d raged and screamed. “Never.”