Chapter 19 #2
“No.” He looked down at his hands—the hands that no longer could work magic. “But it’s true all the same.” In a near-whisper, he added, “I don’t know what to do. Everything’s falling apart, and there’s not a single thing I can do about it.”
She sat at his feet, leaning against him, feeling exactly the same way.
He began to laugh—a heartrending sound. “As little as I had when I grew up here—as little as you’ve had—we’ve never been in a financial mess as bad as we are now.”
She couldn’t even say thank God you’re alive, at least. What if some other wizard came after him? What then?
She stood and kissed him with desperate intensity. He pulled her onto the bed, undressing her, touching her, and for a short while there was no room for thoughts beyond yes and more.
Then it was over, this coupling without really coupling.
They lay under the covers, Beatrix trembling as her mind danced from one terrible fact to the next.
She’d thought they would be able to manage the bills, but they couldn’t.
She’d thought they would be safe from physical attacks, but they weren’t.
She’d thought she had a job, she’d thought they were making progress on typic (and maybe even women’s) rights—so much of what she’d believed had just spectacularly collapsed.
The phone rang, and Peter’s first instinct was to not answer it. But Beatrix was still asleep, so he untangled himself from the kitchen table and grabbed it with a sigh.
“Hello?”
“Wizard Blackwell?” Brisk, female.
“Yes?”
“Please hold for the general.”
The line click-clicked as she transferred it, and he nearly slammed the phone into its cradle. Please hold for the general—a phrase he’d heard dozens of times in his previous life. It was the Pentagram.
“Blackwell,” said the smooth voice on the other end. “Lt. Gen. Rodney Whitaker. I oversee R&D.”
Peter was aware that Mercer had retired, but he hadn’t known who had taken over—other than that, in Martinelli’s words, the man was some “buddy of the vice president’s.” He managed a curt “hello,” thinking hard but coming up with no other information about Whitaker whatsoever.
“I’ll do us both a favor and get right to the point,” Whitaker said. “We want you to come back.”
Peter was too stunned to answer.
“Your work is critical. Political disagreements shouldn’t get in the way of national security,” Whitaker said. “Here’s what I’m prepared to offer.”
“General,” Peter said, “I don’t—”
“I make a point of never turning down a proposition until I hear what it is. I recommend you do the same.”
He considered saying there was no offer the Pentagram could make that he would accept. But that seemed unnecessarily combative.
“Very good,” Whitaker said into the silence. “Now: If you don’t want it known that you’ve returned, I will personally ensure that it remains closely guarded information. You can work with anyone of your choosing, or no one. You will be allocated reds to commute directly from your home.”
Whitaker paused just long enough for Peter to open his mouth, but not long enough for him to get out a “no thank you.”
“Also, we will cover any outstanding hospital bills you may have,” Whitaker said.
Peter grabbed onto the counter for support. “What?”
“If you have any bills from your hospital stay, we will pay them. Yours and your wife’s, naturally.”
The general paused. Peter’s heart thudded in his ears.
“I don’t want an answer now,” the man said. “Sleep on it, Blackwell. I’ll call back tomorrow morning at nine sharp.”
Click. The line went dead.
He stood there, phone in hand, until it began squawking at him and he came back to his senses. He hung up, reminding himself that he couldn’t accept the offer. Obviously, he couldn’t. Just for starters, he wasn’t capable of holding down a job meant for a qualified wizard, for God’s sake.
Except … he wouldn’t have to cast. He could design the spells and have someone else cast them, a wizard of his choosing. He could insist that somebody ferry him to and from work—plenty of wizards had trouble with teleportation.
He shook his head to clear it. No, no, he refused to go back.
The only thing worse than not figuring out a way to neutralize his weapon was to reconvene his earlier work to make it more deadly.
If he stayed out of there, the spells on the sabotaged duplicate he’d left them would degrade, they would recast using the plans he’d altered, and then, at least, the weapon’s explosive capability would shrink.
Except … Beatrix would be overwhelmed with debt that wasn’t her fault. Rosemarie and Lydia might end up homeless. The women could move in with them for now, but how long would that last when they couldn’t afford the brewing ingredients they needed to justify their use of the omnimancer’s house?
He retreated to the attic and sat on the floor, in the room where he’d failed to defeat the weapon, and considered accepting the job.
He turned it over and over in his mind until he could see himself doing it.
Then he considered that Beatrix might rather face ruin than watch him go back to that work.
Yes, that was possible. Likely, even. But it was just as likely that she would come to regret it, because she had never experienced the level of poverty he had.
Ought he to protect her interests by accepting first and telling her afterward?
Would she forgive him if he did?
The rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of assertive knocking on the front door brought him out of his miserable reverie.
He met Beatrix on the stairs and walked the last flight down with her, saying nothing and getting nothing in turn, because “good morning” would hardly be accurate. But she took his hand, grip tight.
“It’s Hickok,” she said, looking out the peephole.
He groaned. Not now. No. He couldn’t bear the thought of an interview, not even one conducted by a reporter he liked.
But Beatrix had already opened the door. “Hello?”
“You look rather surprised to see me.” Hickok stepped inside, lips turning up in an ironic smile. “You didn’t think it would be a sufficient enticement? I almost came out last night just to find out what it was all about.”
He stared at her for a second before looking at Beatrix, who appeared just as befuddled.
“I’m going to take a wild guess, judging by your blank looks, that you had no idea Sue Clark called me,” Hickok said dryly.
“No, none,” Beatrix murmured.
He bit back a few choice words. Why in the hell would Mrs. Clark think that what they required was media coverage of how their lives were falling apart?
Hickok tapped her notebook with her pen. “But there is something you ought to be telling me, isn’t there.”
“I don’t—” he began.
“Yes.” Beatrix lifted her chin. “Come upstairs.”
He trailed after them, annoyed, until it hit him on the second-to-last step that Rydell was sure to find out eventually. There was no contest when it came to which of the two he’d prefer to write about it first.
When they got to the landing, Beatrix gestured Hickok into the brewing room and hung back.
“Sue must have thought this could help,” she murmured. “I think she might be right.”
He let his skeptical expression stand as an answer and went in.
“Any recording devices in here?” Hickok said quietly, eyeing the walls.
“No,” he said, hoping that remained true.
“What about the rest of the house?”
“Besides the telephone, you mean? We’ve stopped checking for bugs downstairs. We just assume we’re being recorded and behave accordingly.”
Hickok shook her head. “I’m trying to get some traction on the story, but no luck yet. Anyway—go ahead, tell me why Sue Clark called.”
Beatrix handed over the bills and noted all the ways this was and could be disastrous.
She explained that she’d been let go. Then—in for a penny, in for a pound—he shared most of the details of the previous night’s attack, leaving out his inability to defend himself with magic and asking her to keep off the record his strong suspicion that another wizard intervened.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to have noticed it,” he said, “and I don’t want to make clear that I did.”
Hickok nodded. “Any idea who it might have been? Your protector, I mean?”
He let out a long breath. “This will sound odd, I know. But I think it was someone sent by the Abbott administration.”
She raised her eyebrows but didn’t laugh. “Why?”
“Invisibility isn’t a widely known spell. And reds—the high-octane leaves you need for teleportation—are tightly controlled by the government.”
“OK,” Hickok said, “but any idea why they would want to prevent your injury or death?”
Yes, now that he knew they thought his skills were hard to replace. But he didn’t want to share that. He shrugged and gave a broader answer. “If I’m killed with magic, who would people blame?”
Hickok gave her ringing hah of a laugh. “One more thing, back on the record: Why did you write that contract for your wife—why take the risk?”
He sighed. “Well, it’s pretty obvious I didn’t understand that it was a risk. I mean—‘we all have certain inalienable rights and I won’t impinge upon yours’ shouldn’t be a radical idea.”
Her smile was sharp. “How very sweet and na?ve of you.”
Beatrix had not been so na?ve, he knew. She must have thought they’d safely concealed the contract from the magiocracy’s prying eyes—and the fact that they hadn’t was alarming in what it suggested about the level of spying they now faced.
“But as you’re obviously not planning to exercise your coverture rights,” Hickok added, “why put it in writing in the first place?”
Because he’d had power over Beatrix before, and he repeatedly abused it. Got her fired. Gave her little choice but to work for him. Forced her hand so she would break the law, day after day, risking arrest on his behalf.
Making her turn over her last shreds of self-determination to him with a Vow was the most egregious example, but it was hardly the only one.
Hickok was looking at him with her head cocked, waiting for an answer.