Chapter 21
‘Outpouring of kindness’ helps strapped ‘Romeo she’d assured him that she needed no help, financial or otherwise. Really, the only thing he could think of was the task he’d already written off as impossible.
Find a way to neutralize Project 96. Make sure no one else was killed by it.
“Good,” Beatrix murmured when he explained his plan, which relied on her to carry out any idea he could come up with. “Let’s do it.”
A month of work put them no closer to a solution, but it settled him in a way that brewing couldn’t. This effort required so much more from him, especially now that he’d stopped looking at the problem as something that the mental equivalent of elbow grease could fix.
He tracked down journal articles on spellcasting innovations.
He came back from a trek to Washington with thirty-two books—on runes, defensive magical maneuvers on the battlefield, spell-hardened infrastructure and a variety of offbeat topics bought simply because you never knew where you might find inspiration.
This time, unlike before, he spent ninety percent of his R&D time on pure R.
Then Lydia and Rosemarie came to visit, Beatrix’s sister wearing the apologetic look he now recognized as her I-have-something-I-need-you-to-do face. “I know I said you both deserve a rest, but …”
“Rest’s over,” Rosemarie said.
The gist of it was that the League’s march on Washington, now known as the Procession for Typic Rights, was four weeks away and they needed more help.
“Could you visit these vendors?” Lydia proffered a list. “They’re all open on Saturday—I checked.”
Peter nodded, looking it over. One public-address-system rental company, two water suppliers, three portable-bathroom purveyors. All in D.C.
“And I know we talked about having you two assist behind the scenes on the day of,” Lydia said, “but actually we’d like you both to speak to the crowd. If you’re willing.”
He blinked. “I thought we agreed that would do more harm than good.” Rosemarie had been quite blunt about it, in fact.
“We’ve made inquiries,” Rosemarie said. “It’s clear that the people who would turn out to hear you far outnumber those who would stay home in protest.”
Beatrix made a muffled sound that might have been a groan she caught in time. “You’re going to make me stand up in front of two hundred thousand people?”
Lydia’s apologetic look deepened. “More likely two hundred and fifty thousand.”
He glanced at Beatrix, raising his eyebrows. This was her call. Not that he particularly wanted to do it, either.
She heaved a sigh. “A short speech. Very short, OK? A glorified introduction for you.”
Her sister shifted, glancing at Rosemarie. “Well …”
“We were thinking Lydia would introduce the two of you,” Rosemarie said. “Seeing as you’re the famous ones.”
Beatrix stared at the women in obvious horror, struck silent.
He had no trouble speaking for them both. “Absolutely not.”
“It doesn’t have to be long,” Rosemarie said. “Lydia would still give the main speech.”
Lydia clasped her hands. “I’ll help you write it—please say you’ll do it? Please?”
It was a foregone conclusion, of course. When had either of them refused her?
As they slogged all over Washington the following day on the errands she’d assigned them, he imagined going off-script during his speech to tell the crowd a few things.
“I advise you to run like the wind if Lydia Harper says she has a favor to ask you,” perhaps.
Or: “Fair warning: This is how Rosemarie Dane punishes you if you screw up.”
By the time they escaped the final vendor, he had no energy left to walk ten blocks to the train. He put out an arm to hail a cab.
One zipped past, carrying passengers. The next stopped half a block shy of them to disgorge one, and he grabbed Beatrix’s hand to run for it before it got away. That gave them an unobstructed view of the man getting out.
Frederick Draden.
Peter stopped dead, heart lurching in surprise and alarm. Draden stared back, similarly still. He looked healthier, perhaps recovered from whatever had ailed him before.
“Omnimancer.” The vice president’s son said his title quietly, almost somberly.
He inclined his head at Beatrix, as if they were on a social call.
Into the charged silence, he added, “My—” And in the second of hesitation that followed, for no other reason than the set of Draden’s jaw, Peter had the irrational impression that the wizard might say “apologies.”
“My regards,” Draden muttered instead, which was almost as ridiculous.
Then he strode off, Peter watching him go in open-mouthed shock.
“Where to?” the taxi driver called.
Peter pulled himself together. “Union Station,” he said, giving Beatrix a hand in. She was trembling. Putting an arm around her, he whispered, “Are you all right?”
“Why, as I live and breathe!” The driver, looking at them through the rearview mirror, broke into a grin. “Romeo and Juliet?”
Peter covered up his sigh with a smile. “That’s us.” If they hadn’t become the star-crossed headline grabbers, no one would have rescued them from those disastrous hospital bills, so he wasn’t going to be ill-natured about it now.
“Boy, oh boy,” the driver said. “Soft, what light through mine clunker breaks?”
Beatrix’s lips turned up in what appeared to be a genuine smile. Peter slipped his hand into hers.
“It is the east, and Beatrix is the sun,” he said, answering the driver’s mock Shakespeare with some of his own.
“Hah! Joe at your service—glad to meet you.” The man lifted his cap in an exaggerated gesture. “I just might win the pool this month.”
“Pool?”
“A friendly bet among some cabbies—how many famous people can you pick up. You know, senators, generals, cabinet members …”
“Vice-presidential offspring,” Beatrix put in with a sardonic edge.
“Oh, you saw him!” Joe chortled. “Yeah, that’s the third or fourth time I’ve given him a ride. Almost didn’t recognize the fellow just now! ’Course, the other times it was past midnight and he was … er …”
“Drunk?” Peter suggested.
The man snorted. “I’ll put it this way: Let’s hope so.”
No one said anything for an extended moment. Peter debated whether to ask the impolite question running through his head—what did the vice president’s son do? But really, it didn’t matter. Only a morbid curiosity made him wonder.
“Well, here you are,” Joe said, pulling up at Union Station, deciding the matter. No time left for gossip.
Peter handed over the fare. The cabbie handed back a notebook. “Mind putting your John Hancocks here so I can prove I really did give you folks a ride?”
Peter signed his name on the empty page. Beatrix signed hers below it. Then she flipped back and stared at the last signature on the previous page, the spiky handwriting of a man who raped and almost killed his own sister.
He slipped the notebook from her hands, snapped it shut and thrust it back at the cabbie, skin crawling. Who would do that? And what sort of father would think the proper reaction was to protect the son instead of the daughter?
On the train ride home, Beatrix sitting silently beside him, he considered Marbella Draden with pity for the first time.
Not that he excused what she had done: People drew terrible lots in life all the time without attempting mass murder.
But her behavior to him earlier in their acquaintance now seemed wholly understandable.
Restrained, even. The way she suddenly snapped—perhaps Beatrix was right.
Perhaps using magic without an exterior source of fuel damaged the brain or overrode normal judgment.
But if it had had that effect on Beatrix, it did not appear permanent. And it certainly was never so extreme in her case. For all they knew, Miss Draden had been biding her time since the moment she learned about the weapon, waiting for the right opportunity, her mind wholly her own.
He shuddered as he followed Beatrix up the stairs to their bedroom. Where was Miss Draden? What was she planning?
Beatrix bespelled the room and turned to him, expression troubled.
“I don’t think that was Frederick Draden in the cab,” she said. “I think it was Ella.”