Chapter 26 #2
“Ella?” she whispered, barely believing it. She followed that with a different question, fear cutting her off: “Is Lydia—is she …?”
“Out of surgery. The doctors are hopeful.”
Beatrix closed her eyes, overcome, taking great, shaking breaths. Lydia was alive. Alive, not dead.
“I don’t think she’s in danger of another attack,” Ella added, and that brought Beatrix back to herself.
“It wasn’t Peter—”
“I know.” Ella’s voice caught. “It was Morse.”
The very wizard Ella had warned them about. A sob rose from Beatrix’s throat and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control the tears or hold back the scream of despair and rage.
“It’s—it’s going to be OK.” Ella’s words had an edge of pleading to them, not reassurance. Her voice sounded gravelly, deeper than usual. “Beatrix, I …”
Invisible hands gripped her arms in a supportive gesture, and for a moment it didn’t matter to Beatrix that Ella had almost killed Peter five months earlier, that Ella’s current soundness of mind had not yet been established, or that Ella had made her a fugitive without asking her opinion on the matter.
Beatrix leaned in to hug her—and leapt back the next moment, heart kicking up so fast she almost lost her balance and fell.
Too tall. Broad shoulders. Flat chest.
Not Ella.
“Who are you?” she shouted.
“Beatrix, I can explain—”
“Take off the invisibility spell!” she demanded, again grasping for the leaves in her bodice.
“No, listen—”
“Bemelde,” Beatrix yelled, and the figure snapped into view.
Standing before her, a look of horror on his face that echoed the feeling exploding from the pit of her stomach, was Frederick Draden.
A few seconds passed in silence, Beatrix’s heart juddering in her chest, her hands aimed at Draden. She’d thought Ella might be masquerading as him, yes, but now she was certain this was not her. Ella’s illusions, as convincing as they were, only changed how something looked—not how it felt.
She’d just outed herself as an illegal magic user to the vice president’s horrifying son.
“Beatrix,” Draden said in that voice that sounded almost but not quite like Ella, “I swear it’s me, I used magic—”
“Undo it, then!”
Draden grimaced. “God, I wish I could.”
“Keep your hands away from your pockets,” she shouted.
He raised them over his head. “Listen—just listen, OK?”
She set her jaw but said nothing. Draden took a shuddering breath.
Then, rapid fire: “I met you at a League meeting in Baltimore in April 2018. When I lived in your house, I had the first bedroom on the right, second floor. I hated teaching. I especially hated grading. I loathe ladies’ shoes and once bought a pair of boys’ boots, then convinced you to put them on to—”
“Stop,” Beatrix said, beside herself. “That doesn’t prove anything! The magiocracy could have learned any of those facts!”
“I set off the weapon.” Draden’s voice broke on the words. “I almost killed tens of thousands of people.”
That shocked Beatrix into silence. Draden—Ella—continued in the same quivering, desperate tone. “I pretended to be you. I drugged Omnimancer Blackwell. I caused the explosion, knowing he would die. And then somehow, one or both of you moved the payload stone and saved everybody, thank God.”
Beatrix didn’t see how the magiocracy could have figured that out. And if they had, they would immediately have arrested Peter for absconding with the weapon in the first place.
“Is this room safe?” she murmured.
“No one knows I have this apartment—”
“Check anyway.”
Ella cast the magic detector—it didn’t take until the third try, which suggested she was every bit as rattled as Beatrix. It showed nothing, no one invisibly monitoring them. Beatrix cast a soundproofing spell on the room for good measure.
“What fruit did we practice with in Peter’s house?” she asked, wanting to be absolutely, completely sure.
The answer came without hesitation: “Crabapples.”
“What do you call the magic you can do?”
“Knitting.”
“Why did you say I couldn’t really be in love with Peter?”
The face that looked like Frederick Draden’s winced. “Because you’re both under Vows to each other. But I shouldn’t have—”
“The Vows are broken. Peter’s heart stopped after the explosion and I restarted it with CPR.”
“Oh,” Ella said very quietly. Her lips trembled. “What I did was monstrous. I—I’m not asking you to forgive me, because it’s unforgiveable.”
Why did you do it, then? She wanted to ask that—needed to—but not now. Too many other questions could not afford to wait.
“Tell me truthfully,” she said. “Are you a danger to my life or anyone else’s?”
“No.” Ella hung her head. “No, I swear I’m not.”
Beatrix took a breath and forced out the question that had circled through her head without reprieve for hours: “Is Peter dead?”
“Alive—he’s alive.”
Beatrix collapsed into a chair, legs rubbery from a mix of relief over that answer and dread of the one to come: “Rosemarie?”
“I haven’t been able to find out.”
Beatrix moaned. Ella added: “My father doesn’t keep ‘Frederick’ in the loop.
I didn’t know about the plot to kill Lydia at the march, either, or of course I would have warned you.
But I managed to overhear a few things tonight.
Like ‘Blackwell is demanding a Vow from you’ and ‘fine, only if he takes one, too.’”
Beatrix looked at her in a panic. “What?”
“That’s good news, really—they wouldn’t extract a Vow from him if they were about to kill him.”
But he couldn’t cast it. That was the problem. “Where do they have him?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to get him out!”
Ella glanced away. “Beatrix …”
“You owe him,” she snarled. “The weapon you set off with his life force took away his ability to cast”—Ella gasped—“so he can’t take a Vow, he can’t work any spells, he can’t escape. You owe him, Ella Knight!”
Ella nodded, looking painfully earnest. “Yes. I do. I owe him my life, if that’s what it takes.
But I don’t know how to find out where they’ve got him.
I asked my father outright what was going on so I could ‘help,’ but he brushed me off.
” She slumped in her seat. “Morse clearly doesn’t trust me.
I’d have been better off if I’d just cast an illusion to make myself a random wizard. ”
Bracing herself, Beatrix asked: “Where’s your brother?”
“Dead,” Ella said flatly. “He was dead when I showed up. Facedown in his own vomit.”
Beatrix shuddered. “And when you say you can’t drop this illusion …” She gestured toward Ella’s unnerving facade.
“It’s not an illusion—that’s the trouble.
Let me explain.” She pressed a hand to her forehead.
“First off: I didn’t kill Frederick, I promise.
I was afraid you and Lydia were both in danger—I thought I might be able to convince him to find out what our father was up to.
You know: ‘You owe me, you bastard, and you hate Father anyway so why not.’”
The devil-may-care tone she’d affected on the final words carried a hint of a tremor. Beatrix knew enough about Ella’s history to grasp how horrendously difficult it must have been, deciding to speak to him.
“He’d left his keys in the door, so I opened it. He was there, on the floor. I almost tripped over him.”
Beatrix winced. “What did you do?”
“Said, ‘God damn you, I bet you died just to spite me,’ and burst into tears.” Ella’s borrowed lips twisted into a brief parody of her sardonic smile. “The one time in his miserable life he could have done some good, and he’d already checked out.”
She took several deep breaths and went on. “After a while, the thought occurred to me: I could be Frederick. I could spy. The height difference meant an illusion was out of the question, but knitting is powerful stuff—what if I could just … become him? Refashion my body?”
“Oh, no,” Beatrix whispered.
Ella made a sound that was almost a laugh. “I know, right? I managed it—and now I’m stuck. I can’t transform back.”
She stared at the ceiling, slouching further into the chair.
“I can’t knit anymore. I can barely cast a spell—I did the job so well that I seem to have gotten my brother’s lousy abilities into the bargain.
And on top of all that, it hasn’t done any good because I can’t get my father to tell me anything. ”
Beatrix didn’t know what to say. Ella had simply been trying to help. She reached out and took her hand.
Ella’s eyes welled.
“It must be especially hard to be trapped in that body,” Beatrix murmured.
“It’s been weeks and I still feel sick every time I look in a mirror.
” Ella scrubbed at her face with her free hand.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking. It was an unhinged thing to do.
Sort of like what I did to Omnimancer Blackwell, though obviously that was a million times worse.
It seemed perfectly logical and necessary to me at the time to set the weapon off, and now I look back and wonder what in the nine circles of hell was wrong with me. ”
Beatrix took a steadying breath. Now or never. “I think it was the knitting.”
Ella looked stunned. “What?”
Beatrix explained. How close she’d come, twice, to attempting murder. How she too had felt as if something was wrong with her, as if she wasn’t in control of her own thoughts. And how she hadn’t had any more murderous urges since she stopped knitting.
“That would mean it’s not your fault,” she said. “It’s mine, really. Because I taught you.”
Ella, listening to all this with wide eyes, shook her head and let out a huff of a breath. “Don’t be silly. You taught me because I wanted to know how to do it. Anyway, if knitting warps the mind and I was practicing far more than you, why wasn’t it affecting my daily behavior?”
Beatrix frowned, considering the question. “We were under a great deal of stress during each incident. A lot more than normal. Maybe that’s why? Anyway, since you … transformed, have you acted or considered acting in a way you would describe as crazy?”
Ella thought about it. “Well … no, I guess not.”
“And you haven’t been able to knit,” Beatrix pointed out.
Ella did not look entirely convinced. She raised her eyebrows. “You’ll probably have to knit again before this is all over, you know.”
Beatrix shivered. She hoped not. Then she made the mistake of glancing down and was forcibly reminded that Lydia’s blood was all over her dress.
“Oh,” she said, jerking back, trembling. “I—I can’t—I need—Ella, the blood—”
“Yes, right, just a moment!” Ella stuffed a hand in her pocket and came out with leaves. “Beclaense. Come on—beclaense. Beclaense! Beclaense!”
Beatrix felt the tingle of the spell through her dress.
“Fourth time’s the charm, said no one ever,” Ella muttered.
Beatrix started to laugh, but it came out all wrong. Oh, God. What was she to do? What?
Focus. Peter’s life depended on her—Rosemarie’s, too. She couldn’t help Lydia when it mattered because she’d panicked, and she couldn’t afford to do that again.
She took a shaky breath, then another. “We need a plan to find Peter and Rosemarie. They might be in the same place. Tell me exactly what you’ve overheard.”
Ella bit her lip as she always did when thinking deeply. It was so Ella-ish that for a moment, she looked nothing like her brother. “I didn’t catch much. All of it was in the same conversation. First that part about the Vows—”
“Your father was talking to Morse?”
“No, to Roddie Whitaker. One of his cronies.”
“Wizard?”
Ella shook her head. “Typic. They grew up together.”
Beatrix crossed her arms, unsettled but not sure why.
“Anyway, after that bit about the Vows, my father said, ‘The wife?’ And Whitaker said, ‘Handled.’ God, that sounded bad,” Ella murmured.
“I’m sorry I scared the stuffing out of you, but I needed to get you out of jail in case—in case ‘handled’ meant more was coming than what had already happened to you.
How in blazes did they justify charging you with Lydia’s attempted murder? ”
Beatrix explained. Ella looked as if she might explode.
“What else did you hear them say?” Beatrix put in quickly, trying to keep her on track.
Ella’s expression ratcheted down to a scowl.
“Well—Whitaker said something like, ‘Did you listen to the news?’ My father said yes, and Whitaker said, ‘I was there. That Morse is a fucking virtuoso. I would have believed it if I hadn’t known.’ That’s how I found out that Morse attacked Lydia, though I was already certain it was him.
Oh, and I’m not worried about another attack because Whitaker asked whether there was a need to ‘finish the job,’ and my father said, ‘No, that’s sufficient. Let’s not push our luck.’”
Beatrix let out a long breath, relieved beyond words. But it told them nothing about Peter’s whereabouts. Or Rosemarie’s. (Surely they were together, please let them be together …)
“Anything else?” Beatrix said, hoping—hoping—but Ella shook her head.
She stared at the wall, swallowing a sob. No clues, nothing beyond the fact that Draden expected Peter to take a Vow. He could be anywhere. How was she supposed to find him? What if she couldn’t?
Focus. Focus on what she did know. Whitaker—something about him was bothering her.
“Who’s the crony?” she asked. “What does he do?”
“He’s a military bigwig. A general.”
Whitaker. Whitaker. Why did that sound so—
“Oh God,” Beatrix said, hand to her mouth. “He’s the one in charge of the Army test site Peter used to work at. He tried to rehire Peter in March to work on the weapon again, but Peter said no.”
Ella stared at her. “You think they kidnapped him to force the point?”
Rising horror made it hard to do anything but nod.
“Doesn’t that suggest they have a plan to use it?” Ella’s voice shook. “A … specific, immediate plan?”
Beatrix shut her eyes, the explosions she’d seen in Peter’s memories replaying in a horrible loop.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think that’s exactly what’s going on.”