Chapter 27 #2
Beatrix thought he must be squirreled away in the New Mexico test site somewhere.
But even if she could retrace her steps to the spot in the desert where she dropped the payload stone, she had no idea which direction the facility was from there.
She had no way of getting in if she found it.
And she had to concede that the last place Draden might want to put Peter was in a government facility.
“Here,” Ella said, digging into a pocket and coming out with a large clump of leaves. “Take these. Just in case.”
Beatrix watched her teleport away—fifth try was the charm this time—with her stomach in knots. She wanted to do something. Help Ella. Guard Lydia. Talk to Gray. Instead, she had to stay put lest she be recognized and arrested.
Ella’s secret apartment was tiny, a Northeast Washington efficiency with a pullout couch for a bed.
(“Landlord doesn’t know who I am,” Ella had assured her.
“I covered up my hair and passed as a typic to rent it, and I only come here by teleportation so no one can follow me.”) Beatrix paced uselessly around for a while before thinking to switch on the radio.
“—and disappeared before the guard’s eyes, police say.
They believe Omnimancer Blackwell rescued his wife with a so-called ‘teleportation’ spell, which can transport people great distances in the blink of an eye.
Immediately before, Mrs. Blackwell called for help and said someone was trying to kidnap her.
But police say they suspect she did so to throw them off the scent. ”
Beatrix scowled at the radio. Honestly.
“Stay tuned for more on this developing story,” the newsreader said. “Meanwhile, in the world of sports—”
She switched to another station. There she learned that her sister had awoken and managed a sip of water, that FBI sources believed she and Peter fled to Canada, that Mayor Croft was heroically trying to defend them (“I don’t understand it, I know it looks bad, but it couldn’t possibly have happened that way—it just couldn’t”), and that policemen were protecting Lydia’s hospital room.
“It is regrettable that Miss Harper’s hysterical view of wizards is so ingrained that she would put her life at risk rather than accept our offer of a wizard guard,” said an indignant-sounding spokesman for the president.
“I assure you that all we want is to keep the young lady safe and bring the Blackwells to justice for their heinous attack on her.”
As the newsreader moved on to unrelated reports, Beatrix ground her teeth. Sitting here doing nothing was hardly better than sitting in her cell.
She switched to yet another station, which finished up a segment about a North and South American summit in Detroit and went right to details of the “shocking attack on the country’s leading typic-rights campaigner by her brother-in-law.
” The station played the doctored audio that made it appear that she, Beatrix, had asked him to do it.
“The Washington Herald is reporting that the FBI obtained the recording late Friday and turned it over to D.C. police straightaway,” the newsreader said.
“Police officials declined to comment about why they didn’t arrest the Blackwells immediately.
But two sources told the Herald that the recording was misdirected.
It was meant for the agency’s head of criminal investigations, John Meltner.
Instead, it went to John Neller, head of accounting.
The error was discovered only minutes before the attack. ”
She shook her head. They had thought of everything, hadn’t they? If they’d leaked the audio afterward, people might reasonably wonder why the administration hadn’t tried to do something when it might have helped. This way, they got the credit with no danger that the police could have acted in time.
The ringing tones of Maryland Senate President William Dixon refocused her attention on the broadcast.
“This is what comes of a man abdicating his responsibility to oversee his family!” Dixon thundered.
“He asks his wife what he should do, and she says, ‘Kill my sister’—and then he runs off to do it! My God, it’s positively providential that Maryland did not get conned into passing that so-called typic-rights bill pushed by these criminals! ”
Then came the shaky voice of a marcher: “I was just a few yards away when it happened. I could barely believe it at first, but now it makes sense, and Roger Rydell—the columnist, you know—he warned us weeks ago that Peter Blackwell was unstable and seemed far more interested in Lydia Harper than her sister. If only someone had been able to do something!”
Beatrix slid farther into her chair. Good God, were the dirty tricks during the legislative session intended from the start to play this double duty?
Just then, Ella teleported back in. Her eyes were shining. She broke into a grin.
“He’s going to the test site tomorrow to give a speech. And he agreed to bring me.”
Beatrix jumped to her feet. “How did you manage that?”
“Father,” Ella said in a deeper, more masculine voice, “it’s patently obvious that something important is happening, and it’s just as obvious that you don’t trust me to assist you with it.
But the only way I can make up for all the years I’ve wasted is to be useful to you.
Please give me that chance. Please let me help. ”
“What’s happening? Did he let you in on the plot?”
Ella’s smile faded. “No. Not a word about the omnimancer or Lydia or the weapon. All he said is that he’s very concerned about intel they’re getting regarding a, quote, ‘imminent attack by Canada.’”
Beatrix shivered. “You think that’s a cover story for whatever he’s doing?”
“I don’t know. But with him it’s usually safe to assume the worst.”
“They’re telling the media that Peter and I went there. To Canada. What if …” She faltered. It was too horrible.
“What if they’re trying to use you as an excuse to start a war?”
“And to set off Peter’s weapon,” she said quietly.
Death, so much death—including Peter’s, just as soon as they had what they wanted from him.
“You have to bring me with you,” she said, grabbing Ella’s arm. “Under an invisibility spell. You stay with your father, and I’ll look for Peter.”
“No! It’s too dangerous. We don’t know anything about the setup—what if they check everyone who comes in for hidden spells? Let me get the lay of the land, and maybe I can figure out where—”
“You’re not going to be allowed to wander around in there, Ella! And we can’t afford to be cautious. An ‘imminent attack’—that’s bad. Something’s going to happen soon.”
Ella crossed her arms. She sighed. “OK. On one condition: You’ll knit yourself invisible.”
“No—”
“That’s the only way you won’t be found out if they cast an invisibility counter-spell or the magic-detector.”
Beatrix stared at the floor, considering her options, none of them good. Ella was right. But oh, the risks. If the key to going crazy was knitting in a high-stress situation, this was custom-made for it.
“Come with me to see Lydia,” Ella said. “Call it a test run.”
A bad idea. Terrible, in fact.
“All right,” Beatrix whispered.
She was out of practice to start with, and she’d never tried knitting anyone invisible. Doing it to them both took quite a while. When they finally arrived at the hospital, they found a policeman sitting at the visitors’ desk, eyeing everyone coming in. They walked by, no one the wiser.
The police officer stationed outside Lydia’s room posed more of an inconvenience. Their plan was to wait until Joan or one of the other League leaders came out to use the facilities, then ask for help getting in.
The women’s bathroom was at the end of the hallway, so they crept alongside the wall opposite the one the officer leaned against. They had to be more careful this time, without other passersby covering up the sound of their footsteps.
Beatrix was hyperaware of her own breathing.
Ella, behind her, gripped her hand harder as they neared the guard.
Beatrix took another careful step and—she almost cried out in surprise—rammed right into something.
Something invisible.
A large hand grabbed her. Panicked, she wrenched away and ran flat out the other direction, jerking Ella along with her. She had to get into the right mindset for teleporting—something she’d managed only half a dozen times in her life.
“What—?” Ella hissed at her.
“Wizard!”
Two feet shy of the intersecting hallway they’d come from, she hit a barrier—also invisible—and bounced back. God Almighty!
They had to go now. Grass, sidewalk, smell of exhaust, trash can, Capitol—
She’d just felt the magic catch when the man ran into her and all three of them—Beatrix, Ella and the wizard she was desperately afraid was Morse—were sucked into the jump to Spirit of Justice park.
They came out the other end overbalanced, falling in a confused mess onto the sidewalk with a sharp thunk that sounded like a head connecting with the concrete.
Beatrix scrambled to her feet and ran, fumbling in her pockets for leaves.
“Bemelde!” she hissed, aiming her hand in the direction she’d come from.
A wizard in a blood-red coat snapped into focus on the ground, face down but stirring. What if Ella was also lying there, knocked out? The spell countering invisibility wouldn’t work on knitting. Beatrix looked around, saw no one, and hissed as loudly as she dared, “Pssst! Pssssst!”
She was just about to run back, as terrifying as that was with the wizard now pushing himself to his knees, when Ella thudded into her.
“Let’s go!” Ella whispered. “Quick!”
Beatrix hastily pictured Ella’s apartment. Flowered couch, old radio with a chip on the side—the wizard stumbled to his feet—worn rug by the door, calendar on the wall, slight odor of mothballs—