Chapter 30 #2
“OK, wait a minute. Or possibly a few minutes—I’m getting better at shedding invisibility, but I could still use a lot more practice.”
Roughly forty seconds later, Beatrix snapped into focus in a light blue shirt, gray trousers and white duster. Her hair was pulled back in a neat queue. A wizard’s outfit from head to toe.
She made it look like a revolutionary statement. Like the future.
It was also unexpectedly, undeniably sexy. He kissed her, the blood in his veins zipping south as she pressed against him.
Martinelli cleared his throat. They pulled back, Beatrix’s cheeks as pink as his felt.
“Sorry to interrupt, kids,” Martinelli said, “but this is important: Do not let those wizards find out. I mean—you don’t want them to know about the regular magic, either, but especially not this stuff.”
Peter’s heart gave a nasty twist as he remembered the terrible bit of news he hadn’t yet passed on to her. “Morse suspects you use magic. If he discovers you do, he’ll …” He swallowed. “He’ll kill you.”
She sighed—a weary verbal shrug. He thought she wasn’t giving it the proper weight, filing it too low on her already-long list of disasters, but then she said, “I’m almost certain he already knows.”
He reflexively tightened his arms around her—as if that would protect her. As if he hadn’t been the one to put her in mortal danger in the first place.
“Look, we’ll all have to go into hiding when we get out,” Martinelli said. “But let’s, you know, get out, OK?”
Beatrix nodded. “Fair warning: Coming up with new knitting is a lot slower than repeating something I’ve already managed.”
An image of Morse catching up to them while they were working on their escape burst into his head. “We have to do more to protect ourselves here.”
“The shield spell is a good start,” Martinelli said.
“It’s also a problem. They’re going to search the place. They’ll get here eventually, and if they find a barrier in their way, they’ll know why. Then we’re sitting ducks.”
Martinelli groaned. “We can’t take it down. What’s to stop them just teleporting in if there isn’t a barrier?”
Peter looked around the room, frowning. What they needed was something that could hide them. Like a fake wall. Or …
“Beatrix,” he said, “do you think you could make a false ceiling?”
It took almost ninety minutes. The whole time, he was tensed for discovery.
But what she ultimately knitted was even better than he’d hoped: a hiding spot seven feet off the floor of the bathroom, big enough for them all to lie down or sit up in.
To anyone inside it, the magic was translucent. Anybody outside saw only thin air.
He watched Martinelli clamber into the hiding place, head disappearing first, followed by the rest of him, and shook his own head in amazement. He turned to congratulate Beatrix and discovered she’d slumped against the wall, face flushed.
“Oh, no,” he said, rushing to her, recalling that her hospitalization for severe dehydration came after a spurt of knitting to save Washington and him. “Quick, drink something.”
“Really tired,” Beatrix mumbled, eyes sliding closed.
No wonder. He managed to get a canteen’s worth of water into her and then—with help from Martinelli—hoisted her into the hiding spot. A minute later, she’d fallen asleep.
He put a hand on her forehead, relieved that she didn’t feel overheated.
Martinelli, sitting next to him, murmured, “So I leave the shielding up unless someone sets off the tripwire, and in that case, I drop it?”
“Really fast, yeah.”
Martinelli nodded. “I ought to soundproof this hidey hole.”
“Good thinking.”
He waited until that was done before asking, “Is your wife in danger? Should we risk calling to warn her?”
Martinelli shook his head. “The Army records all calls, you know. She’d be in far more danger if we did.
I’ve given it a lot of thought, trust me,” he added.
“I really think they’ll leave her out of it.
They gave me something that first day—must be what Draden’s daughter gave you, because it made me think I should tell them whatever they wanted to know—so they’re aware Mae left me.
They haven’t tried to hold her over me the way Morse has done to you with your wife. ”
“Thank goodness for that,” Peter said.
“They didn’t ask any questions about you while I was under the influence,” Martinelli added, “but they pressed me for all sorts of details later. Why did you leave, what were you doing, how could they convince you to come back. I just relayed the stuff you told me before you got me under a Vow—figured that was safe.”
“Yes, thank you.” Then it hit him: The secrets he told Martinelli were no longer protected by that Vow.
Like the Vows he took with Beatrix, it would have evaporated the moment his heart stopped.
A single question posed to a drugged Martinelli—“what is Peter Blackwell doing in Ellicott Mills,” for instance—and Morse would have known in January that Beatrix was using magic.
She wouldn’t be here now, lying next to him. She’d be dead.
Peter gripped her hand, sick with the thought that her life was still at risk.
Then Martinelli turned to him, face grave.
“How much time do you think we have to convince someone to do something about these guys? I mean—let’s just assume for a moment that they build another transmitter and decide that’s close enough, it’s time to set it off … ”
Peter nodded, seeing his point. “A week, if they throw all their resources at it. Two, if we’re lucky.”
Martinelli’s sigh sounded one notch shy of morose. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it. I know they claimed I was dead, but honestly, I don’t think showing up alive would be enough evidence for what I’d be saying they’re doing. It’s too wild a story. Who’s going to believe me?”
What remained of Peter’s elation was rapidly draining away. Who, indeed.
Martinelli’s breath caught. “The—the tripwire—!”
“Hurry!”
Martinelli undid the spell around the room with shaking hands. Peter leaned as close as he dared to the edge of the hidden area and watched the laboratory door open a few seconds later.
Not Morse. Red Coat.
The wizard glanced around with a scowl and strode in, closing the door behind him.
He hurled a demarcation stone at each corner of the lab and cast the spell detector.
The spot where they’d vaporized Project 96 lit up white.
Would Red Coat think this looked suspicious?
Would he assume that Army scientists had done it?
The man brushed his hand along the walls and aimed a kick at the area where the transmitter had stood.
Then he stepped into the bathroom and cast a spell that sent the stones hurdling that direction—one cutting right through the hiding place, whizzing past Peter’s nose, before hitting the wall and falling with a clunk.
He gripped Martinelli’s arm. Red Coat was looking their way.
He must have seen the stone momentarily disappear—realized something was amiss—
“My fault,” Red Coat muttered, scowling. “My fault, he says. How was I supposed to see the bastards got out last night? You could barely see it in the dark! And so what if I’d fallen asleep? A man’s gotta sleep, for fuck’s sake!”
He cast the spell detector. He collected the stones. And he stomped out, slamming the door behind him.
Martinelli gave a shaky laugh. “Lucky he’s a bit of an idiot.”
“Damn lucky it wasn’t Morse.”
They lapsed into silence while Beatrix slept on, blissfully unaware of how close a call they’d had.