Chapter 17
Beatrix and Ella were hoisting their bags to tromp to work together when the doorbell sounded. Theo Garrett stood on the porch.
“I’ve come to collect,” he said.
“Oh?” Beatrix said, smiling at the contrast between his serious tone and quirked lips.
“You promised me a walk through the woods. I thought I might as well tag along when you were already about to take one.”
“I wouldn’t say I promised—”
“Miss Harper, how am I supposed to prove I’m nothing like your idea of wizards if you never spend more than a few minutes with me? I call that unjust.”
A snort from somewhere behind her, presumably Ella’s, offered commentary.
But Beatrix, who couldn’t very well tell him he had already proved himself, saw no way to keep him from joining them without being overtly rude.
And she needed—urgently—to test every square inch of her Vow to see if some drops of information could get through to him.
“Come along, then,” she said. “This is my friend—”
“Forgot something,” Ella said abruptly. “Go on, don’t wait for me.”
“Oh, but …”
Ella was already headed up the steps, away from them. “Hurry, or you’ll be late.”
“You know,” Garrett said sotto voce, tapping his forehead, “I’m beginning to think she might not entirely like wizards, either.”
Beatrix tried to hold back a laugh, with only partial success.
“It’s so refreshing to get out of D.C.,” he added cheerfully as they walked around the house to the back yard. “You know exactly where you stand here.”
His good humor was infectious. How tempting it would be to get caught up in it and put Blackwell out of her mind for the duration of the walk. But she had work to do.
She tried to say, “Blackwell’s spending hours firing off explosive spells.” She couldn’t so much as form the first word.
She attempted to just spit out “fordēst” while pointing in the general direction of the omnimancer’s mansion, but she couldn’t move her tongue or her arm.
She made herself stop thinking of possible sentences or what she was trying to accomplish. “Blackwell,” she managed to say, and then started to choke.
“Are you all right?” Garrett reached for her as if he thought a few pats on the back were required.
“Fine,” she gasped, getting control of her traitorous lungs.
“What about Blackwell? Have you seen him do something odd?” Garrett said.
This was impossible. Yes, she tried to say. Yes, yes, yes!
“Miss Harper?”
She sighed. “I’m afraid I have nothing useful I can say on that subject.”
“Well, then—forgive my burning curiosity, Miss Harper, but are you really managing to put your sister through college all on your own? Or did you have family savings to draw on after your parents passed away?”
“You’ve been talking to people in town about me,” Beatrix said, wanting to be annoyed. Not quite managing.
“They don’t have much to say about Omnimancer Blackwell, except they’re glad he’s here and I’d better not take him away, but everyone has opinions about you.”
“I’m sure the presiding sentiment is that I’m wasting my money.”
His grin was so mischievous, she couldn’t help but smile back. “I may have heard that a few times,” he admitted. “But I also heard admiration about your ability to see a difficult goal through. So—you’ve really done it yourself?”
“There were no family savings,” she said, ignoring her instinct not to give personal information to the magiocracy.
Of course he knew the answer already. Small towns had no secrets—no secrets not protected by magical Vows, anyway.
“We always had the best of everything when I was a child, so I assumed we had plenty of money. But after the second Depression hit, we were just living beyond our means.”
“Your father used to own the general store, I gather.”
“I had to sell it after his death. It was the only way to save the house from foreclosure.”
“No life insurance?”
She shook her head. He’d stopped paying the premiums after her mother died. Stopped doing much of anything, really.
“So you put your family’s finances to rights by yourself and raised your sister.” Garrett ducked under a low branch, glancing over his shoulder at her. “I’ve read some of the stories about Lydia Harper, you know—I take the News-Register—and I can’t believe no one has thought to write about you.”
“Well, no one has drawn an editorial cartoon of me with wings and clawed feet under the title of ‘Harpy,’ either, so on the whole I consider it a plus,” she said, grateful for the change of subject.
He shook his head. “Not one of the News-Register’s finer moments.”
“Or how about their column headlined, ‘Stop Harping, Miss Harper.’”
“Sounds like they’re the ones doing the harping.” He leaned toward her as he said it, and her stomach gave a funny sort of turn. She had never felt so acutely alone with anyone as she did with this wizard. Except Blackwell, but that was a very different sort of feeling.
“Well,” she said, a shade too cheerfully to sound natural, “you now know my life story. What about yours?”
“Oh, much less interesting. Military brat who tested positive for wizardry, thought he’d do something totally different than his old man, and ended up in the Army anyhow.”
There was a hint of bitterness there. She looked at him as she said, “You don’t sound entirely happy about that.”
He shrugged. “Depends on the day.” Then he gave a wide smile that crinkled his eyes, revealed teeth endearing in their slight crookedness and made it difficult to look away.
Stop it. Stop.
“I have no complaint with this day,” he said. “You?”
Making herself glance away, she caught sight of the omnimancer’s mansion looming beyond the trees.
“Not yet.” She sighed. “But I will.”
The workday passed much as the one before.
She brewed while Blackwell set off explosions.
Shuffled her feet like a grade-school pupil as he checked her work.
And unpinned her hair at his demand so he could better see whether he needed to pull any of it out, an extended moment that made her feel both angry and exposed.
Just as he leaned in to pluck one, she remembered what she had dreamt the previous night.
She’d never told anyone that she’d kissed Evan Zeiler, valedictorian of their high school class, and now Blackwell knew—and knew exactly how she’d felt about it.
Thank goodness for small favors that the dream had at least ended where it did.
Then the ordeal was over. She walked out of the accursed house. And waiting for her at the edge of the forest, almost disappearing into the surroundings in his deep green coat, was Theo Garrett.
“Would you like to go home the quick way?” he asked.
Five minutes earlier, she would have said yes. But there was something rejuvenating about getting out from under Blackwell’s thumb and into the woods. There was something rejuvenating about seeing this man.
“I think I’m well enough to get there the long way this time,” she said. “I’ve nothing useful I can tell you, in any case, so I shouldn’t be wasting your employer’s resources.”
“Have you decided I am, in fact, disagreeable?”
She laughed. “Not at all. You’re welcome to come with me.”
As he fell into step beside her, she thought of asking how the investigation was coming along. But then it struck her—she didn’t want to know the answer. Blackwell could force it out of her.
So she reached for something harmless. “I hope you haven’t been out here all day in this heat.”
“No, I spent most of it elsewhere. Other assignments called.”
If hearts really could sink, hers would have. It felt as heavy as a rock in her chest. Even the thought of having to regurgitate this conversation for Blackwell couldn’t stop her from asking, “Have you concluded this one? Is that what you came to tell me?”
“No. Truly,” he added, glancing at her, perhaps sensing her distress from the sharp way she’d asked. “Once I’m determined to do something, I don’t quit.”
The rush of relief this brought on left her a bit shaky. She put a hand on an oak tree, steadying herself as she stepped over a log. “I thought—I thought you might have given up.”
“How could I fail with an agent on the inside?”
He was teasing her. But she worried there was truth to it, that perhaps he really was counting on her to bring him evidence.
“Our omnimancer isn’t about to let me see anything I”—she paused—“could use”—another pause—“to incriminate him.”
She looked up at Garrett, but this clue so subtle it got past the Vow was apparently too understated to raise his suspicions. His “oh?” was no less cheerful than his usual.
She sighed. “He’s aware I loathe him.”
“Pity.”
She tried to say, “You will keep investigating him?” But this apparently was one step too far. She couldn’t form the words.
“I don’t understand why he was so adamant about hiring you, knowing you would hate the very idea,” Garrett said. “You grew up together, didn’t you? Is there some history I’m missing?”
She sketched out the sorry story, without explaining why her mother had taken a dislike to Blackwell.
“Ah.” Garrett’s expression darkened and she saw a hint of steel under the sunniness. “Rotten of him to—are you all right?”
“Yes,” she choked out, pomegranate strangling her efforts to add and now he’s making me do magic.
Garrett seemed to have a leaf in his hands without reaching into his pockets for it, or perhaps he was just that fast. A murmured spell, and it transformed into a metal canteen. “Here,” he said, putting it into her hands. “It’s perfectly safe to drink, I promise.”
She sipped at the water inside and handed the canteen back, noting its dents. “You created this out of thin air?”
“No—it’s mine. I called it here.”
“Can you do that with anything? It seems like an invitation to robbery.”
He laughed. “That would make life easy for the criminally inclined, wouldn’t it? But no, I can’t get just anything. You need it to be in a specialized sort of room. I keep this canteen in one in case I’m ever stuck somewhere and dying of thirst.”
“And has that ever happened? Almost dying of thirst, I mean?”
“I’m sent a great many places,” he said. He was standing so close that the remnants of pomegranate faded underneath his scent—spicy aftershave and soap. She inhaled, feeling dizzy.
“Shall we?” she said, and strode deeper into the woods.
Beatrix left for work the next morning without Ella, who was tucked into bed with a head cold.
Theo Garrett did not make an encore appearance on their doorstep.
She had just convinced herself she wasn’t sorry when she stepped into her back yard and discovered he was waiting for her there, where lawn gave way to forest. Something inside her chest swooped at the sight.
“If I had nothing useful to tell you yesterday evening, I certainly don’t this morning,” she said, meaning for it to sound chiding but failing miserably.
“I know,” he said. He smiled at her. He really had a lovely smile.
She realized—of course—that she should send him away. He was a wizard. He might be superior to Blackwell in all respects, but he was part of the magiocracy all the same.
She smiled back. She stepped into the forest with him. When he offered his arm, she took it.
A bit like being under a compulsion, but this time magic had nothing to do with it.
“I’m president of the county chapter of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic,” she said, because she wasn’t so far gone to not see the objections.
“Yes.”
“And you know who my sister is.”
“Naturally.”
She looked up at him. “You can’t tell me that doesn’t bother you in the slightest.”
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” he said, smile widening.
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t honestly tell you I’m not troubled that you’re a wizard.”
“Miss Harper,” he said, the steel showing through again, “I am surrounded in Washington by girls who simply adore wizards. They would like nothing better than to marry a wizard, and they don’t very much care which. I am sick unto death of being liked for my profession.”
She considered this. “But is it really better to be liked despite it?”
He leaned in and kissed her. She pressed closer, his freshly shaved jaw under her fingertips, his spicy scent enveloping her.
“Yes,” he murmured into her ear. “Infinitely better.”