Chapter 22
Helen Hickok, the only female journalist in Baltimore outside of the society pages, sat hunched over her typewriter, glancing at a notepad while her fingers flew over the keys.
She had hair as bright as an orange, twisted in such a way to give the impression from certain angles that it was bobbed, and her skirt was so short it stopped at least two inches above her ankles.
Beatrix wished she had the courage to dress like that. It wasn’t the thought of what people would say that held her back, but rather of Rosemarie and Lydia taking her to task for what people would say.
“Miss ... Harper?” Hickok said in her ringing voice. “What brings you here so late? Please tell me,” she added, brows drawing together, “that you’re not here to badger me to write about that blasted conference.”
“Well—”
“No, no. That profile of your sister was a one-off. I cover politics. I do not cover ladies’ issues, and I didn’t spend nineteen years clawing my way to this spot only to tumble back down as the Star recollects that I am in fact a goddamned lady.”
Beatrix bit her lip. “You have the knack of making one want to laugh and cry at the same time.”
“My finest quality.” Hickok squinted at her. “Is that a film projector?”
“I’ve got something I think you’ll want to see. Heavy on the political intrigue, light on the ladies’ issues, I promise.”
The reporter pursed her lips. “Long?”
“Short,” said Beatrix, who’d gotten Blackwell to show her how to speed over the contract-reading part.
“Come with me to the washroom, then. It’s the only spot that’s dark enough.”
Hickok watched in dead silence. When they came to the end, she said: “Let me get this straight: John Dockett of the Key Hotel is in cahoots with the Abbott administration to keep you from having the conference this weekend, apparently by replacing the contract you signed with one that has the wrong dates?”
“Including stealing ours from a lockbox in our house and leaving said replacement,” Beatrix said, drawing the contract from her coat. “And he’s insisting we pay him for our quote-unquote reservation.”
Hickok frowned over the contract. Then she turned a beady eye to Beatrix and said, “How did you get this film?”
“I can’t reveal who gave it to me, but as you can see, Mr. Dockett had no idea someone put a camera in his office.”
“Don’t move,” Hickok demanded.
She returned with a notepad and pen, then replayed the film three more times.
“So you’ll write about this?” Beatrix said, trying to keep the hopeful note to a minimum as Hickok switched the light back on.
“Are you offering it to me as an exclusive? It’s too late now to get this into tomorrow’s paper.”
“We’re going to play the film for the League tomorrow—somewhere. The News-Register might see it then. But you’ll have the jump on what passes for competition.”
Hickok’s snort gave way to a grimace. “You do realize I’m not your advocate.”
“Yes,” said Beatrix, not sure why she would feel the need to point this out.
“Your sister’s keeper—Mary?—informed me last month that I ought to write more stories about the League and Lydia Harper, quote, for the good of women everywhere, unquote, then reminded me in no uncertain terms of my own gender.”
“Ah. Rosemarie—that was Rosemarie. I’m sorry.”
“You tell her I’m not a woman, I’m a reporter,” Hickok said, then added in what for her could almost be called a whisper: “It’s a fabulous comeback, and I’m aggravated I didn’t think of it at the time.
” She cleared her throat, putting pen to paper.
“Now—when did you discover the contract dates were wrong?”
Peter, catching sight of Miss Harper leaving the Star’s building, started his car and pulled onto Light Street to pick her up. He didn’t have to ask how it went. He’d felt her intoxicating rush of success fifteen minutes earlier.
“Where now?” he asked as she slipped in, cheeks flushed with victory.
“Home,” she said, smiling at him, which made his stomach twist as he realized it was the first time she’d done that since he’d made her take the Vow. “I think we’ve accomplished all that can possibly be expected in one night.”
“What about a venue, though?”
Her smile faded, and he was sorry he’d mentioned it. “Other leaders from the League were working on that,” she said. “Let’s hope they managed to find something.”
He hung a right on Lombard and took Paca back to Route 40. She said nothing through the entire maneuver. Then the words burst out: “Do you really think Wizard Garrett is behind this, or was your question to Dockett part of your campaign to separate us?”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He had her full attention.
“Both,” he said.
“Omnimancer ...”
“I am trying to separate you, but it’s not just because he’s hoping to dig up dirt on me.”
This prompted a snort. “You’re looking out for my well-being, are you?”
“What has he told you he does for the Army?” he said, stopping for a red light.
She shifted in her seat. Uncomfortably, if he wasn’t mistaken. “He said he solves problems. He couldn’t be more specific because it’s classified.”
“Army wizards who don’t work as battlefield medics are either researchers or covert agents specializing in spying, assassinations and sabotage. Which do you think he is?”
“Oh, come on.”
“It’s the truth,” he insisted.
She stared out her window. “I can’t believe you.”
If all he had to go on were her words, he would have pegged her as angry. But what he sensed instead was sharp disappointment. Not, he suspected, aimed at Garrett.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he said, “Can you feel my emotions?”
She whipped her head around to look at him. “What?”
“I discovered today that I can feel yours, if they’re powerful enough. I knew something was wrong before you knocked on my door. I just didn’t cotton on to the fact that it was your emotion until you showed up.”
She said nothing. The light turned green. He traveled three blocks and found he couldn’t take the suspense. “Miss Harper—”
“I don’t know.” She sounded bone weary. “I don’t think so.”
The regret this prompted was so odd that he assumed it was her discontent with the situation slopping over to him. Then he examined it more closely and realized some part of him really was sorry the link didn’t go both ways, though he couldn’t begin to explain why.
“Wait ... Are you often”—she hesitated—“afraid?”
His breath caught in his throat. “Yes,” he admitted.
“Why?”
He felt a rushing desire for her to know. That was surely her feeling. “I don’t—”
“You don’t trust me,” she said—no anger there, just resignation. “I know.”
“I was going to say that I don’t think you want to add your own fear to what you’re getting from me secondhand.”
She was staring at him again. He made himself keep his eyes on the nearly empty road.
“I hear you setting off explosions overhead every day,” she said. “Whatever is going on can’t be worse than what I’ve been imagining.”
He held back a bitter laugh.
“Omnimancer …”
“No.”
She sighed. “All right. At least now I know I’m not as afraid of you as I thought. I’m also afraid because of you.”
He doubted very much that she was afraid of anything, this woman who fought with him, demanded his help, charged invisibly into the lion’s den for evidence and then negotiated media coverage, all in one day.
Perhaps it was exasperation, perhaps hurt, but his response shot out more sharply than he’d intended: “There’s no reason to be frightened of me. ”
She did not hold in her bitter laugh.
“What happened to believing I mean you no harm?” he asked.
“Meaning no harm is not the same as doing none.”
He couldn’t refute that. It was, so far as he could tell, the reason his Vow hadn’t required him to help her—he had no ill intent. Not even uncharitable thoughts, unlike when the Vow had forced his hand.
As if she’d read his mind, she said: “I am in your debt for your assistance tonight, I know that, but we have no privacy while we’re asleep and less than we ought while we’re awake. And you once summoned me without meaning to do it.”
He tried to think of something to say to that, but she wasn’t done.
“I live in a constant state of apprehension,” she said, a quiet statement of fact. “You could order me to do anything, consciously or not.”
He hesitated on the brink of a decision for miles, as the landscape around Route 40 turned from rowhomes to modest houses and finally to farmland. At the edge of Ellicott Mills, he leapt into the abyss.
“I’ll rewrite the contract.”
She gasped.
“It will cover exactly what I need you to do, nothing more,” he said. “If we put that into effect and destroy the original, our dreams and feelings might go back to being ours alone.”
“Right now?” Her words tumbled out, clipped, taut. “You’ll do this right now?”
If their positions were reversed, he wouldn’t let her sleep on it, either. “Yes. Immediately.”
Once in the house, Peter retrieved the contract from its hiding place in his bedroom—pausing to steady himself against the bed, so intense were the feelings radiating from his chest. Joy, relief, anticipation. The best he’d felt in months, and it was entirely secondhand.
He was tempted to linger so he could savor it for just a bit longer. But he made himself turn around and walk down the stairs.
Miss Harper was already in the brewing room, setting up the demarcation circles. She removed pips from a pomegranate as he wrote up the replacement:
I, Beatrix Jane Harper, swear to assist Peter William Blackwell to the best of my abilities and to do him no harm.
Unless he gives permission, I swear to cast no spells in anyone else’s presence or outside this house; to in no way communicate about any of his activities or anything occurring inside this house, beyond saying I am helping him with the non-magical aspects of brewing; to take nothing from this house, either the original or a duplicate; and to communicate nothing that would suggest anything unusual or untoward is happening here.