Chapter 24 #3
“Wife’ll be wondering where I got to,” another man muttered.
“Yeah, show’s over,” said the burly man who had encouraged Gossard to sing and leered at Lydia. “Who’s up for a beer?”
When half the crowd seemed content to stay put, Beatrix found paper and pens and called out, “If you’d like to support our efforts, write your name and address here.
” And that worked like a charm. Dozens used that as their cue to leave.
The ones who wanted to help stayed just long enough to scribble their information.
“That was nerve-wracking,” Blackwell muttered invisibly near her. “I’m going to go keep an eye on the ballot box.”
“Bless you,” Beatrix said.
She tried to think how she could even the scales until recollecting that he had a lot of scale-balancing to do himself.
This was followed by a moment of wondering whether he wanted to make her feel beholden to him for some nefarious purpose.
Then her mind turned back to her dream and how that had made her feel.
She had to stop thinking.
She darted back into the tent with an eye toward getting Lydia to eat something, but her sister was laughing with the Hazelhurst alums about a professor who would not accept type-written papers with so much as a single drop of correction fluid.
Lydia seemed so at home with these women—so much more comfortable with them than with her.
And for the first time, it occurred to Beatrix that Rosemarie, however influential, might not have been the reason for the awkward distance she felt between her and her sister.
College divided them. Lydia, who once looked up to her and peppered her with questions about everything, was now better educated than she was. Which was exactly what she’d wanted for Lydia, but by sending her to Hazelhurst, had she relegated them to lives lived at arm’s length?
Her sister pulled a former classmate in for a tight hug. Heart constricting, Beatrix turned away—and nearly smacked into Ella.
Speaking of ruined relationships.
“I talked to Meg.” Ella’s voice had a flat quality. “She said someone passed you a film yesterday that proved wizards switched the contracts.”
“Yes, I—”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I hardly slept last night, thinking everyone would blame it on Lydia! And today—you never once thought I’d like to know?”
Beatrix tried to answer this perfectly reasonable complaint and faltered.
“Oh,” Ella said, an octave too high. Her face crumpled. She took Beatrix’s arm and pulled her just beyond the tent, away from the tables of women who still had not voted. “You think … You think I’m the traitor.”
“Ella—”
“Because I was the last one with the invitations?” Ella dropped her voice to a whisper. “I swear I delivered everything I got to the post office. Anyone at the meeting that night could have grabbed a handful from the box.”
“I know. I know.”
“Then—what is it? What do you think I did?”
Beatrix swallowed, throat dry. “Whoever stole the contract and replaced it with the one that had the wrong dates knew where we kept the lockbox and key. And had access to them.”
“I didn’t—I never—” Ella was nearly hyperventilating.
“Please believe me! I didn’t take the contract.
I didn’t even see it. There’s nothing more important to me than what Lydia is trying to accomplish, and there’s no one whose good opinion is more important to me than yours.
” A tear ran down her cheek. “Beatrix—please.”
Beatrix desperately wanted to assure her that of course she believed her.
But the timing of Ella’s arrival in Ellicott Mills was troubling.
Her effort to get Evelyn Becker out of the house last month so she could move in seemed in a certain light to be rather sinister.
Her suggestion that someone in the League was collaborating with wizards could have been a clever diversion.
And she’d been perfectly placed to sabotage the invitations, switch the contracts and inform on their decisions.
Certainly Rosemarie and Lydia had made up their minds. Tears welled in her own eyes.
“You’re thinking I would say these exact things if I were the traitor.” Ella wiped her face and smiled a miserable, tight smile. “I can’t blame you. But oh, God, I thought you knew me better than that.”
Did she know her at all? That was the question. But she couldn’t ask it.
Ella turned away. “I’ll go sit in the bus. No harm I could do there.”
Beatrix stood where Ella left her, feeling ill and disconnected, as the last of the state chapter presidents and vice presidents finally cast their ballots.
All looked grim. Only one of the stragglers would talk to Hickok, who was working the room for quotes as the News-Register’s columnist stared with distaste at his punch.
Rosemarie cleared her throat. “Lydia, Mrs. Gossard—if you would both like to watch while we count ...”
Her sister had to be beside herself with the suspense. Beatrix tried to imagine four more years of helping Lydia angle for this job, four more years of meetings and organizing and politics. Dear God.
But what awaited them if Lydia won would surely make the tribulations with this conference seem like a stroll in the forest.
And either way, there would be no Ella to make it more bearable.
She worked her way to the front of the tent and listened as Rosemarie and Gossard’s right-hand woman, Eleanor Menendez, murmured over the ballots. “Gossard ... Harper ... Gossard ... Gossard ... Harper ...”
She quickly lost track. But it was obviously going to be close.
After the women finished counting, they did it over again, then a third time. She couldn’t see Lydia’s face—or Gossard’s, for that matter—but both were stiff-backed and white-knuckled.
So was she. She didn’t know if she wanted her sister to win.
“Attention, everyone.” Rosemarie, as unreadable as a poker player. “Mrs. Menendez, will you do the honors?”
Menendez turned, and Beatrix knew—knew by the expression on her face.
“Mrs. Gossard received forty-seven votes,” Menendez said, choking over the words. “Miss Harper, forty-nine. Congratulations, Miss Harper.”
The Hazelhurst women jumped to their feet, cheering, hugging, crying.
Lydia shook hands with Gossard, both of them going through the motions, looking equally shocked.
And then Beatrix had no time to think, because she had to hustle the out-of-town leaders onto the buses (none of which contained Ella, who must have slipped out when she saw the crowd coming) and oversee the workers sent to pick up the rented items.
When all that was done, she found a quiet spot to stand by herself in the almost-darkness as Rosemarie saw the caterers off and Meg carried a bag of odds and ends to their car, the lone one left in the lot.
She wished she could simply be happy for her sister.
She was so proud of her—fiercely—and so very tired of this, even before it had cost her Ella. It would never stop. And at every step, they would have to make out the invisible hand of meddling wizards before it was too late.
“Well done,” said the invisible wizard who had been meddling on their behalf.
“Thank you.” She rubbed her eyes. “Truly—thank you very much for everything.”
“You don’t sound happy,” Blackwell said.
“I am,” she protested, then decided to be honest with him. She owed him that, after all he’d done—and he couldn’t use anything she told him about Lydia against them, anyway. “No, you’re right. I’m not. I don’t think I’m up to the challenge she’s setting.”
His snort was soft but audible. “You found this site and got a tent, a bunch of tables, dozens of seats and two portable toilets here, all within—what, four hours?”
“Four-and-a-half.”
“Miss Harper—you can do anything.”
She smiled at the air where she knew he was standing. Then she sighed. “But perhaps I don’t want to do anything more.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well—I understand that feeling perfectly.”
“You’ve been in my situation?”
“Yes.”
A feeling that was close to hope zipped through her, starting in her toes and ending in her throat, making it hard to respond. With effort, she whispered, “What did you do?”
“Kept going. There really was no other choice.”
She looked for something calming to focus on and found a bit of unexpected beauty—the lights from across the harbor’s basin setting the water aglow and throwing the heavy equipment into silhouette. Lydia stood with her back to them at the water’s edge, no doubt planning her next dozen moves.
The last of the caterers drove off. They could finally go home. But her legs felt like lead, and she couldn’t summon the energy to move.
Blackwell shifted, gravel rolling from the spot where she assumed his boot had connected with it. “It would have been easier if she’d lost, then?”
“One assumes Washington would have taken less of an active interest in us. At least for a while.”
“Wish I’d known that before I rigged the vote.”
She opened her mouth, horrified, but his muffled laughter gave him away before she could say a word.
“I’m joking,” he said. “I promise.”
Omnimancer Blackwell, comedian. She very nearly elbowed him—as if he were a friend. As if he were Ella.
Who was not, apparently, a friend after all.
“No one else tampered with the ballots either,” he added. “There hasn’t been a spell cast since I arrived that wasn’t mine.”
“I’m so glad you were here.” She cleared her throat, trying to sound a bit less like she was about to cry. “Thank you.”
“Any—” He broke off, hissing in pain.
She put out a hand. She wished she could see him. “What’s wrong?”
“Magic.” The word burst out, strained and urgent. “Somebody just did magic.”
Lydia—where was Lydia? To her relief, her sister was still beside the water, perfectly fine.
Then the massive arm of the hulking crane above Lydia detached with a metallic screech, plummeting toward the ground—and her.