Chapter 26
Blackwell stared at her. Beatrix could well imagine his line of thought: What have I gotten myself into?
“I’ll require Vows,” he said.
She leapt to her feet, appalled.
“Limited to keeping the secret,” he added, looking up at her.
“Why would they say anything? They’d be thrown into jail for breaking the magic-use law! Good Lord, you’re a—”
She stopped, pressing the tips of her fingers against trembling lips. She needed his help, it was absolutely a matter of life and death, and his life would be far simpler if he didn’t give it. Now was not the time.
“What?” There was nothing aggressive about his question, but he stood, putting them a foot apart and giving her yet another shot of adrenaline. “What am I?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. His brown eyes were flecked with green. She’d never noticed. “I don’t know anymore. But you’re proposing something every bit as unnecessary as it was in my case.”
An ambiguous emotion twinged unpleasantly in her chest, and he winced. Was that his guilt she was feeling?
“Just because you don’t intend to reveal something doesn’t mean you won’t, once you’re faced with the threat of prison,” he said.
“A Vow supersedes all that. Besides, other than your sister, how sure are you that you can trust those women? You need them to take Vows. They know something very dangerous about you.”
Her stomach lurched. He was right. If Ella really was a spy, despite it all—
But the idea of standing by while Ella and the others chanted a dark spell and gave away a piece of their free will made her sick.
She hesitated, trying to think of another way.
“All right,” she said finally, forcing the words out.
“It’s going to be up to you to get them to do it, you realize.”
“Oh, God.”
“Try persuasion.” He looked at her for perhaps the space of a dozen rapid heartbeats before adding, “I wish I had.”
It was the closest he’d come to apologizing. She swallowed, throat dry. He laid a hand on her arm, a tentative barely-there connection—and a hammering at the door brought the moment to an abrupt end.
“Enough already!” Rosemarie, of course. “Open up!”
Beatrix rushed for the door, equally upset and relieved by the interruption. She wanted to know what he would have said. She wanted to keep standing there as he touched her. And she was completely disgusted with herself for it.
Focus. She needed to focus.
“Well?” Rosemarie’s voice betrayed the same level of strain she herself felt. “What are we to do?”
Beatrix closed the door behind Meg, the last one through, and said a quick prayer that she could be half as persuasive as Lydia. “I’ve asked Omnimancer Blackwell to teach us how to cast protection spells—”
“What?” Rosemarie said.
“—and he has very kindly agreed,” Beatrix said, thinking this an unpromising beginning.
Ella’s eyes were wide. “You believe we’re all capable, then. You think we all can do magic.”
“We can’t do magic,” Rosemarie exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “This would ruin Lydia if word ever got out—never mind the fact that we’d all be sent to prison! It’s bad enough that you’re using it, Beatrix. What were you thinking, getting involved in such a thing?”
Ella pushed in before Beatrix could figure out how to defend herself. “Do you want Lydia dead? This is the only way to defend her.”
“Says the woman responsible for her close call!”
“I wasn’t! How on earth am I supposed to prove to you that I—” Ella came to an abrupt stop, breathing hard. She turned to Beatrix. “I want to take a Vow.”
“As a matter of fact,” Beatrix said, knowing an opportunity when it danced a jig around her, “I think everyone should take one. Vow to do no harm to Lydia and say nothing about the magic we’re about to learn.”
“This is a terrible idea,” Rosemarie said.
Ella glanced at Lydia, eyebrows raised. “Maybe she’s the saboteur—have you ever thought of that?”
“Stop it, both of you!” Lydia snapped. “We can’t afford to fight.” To Beatrix she added, “Is the Vow really as powerful as Ella says? You have to do what you say you will?”
“Yes,” Beatrix said, and she must have put more emotion into the word than she’d intended because Ella gave her a searching look.
“Well—that’s the only way, then.” Lydia was beginning to sound more like herself, the general marshaling the troops. “We all take a Vow, and there’s no reason to wonder whether one of us is undermining the effort. Are we agreed?”
“Absolutely and completely,” Ella said. Meg, slumped in the chair in the corner of the room, made no objection—audible, at least. Beatrix turned to Rosemarie, the most likely source of objections, in time to see her shake her head.
“All of us but Lydia,” Rosemarie said. “She’s not to learn magic at all.
The rest of us will make sure she’s never alone so we can protect her,” she added, raising her voice as both Beatrix and Ella tried to cut in.
“But at least she won’t be tainted. And I want it in the Vow that if it ever comes out what we’ve done, we’ll say Lydia had no idea. ”
Beatrix stared at her. “You don’t really believe magic is evil, do you?”
“The point is that a substantial part of the League believes it, and I don’t want her even in secret doing something her membership would find abhorrent.”
Always the strategist. Biting back the urge to shout, Beatrix said, “Given a choice between safety and political expediency—”
“No, she’s right,” her sister said.
“Lydia,” she pleaded, grasping her sister’s hand with both of hers, “this is deadly serious.”
“I know.” Lydia’s laugh had a tinge of hysteria to it. “Believe me, I know. That’s why we must succeed.”
Beatrix closed her eyes as Lydia, squeezing her hand, pulled back. She couldn’t lose her sister. Not her, too.
The room was ominously silent. After a moment, Ella cleared her throat. “Vows, then?”
Blackwell handed Beatrix a pad of hotel stationary and a pen. Swallowing hard, she began writing a contract that echoed both her own and his.
“How about this,” she said. “‘I’—and then your name—‘swear I will take no actions to harm Lydia Josephine Harper in any way or to harm her efforts on behalf of women’s rights. I further swear that I will protect her to the utmost of my abilities. Related to that, I swear I will in no way communicate to anyone other than’—and here we’ll name the rest of us—‘about our use of magic, how we learned it or Peter William Blackwell’s involvement.
I finally swear if it becomes known that League members are practicing magic, I will attest that it was done solely for the protection of Lydia Josephine Harper, without her knowledge or consent. ’”
“Please tell me we won’t have to repeat all that,” Ella said, perfectly deadpan, almost managing to make her laugh.
“No, you just have to sign it—and cast the incantation,” Blackwell said. “But the Vow does have to be to someone. And it obviously can’t be to the woman you’re claiming isn’t a party to this agreement.”
“I’m not Vowing to you,” Ella said, quietly but with such an insulting edge that Beatrix winced.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “You can Vow to Miss Harper.”
She wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse.
“All right?” Blackwell looked at all of them in turn. “OK. Miss Harper, if you’ll take care of the contracts, I’ll fetch a pomegranate.”
He cast the invisibility spell again—a wizard in Baltimore was only slightly less remarkable than one in Ellicott Mills—and slipped out. As soon as the door clicked shut, Ella put a hand on Beatrix’s arm. “What did he make you Vow?”
Beatrix snorted. “I can’t very well tell you, can I? Ask him.”
“Oh, I will.”
She didn’t doubt it, given Ella’s grim look. What would it take to induce him to tell the truth, though?
“Can you at least explain why you’re confident we’ll be able to spellcast?” Ella said.
“I—” Beatrix began, and that was as far as she got.
“Sorry.” Ella patted her on the back as the coughing set in. “Let’s get that wizard to loosen the reins a bit, or I’ll forever be making you choke.”
Beatrix had just finished copying out the last of the three contracts when the door opened—seemingly by itself—and Blackwell reappeared. He held a pomegranate quarter.
“How did you find one so quickly?” she asked.
“Lifted it from the kitchen. Figured I might as well add a misdemeanor to my running list of charges.”
Thank you seemed so wholly inadequate that she ended up saying nothing at all.
Blackwell handed over his demarcation stones and she kneeled to create interlocking circles, the symbol setting off her fight-or-flight reflexes. She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths, and opened them to find Ella waiting nearby. Contract in hand. Practically vibrating with anticipation.
“I’ll go first,” Ella said. “Step into one circle, eat the pips, cast the spellword?”
“Spell, then pips,” Blackwell said. “The incantation is Ic gehāte.”
Ella practiced the phrase. Then she jumped—jumped!—into the closest circle. “Shall we?”
Blackwell handed leaves to Ella and held out the pips to Beatrix as she stepped, feet leaden, into the other circle. Their fingers brushed as she took them, touching off a reaction down her arm and spine that felt almost like casting a spell.
No one said anything for a charged moment. Then he launched into a near-replica of the lesson he’d given her, four weeks and a lifetime ago—arm positions and mental discipline and exactly how to hold the leaf. She shivered. She hadn’t done any of that on the Schoen lot. She’d simply ... traveled.
Ella drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches. She put out her hand. “Ic gehāte!”
The contract glowed. Someone gasped.
Beatrix gave the pips to her, mechanically, and watched as she swallowed them with unmistakable joy.
“Oh dear Lord,” Ella said, throwing her arms around Beatrix. “This is better than architecture.”