Chapter 27 #2
“Oh, Lord.” Lydia Harper covered her face with her hands and laughed a bit more than the situation would have called for, if the situation hadn’t involved a recent attempt on her life.
“Nevertheless—” Miss Knight put in.
“You’re not wrong that I was upset with Omnimancer Blackwell,” Miss Harper said to her friend. “Extremely upset. But it’s true that all he wants is for me to assist him.”
He suppressed a sigh. It was all he would ask for, but not all he wanted—not anymore.
“Be that as it may,” Miss Knight said, leveling her gaze at him, “I still want to look at the contracts tonight, so there’s no question I’m seeing the real thing.
We know what we Vowed, but we only have your word for what you Vowed—and the word of someone under a Vow to you,” she added, as he started to object.
“Sorry, Beatrix. It’s not that I don’t want to believe you. ”
Miss Harper winced. “Only fair.”
“Besides, someone needs to stop by the house and get everyone a change of clothes for tomorrow,” Miss Knight said. “So, Omnimancer: Do you intend to uphold your promise?”
He crossed his arms. “Yes. And then you’ll see that nothing in my Vow required me to lift a finger today.”
“I’m so glad you did,” Lydia Harper said. “But—why?”
He glanced at Miss Harper—his Miss Harper, who was of course not his—before he could stop himself. He forced his gaze back to her sister, hoping he hadn’t just given himself away.
“I had an inkling that Washington might resort to violence,” he said. “And just for the record, I agree with every word of your speech.”
“You—a wizard—think wizards should be drummed out of public office,” she said, a disbelieving note creeping in.
“These wizards. That’s the least of what some of them deserve.”
This seemed to satisfy her. It was, after all, the truth, if not the whole of it.
But when he risked another glance at Miss Harper, he caught her looking at him, face pinched with apprehension, for the half-second before she averted her eyes and smoothed her expression into a calm blank.
And he sensed enough of her roiling emotions—distrust, uncertainty, distress—to know that simple fear for her sister wasn’t the cause.
What had he said?
She took her friend’s arm. “I suppose we should go now, if we’re going.” Without quite looking at him, she added, “We’ll drop you off at your car, Omnimancer.”
Asking her what was wrong—in front of everyone—seemed like a fool’s errand. So he followed the women out of the bathroom and took her conversational cue. “Bring the new contracts. I’ll hide them with the other two—we can’t afford to have anyone find them.”
Miss Harper nodded, but Miss Knight put up a warning hand. “I’m only handing Beatrix’s over if I’m satisfied with what I see. Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me that you could destroy it anytime you like.”
The ride back to his car was predictably tense. He sat in the rear seat, invisible again, and wondered whether they would get all the way to the Key Hotel without any of them saying a word.
Miss Knight broke the silence just as the building came into view. “We ought to call the press. Right now. Get them back on site.”
“Oh, crud, yes,” Miss Harper said. “There’s no time to lose if we want to catch Helen Hickok before she leaves for the night.”
He had a very different opinion on the matter, but Miss Knight would see only nefarious intent if he offered it. Instead, he said, “We can’t very well walk into the Key and ask to use their phone.”
“There’s a payphone,” Miss Knight said, gesturing at it as Miss Harper slowed for the turn into the parking lot.
This was a bad idea. The reporter might believe it—might—but he doubted that most of her readers would.
They would chalk it up to an accident. What Miss Harper had in this case, unlike the film, was circumstantial evidence.
And he wasn’t about to expose his involvement by stepping up as an expert witness.
“Wait,” Miss Harper said, drawing the syllable out, turning the word into an uncertain sound. Had his doubt bled over to her? “Omnimancer ... You are sure someone cast a spell just before the crane arm fell, aren’t you?”
He hesitated. But he didn’t want to lie to her. “Yes.”
“We don’t absolutely know it was cast on the crane, though,” she said, parking the car. “Could we check for magical residue, just to be certain?”
Miss Knight looked up with a start. “There’s a spell for that?” Apparently her magical knowledge did have limits—but then, up until a few weeks ago he hadn’t known about the spell, either.
“Officially, there isn’t,” he said. “If you ask a wizard to cast it, he’ll say it’s impossible.”
Miss Knight snorted. “Including you?”
“Absolutely, if you ask me in public. I’m not supposed to know it exists.”
“Let’s go,” Miss Harper said, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder, forestalling an argument.
“I won’t feel easy telling Hickok what happened unless we’re sure, completely sure, because even with the proof lying all over the ground, it’s going to sound unbelievable.
Especially since we don’t have any witnesses that aren’t in the League.
Well—any witnesses in a position to come forward. ”
They piled out of the car and crossed Key Highway after Peter cast an invisibility spell on both women, just in case. The lack of observable life on the manufacturer’s property did not guarantee they were alone.
“I feel terrible about the damage,” Miss Harper whispered. “I know it wasn’t our fault, but it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t there. And Schoen’s charged us next to nothing.”
Miss Knight sucked in a breath. “Beatrix—I think it’s gone.”
They covered the distance at a run. Nothing lay where lot gave way to piers, not even broken bits of metal. Peter stared at the unmarred cranes towering over them, trying to remember how many Schoen’s had started with.
“So much for the evidence,” the disembodied voice of Miss Harper murmured from somewhere a few feet to his left.
“Bastards.” Miss Knight—of course.
No need to cast the spell now. No proof, no press. And if any other wizards were still here, equally invisible, he shouldn’t want to give them a blazing clue that another magic-user was poking around.
He gazed at the cranes. Then he fumbled in pockets he couldn’t see until he found his demarcation stones, because—like Miss Harper—he wanted to be certain.
He laid them around the cranes, casting another chameleon spell for safety’s sake before uttering the spellwords.
Bingo. The crane closest to the pier lit up with a lattice of white along the horizontal jib, the long arm that had nearly flattened Miss Harper’s sister—and Miss Harper.
It looked as if it had been fractured in a hundred places.
The wizard who handled the patch-up job probably needed half an hour to set it right.
Miss Harper sighed. “Good for Schoen’s, at least.”
A snort. Miss Knight, who added: “Too bad we can’t tell who cast that spell on the crane.”
A curse slipped off his tongue before he could stop it, not that these women would much care about his lack of decorum. He reached out until he connected with Miss Harper’s arm, then leaned in and whispered: “I can—I just didn’t think of it before. Now it might be too late.”
He murmured the identification spell. Burnt bits of leaf swirled from his hand and into the usual miniature twister, turning once, twice, three times. But no face formed. The leaf dust lost cohesion and floated to the ground.
He groaned.
“It’s all right.” Miss Harper paused. “I’m—I’m not sure I really want to know, if you see what I mean.”
He did see. But he wanted to know.
Beatrix pulled onto Route 40, losing sight of Blackwell’s Pierce-Arrow and the traffic light he was stopped at behind them, and tried to come up with something to say to her best friend. Sorry I thought you were a spy? Ella sat shotgun with her eyes on the road, saying nothing.
“Ella …”
She shifted in her seat. “Yes?”
Suddenly a siren went off—loud, close. In the lane next to theirs was a black sedan, unmarked, with a man in a suit gesturing at Beatrix to pull over.
Oh no.
She stopped on the shoulder, overworked heart zipping to top speed yet again as terrible possibilities suggested themselves. She glanced at Ella as the sedan came to a halt in front of them. Ella looked back, eyes wide.
“Wizard?” she asked.
“I—I don’t know,” Beatrix said. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”
He stepped out of his car, revealing a long, dark coat. But as he walked under a street lamp, the light showed his hair was blond, not silver, cut short.
“Not a wizard,” Beatrix whispered, the hard knot in her stomach unrelieved.
Ella gripped her hand and put her fear into words: “Could be FBI.”
Beatrix rolled down her window as the man arrived at their car, and he leaned in, frowning at them both. “ID, please.”
“Is anything the matter?” Beatrix said, reaching for the expected words from an innocent person.
“ID,” he snapped.
Beatrix handed over her driver’s license and Ella’s state-issued identification card, trying to arrange her face into an expression that resembled puzzlement.
He looked at the cards. Then he said, “Do you ladies have any idea what time it is?”
Beatrix could do nothing but stare at him, now honestly befuddled.
“Five minutes after nine,” Ella said.
“At night,” he said.
There was a brief silence as they waited, fruitlessly, for him to go on.
“Yes,” Beatrix said. “It is indeed night. Is there anything—”
“Do you consider it appropriate to be out this late in a city neither of you live in?”
Oh. She nearly laughed. It was that sort of stop.
Thank God.
“We’re on our way home, officer,” she said.
He leveled a disbelieving stare at her. “I’d like to search this car.”
Ella made a noise that sounded like the precursor to a protest. Beatrix hurriedly said, “Certainly, sir, if you’ll just show me your identification.”
The man produced a Baltimore Police Department badge and ID. “Get out.”