Chapter 32
The knock was tentative. Heart kicking up, Peter walked across the attic and opened the door.
“I just finished for the day,” Beatrix said. “Could I … come in?”
“Please,” he said, feeling pathetically grateful that she had not changed her mind since the previous evening.
She stopped in the middle of the room, looking around. “I’ve been wondering: Why didn’t you soundproof this place? Keep me from hearing the explosions and thinking … what I thought?”
“Because I wanted you to hear me if I had to call for help.”
She shivered. After all the explosions she’d seen through his eyes, he knew she could well imagine what might go wrong.
“Here,” he added, handing over his notebook—his record of failure.
She read it, frowning thoughtfully. “You’re looking for the magic words.”
“Yes.”
“Why not take the strongest protective spell—beorgan?—and bulk that up with runes and other paraphernalia?”
“Researchers have tried.” He brushed a rogue bit of hair behind his ear. “The results fall so far short, I was sure I needed to come up with something stronger as a foundation.”
“Something revolutionary.”
“Yes.”
She hummed under her breath. “What about the power of three?”
“It doesn’t add that much kick to protective spells.”
“I suppose it doesn’t add anything to explosive spells, or you would have been casting them in trios.”
He nodded. “There seems to be no power-of-three effect for destruction. Thank God.”
“How about trying a language other than Old English?”
“That’s not my area of expertise, but the language specialists insist it’s better than anything else—beats the heck out of Greek and Latin. The entire European continent uses it.”
She sighed. “Well, it wasn’t likely that I’d think of anything you didn’t, but I’ll keep trying. Why don’t you continue where you left off?”
He worked down his list of new ideas on an over-the-hill apple, getting nowhere as usual, eyes stinging. After a while, she interrupted with a cautious, “Omnimancer …”
His heart twisted. “Don’t call me that,” he said quietly. “Please.”
“Peter,” she amended, eyes on the apple rather than on him. “If the Army wants a big explosion, what would stop them from laying down a bunch of payload stones in the right proximity to each other?”
“It doesn’t work. You can’t connect more than one payload stone to the transmitter at a time, and when we tried two that were each attached to a separate transmitter …
” He shrugged. “It’s a type of interference.
The spells are on the same magical wavelength, and they cancel each other out.
Even when we tried to set them off miles apart. ”
She nodded, clearly relieved. Then another unsettling thought hit her—he could feel her anxiety before the words rushed out: “If they discover you sabotaged the weapon ...”
“They’ll execute me.”
“Do they suspect?”
He shrugged. “The spells shouldn’t have begun degrading yet. I think Garrett was assigned to poke his nose around here simply because quitting an important job for one with no salary or prospects looked odd.”
“Yes, so why did you?”
“I could at least justify coming home. And I knew the town would throw a fit if the Pentagram took their omnimancer away. I needed to make it harder to conveniently disappear me.”
She nodded, biting her lip in that way she had while thinking. “Are you sure a protection spell could work? Do the transmitter spells travel to the payload like a lit fuse, or are they just ... there?”
“Once that initial ninety-second delay ends, you mean? They travel—at close distances it’s nearly too fast to tell, but it does mean a strong enough wall of protection should stop them from getting to the payload.
The problem is, the force of the spellwork is so overwhelming that it destroys a beorgan shield instantly and keeps going. ”
She shuddered.
“We did try to find a way to capitalize on quantum entanglement theory so it would simply be ‘there,’ but we had no luck—there’s a mercy,” he added.
“I’ve never heard of quantum entanglement. What is it?”
“Subatomic sorcery—figuratively speaking.” He held up both pointer fingers at arm’s length. “Two entangled particles have a bizarre connection: However far apart they are, what happens to one”—he jerked his left hand up, then his right—“affects the other.”
She made a rueful sound. Even without asking, he knew what she was thinking.
Like us.
Their coupling in dreamside that night was fast and just short of violent. He grasped her hips so hard she could feel his fingers imprinting on her skin. She bruised his lips and scratched his back.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she gasped, falling back onto the pillows, her body twitching with aftershocks. “Don’t leave me.”
He traced the line of her jaw. “I thought you’d be relieved.”
“I am contractually obligated to feel otherwise.”
“Beatrix,” he said, eyes downcast, “I am so wretchedly sorry. I swear to God I never meant this to happen.”
“I know.” She cupped his face, breathing in his scent. “It’s not an accusation. It’s a reminder that I’m the addict and you’re the drug.”
He rested his forehead on hers.
“To me,” he said, “it feels like the other way around.”
“Maybe a protection spell is going about it from the wrong angle.”
Peter, crossing out yet another failed variant, looked up at her. “Oh?”
“What about a spell that would set off an alarm if someone arrives with a payload stone? A bit like your early-warning system,” she said, lifting the charmed necklace from under her blouse.
He stared at her.
“I’m sure you thought of that already,” she added, embarrassed she brought it up.
“No, damn it—I didn’t, and I feel like an idiot.”
She stepped closer, clasping her hands to keep them from shaking. “Do you think it’s possible?”
He paced around the room for a while, clearly puzzling it through.
Finally he said, “Our charms pick up spells at the moment of casting because there’s something to pick up on—that temporary pop of energy you’d be able to measure with an incantometer if you happened to be there.
I’ve no idea if there’s anything about the stones we could use as handholds.
If runes have a magical signature, it’s not one the incantometer recognizes. ”
He stopped in front of her and added, “But that’s what experimentation is for. Brilliant idea, Beatrix—truly.”
She knew intellectually that what she felt for this man was a fabrication, and for her own sanity she had to fight against it while awake and in possession of all her faculties. But unlike the payloads, she wasn’t made of stone.
She took a step backward to give herself more space. “What—ah—what time is it?”
He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “Seven. I’m sorry, I’ve made you late for dinner three nights in a row.”
“It’s all right.” She smiled, turned, retreated.
When she arrived home, it was to an empty kitchen. She spooned lukewarm vegetables onto her plate—oh, for a bit of meat—and was about to pour herself a glass of water when Ella walked in.
“So,” her friend said, leaning against the table. “How’s the learning-your-lesson going? As if I couldn’t tell.”
“Lesson completely learned. I’ve been working. Just working.”
No one—not even Rosemarie—did skeptical looks like Ella.
“Honestly.” Beatrix lowered her voice. “No declarations of eternal love. No kissing. No touching. Nothing.”
While awake. She didn’t add that part.
“It’s bad enough that you’re working together every day, alone,” Ella said. “If you keep spending extra time with the man, you’re going to crack.”
“I’m stronger than you think.”
Ella’s snorts were also quite expressive.
“No—listen,” Beatrix said, leaning toward her. “I realized after we talked that the feelings I developed for him aren’t mine. I Vowed to do him no harm. Magic is trying to engineer a warped happily ever after for his benefit.”
“Oh, God!”
“Shhh! But I had it out with him last week. He’s just as horrified as I am.”
“No doubt,” Ella said, scowling.
She scowled back. “He’s not acting on his attraction to me, and if you think I’d act on ‘mine’ for him, fully aware it’s been foisted on me like—like a blasted corset, then you really don’t know me, Ella Knight.”
Ella looked at her with a mournful sort of affection, shaking her head. “I know you. I know that when you put your mind to something, nothing will stop you. But sweet mother of God, why doesn’t he destroy the contract?”
“He tried. We can’t do it. It’s fused somehow with my Vows to him, and we can’t even destroy all three contracts.”
Ella’s mouth worked open and closed. She choked out, “You’re stuck with him? ’Til death do you part?”
“Yes. How did you know—”
Ella waved that off. “Bethesda, remember? Beatrix ... this is ghastly.”
“Yes.” She separated the carrots and potatoes on her plate to give her something to do with her hands.
“But it’s less ghastly than the feds targeting Lydia or the way we’re all so casually treated as inferior to men or—or any number of things,” she said, town-sized explosions replaying in her memory.
Ella came around the table and pulled her into a fierce hug. “What can I do? Anything—name it.”
“Thank you.” She wiped at suddenly wet eyes. “I’m managing. Just ... promise you won’t tell anyone. Especially Lydia.”
Her friend hesitated.
“Ella—”
“I won’t. I promise. I just think you should tell Lydia.”
She suppressed a laugh at the idea of that conversation. Hardly the time to start communicating. Besides: “She has too much to worry about already. No need to add my troubles, too.”
Ella sighed. But she didn’t argue.
Beatrix spent Saturday morning catching up on house cleaning and the early afternoon mending stockings. Then she slipped out the back door to continue where she’d left off with Peter.
Rosemarie, harvesting beets in the garden, straightened and gave her that long-practiced look. The one for wayward children. “Where are you going?”