Chapter 32 #3
Beatrix put her arms awkwardly around the woman, hoping the gesture would not be unwelcome. “We can help. We’ve got anti-nausea medicine already brewed—I can send you home with a bottle. And the sleeping draft is safe in moderation for expectant mothers. Um—when are you due?”
“The end of January.” Mrs. Clark’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. We can’t make ends meet as it is. Daniel tries, he really does, but—four children, heaven above. Four. We thought we’d have one.”
Beatrix felt utterly unequal to this task. What could she say, except unhelpful platitudes?
“I tried to be so careful this time.” Tears leaked from Mrs. Clark’s eyes.
“Charting my rhythms. Taking my temperature. Having Daniel—” She blushed.
“But you can’t keep asking that of a man.
You can’t go on a trip and then turn around and leave just before you get where you’re going. What was I supposed to do? What?”
Beatrix braced herself against Peter’s desk. “Other than black-market rubbers? I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to break the law.” Mrs. Clark’s sobs gave way to a frantic laugh. “Besides, I haven’t the slightest idea where to get them.”
Beatrix collected the brews and saw Mrs. Clark out with a month’s supply, wishing—like Mrs. Clark—that there was more she could do. She leaned against the door after recasting the shielding spell, feeling numb, and was still there a minute later when Peter emerged from the kitchen.
“I now know the story of Mr. Freelow’s bursitis well enough to recite it myself,” he said. “Full of drama and intrigue.”
She tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Who was at the door?”
“Mrs. Clark. She’s expecting again, to her dismay.”
He sat on a stair and sighed. “Better add an extra batch of the vitamin brew to the list—she’ll need it.”
“It makes me want to start crusading for the legalization of rubbers.”
“Please, one gigantic problem at a time. Remember what happened to Margaret Sanger.”
“True.” She bit her lip. “Any progress?”
“Where’s Miss Knight?” he asked in an undertone.
“Gone.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve made as much progress as I generally make at first, which is to say none at all. Runes are”—he grimaced—“extremely frustrating. We don’t really know why they work, you understand, just that they do. Impedes efforts to use them in new ways.”
“The effect you got seemed awfully new. What were you using, the ear rune?”
His laugh was utterly without humor. “Yes—but destruction is pretty much par for the course with that one. There’s a reason it’s nicknamed ‘the grave.’”
He put a hand in an interior pocket and came out with an example—inscribed on an alabaster-white stone.
“Peter!” Horror propelled her forward until only a foot separated her from the dangerous item in his palm. “You brought a payload stone here?”
“How else am I supposed to come up with a defense against it?”
“It could level the entire town!”
“It’s not connected to the transmitter I left the Pentagram with.” He paused. “It’s connected to the one I took.”
She backed up against the door, wrapping her arms around herself. “That’s here, too. Isn’t it.”
“Yes.”
She glared at him. “Where?”
“In the forest,” he said, slipping the stone back into its pocket. “Garrett almost found it here a few months ago—I had to get it out of the house.”
Her forest. Her beautiful forest.
“You surely aren’t planning to use it to detonate explosions here,” she said, meaning it as a statement, but it came out as a wavery question.
“Extremely small ones inside a soundproofed area. But there’s really no point until I develop a defense worth testing.” He glanced at her, a pleading look in his eyes. “I swear I won’t blow up Ellicott Mills. I keep the stone on me at all times.”
She lowered herself onto the step below him, resolutely not looking at him. “This is a complete and utter disaster, you know.”
“That thought runs through my head many times a day, I assure you.”
They sat silently for a stretch, Beatrix trying not to imagine a blast with a mile-and-a-half radius consuming nearly everyone she knew.
“What would you use to fuel these small explosions?” she asked finally. “Not—not living creatures.”
“God, no. Leaves. In that case, leaves will do.”
She shivered as she thought of his research. Of the dead man’s feet. “Are you certain about your theory that intelligence explains why people make such terribly effective fuel?”
“No,” he admitted. “It seems to explain why pigs proved the best of the barnyard animals, why primates were significantly better, etc., but I don’t see why brainpower should have anything to do with it.”
“And the actual size of the brain is irrelevant?”
“Right. Rats did better than cows.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You have a hypothesis, don’t you. You don’t like it, and so you don’t want to put it into words.”
“How well you know me,” he muttered. He stood, gesturing for her to precede him up the stairs. “Magical potential. I think it’s about magical potential.”
She sucked in a breath. “If that’s true, the very best victims—”
“—would be wizards,” he said. “With women next in line.”