They watched Willi and Hartgrave for a while—easy to get mesmerized by the sheer repetition of it—before she tried a question to which she figured she alreadyknew the answer. “Are you sure this plan is the only way?”
“Seems to be. Apparently those three always have the magical equivalent of Kevlar around them, so sneak attacks are a no-go.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Not very heroic, anyway.”
“More heroic than what they’re doing.”
Indisputable. She went back to watching Willi disappear and reappear, his mouth set in an unwavering line, his eyes hard.
. . . . .
“No, not yet,” Hartgrave said the next morning. He put a hand on her shoulder to restrain her from getting back to work on the wall of magic she’d taken a pause from pummeling. “You’re going to learn to pace yourself, Daggett.”
She sighed, trying not to fidget. More seconds ticked by.
“All right, continue,” he said.
When she finally broke through, she suffered none of the symptoms that had made the previous attempt so uncomfortable. But Willi’s stopwatch app recorded a disappointing twenty minutes, thirty-one seconds.
“Oh, come on,” she said, scowling at Hartgrave.
He glowered back. “Safety first, then speed.”
“Don’t fret,” Bernie muttered, patting her on the back. “You still beat Safety Boy here by a considerable margin.”
“Safety Boy” had all sorts of rules for her. Each practice could at most be thirty seconds faster than the last, and only if she showed no sign of overheating or fatigue. If she looked the tiniest bit tired, headdedthirty seconds. And she was permitted just four rounds of practice a day.
After a week and a half of this, she burst through to Willi and Bernie at ten minutes, one second. They pulled her into a jig and capped it by kissing her on opposite cheeks.
Hartgrave limited himself to a “well done,” though his smile promised more later. Bernie, snorting, gave her a little push toward Hartgrave and said, “Go on.”
“Ja, you two are not fooling anyone,” Willi said.
Oh. She looked at Hartgrave, seeing in his flushed face the same pleased embarrassment she felt. He put his arms around her, leaned in and brushed his lips against hers.
His cell-phone alarm interrupted.SOS. SOS. SOS.
They leapt apart, Hartgrave cursing and grappling in his pocket for the phone. Everyone crowded around, trying to see the screen as he zoomed in on the problem. Had they been found? Were they about to be attacked? Heart pounding, she looked at the street names and saw none she recognized. Hoffman, Preston, Biddle ...
“Not the Organization,” Hartgrave said, tapping the pulsating dot, which she belatedly noticed was green, not red. Coordinates appeared above it.
She shivered. “An autodidact?”
He nodded. This brought no real relief. An autodidact about to draw the Organization’s attention wasnearly as bad, because she knew what he was going to do.
Hartgrave zoomed out on the map, revealing highways and a harbor and the city’s name. Baltimore. “Ballantine, pick me up afterward at the airport. Willi, stay with Daggett.”
And he was off, running to the wardrobe, flinging on his black duster like a superhero donning a cape. She dashed after him, catching up just as he reached the door.
“Don’t leave this room,” he said, a fierceness to the order that raised her hackles.
She stifled her inclination to spit out something equally snappish. What she said instead was, “Come back.”
He nodded, opened the door a crack and with a flicker was gone—answering the question of how to teleport from a room that wouldn’t let magic out, though at the moment she didn’t care.
Bernie jogged over and pulled the door shut, shooting her an anxious look he’d probably meant to go unnoticed. Willi sat on the bed, the real one, staring at the wall with unfocused eyes.
She might never see Hartgrave again.
