“Oh God,” she said, all her muscles trembling at once.
Bernie took her arm and led her to the chair. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay, Em, it’ll be okay.”
She leaned back and squeezed her eyes shut. “Saying it over and over doesn’t make it true.”
“He’s done this a lot. Dozens of times.”
“Yeah, that’s why the families of firefighters never worry.”
Bernie put a hand over hers, yelped and retreated.
“Not a good idea to touch my bare skin when I’m upset,” she said, rubbing her hand. “Guess Hartgrave didn’t mention that.”
“Probably saw no reason for anyone to touch you but him,” Bernie said, which would have been enough to get a laugh out of her if she didn’t immediately wonder whether that sweet kiss would be their last.
She swallowed with effort. “How much time does he have? Ten minutes? Five?”
“What? No! All day.”
He looked too surprised to be lying. She felt instantly calmer. “So when they showed up in two minutes flat after Hartgrave blipped onto their radar, that was—”
“—extremely unusual,” he said, emphasizing both words. “For the run-of-the-mill autodidact, they give it a day to see if the aura persists. Sometimes people do minor, unconscious magic and won’t ever manage it again. It’s not at all like what we’re planning—when Willi and I leap into the great wide yonder, we’re counting on a much speedier response. Anyway, the Organization doesn’t know Hartgrave is warning off autodidacts, so they have no reason to show up in Baltimore until tomorrow.”
This seemed so reasonable, so likely, that she managed a shaky smile. Then she glanced past him and saw how shattered Willi looked.
“Bernie ...”
“He’s not thinking about Hartgrave,” Bernie whispered.
Oh.Of course.
She got to her feet, walked with care around Hartgrave’s conjured bed and sat next to Willi, ignoring Bernie’s hissed warnings to leave well enough alone. “Could you explain to me what should happen now? I’m worried.”
Willi turned and blinked, focusing with evident effort. She’d just decided that Bernie was right, trying to distract him was a bad idea, when he pulled his cell phone from a voluminous coat pocket.
“Here is the autodidact.” He pointed at the green dot. “At home, or inside someone’s home,” he added, zooming in until they got an aerial photograph of the street, a patchwork of old rowhouses and vacant lots. “Alexander jumps usually to a back yard.”
She frowned at the map. “Why not just teleport into the house? Would be a good way to prove he’s not making it all up.”
“No, that would be a good way to get shot,” Bernie put in. “Infinitely better to knock on the door.”
“And what, ask to be invited in for tea?”
Bernie shrugged. “He’s persuasive. And he manages to bring most of them around—keep in mind they’re usually aware something odd just happened, even if they don’t suspect they did magic. So they’re automatically more receptive than the average person. All he had to do in my case was pop off a minor spell that stayed under the radar and show me this program—with me on themap in living green color, and the ominous mass of red in Cornwall.”
She hugged her knees to her chest. “But the ones who don’t come around ...”
“They die,” Willi said, voice flat.
They sat around his cell phone for a long while, saying nothing. The dot kept blinking with infuriating regularity. She glared at it until she could stand it no longer.
“If I don’t do something, I’ll scream.”
Willi eyed her. “We could practice.” A grim smile flickered for an instant on his face. “No one is now around who would stop you from practicing as much as you want.”
She gave a choked laugh. “Good idea.”
The two men cast barriers for her to disintegrate until she was exhausted, and then they made her take a nap. When she woke at 11 p.m., the autodidact was still on the radar. And no one had heard a thing from Hartgrave.
