She crept along behind them, looking for an opening. What was under the sheet? Too big to be a chimpanzee. Possibly an orangutan, if the Army had procured an especially large one. But she suspected otherwise with a horror that made it hard to breathe.
The wizards slowed as they neared a door. Here was her chance. As the gurney lurched to a halt, she flipped one end of the sheet up, enough to get a glimpse.
Two very obviously human feet came into view before the sheet fluttered back into place.
Her fault. Hers.
“Who’s the poor sap?” the first wizard said, fumbling in his pockets.
“Some typic on death row.”
The man extracted a leaf. “If this isn’t cruel and fucking unusual punishment, I don’t know what is.Onirnan.”
The door opened. They pushed the gurney and its terrible contents away, leaving her on the other side, shattered.
A new batch of memories ran past at a quick clip. Reading classified reports on weapons manufacturing in antagonistic countries. Finding nothing to suggest projects of similar destructive power were underway. Staging what looked like a terminal mishap for the Project 96 transmitter. Making a new one with interwoven spells that would eventually wear off, reducing its blast radius. Tracking down any documents that specified how the weapon was constructed and replacing them with altered versions. Spiriting the original transmitter out of the complex.
Coming across the report of female magic use, absolutely by accident.
She was right in the middle of that memory when it went foggy and she sat up in Peter’s bed, awake, Beatrix again. All the emotions she would have felt had she seen those events as herself battered her simultaneously.
“Oh,” she moaned, wrapping her arms around her stomach.
Peter launched himself toward the adjoining bathroom and retched over the toilet. When she thought she couldstand without ending up in the same position, she walked over on shaking legs, found a cup balanced on the sink and filled it with water.
“Here,” she said, holding it out to him.
He took a sip and leaned his head against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. “I thought it would be slightly less awful a second time, but I was wrong.”
She bit her lip, working up the courage to ask a question to which she really didn’t want to know the answer. “Is an explosion powered by a human life so much bigger than the ones with chimpanzees?”
“Yes. I tracked down the readings.” He swallowed. “Instead of a quarter-mile radius, it’s a mile and a half.”
“God Almighty,” she whispered, sitting next to him. “That’s enough to destroy all of Ellicott Mills and everything around it.”
“Or the downtown of a major city. Or the core of a nation’s capital.”
“You’re trying to find—what, some defense against it?”
“Trying. Failing.”
“Let me help you.”
“You are helping.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “You’re giving me time.”
“No, I mean—hands-on. You’re used to working with a partner. Perhaps explaining your ideas will make you think of something helpful.”
As he hesitated, she added: “Please—I mustdosomething. I know you understand.”
“Yes.” He shifted, and the movement brought their shoulders into contact. “Thank you.”
“You’ll need to go back to sleeping at night,” she said, looking at her hands.
“I suppose so.”
It felt as if he wanted to add, or ask, something important. But perhaps she’d misread him, for the next words out of his mouth were, “But not tonight.”
Seconds ticked by. Then it came—abrupt and bitter: “Have I cured you of your feelings for me?”
