“What—”
“I think Wizard Garrett followed me,” she whispered.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. Leaning in, he murmured, “Close every door in the house.”
Receiving room. Brewing room. Cellar. Bathrooms. Bedrooms. Attic. She dashed back to the second-floor landing and found he’d demarcated the stairwell, hallway and kitchen and cast the spell detector. The handful of whiteareas were all too small to be human, but he put a hand through each one.
He repeated the process in every room she’d closed off.
“Not here, thank God,” he said finally, deactivating the spell.
It was only as they walked back to the first floor that she thought of the locket around his neck. Hers was set only to her own property. His would pick up an intruder’s spell anywhere in town.
“Did your charm go off?” she asked.
“No. That’s why I was caught off guard.”
She felt foolish. “I’m sorry—I heard a twig snap, and I jumped to conclusions.” She pushed a stray hair from her eyes with shaking fingers. “When I thought about the consequences if hedidget in ...”
“Yes.” He rubbed his arms as if he’d had an attack of gooseflesh, too. “He hasn’t cast a spell in Ellicott Mills since the night you sent him packing, but I’m worried that teleporting here doesn’t register because the actual casting happens elsewhere.”
She stared at him. “So if he spelled himself invisible first and then made the trip?—”
“—we’d have no idea. And whenever he teleports away, if he happens to be just outside town, outside the area I demarcated, we wouldn’t even get an after-the-fact warning.”
An awful thought. She made a beeline for the receiving room and sank into a chair, rubbing her temples.
He slumped into the one on the other side of the desk. “It gets worse. There’s apparently a highly classified spell to silence the sound of footsteps, and he knows it.”
“Wait—then the snapping twig I heard couldn’t have been him.”
“The spell might mute that sound, or it might not.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what spell he’s using or how it works.”
She sat up straight, a thought occurring. “Would he know to avoid casting here? Is your alarm spell common knowledge?”
“No—no one knows about it except us and your compatriots.” He shook his head. “Still—we can’t risk him picking the lock and slipping in. From now on I’m castingscieldon the house so no one can get by without taking it down.”
After he followed through on that, he considered her. “Are you all right?”
She ran a hand along the arm of the chair. “I suppose I keep waiting for them to make their next move ...”
“And the longer it takes, the more anxious you get.” His laugh had a black edge to it. “Don’t I know it.”
Someone knocked on the door.
They looked at each other. Peter strode into the hall, projecting a calmness she knew he didn’t feel, and peered through the peephole.
“Miss Knight,” he murmured, undoing the spell.
“Wait.” Beatrix positioned herself to ensure that no one could get in before or after Ella. “OK, go ahead.”
Ella, walking in with a merry “hello” on her lips, stopped, eyebrows raised, as Beatrix immediately slammed the door shut.
“That’s ... unnerving,” she said to Beatrix as Peter reset the protection spell.
“I had the feeling that Wizard Garrett was following me after you left. It might have been my imagination,” she hastened to add as Ella gasped, “but I’m not in the mood to take chances.”
“No kidding.”
