He rushed after her, almost tripping on the way. “Remember, the phone is tapped!”
“Yes—right.”
She dialed her number with shaking hands, getting a finger into the wrong hole, having to start all over again. His locket was still hot. Several spells back-to-back? He heard the telephone ring faintly against her ear, once, twice, three times, four.
“Hello?” said a tinny and clearly upset voice.
“Lydia!” Beatrix sagged with relief against the wall. “Is—is now a good time for me to come back?”
Her sister’s “yes, please do” sounded emphatic but, he thought, not frightened.
“I’ll be home shortly.” Beatrix swallowed and added in nearly a whisper, “I love you.”
He winced at the unexpected pain of hearing those words from her dayside, knowing she would never say them to him. Then he felt guilty for thinking of that when her sister could be in danger.
“I’ll drive,” he said as she hung up. “Come on.”
She said nothing on the short trip there, hands clenched in her lap. He parked away from the house, cast a layer of protection on them both and spelled himself invisible.
Nothing looked amiss with the land or the house. They slipped in and found nothing obviously wrong on the inside, either, other than Miss Dane standing beside Beatrix’s sister with the forbidding air of a bouncer.
“What happened?” Beatrix whispered.
“No idea,” Miss Harper said in similarly hushed tones. “I was in the sitting room with homework and Rosemarie was in the kitchen, so we’re fairly confident no one got in either door.”
“Where’s Ella?”
“With you, we assumed.” Miss Dane raised an eyebrow at her. “Though considering that you called here just a few minutes ago, you didn’t come from the woods.”
“I stopped in at our omnimancer’s.”
Miss Dane took two steps forward and grabbed his arm—as if she couldseehim. “Obviously,” she said, voice dry as dust.
“How—” he said, rattled.
“There’s something a shade off about the air around you.”
He’d never noticed such an effect. He wasn’t aware of anyone else noticing it, either. Extremely observant woman, Miss Dane.
“Well, Omnimancer?” She crossed her arms. “What do you suggest?”
Lang read leohtwould help. But the fact that his former employer had no idea he knew it was a huge advantage, and casting the magic-detection spell now increased the odds of them finding out.
So he said, “Go around the house and see if you can find any other air that looks off.”
Miss Dane worked her way through the place, the rest of them standing strategically near doorways to keep an invisible wizard from slipping past. Fortunate that Beatrix’s odd-woman-out tenant—the one not in the League—had happened to walk to town, because he was certain what they were doing would look strange.
“Nothing,” Miss Dane said finally. “Now what?”
Loud knocking saved him from replying. Miss Knight, at the back door, out of breath. “Is everyone all right?” she said as she closed the door behind her.
“Yes, and we have no idea what it was all about, so we’d better watch what we say,” Beatrix’s sister murmured. “Omnimancer Blackwell is here, by the way.”
“Miss Knight,” he said from thin air, making her jump. She apparently didn’t have his former teacher’s unusual knack.
That formidable woman turned to Miss Knight, eyes narrowed. “Where were you? Since you weren’t doing what yousaidyou were doing.”
Miss Knight flushed. “I most certainly was. I just did more walking than Beatrix.”
