“While she visited our omnimancer,” Miss Dane said, giving an ugly connotation to the verb.
“Hey!” he said. At the same time, Beatrix snapped, “You should be glad I did!”
“Please, let’s not fight,” said Miss Harper, holding up her hands. “Omnimancer, Iamglad you’re here. Would you be willing to check for signs of spellcasting?”
He supposed there really was no way around it. None of them, least of all him, could afford to have a camera hiding in this house.
“I will,” he said, “if you turn the place upside down for recording equipment that’s simply been hidden. And pull down all the window shades in case he’s outside looking in.”
He went room by room, expecting he’d have to wade through dozens of spells cast by the women. But other than the exterior walls—bright white with what were almost certainly protection spells—there were surprisingly few remnants of magic. Then he got to the master suite and discovered the ghostly outlines of a crowd of invisible people in the bathroom.
His breath caught in his throat.
“It’s OK,” Beatrix said, rushing in and putting her hand through them all. Nothing there.
Oh. He realized, now that his heart wasn’t trying to jump up his throat, that the outlines were about the size of her sister. Brilliant in its simplicity: They’d obviously decided to cast all their protection spells on Miss Harper in one spot so they could more easily distinguish between theirs and an intruder’s.
“Excellent idea,” he said.
She smiled. “I was pleased with it.”
“House seems OK—I can’t absolutely vouch for the exterior walls, but I’ve got a workaround in mind. Find anything?”
“Not yet. We’re still, ah, ‘cleaning.’” She brandished a duster in a distinctly ironic way. “What’s your workaround?”
He reversed the spell on himself and snapped back into view. “I’ll cast a sound-dampening spell in a few places. It doesn’t completely deaden sound like the anti-eavesdropper, just turns everything said in the area into indistinct mumbling outside of it. I’m thinking it would be useful in this bathroom and wherever you have League meetings. The dining room?”
“Yes. Thank you—that should do very well.”
After he cast the spells and every inch of the house had been scrubbed, they gathered in the dining room, young Miss Harper choosing to pace as the rest of them sat.
“What could those spells have been about?” she said. “A wizard just popping in for a jaunt around town?”
“Do we know who it was?” Miss Knight added.
Beatrix shrugged. “Not Wizard Garrett. The man’s in his late thirties, perhaps, with a slightly receding hairline and a square jaw.”
He thought Miss Knight’s eyes widened at that description. “Anyone you know? From Bethesda, perhaps?” he said dryly.
“I … I’m not sure.”
“How many spells did he cast?” Miss Dane said.
“One or several in quick succession,” Peter said. “Entirely possible that hedidcome for a jaunt around town, in thegetting-his-bearings sense, and the spell we all felt was when he teleported out. Bea—” He caught himself before saying the second syllable of Beatrix’s name and hoped he hadn’t turned red at the slip. “Be careful. Miss Harper thought she was followed in the woods today.”
The younger Miss Harper—the only person he thought of as “Miss Harper” anymore—grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself.
Miss Dane eyed Beatrix. “Please tell me you weren’t doing something incriminating at the time.”
“No, Rosemarie.”
Miss Knight tapped on the table, drawing everyone’s attention. “We haven’t checked outside the house, correct? The wizard must have cast something there if he didn’t do it in here.”
He couldn’t deny that.
“We should look,” Beatrix said apologetically.
He couldn’t deny that, either. He sighed. “Let me handle that after dark. If he’s still around, I want to give him a chance to get out.”
