Someone besides him.
His alarm clock went off the next moment, and he hopped over to it, pulling up his trousers with one hand. With the other, he grabbed a leaf from the pocket of his coat—he’d slept in it to have all his tools of the trade handy in a pinch. He’d expected a visit. Just not quite this soon.
He cast a spell he’d invented on the side and—conveniently, as it happened—hadn’t gotten around totelling anyone about. The burnt ashes of the leaf swirled until they formed a face, almost photographic in its clarity.
He slumped back on the bed in boneless relief. Tim Martinelli, his deputy director. Or, rather, nothisdeputy anymore. What on earth was the man doing here at six in the morning?
No way to know where exactly Martinelli was within the perimeter he’d set up around the town, but odds were good that his former colleague was en route by car, considering how much the man hated teleportation.
Peter finished dressing at a more sedate pace and managed to shave, brush his hair and set the coffee pot to boil before a tentative knock sounded on the front door.
“In need of some omnimancing?” he said, startling the gangly man into a laugh.
“Do you ever sleep?” Martinelli said. “Seriously—if you’ve developed something that lets you stay up around the clock, I want in.”
“Sorry, no such luck. Though I am interested to know why you’d show up now if you thought I wouldn’t be awake.”
“Because I couldn’t come any later.” Martinelli’s smile was thin on humor. “Some of us still need to be at the Pentagram at eight on Mondays, you know.”
Peter looked pointedly at Martinelli’s DeSoto, parked just shy of the porch.“Someof us could jump directly there.”
“Yeah, yeah. Iliketo drive.”
He stood aside to let Martinelli in. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
“Sit in the receiving room—there, to your right.”
Back in the kitchen, the kettle was whistling. He filled two mugs, cast a no-eavesdropping spell on the house and joined his guest, perched awkwardly on a chair. Martinelli took the coffee and stared at it, neither drinking nor talking. The dim light emphasized the bags under his eyes, making him look older than his forty-something years.
“Is there anything in particular that brought you all this way at the crack of dawn?” Peter said at last, curiosity and anxiety battling for the upper hand.
“Why did youdoit?”
The tone was so accusatory that for a horrible instant he thought he’d been found out. Then Martinelli added, “Why would you leave such an important project for ...this?”He spread his arms, as if to encompass both the less-than-impressive receiving room and the entire town.
“Helping people with their troubles seemed a nice change from designing a weapon of mass destruction.”
Martinelli gave him a look that said what he thought of that. “Did they fire you?”
“No.”
“Was it something I did?”
“Of course not. You’re a perfectly acceptable researcher.”
“Thanks, I’ve always aspired to be acceptable,” his ex-deputy muttered, the expected comeback to an insult as comfortable and threadbare as a pair of old pants. “Whippersnapper.”
Martinelli had meant it to sting the first time he’d said it, had considered Peter everything the word represented: young, inexperienced, overconfident. He had come aroundlater. But now Peter realized Martinelli’s first instinct had been absolutely right.
Martinelli leaned in. “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, but still: Are you honestly telling me you woke up one day and said, ‘I ought to chuck everything I’ve been doing, leave my team in the lurch and go wipe people’s noses in Middle-of-Nowheresville?’”
“Pretty much my exact words.”
“We can’tdothis without you, damn it!”
He certainly hoped that would be the case. All his efforts were in vain, otherwise.
