“Mayor Croft, Wizard Blackwell would like to have a word,” Beatrix said, trying to avoid sounding as if she wanted to throttle said wizard. “Should I handle the counter for you in the meantime?”
Croft made shooing gestures. “No, no, you go have your lunch.”
But Blackwell positioned himself where the counter opened, blocking her escape. “I don’t believe you introduced yourself.Miss.”
The old superstition about the power of names, and never telling yours to a magic-user, crossed her mind. Not that he didn’t know it already, if he bothered to think back to his pre-wizard days.
Croft cleared his throat. “My assistant, Beatrix Harper.”
As she left with her lunch pail and book, she heard her boss ask Blackwell anxiously, “I trust you were … treated well?”
Blackwell gave a sharp laugh. The closing door cut off the rest of his response.
She spent her break unable to concentrate on her book, her food or the fine weather. Had she just gotten herself fired? What had she beenthinking? Not of her responsibilities, that was clear. She put her sandwich away half-eaten and resolved to go back and beg.
The moment she stepped into the shop, Blackwell emerged from an aisle.
“Ah, Miss Harper,” he said. “I’m in need of a full-time assistant, and I’ve chosen you. Come with me.”
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears.
“Thank you,” she managed, “but I already have a job.”
“Not anymore,” he said.
Croft—half-hiding behind a cereal display—did not contradict this statement.
She found she could not beg in front of Blackwell. She struggled with herself for a moment before giving in to recalcitrance. “I will find employment elsewhere, then.”
The wizard shrugged. “I doubt it.”
She had a mental image of going from shop to shop on Main Street and finding all the owners cowering behind displays. For a wild moment she thought of getting work in Baltimore—somehow. But the delusion passed. Her budget could not accommodate daily train tickets, and her car couldn’t take even a month of that commute.
“I’ll pay you the same rate,” Blackwell added. “I presume you need every cent, if you’re covering your sister’s tuition bills.”
Croft inched further behind the cereal boxes.
In desperation, Beatrix said, “I’m thelastperson you want assisting you! I’m the county chapter president of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic!”
“Yes. No doubt your membership will ask you to step down.”
Blackwell walked past her and held the door open. Feeling more powerless than ever before, she followed him out of Croft’s Goods—her face hot, her hands shaking—and toward the long-empty omnimancer’s mansion.
CHAPTER 2
The sprawling Victorian designated as home and office for Ellicott Mills’ omnimancer sat just up the street from Croft’s at the top of the town’s highest hill. Peter spent most of the climb wondering if he would dare do what had sprung into his mind when Beatrix Harper coolly took him to task for patronizing her. She would either be ideal or a monumental mistake.
Then they crested the hill and he got a close look at the house, which drove every other thought from his head.
The front porch sagged. The window pane above the door was broken. The wood siding proved to be gray not on purpose but because the light-blue paint was all but worn away.
The panic he’d suppressed as he fled D.C. flared up again. “How long have you been without an omnimancer?”
“Five years,” Miss Harper said.
“Five?This looks like it’s been falling apart for twenty.”
She said nothing. She probably had no intention of speaking to him unless required. Her mouth was set in a tight line, her hands in fists at her sides.
