He checked the book for the other brews he hoped to tackle that day. “Fresh horseradish, garlic and blueberries. Pick through them to get good specimens. Also, make sure he’s ordered the mature ginger—we’ll need that for the anti-arthritic and anti-nausea concoctions.”
“The horseradish is for the cold medicine, the garlic for the intestinal brew and the blueberries for—let’s see—the kidney-stone medicine?”
“Miss Harper,” he said, deeply impressed, “you’ve progressed faster in a single day than my classmates and I got in a month of brewing.”
She beamed. He felt a twinge at the thought of what he had in store for her.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised, heading for the door.
Too late to listen to twinges. He pulled a slim volume stampedCLASSIFIEDfrom the bookcase, one with a title sure to intrigue his assistant, and left it lying next to the brewing guide.
Beatrix rappedon the shop’s front door and waved through the glass pane when the mayor, looking harassed, leaned out from an aisle. A tremendous crash echoed from somewhere nearby.
“Billy,” Croft bellowed. “Be more careful, for pity’s sake! Just wait here and don’t touch anything until I come back.”
“Our omnimancer requires ingredients,” she said as he let her in.
Croft rubbed his face miserably. “He asked if you were a good employee, and like a complete ninny I told him the truth. I’m sorry.”
She patted his shoulder. If he’d replaced her with Billy Peterson, his clumsy nephew, he needed the sympathy more than she did. “I suspect Omnimancer Blackwell’s mind was already made up before he asked.”
“I didn’t really—well—argue with him.” Croft couldn’t seem to look her in the eye. “The missus had been after me to bring Billy on.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “You gave me a job when no one in town would, and I will always be grateful for that.”
Croft leaned in. “I did manage to do you one good turn in this whole mess.”
“Oh?” She grinned at his conspiratorial air. “What?”
“Padded your wage by fifty cents an hour when he asked how much I was paying you.”
She burst into helpless laughter at the thought of honest Sam Croft lying through his teeth like that. “Thank you. Very quick thinking.”
Another crash sounded from the back.
“Lord give me strength,” he muttered. “Well, then—what can I get for you?”
Beatrix left with the items on her list and a promise of ginger to come. She nodded to the butcher as he unlocked his shop, passed by the trio of boarded-up stores with an internal sigh and worked her way up Main Street, pausing at the omnimancer’s driveway to glance down at the town laid out below.
Ellicott Mills might not be the place it was before the Second Great Depression—let alone the first—but she would never tire of this sight. The houses tucked into every hill. The eight-fifteen train puffing into the station. The patchwork of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century buildings—wood, brick, granite—squeezed together on Main Street like a set of mismatched but interesting teeth.
She turned back to the mansion in time to witness something she’d never seen before: two men winking into existence where the second before there had been only air. Holysmoke. She’d heard that wizards could travel like that, but she hadn’t entirely believed it.
Only one of the pair standing on the porch was a wizard. The other man’s hair was a normal gray rather than silver,clipped short. He wore dark blue, a uniform of some sort, and she caught the glint of medals on his chest before he pulled free of his magical chauffeur and banged on the front door. Bashed at it, actually.
A military officer. Why?
Blackwell let the man in and closed the door behind them, leaving the wizard on the porch. Chauffeurs never got to come in. How unfair. The wizard paid no attention to her—he seemed to be inspecting the exterior of the house—so she amused herself by staring at him as she walked up the long driveway.
While Blackwell was arresting mainly by virtue of his silver hair, this man would have been striking even without the telltale sign of magic use. He was tall, taller than either Blackwell or the officer. His cheekbones were high, his eyes dark—a detail she couldn’t help but notice when he finally trained them on her.
“I’m afraid the omnimancer is occupied,” he said, blocking the way.
Chauffeur who secretly yearned to be a bodyguard? She tried not to smile at the thought of bored wizards doing nothing but taking important typics from one place to another—perhaps omnimancers weren’t the bottom rung of the magiocracy—but her lips quirked anyway.
“I know he is,” she said, slipping by him. “Don’t worry, I won’t interrupt.”
He frowned. He probably wasn’t used to recalcitrance from the hoi polloi. “If you would just wait here ...”
