They’d been so worried aboutthathorrible possibility, they’d paid the Key Hotel extra for a clause in the contract that required hotel management to cough up a huge penalty if it defaulted on the terms. Too bad they hadn’t done the same for the catering company. The Key wasn’t nearly ritzy enough to have an in-house team, the events in its ballroom consisting primarily of pizza-and-beer retirement parties for the factory and port workers who toiled along Baltimore’s harbor.
She gulped down the remainder of her dinner, leapt to her feet as soon as the others showed signs of rising and signaled her sister to follow her. She ended up with both Lydia and Rosemarie. Feeling like the leader of a grim parade, Beatrix marched outside to the bench in what hadonce been the front-yard flower garden, when there had been money for fripperies like flowers.
“What’s happened?” she said, keeping her voice low. “Ella says the caterer’s quit.”
“Called this afternoon to report that he’s lost two employees and can no longer handle such a big job,” Lydia said, pacing about.
“A likely story,” added Rosemarie, who sat down—Rosemarie was always better at keeping her emotions in check. “Might I point out that this happened just three days after the wizard you’re so happy to be working for arrived in town, Beatrix. A wizard who has a knack for making people do what he wants.”
“A wizard who’s been working overtime on the town’s huge to-do list,” Beatrix retorted, crossing her arms. “When exactly would he have had time to figure out who our caterer was, let alone go to Baltimore to strong-arm him?”
“Wemusthave a leak.” Lydia slumped onto the bench between them. “Who would do such a thing? Who would betray us?”
Beatrix put an arm around her, earlier indignation melted away to nothing. No leak was required for wizards to make the League’s conference efforts generally difficult—Lydia’s role as head organizer was public knowledge, appearing as it had in both theStarand theNews-Register. But some of the problems would have been nearly impossible to create without inside help.
“Who knew which catering company we managed to get, and who had access to the conference invitations that went missing?” Rosemarie asked.
They chewed over this.
“Everyone who came to last month’s meeting knew about the caterer,” Lydia said. “Nearly two dozen people. That was when we worked out conference-day assignments for everybody.”
“Meg handled the invitations,” said Beatrix, who had been relieved that their treasurer was assigned that task, the sort that she usually ended up with herself. “But she’s also the one who discovered the problem—I don’t think she caused it.”
“She and I have been in most of the same classes for the past three years,” Lydia said. “She’s been gung-ho for women’s rights from the start. There’s no mistaking it.”
Rosemarie frowned. “Did she take them to the post office herself?”
Beatrix cast her mind back. She had a vague memory of Meg bringing a big box with her to a meeting ...
“She set them by the door when she arrived,” Lydia said. “Weren’t they left alone there until the meeting broke up?”
Beatrix grimaced. “You’re right. They were. So strictly speaking?—”
“Miss Massey could have done it,” Rosemarie said. “And listened at the door to hear which caterer we picked.”
“The mind boggles at the thought of Miss Massey as a spy,” Lydia said, shaking her head.
“That would make her a very effective one, then.” Rosemarie gave a grim smile.
Beatrix was trying to wrap her mind around the thought that she might be giving room and board to an enemy when something even worse occurred to her.
“Ella,” she whispered, heart sinking.“Ellatook the box of invitations home. Meg was going out of town to see her family for Easter, so you asked me to take care of it,” she said to her sister, “but Ella pointed out that she lived two doors up from the post office.”
“I really don’t think it was her,” Lydia said, putting a hand on Beatrix’s shoulder.
But none of them had to state the obvious: more likely Ella than Miss Massey. And not simply because one was shy and the other, bold.
Miss Massey, not quite thirty, had lived with them for seven years, ever since her widowed father had died and long before powerful wizards would have had any reason to take an interest in Lydia. No doubt Lydia and Rosemarie had started plotting together around that time about the best way to build a powerful women’s rights campaign—they were thick as thieves by the time Lydia finished middle school—but it wasn’t until Lydia actually started at Hazelhurst College that plans turned to action.
A brilliant idea, really. Her sister ignored the active women’s rights club on campus, which had no national reach, to breathe life into the county’s dwindling Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic chapter.
She accomplished so much in two semesters that every other chapter in the state took notice. TheStarwrote an only slightly patronizing profile of Lydia that called Hazelhurst the epicenter of the new “ladies’ movement.” The summer before last, Rosemarie retired and Ella took her job—so eager to volunteer that she’d left a teaching position in a wealthy Baltimore neighborhood for Ellicott Mills and its ancient one-room schoolhouse.
AfterWashington would have had a reason to monitor what Lydia was up to.
Beatrix didn’t want to believe her friend was not actually her friend in the same way that she didn’t want to jump off a bridge. They had such an easy connection, with no awkwardness, no second-guessing, no trouble finding common ground. Ella had always struck her as the most honest person she knew, charging in with the truth like a well-meaning rhinoceros when a pleasant fib would be easier. If her entire life here turned out to be a lie?—
“Perhaps we’ve been bugged,” she said, the words tumbling out. “A wizard could have slipped into the house months ago to hide recording devices or cast a listening spell. Assuming there is such a spell.”
