“Brewing, predominantly.”
“Have you seen him work on anything that appears unrelated to the needs of this town?”
“Not so far,” she said. Even the elaborate trap he’d sprung on her was about omnimancing—though what he planned to do with the time he’d freed up for himself remained to be seen.
Garrett stood, extracted a card from a coat so dark green it was nearly black and handed it to her.Wizard Theo Garrett, it said, and under that,United States Army—no title or rank. The D.C. address paired with the 703 area code in his telephone number strongly suggested that he worked at the Pentagram.
“Would you keep an eye out for anything untoward?”
“If there’s anything I can”—she paused—“manageto communicate to you, that would make me very happy.”
Garrett looked at her intently. “Even if it lands him in prison?”
More pomegranate ghosted up her throat. “Yes,” she croaked.
She saw him to the door, accepted his thanks and watched him teleport from her driveway to destinations unknown, making a sucking sound as he went that ended with apop.
“Well,” Rosemarie said. “I think we’d better talk to Miss Massey, don’t you?”
They found her slumped at the table, like a tire with all the air let out.
“Oh,” she whispered, “I just didn’t know what todo. I’ve never been thatcloseto a wizard before.”
“Come with us into the garden and get some air,” Beatrix said, helping her up before she could think to demur. “It’ll do you good.”
Once they were safely out of the house, Beatrix said: “I’m so sorry you had to go through that by yourself. However did you manage to occupy him and make the tea at the same time?”
“I couldn’t!” Miss Massey wrung her hands. “I had to leave him in the sitting room. He wassounderstanding, but I was mortified.”
“Surely it was only for a few minutes.”
“Nearly ten,” her boarder said, sighing deeply.
“I’m certain Wizard Garrett wasn’t upset,” Rosemarie said, giving Beatrix a look over Miss Massey’s head that made clear she too was thinking of everything he might have done in nearly ten minutes. Yes, Rosemarie was exceedingly good to have on your side when things went wrong.
They were past the vegetable garden now and at the gazebo Beatrix’s father had built at the edge of the forest. Beatrix, persuading Miss Massey to have a seat, linked arms with Rosemarie so they could take another turn around the garden without looking suspicious.
“I don’t think we should take his word for it that he’s here to investigate Blackwell,” she murmured in Rosemarie’s ear.
“Very convenient that he turned up when all of us save one were out. Miss Massey’s headache might have been a ruse so she could stay behind. Or not, in which case Ella could have tipped him off.”
“Or he kept an eye on our movements and pounced at the first opportunity,” Beatrix said, hoping that was the right answer.
Rosemarie made a disgusted sound that Beatrix thought was a reaction to her effort at optimism. But no: “We can’t talk about anything important in the house now, you realize. He could have hidden listening devices in the sitting room and dining room even if Miss Massey wasn’t in on it.”
“And in every room of the house if she is,” Beatrix said, developing a headache of her own.
CHAPTER 15
Peter, one step from the top of the staircase, heard the front door open and shut, followed by the soft sound of Miss Harper’s bare feet on the hardwood floor. He could practically feel her anger from two flights up. With a sigh, he slipped into the attic.
Over the weekend, he’d transformed it into an approximation of an experimental-spells lab. Gone were all the odds and ends. Enchantments on the walls, ceiling and floor shielded the old wood from the magic he was about to start throwing around. Most of it would do nothing at all—that was the nature of R&D. Ninety-nine out of a hundred attempts to create brand-new spells failed, either in the pfft sense or because the results weren’t useful. If you were lucky, one worked—as intended or as a happy accident. If you were unlucky, one went monumentally wrong.
Impossible to predict how magic would react to a seemingly harmless combination of words—or words and aids—never tried before. That was why one wasn’t supposed to muck around with spell invention all alone.
He’d been doing a lot of things lately that one wasn’t supposed to do.
“Forþringan feorhbealu,” he said, a dictionary lying open on the table beside him so he could make absolutely certain he didn’t mispronounce the Old English words. Defend against deadly evil. That pretty much summed up his requirements.
