“No child should have to go hungry,” he muttered.
It sounded like the voice of experience. Guilt pricked at her—why hadn’t she noticed? Why hadn’t she shared her lunches with him at school rather than haring off during the break to read books in the glen and imagine herself at Hazelhurst?
“If you’re certain you want to walk home, you’re free to go,” he said, breaking the charged silence. “Hand me whatever leaves you have left in your pockets, please.”
As she obeyed his nominal request, he narrowed his eyes, frowning. “Hang on.” She flinched involuntarily into the wall as he put out a hand and plucked two hairs from her head that had slipped out of her bun.
They were silver.
“Wizards usually save their first magic-tinted hair.” He stepped back, allowing her to breathe again. “I’m afraid you can’t.”
He pulled out a leaf and murmured a spell. The offending specimens went scorched-black before disappearing altogether, as if he’d burned them.
“You can’t just cast a spell to turn them back to their original color?” she asked, wanting to avoid having them plucked from her scalp one by one. Wanting even more to avoid having his hands in her hair.
“Possibly, but then you’d have the remnants of magic around you constantly. Should someone discover that, it would look suspicious. You’re not likely to develop more than a few silver hairs a week—I promise you won’t lose many.”
“But traces of spellwork disappear within minutes,” Beatrix said, parroting the encyclopedia she’d read on the fateful day she’d cast her first spell.
“I thought so, too. It turns out that someone has developed a new spell to pick up on those traces for much longer.”
Her heartbeat revved from excitement this time, not fear. “How long?”
“Days, possibly weeks.”
He could determine once and for all if Garrett cast spells in her house. If there were enchantments, then they would know why the wizard was really in town. If there weren’t—well, perhaps Garrett was being straight with her. Perhaps she could trust him to a certain extent. Perhaps (oh please God) she could help him stop Blackwell before something or someone was destroyed, and extract herself from this nightmare.
“I want you to cast this spell in my house,” she said—quickly, before she could think of reasons not to go through with it.
“What? Why?”
“Cast the spell in my house or you will harm my sister, her efforts with the Women’s League for?—”
“All right, all right,” he said, putting up his hands, stopping her before she could call on his Vow. “I’ll do it. But first explain to me why you believe you have traces of magic in your house.”
She intended to say, “Because we have a leak in the organization, and I want to make sure it’s not a magical one.” That wasn’t a lie. But different words tumbled automatically from her mouth, the absolute truth extracted by his demand.
“A wizard visited yesterday.”
Damn, damn, damn.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Who was it?”
“He said his name is Theo Garrett.”
“Tall, aquiline nose, about our age?”
“Yes,” she said. “You know him?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He crossed his arms. “Tell me what he said.”
The words rushed out: “He asked me why I was working for you, why you wanted me to work for you, what you have me do. He said you were handling a sensitive project for the Army, and they want to know why you quit. He asked if I’ve seen you work on anything that didn’t appear to be omnimancy, and he asked me to keep an eye out for ‘anything untoward.’”
She gasped for breath, miserable. So much for Garrett’s element of surprise. But Blackwell did not seem astonished by these revelations. Either he already knew the Army was investigating—that could be why a general showed up last week—or he’d expected they would come after him.
“I suppose I don’t need to ask why you neglected to mention this of your own volition,” Blackwell said, a bitter twist to the words.
“No,” she said between deep breaths. “You don’t.”
