“Hasn’t happened evenonce,” Garrett said, putting a hand to his heart. “To me or anyone else.”
“And how long have wizards been traveling this way?” she asked skeptically.
He laughed. “You ought to be a prosecutor. Fine, only for several years. But it’s perfectly safe—researchers have been teleporting for at least a generation. We just couldn’t use it to get farther than a few feet until someone developed fuel with more of a kick.”
Peter suppressed a sigh. That someone was him. He wished he hadn’t, considering what it had led to.
Garrett dipped his fingers into an interior pocket and came out with a “red”—a teleportation leaf the color of cherries. “Shall we?”
“Was that pickedafterit started to turn? I should have thought that would make it less effective.”
“The color is artificial. It’s to ensure we don’t mix it up with a regular leaf and waste it on another spell.”
She eyed it, clearly intrigued. “How does it work?”
Garrett smirked. “I’m afraid that information is?—”
“—classified,” she finished for him, rolling her eyes.
“Annoying, isn’t it? I get told that a lot, too. So—coming?”
As she took a step toward the wizard, her knees buckled. Garrett sprung forward and caught her—so quickly it was alarming.
“Thank you,” she said, voice catching.
“You really are exhausted.” He gazed down at her. This too was alarming. “What on earth did Blackwell have you do today?”
Peter could see by her expression that she wished she could tell the truth, never mind the implications it might have for her. But her Vow stood in the way. She cleared her throat. “Cleaning.”
“The lout.”
“Absolutely and completely.”
She had regained her footing, but Garrett did not let go. Peter had the urge to chuck a stone at him. Seducing your target’s assistant to get information wasterribleform.
He glanced back at Miss Harper in time to see her raise a challenging eyebrow. “This spell requires a long stretch of standing still, I take it?”
He nearly gave himself away by laughing. Garrett’s own lips turned up as he said, “Just didn’t want to rush you. Ready? Hang on—gefaran!”
They dematerialized, setting off Peter’s charmed locket. He fumbled for it with fingers he couldn’t see and held it away from his chest for the few seconds it needed to cool down.
Then he took off for Miss Harper’s house at a sprint. His days of burning through high-grade fuel on a whim ended when he left D.C. His two remaining reds were tucked in a breast pocket of his coat for emergencies, and catching up with Garrett and Miss Harper did not qualify. But the thought of her alone with that spy-or-assassin did keep him running far past the point he otherwise would have slowed to a walk.
When he finally pulled into sight of her back yard, he was just in time to see the wizard dematerialize again—this time by himself. Miss Harper stood in her gazebo, looking at the spot that had been Garrett and now was thin air. Peter caught his breath, relieved she was fine even though he’d had no reason to expect otherwise, and cleared his throat.
She swung about, looking not so much startled as wary.
“Can I safely reappear?” he said, keeping his voice down.
“Wait here—I’ll be right back.”
Sweat trickled down his hairline as he stood at the edge of her property. He supposed he should have cast a cooling spell before he dashed through the woods in the encore heat wave that always seemed to come in September, but somehow the weather hadn’t registered. He wiped his forehead, glad for the temperature-control spell worked into his coat, and glanced around the yard as he waited for Miss Harper to return.
A garden extended across most of it. He remembered flowers there twenty years ago, delicate blooms in yellow and red where lettuce, tomatoes and cabbage now grew, and couldn’t help feeling sorry about the change. The flowers had been the one thing about this place—Cedarwood?—that he’d really liked. Everything else had stoked up envy. The flowers had such a quiet, undemanding beauty that looking at them had always calmed him.
But you couldn’t make a meal of them.
Minutes ticked by. What was she doing? When she finally opened the back door, her expression was apologetic.
