“What about Blackwell? Have you seen him do something odd?” Garrett said.
This was impossible.Yes, she tried to say.Yes, yes, yes!
“Miss Harper?”
She sighed. “I’m afraid I have nothing useful I can say on that subject.”
“Well, then—forgive my burning curiosity, Miss Harper, but are you really managing to put your sister through college all on your own? Or did you have family savings to draw on after your parents passed away?”
“You’ve been talking to people in town about me,” Beatrix said, wantingto be annoyed. Not quite managing.
“They don’t have much to say about Omnimancer Blackwell, except they’re glad he’s here and I’d better not take him away, but everyone has opinions aboutyou.”
“I’m sure the presiding sentiment is that I’m wasting my money.”
His grin was so mischievous, she couldn’t help but smile back. “I may have heard that afewtimes,” he admitted. “But I also heard admiration about your ability to see a difficult goal through. So—you’ve really done it yourself?”
“There were no family savings,” she said, ignoring her instinct not to give personal information to the magiocracy. Of course he knew the answer already. Small towns had no secrets—no secrets not protected by magical Vows, anyway. “We always had the best of everything when I was a child, so I assumed we had plenty of money. But after the second Depression hit, we were just living beyond our means.”
“Your father used to own the general store, I gather.”
“I had to sell it after his death. It was the only way to save the house from foreclosure.”
“No life insurance?”
She shook her head. He’d stopped paying the premiums after her mother died. Stopped doing much of anything, really.
“So you put your family’s finances to rights by yourself and raised your sister.” Garrett ducked under a low branch, glancing over his shoulder at her. “I’ve read some of the stories about Lydia Harper, you know—I take theNews-Register—and I can’t believe no one has thought to write aboutyou.”
“Well, no one has drawn an editorial cartoon of me with wings and clawed feet under the title of ‘Harpy,’ either, so on the whole I consider it a plus,” she said, grateful for the change of subject.
He shook his head. “Not one of theNews-Register’s finer moments.”
“Or how about their column headlined, ‘Stop Harping, Miss Harper.’”
“Sounds like they’re the ones doing the harping.” He leaned toward her as he said it, and her stomach gave a funny sort of turn. She had never felt so acutely alone with anyone as she did with this wizard. Except Blackwell, but that was a very different sort of feeling.
“Well,” she said, a shade too cheerfully to sound natural, “you now know my life story. What about yours?”
“Oh, much less interesting. Military brat who tested positive for wizardry, thought he’d do something totally different than his old man, and ended up in the Army anyhow.”
There was a hint of bitterness there. She looked at him as she said, “You don’t sound entirely happy about that.”
He shrugged. “Depends on the day.” Then he gave a wide smile that crinkled his eyes, revealed teeth endearing in their slight crookedness and made it difficult to look away.
Stop it. Stop.
“I have no complaint with this day,” he said. “You?”
Making herself glance away, she caught sight of the omnimancer’s mansion looming beyond the trees.
“Not yet.” She sighed. “But I will.”
The workday passed much as the one before. She brewed while Blackwell set off explosions. Shuffled her feet like a grade-school pupil as he checked her work. And unpinned her hair at his demand so he could better see whether he needed to pull any of it out, an extended moment that made her feel both angry and exposed.
Just as he leaned in to pluck one, she remembered what she had dreamt the previous night. She’d never told anyone that she’d kissed Evan Zeiler, valedictorian of their high school class, and now Blackwell knew—and knew exactly how she’d felt about it. Thank goodness for small favors that the dream had at least ended where it did.
Then the ordeal was over. She walked out of the accursed house. And waiting for her at the edge of the forest, almost disappearing into the surroundings in his deep green coat, was Theo Garrett.
