The effect was explosive. Papers flew to him from every corner of the office, turning the room into a confusion of white as Dockett bellowed in outrage. Beatrix had no time to feel relieved—the box she’d put the camera on was literally bouncing. Paperwork trying to batter its way out? The flaps strained against the masking tape holding them down. The thing was about to blow.
She grabbed both sides of the camera—just in time—and hung on as it vaulted into the air with an overstuffed three-ring binder in its wake. Then she brought it down, hopingany later viewers—if there was anythingtoview—would think gravity alone was at work. In a stroke of good luck, she managed to catch one of the flaps with the camera and balance the thing on the now-misshapen cardboard.
“Christ!” Dockett said, the first intelligible word he’d managed since Blackwell’s spell. “What—what thefuckdid you do?”
Blackwell now stood behind the chair, which—she almost laughed—had a tower of papers stacked neatly beside it with the binder roosted precariously at the top. “I summoned all the paperwork in the room,” he said, as if this should have been obvious.
“All right then,whythe?—”
“I am aware the original contract for this weekend was destroyed. I was sent to ensure no copies are lying about in this pigsty you call an office.”
“You could’ve blisteringasked!Come on, you think I want it getting out that I’d screw over a client? I never made any copies of that contract besides the carbon your guy burned?—”
Yes. Yes, yes,yes.
“—and you’vedestroyedmy filing system, you—you?—”
Dockett, seeming to recollect that the man he was on the verge of insulting could do a great many things to him with a leaf and a word, came to a sputtering stop.
“There was a system? My goodness.” Blackwell leaned an arm on the chair. “This is what will happen. I’m going to look through these contracts to see if you’re telling thetruth. You are free to stay or get back to running the Key, whichever you’d prefer. I can let myself out.”
“I’ll stay,” Dockett muttered.
Blackwell worked efficiently, building a pile of glanced-at papers on the desk. But there had to be hundreds to go through. Beatrix—who didn’t doubt that Dockett had told the truth—watched in an agony of nerves and wished they were out of the room. She desperately wanted to watch the film.
“Good,” Blackwell said after nearly fifteen minutes of this, rising from the chair. “Thank you for your—ah—hospitality, Mr. Dockett.”
“You’re not paying me nearly enough to put up with this shit,” the owner said, looking at the jumble of contracts with a grim air.
“Considering that you’re also getting the League’s money, a bit of overdue cleaning seems a small price.”
Beatrix jabbed at the switch to turn the camera off just before he swung about and strode for the door. Pressing the machine to her bosom, she tiptoed after him, equally afraid her shoes would clack against the floor or that—by moving slowly to avoid noise—she would miss her opportunity to get out.
Blackwell opened the door before she got there. But he must have anticipated as much, because he held it wide and turned back to Dockett.
“Give my regards to Garrett the next time he stops by,” he said.
Her heart stuttered.
“Garrett?” the owner spat.
“Wizard Garrett. Your original contact.”
“He didn’t tell me his name,” Dockett said peevishly.
“You don’t say.” Blackwell smirked. “Maybe he managed to wriggle out of the assignment. Tall, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, dark green coat?”
“I don’t know,” Dockett muttered. “All you wizards?—”
“—look the same. So I’ve been told.”
She poked Blackwell, perhaps slightly harder than necessary, to signal she was on the way out. She minced along one edge of the hallway until he caught up, then jumped directly behind him and lengthened her stride so her shoes hit the ground in time with his. When he pulled the hotel’s main door open, she dashed by him with a whispered “all clear.”
“Oh God,” she murmured once they crossed the little highway to Schoen’s Sugar and she judged it safe to have a conversation. “My respect for spies has increased exponentially.”
Blackwell grinned. And if it didn’t exactly do for him what a grin did for certain other wizards, it did create the illusion that they were partners in this. Allies.
“I thought that was fun,” he said. “Well—except for the slog through the contracts. Though it made that bastard even more infuriated, so all in all I count it a plus.”
