“Yes.”
A feeling that was close to hope zipped through her, starting in her toes and ending in her throat, making it hard to respond. With effort, she whispered, “What did you do?”
“Kept going. There really was no other choice.”
She looked for something calming to focus on and found a bit of unexpected beauty—the lights from across the harbor’s basin setting the water aglow and throwing the heavy equipment into silhouette. Lydia stood with her back to them at the water’s edge, no doubt planning her next dozen moves.
The last of the caterers drove off. They could finally go home. But her legs felt like lead, and she couldn’t summon the energy to move.
Blackwell shifted, gravel rolling from the spot where she assumed his boot had connected with it. “It would have been easier if she’d lost, then?”
“One assumes Washington would have taken less of an active interest in us. At least for a while.”
“Wish I’d known that before I rigged the vote.”
She opened her mouth, horrified, but his muffled laughter gave him away before she could say a word.
“I’m joking,” he said. “I promise.”
Omnimancer Blackwell, comedian. She very nearly elbowed him—as if he were a friend. As if he were Ella.
Who was not, apparently, a friend after all.
“No one else tampered with the ballots either,” he added. “There hasn’t been a spell cast since I arrived that wasn’t mine.”
“I’m so glad you were here.” She cleared her throat, trying to sound a bit less like she was about to cry. “Thank you.”
“Any—” He broke off, hissing in pain.
She put out a hand. She wished she could see him. “What’s wrong?”
“Magic.” The word burst out, strained and urgent. “Somebody just did magic.”
Lydia—where was Lydia? To her relief, her sister was still beside the water, perfectly fine.
Then the massive arm of the hulking crane above Lydia detached with a metallic screech, plummeting toward the ground—and her.
CHAPTER 25
The next second seemed to go by in slow motion. The crane arm—yards, feet, inches from colliding with Lydia’s head. Blackwell’s horrified intake of breath. Her legs lurching her forward even though there was nothing she could do,nothing, because she was hundreds of feet away.
And then—impossibly—she wasn’t.
She barreled into her sister, knocking her onto a wooden pier as deadly steel whistled past, her own body jerked backward when the crane arm clanged on the pavement. It took her a breathless, ear-ringing moment to realize the fallen equipment had caught the edge of her coat. How she’d traveled the distance of a football field in under a second without so much as casting a spell, she had no idea. But now was not the time to ponder.
They needed to run.
Lydia lay on the pier, looking shell-shocked. Beatrix, yanking her coat free, dragged her sister to her feet and got them turned around. The ruined equipment cut them off from the lot, a barrier nearly six feet tall.
“Help!” she shouted.
Rosemarie, somewhere in the distance, bellowed back. “I’m coming!”
But it was Ella who got there first, Ella who scrambled over the downed arm. Beatrix couldn’t believe, looking at her face, that she’d had anything to do with this—this assassination attempt.
Blackwell’s words about Theo echoed in her ears:Army wizards are either researchers or agents specializing in spying, assassinations and sabotage. Which do you think he is?
“Quickly,” Ella said, grasping Lydia’s other arm and hoisting her over the remains of the crane. “To the car, come on,move.”
