The lot they’d parked in seemed miles away. But Ella didn’t run directly for it. She zigzagged, taking them all with her.
“What are you—” Beatrix began.
“Neverrun away from a wizard in a straight line. Easy target.”
Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that? But twenty seconds later, Beatrix felt the telltale tingle of magic on her skin. The world jittered around her as her heart accelerated from rapid to breakneck.
Ella yelled, “I think we’ve been hit!”
“Protection,” Blackwell whispered, so close she could feel his breath on her ear. He grabbed her free arm and ran alongside her toward the lot.
“It’s OK,” Beatrix gasped out to Ella and Lydia. “It’s OK. Keep going. Almost there.”
Blackwell let go as they reached the car. She wrenched the back door open and Ella scrambled in, pulling Lydia with her.
“What if the car’s been sabotaged?” she whispered in what she hoped was Blackwell’s direction as Rosemarie and Meg caught up with them.
Rosemarie’s outraged shout overwhelmed whatever he said in response. “Why is she here? Get herout!”
No mystery who “she” was. Ella’s eyes widened.
“No.” Beatrix glared at Rosemarie. “It’s my car, and she’s staying. Getin.”
It couldn’t balance out her lack of faith in Ella before, but it was something. Rosemarie made a disgusted noise and flung open the front passenger door.
“I’ll cast the detection spell on the car, but they’re going to be beside themselves when they see it,” Blackwell whispered.
“Rosemarie, wait—you drive,” Beatrix called out, praying that no one would stop them and discover Rosemarie was past the legal driving age for ladies.
Assuming they made it out at all.
“Meg, get in the front,” she said. “Pop the hood and don’t put the key in the ignition—I need to make sure it’s notgoing to blow up on us. Everyone, put your headsdown,cover them with your arms,come on, come on!”
“Clever,” Blackwell murmured, a softclackin the vicinity suggesting a demarcation stone laid on the pavement beside the car.
“Wait!” Her stomach clenched as she remembered his one request that day—avoid revealing he was helping them. “The wizard will see the spell.”
“I’m casting a chameleon spell first. All he’ll see is what the car looks like right now.”
The air shimmered around them as he whispered the magic words. Then he cast again, and the eerie red light flared up as if he’d turned it on with a switch.
No wizardry under the hood. No problems with the tires. No splotches of white inside the car, except the protective magic around Lydia and Ella—which thankfully they couldn’t see with their heads down. Blackwell undid both spells, cutting off the red light and the shimmery sheen.
“Start the car!” she hollered. To Blackwell, she murmured: “Thank you,thankyou. Please be careful.”
“I’m coming with you,” he whispered as she opened the back door, when it was too late to argue, and he squeezed in with her—four adults in a space meant for three.
Rosemarie hit the accelerator and they took off. Meg, white as death, remained hunched over, arms around her stomach now instead of her head, moaning. Ella turned around to stare out the rear window. Lydia leaned against Beatrix, shivering, just like the little girl who once ran to herafter bad dreams—but this time with a nightmare all too real.
And kneeling at her feet, Blackwell.
His thigh was pressed against her leg. His arm, braced against the door, was so close she could feel it every time she breathed in. She put out a hand to determine where his face was, not wanting to bang into it by accident, and brushed against his mouth.
The memory of what those lips felt like on hers was a sham. But her traitorous body reacted to it as if it really had happened.
She pulled her hand back and worked on sliding out the pins holding her hat in place. It gave her something to concentrate on that wasn’t horrible.
“I don’t think any wizards are following us,” Ella said. “We’re in traffic now, it would be the height of idiocy to tail us in an invisible vehicle—myGod, that was close. I saw the crane and thought—but there you were, as if you appeared out of nowhere,” she added, turning to look at Beatrix. “Incredibly lucky that you happened to be so close by.”
