Whowasshe and where had she acquired her information? But neither question was an appropriate response to hers, so he merely said, “Of course.”
The younger Miss Harper, who looked uncomfortably like her mother, held out her hand to him. “Thank you, Omnimancer,” she said. Her quiet words were a striking contrast to her rousing style on stage, but he was left with the same impression of steely resolve. In the space of a few minutes, she’d pulled herself together by sheer will.
As she took back her hand—ice cold—she said, “I am in your debt.”
“Incredibly inconvenient, given the circumstances,” Miss Dane muttered.
A strained laugh got out before he could stop it. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
“You might owe your life to the very thing your membership wants to ban,” he said to the newly elected president of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, “but you don’t owe it to me. It’s your sister who saved you.”
“On that, we agree,” the dark-haired young woman said.
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he said. “But I remember you, Miss Dane, and you”—to Lydia Harper—“I obviously know by reputation.”
His assistant gestured toward the other woman he didn’t know, the one in the front passenger seat. “Omnimancer Blackwell, this is Meg Wallace, our treasurer.”
Tears streaked Miss Wallace’s face. She looked more shaken than the assassination target.
Miss Harper turned back to the dark-haired woman. “And this is”—she hesitated—“my best friend, Ella Knight.”
Knight, Knight—he reached into the recesses of his memory and came up empty. He couldn’t help himself: “How do you know so much about magic, Miss Knight?”
“I grew up in Bethesda,” she said, dry as burnt toast. “I couldn’t escape it.”
“Mm,” he said, not sure whether to be satisfied with that answer. But it was true that the fashionable Washington suburb was home to more wizards per square mile than anywhere else in the country.
Miss Harper gestured to the alley. “We can’t stay here. And I don’t think Lydia should go home tonight. Rosemarie,do you know if any of the hotels have rooms left? Besides the Key,” she added, prompting snorts.
“We don’t have the money for it,” Miss Dane said.
“I’ll pay,” Peter said.
“I really don’t think?—”
“Miss Harper is right. It’s not safe to go home until we’ve come up with a plan.”
Miss Dane pursed her lips, then inclined her head. “All right. Thank you, Omnimancer.”
Ten minutes later, they walked into the Southern Hotel as five visible women and a once-again-invisible man. Miss Dane procured the keys to a room under an assumed name, using the cash he’d given her, and he reemerged once they were safely inside.
Peter put a finger to his lips and searched the room for cameras placed by the hotel or anyone else. Finding none, he set down demarcation stones and castLang read leoht. The room was clean.
He relaxed just a fraction and cast the anti-eavesdropping spell.
“Room’s soundproofed,” he said, wondering how bad it would look if he kicked out everyone but Miss Harper so he could talk to her first.
She beat him to it: “Could I have a word with the omnimancer? Alone?”
“All right,” her sister said, over the objections of Misses Dane and Knight. She herded them and the overwhelmed treasurer into the hall and closed the door.
He slumped on one of the double beds. Though it wasn’t the most immediately pressing thing he needed to talk to her about, he found himself asking: “How did you do it—teleport?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice wavered. She turned to face him. “I wasn’t holding leaves. I didn’t say any spellwords. I just—I just desperately wanted to be across the lot to push Lydia out of the way, and suddenly I was. How could that be?”
He was just as mystified. Even if Garrett had at some point mislaid a red and she’d pocketed it, he’d never known anyone to successfully teleport the first time they’d tried.
“In case you’re wondering …” She turned out her pockets. Empty—no leaves of any sort. “Besides, you made me Vow to never cast a spell outside the house without your permission. So how did Idoit? Do you have any ideas?”
