The ride back to his car was predictably tense. He sat in the rear seat, invisible again, and wondered whether they would get all the way to the Key Hotel without any of them saying a word.
Miss Knight broke the silence just as the building came into view. “We ought to call the press. Right now. Get them back on site.”
“Oh, crud, yes,” Miss Harper said. “There’s no time to lose if we want to catch Helen Hickok before she leaves for the night.”
He had a very different opinion on the matter, but Miss Knight would see only nefarious intent if he offered it. Instead, he said, “We can’t very well walk into the Key and ask to use their phone.”
“There’s a payphone,” Miss Knight said, gesturing at it as Miss Harper slowed for the turn into the parking lot.
This was a bad idea. The reporter might believe it—might—but he doubted that most of her readers would. They would chalk it up to an accident. What Miss Harper had in this case, unlike the film, was circumstantial evidence. And he wasn’t about to expose his involvement by stepping up as an expert witness.
“Wait,” Miss Harper said, drawing the syllable out, turning the word into an uncertain sound. Had his doubt bled over to her? “Omnimancer ... Youaresure someone cast a spell just before the crane arm fell, aren’t you?”
He hesitated. But he didn’t want to lie to her. “Yes.”
“We don’t absolutely know it was cast on the crane, though,” she said, parking the car. “Could we check for magical residue, just to be certain?”
Miss Knight looked up with a start. “There’s a spell for that?” Apparently her magical knowledge did have limits—but then, up until a few weeks ago he hadn’t known about the spell, either.
“Officially, there isn’t,” he said. “If you ask a wizard to cast it, he’ll say it’s impossible.”
Miss Knight snorted. “Including you?”
“Absolutely, if you ask me in public. I’m not supposed to know it exists.”
“Let’s go,” Miss Harper said, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder, forestalling an argument. “I won’t feel easy telling Hickok what happened unless we’re sure,completelysure, because even with the proof lying all over the ground, it’s going to sound unbelievable. Especially since we don’t have any witnesses that aren’t in the League. Well—any witnesses in a position to come forward.”
They piled out of the car and crossed Key Highway after Peter cast an invisibility spell on both women, just in case. The lack of observable life on the manufacturer’s property did not guarantee they were alone.
“I feel terrible about the damage,” Miss Harper whispered. “I know it wasn’t our fault, but it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t there. And Schoen’s charged us next to nothing.”
Miss Knight sucked in a breath. “Beatrix—I think it’sgone.”
They covered the distance at a run. Nothing lay where lot gave way to piers, not even broken bits of metal. Peter stared at the unmarred cranes towering over them, trying to remember how many Schoen’s had started with.
“So much for the evidence,” the disembodied voice of Miss Harper murmured from somewhere a few feet to his left.
“Bastards.” Miss Knight—of course.
No need to cast the spell now. No proof, no press. And if any other wizards were still here, equally invisible, he shouldn’t want to give them a blazing clue that another magic-user was poking around.
He gazed at the cranes. Then he fumbled in pockets he couldn’t see until he found his demarcation stones, because—like Miss Harper—he wanted to be certain.
He laid them around the cranes, casting another chameleon spell for safety’s sake before uttering the spellwords.
Bingo. The crane closest to the pier lit up with a lattice of white along the horizontal jib, the long arm that had nearly flattened Miss Harper’s sister—and Miss Harper. It looked as if it had been fractured in a hundred places. The wizard who handled the patch-up job probably needed half an hour to set it right.
Miss Harper sighed. “Good for Schoen’s, at least.”
A snort. Miss Knight, who added: “Too bad we can’t tell who cast that spell on the crane.”
A curse slipped off his tongue before he could stop it, not that these women would much care about his lack of decorum. He reached out until he connected with Miss Harper’s arm, then leaned in and whispered: “Ican—I just didn’t think of it before. Now it might be too late.”
He murmured the identification spell. Burnt bits of leaf swirled from his hand and into the usual miniature twister, turning once, twice, three times. But no face formed. The leaf dust lost cohesion and floated to the ground.
He groaned.
“It’s all right.” Miss Harper paused. “I’m—I’m not sure I really wantto know, if you see what I mean.”
