Ella did not look convinced.“OK?”
She was about to explain, but then she saw Blackwell’s Pierce-Arrow. He slowed abruptly as he passed by, giving her a glimpse of his shocked expression, and pulled over in front of the officer’s car.
His coat billowed impressively behind him as he stalked over.
“You there,” the officer snapped, “stay back from?—”
Then he must have caught sight of Blackwell’s hair.
“Uh,” he said. “Um.”
“Has my assistant done something wrong, officer?” Blackwell said.
The man didn’t have an immediate answer. In as bland a tone as she could manage, Beatrix said, “I believe he thinks we’re prostitutes, Omnimancer.”
Ella choked. Blackwell gaped at her.
“Um,” the officer said again.
“For the record,” Beatrix said, “we’re not.”
“I’m aschool teacher,” Ella snapped.
“No, that’s not …” The officer had a deer-in-headlights look. “I was just …”
“I have to assume that’s the issue, since you didn’t explain why you’d stopped us,” Beatrix said.
The officer opened his mouth and promptly closed it.
Blackwell looked as if he was about to explode. Beatrix cut in first. “Have you ascertained to your satisfaction that nothing is wrong here?”
“Yes! Yes.” The officer returned the ID cards with fumbling haste. “Everything seems to be in order.”
“Are we free to go?”
He backed away. “Yes. Yes, ma’am,” he tacked on before fleeing to his car.
Blackwell glared at the vehicle as it sped off. “That… that?—”
Beatrix let out the laughter that had been building since she realized the man was not an FBI agent on the verge of arresting them for illegal magic use. Both Blackwell and Ella stared at her in carbon-copy bewilderment.
“Beatrix, it’s not funny,” said Ella, who usually saw the humor in everything.
“Itis.” She gestured at her sedate, chin-to-ankle outfit. “How did he expect us to have any success at prostitution dressed like this?”
Ella’s lips twitched. “Maybe he thought he’d find a change of clothes in the trunk.”
Blackwell leaned against the car. “How did you know that was why the officer stopped you, if he never explained himself?”
She no longer felt the overpowering urge to laugh. “Because that’s the third time it’s happened to me.”
Ella’s “what?” sounded horrified. But Blackwell nodded, as if he’d suspected. One of the many unsettling things about him: He was beginning to know her better than her best friend.
“You’ve seen how officers target women drivers,” Beatrix said to Ella.
“Yes, but not forprostitution,” she said. “For going a mile over the speed limit or taking a bit too long to react to a green light.”
“If you’re driving at night, you run the risk that they’ll stop you and search for rubbers.”
