“Nothing except my own old spells.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“The spell on the door may not have been cast today,” he said. “Maybe someone unlocked it in order to switch the contracts—maybe that happened just a few days ago, close enough that it’s still bright.”
“But there was no spell on the safe.”
He shrugged. “The safe might be easier to pick than the door. Or they found the key—is it in the house?”
“Yes,” she admitted. She squeezed her eyes shut, and he was reminded that she had just sent away a man she’d cared about, a man who had offered her exceedingly tempting marriage terms. A man who—she had to be thinking—might have switched the contracts himself.
He wanted to say ... something. He fumbled for words.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, taking the most obvious ones from him. “I just remembered you never got dinner—you must be starving.”
He was, come to think of it.
“Please, come downstairs and have something to eat,” she added.
“While invisible?”
She cracked a very small smile. “As amusing as it would be to watch, no. Ella has Miss Massey well in hand. They’re deep into a game of checkers in her room.”
He followed her to the kitchen, reversing the spell on himself as she slid a casserole into the toaster oven. The tension radiating from her reminded him where she ought to be instead.
“I’m keeping you from your sister,” he said, voice down so Miss Massey wouldn’t hear.
She shook her head. “We’ve decided not to go tonight after all. We might lead them right to her. She’s safer if we stay here and work on some protections for the house so it’s less vulnerable when she comes back.”
He could see the logic in that. And he could think of several spells they should cast to counter the most likely “accidents.” Fire resistance would be chief among them.
“Have you called her already to tell her you’re not coming?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll call from the payphone on Main Street. Just in case.”
“Good.” He hesitated. “I should stay here tonight.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“I don’t mean it as commentary on your ability to take care of yourself,” he said, the words rushing out. He sounded like a blastedschoolboy. “Three is a magically significant number. Three wizards—magic-users—casting protective spells together have a greater effect than one casting just as many spells. If they do it at the darkest point of the night, so much the better. And while we’re at it, I want to set up the charm that alerts you if anyone casts a spell on the property.”
“Then I would be grateful—very grateful—for the help.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he said, gesturing toward the sitting room.
She gave a wan smile. “I’m not inflicting that horrible thing on you, Omnimancer. I’ll make up the bed in the master suite.”
“Your parents’ room?” Her mother would roll over in her grave. And he didn’t particularly care to sleep there.
Miss Harper winced. “Sorry. Bad memories, I know.”
Right—she had seen that memory through his eyes. She’d cleaned the floor of the room as if she had done it with her own hands and heard her mother’s unkind words with the exact horror he had felt.
She knew things about him that he’d never told anyone, that he could never fully explain simply by telling. Terrible—and intoxicating.
“I’ll put you in Rosemarie’s room,” she said. “Would that be all right?”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
