“It’s me,” he said, marveling again at her ability to sense something off about the air around a person under aninvisibility spell. In the near-dark, no less. “There’s no one in the house—where’s the elder Miss Harper?”
Her eyes widened. “Everyone’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“They must have driven somewhere.”
But the car was in the garage. As they retraced their steps, he said, “Do you haveanyidea where they might be?”
Miss Dane shook her head. But she looked back at the forest.
“Let’s go,” he said, heading in. “I don’t like this at all.”
Every few steps, Miss Dane called out for Beatrix. Soon, they heard rushed footsteps behind them—his heart leapt—but it was her sister barreling toward them.
“Beatrix is missing?” Lydia said.
“We presume she’s in here,” Miss Dane said, gesturing at the expansive forest. “Where didyougo?”
“Out,” Lydia said.
“Obviously, but where?”
“We can discuss that later,” Peter whispered, giving Lydia a start. She did not have Miss Dane’s peculiar talent. No one else did, as far as he knew.
Miss Dane pushed onward, bellowing Beatrix’s name. A few minutes later they were again met by the wrong woman coming from behind. As Miss Knight ran up the path, he glared at her purely because she was not Beatrix.
“What’s going on?” she said, completely out of breath.
“Where were you?” Miss Dane demanded.
“Where wasI?Where wereyou?I wanted to strategize with you, and you were nowhere in the house!”
“Bee!”
He turned and saw what Lydia had noticed first—Beatrix, thankGod, unharmed and making her way toward them. Her sister closed the gap at a run. “Listen, you must plead not guilty?—”
“Garrett is dead,” Beatrix said, her voice flat.
They all stared at her. It was Lydia who finally broke the silence with a shocked, “What?”
“I need to find the omnimancer,” Beatrix said, stepping around her sister.
“I’m here,” he said, and canceled the invisibility spell on himself. “Whathappened?”
Beatrix turned back. “I’ll show you.”
Wizard Garrett lay within sight of the sloping lawn beyond the forest, though not where Peter had originally found him with Beatrix. She explained how she’d discovered him, pointed to the head injury, the rock, the root. She looked so guarded—eyes watchful, voice nearly monotone—that he immediately thought of Plan B. She was holding something back.
Had she killed Garrett?
No.No.But the question ate at him as they hastened to his house.
He met them in the receiving room after securing and checking the interior. Beatrix spoke first: “I think we all need to explain our whereabouts.”
Lydia gave a start. “What do you mean?”
“His death is suspicious,” Peter said.
