He felt another lurch in his stomach. Beatrix didn’t want him to go—because he didn’twanther to want him to go, which was possibly the strongest argument in favor of going. And given what happened in her parents’ room, what on earth might he do if they continued to see each other every day?
“Running will be seen as an admission of guilt,” Miss Dane warned. “They’ll hunt for you. Wouldn’t you be better off staying put?”
That was true. They would hunt for him far harder than if Garrett had made it back to report what he’d seen.
“Do you want help deciding?” He almost didn’t hear Beatrix’s question, it was so quiet. He looked at her—at her dark eyes focused on his, transmittingstay stay stayas if her lips had formed the words—and couldn’t pull free of her gaze.
“I—I think I’d better figure this out alone,” he said.
Lydia stood. “Please tell us what we can do to assist, either way.”
“Beatrix should come here at eight tomorrow as usual,” Miss Dane said. “If we all keep traipsing in here together, it will be remarked upon. Let her know your decision then.”
The women stood and put their coats back on.
“Oh!” Beatrix turned to him. “It might not matter, but I just remembered—Garrett cast a spell as he dropped me off at home. I think he said ‘hit gewayletseth.’ Do you recognize that?”
He frowned. It sounded vaguely familiar. He went for the lexicon, then recollected it as a classified spell the Pentagram used to protect certain areas of the New Mexico testing site once he insisted (after stealing the weapon) that they needed better security.“Hit gewærlæceþ—a tripwire spell. It would alert him if someone went through. He cast it outside your house?”
She nodded. He winced as it struck him that hadhethought to cast the spell—or, rather, had Beatrix do it—then Garrett couldn’t have slipped in without her knowing about it.
“Wouldn’t we all have set it off as we came and went?” Lydia asked.
He turned to Beatrix. “Was he touching you as he cast it?”
“No, he—” She stopped. “Yes, actually, he was.”
“Only you would set the tripwire off by crossing it, then. The rest of us wouldn’t.”
“He wanted to swoop in if he thought you might escape him,” Miss Knight said, looking disgusted.
Beatrix nodded slowly. “Then—I suppose when I did leave the house, he was already dead.”
“When was that?” he asked, hoping the timing would clarify who wasn’t, if not who was, the perpetrator.
“About ten minutes after you left.”
He sighed. Even Lydia would have had enough time to get to Garrett’s side of the forest and kill him, if she moved quickly.
“I realize this is a terrible question, I do,” Beatrix said into the silence, “but we don’t have any red leaves. Should we take his?”
Tempting. He hesitated.
“No,” Miss Knight said before he could get there himself. “It would be obvious then that he’d been robbed.”
“If we left one or two, it might just look as if he’d used them himself,” Miss Dane said.
He shook his head. “It’s not a risk we should take.”
If he ran, though … If he ran, he might as well. He would sorely need all the reds he could get.
He unwound the spell around the house and opened the door to let the women out. As Beatrix passed by, the last of the group, she looked at him and seemed about to say something. Then Miss Knight took her arm and pulled her along.
Miss Knight had told him not that long ago that he ought to leave. Perhapsshekilled Garrett and knew he’d look like the culprit.
He spent a moment imagining it. But truthfully, he just wanted her to be to blame. He had no evidence to suggest she was more likely to have done it than Miss Dane. Miss Knight had greater magical ability, but Miss Dane could cast an invisibility spell and see through the one cloaking Garrett. Miss Dane also had a good half-foot on Miss Knight, enough height to allow her to crack Garrett on the head witha completely nonmagical rock. It was an even fifty-fifty, again assuming that Garrett’s death wasn’t accidental. Well—forty-five, forty-five, ten, because he couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that Lydia had done it, as unlikely as that seemed. In any case, Miss Knight should have encouraged him to take the reds if she wanted it to look like a wizard-on-wizard crime.
This was getting him nowhere. He had to figure out what to do. He set off for the Sederey farm—either way, he would need his car—but was no closer to a decision when he returned. Head aching, he slumped into a chair in the receiving room.
