“Yes,” she agreed. “He did. But he picked me because he knew I wanted to use magic. And he’s horrified by how it turned out. He’s never tried to shift the blame to me?—”
“Because it’s demonstrably his fault,” Ella bit out.
“—and he could have argued that we were stuck, and so why not make the best of it, why not stop fighting it, but hedidn’t, he understood exactly why I wanted to fight feelings I thought were not my own. He switched when he slept so we wouldn’t have conjoined dreams, and I asked him to switch back—I did that.”
Ella shook her head and turned back to the transmitter. “You’re under the effects of a Vow, Beatrix. Everything you think and do is influenced by it. But I’m not under a Vow tohim. I’m making this call for you because he’s manipulated you from day one, and that ends now.”
“We’re all influenced by something!” Beatrix was trembling now with unalloyed panic. “You’re influenced by your horrific experience! But Peter isnotFrederick!”
Ella didn’t answer. She raised her hands, and Beatrix realized from seeing Peter’s memories of weapons tests that she was starting the spellcasting sequence. The final step.
“No!”Beatrix yelled. The next instant she pulled free of Ella’s magic and tumbled to the ground at Peter’s feet.
Wheezing, the breath knocked out of her, she grabbed a fistful of leaves from his coat and cast the only spell she knew would destroy the transmitter.“Fordest!”
The explosive spell she’d heard Peter cast over and over in his attic burst from her hands, red as blood, her aim true. But a yard shy, it hit something—something nearly invisible that gave the air around Ella a yellowish tint. Beatrix’s spell sizzled up and went no farther. In its place was a scorch mark on the protective magic Ella had erected. The protection went all the way around, like a dome—no way in.
But Ella stopped her spellwork to shore up that protection, and Peter called out, “Keep hitting it!”
She did. At first she thought she was making progress—each spell scorched the wall of magic between them, forcing Ella to focus on repair. But each explosion left less of a mark. Finally, a spell she sent at the barrier didn’t scorch it at all, and Ella turned back to the transmitter, continuing the sequence.
What could she do? What? She dashed back to Peter and dragged him from the circle of demarcation stones, his body a dead weight.
“If you’re outside it and not in—” she began, rubbing the awfulEarrunes off his body.
“It doesn’t make a difference,” he said, and she dredged up another detail from his memories—of animals that moved out of the circle. As long as they’d been inside it when the sequence started, they were inextricably linked to the transmitter and it drew their life force wherever they were.
“No!”She grabbed the lapels of his coat. “I refuse to give up! I won’t! There must be something I can do!”
“Yes, but you’d be risking your life,” he whispered.
“Tellme!”
“Get the stone. Jump it to the desert.”
That would save the city, but not him. And only if she could teleport, which she couldn’t. She’d never been able to replicate whatever it was she’d done to help Lydia, not counting her dreamside cheat method of rearranging the world instead of herself, and?—
I’m not sure that’s so very different from magic.
Peter’s dreamside words ringing in her ears, she hissed, “Where’s the stone? Describe the place—sights, sounds,smells!”
“Spirit of Justice park,” he said quickly. “Close by the Capitol, on top of a garage, lousy spot, mostly grass, no one goes there, smells like exhaust, a sidewalk bisects it and the stone is under a metal trashcan just beside the sidewalk …”
She closed her eyes and concentrated, clutching Peter’s motionless hand. And she couldseeit, she could see exactly what he meant. Just as Ella’s chanting recitation ended and she had ninety seconds left before all was lost, she felt the magic catch. She opened her eyes, heart thundering in her ears.
She and Peter were in a park.
“Is this it?” she cried, jumping to her feet, seeing the grass and the pavement and—oh, the Capitol! The Capitol building!
“Yes!” Peter said. “Quick, do you see a trashcan?”
She saw two, one at each end of the street. She didn’t have time for a bad guess.
“There’s a bare patch of dirt near the can,” Peter shouted.
She saw it. She dashed for it. And there under the can lay the stone, looking like a harmless rock with its rune side out of sight. She grabbed it and ran headlong back to Peter. Even before she got there, he was yelling out details about the test site she’d seen in their dreams:
“Desolate, sand, bits of brown scrub, one two-lane road leading up to the building, nothing from there to the detonation site, the complex is mostly underground and the exterior is an ugly gray, the sun is so hot you can’t bear it at midday, even in the winter—go at least thirty miles out from the building, there’s nothing there, it’s like the moon …”
