She’d been there in a sense already. The magic caught faster this time. She opened her eyes to a barren landscape, spun around, saw nothing and no one, and flung the stone away from her. Without knowing exactly how much time shehad left but sure it was down to seconds, she fell to her knees and put her entire being to the task of conjuring up the Spirit of Justice park. Exhaust, grass, two trashcans, Capitol building?—
Crackling energy broke her concentration. Sparks like lightning rushed horizontally toward her, the sound escalating to the screech of a hurtling train. Her last thought as Ella’s spellwork overtook her was of Peter, lying on the distant sidewalk. About to die—just like her.
Everything went black.
Then the world snapped back to life around her. Not the desert. The park.
She’d teleported herself, still on her knees, directly beside Peter.
“You did it,” he croaked, gazing up at her. His fingertips brushed hers, a spare bit of movement.
She was alive.Hewas alive. Somehow they must have short-circuited the bomb—what she saw and heard must have been her fevered imagination. He wasalive.
She slipped an arm behind his neck, sitting him up, babbling in dumbfounded relief, “You’re all right, you’re all right.”
“No,” he rasped.
With his face close to hers, she saw what she’d missed. His skin was a chalky white the color of the payload stone. He convulsed suddenly in her arms, blood leaking from his mouth.
She screamed. She had to teleport him—no, she couldn’t, the lexicon said a person with internal injuries wouldn’t survive that—ohGod, oh God! “Help! Help us!Help!”
No one came. No one heard.
“What can I do?” she pleaded as he coughed up more blood.
“Nothing,” he said, the word barely above a whisper. “Nothing … you can do.” More coughing, more blood, the faint pressure of his hand on her back as he tried to hold on to her. “Serves me right.”
“No!”she cried, because it didn’t serve him right, he didn’t deserve to die, and no one had tried to save the animals after weapon tests so who was to say she couldn’t save him now?
She pressed her cheek to his and shut her eyes to block out everything but what she wanted. What knitting required, she now knew, wasn’t panic so much as a monomaniac focus on the details. She pictured the color rushing back to Peter’s skin, the sharp stench of blood disappearing, his heartbeat steadying, his laughter filling her ears.
She imagined it with gritted teeth as he convulsed against her, moaning between coughs. She redoubled her efforts, but it only got worse.
“Destroy the transmitter,” he gasped, taking a breath that rattled in his chest. “Please—d-don’t let this happen again—promise?—”
“I promise,” she said, choking over the words. She couldn’t help herself: She looked at him, and what she saw made more attempts at knitting impossible.
Blood vessels burst like fireworks on his cheek. His eyes rolled back in his head. His cough stopped, everything stopped, the trembling, the convulsions—he wasn’t breathing, his heart wasn’t beating?—
Beatrix screamed in incoherent despair.
Then the lessons Rosemarie taught them in middle school rushed back at her with crystal clarity. She pressed him to the ground and pushed on his chest with both palms,fast fast fast fast, singing a verse of that hoary old jig Rosemarie insisted they practice to: “I’ll see you in my dreams, m’dear, I’ll see you in my dreams; reality is no friend to me, but I’ll see you in my dreams.”
Each word was a dagger to the chest, but it helped her keep the rhythm. When the verse ended she put her lips to his and breathed oxygen into his lungs, then sang it again, pressing his chest, keeping the blood flowing through his body. All the while, she tried to think. What did the weapon steal? Life force, he’d said, but what if his suspicion was right, what if it wasmagicthe weapon took—what if life force and magic were one and the same, and she could provide him some of hers?
“I’ll see you in my dreams,” she said, finishing the verse, and as she bent down to give him oxygen, she kept one hand on his heart and gave a mental push.Take my magic take it take it.
She didn’t know if anything was happening, if it were even possible to share it, but she kept going in a fevered loop: chest compressions and song, oxygen and magic. Adrenaline was all she had left, powering her past the exhaustion, the horror, the misery, and she was running out of it. Her compressions slowed. The song came out as a croak.
His body twitched. He was coughing. He wascoughing, that meant he was alive—there was still hope?—
“What’s going on here?”
She looked up, trying to keep the compressions going. A police officer was striding their way.
“Help!” she cried. “He needs an ambulance! Hurry!”
The officer, a typic, scrambled for his radio. Beatrix could feel the faint flutter of Peter’s heart and see his chest rising with weak but independent breaths, so she concentrated all her efforts on infusing him with magic. She pressed out all second thoughts about whether it mattered and imagined it seeping through his skin, rushing to his organs, his blood, every part of his body that was balanced on the knife’s edge between life and death.
