He and Nan had been a household of two. The Clarks were five going on six. The children slept on mats in the living room he’d had all to himself at nights. He walked through it now, trying not to think about the walls closing in on him as they had the night before, and entered the only bedroom.
Seven-year-old Anna and her younger brothers stared at him, eyes wide and mouths solemn, as he took a seat by theirmother. Sue Clark lay in a bed with a sagging mattress, looking pale and small. Even her rounded belly wasn’t as large as by rights it should have been.
“Was this the first time you’ve fainted?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. Simply getting the word out seemed to be an effort. She closed her eyes.
“I ran to get Daddy,” Anna said. “He was coming home for lunch, and I found him and I told him.”
Peter wondered why Anna had been out of school, but now was not the time to ask.
“That was very good,” he said, nodding at her. “If your mother is ever in trouble again, come straight to my house. You know where it is?”
“Yes, sir. Thegiganticone.”
Certainly compared to this apartment. He pulled out a leaf, murmured“hycgan gesyntu”and watched as his second diagnostic spell of the day turned a sickly yellow.
“That means something is wrong, doesn’t it?” Mr. Clark sat on the other side of the bed, both hands wrapped around one of his wife’s, his voice shaking. “Yellow is bad, isn’t it?”
“It does mean she’s not perfectly healthy, but it could be minor,” Peter said, trying to hit a soothing tone. “Unfortunately, the diagnostic test doesn’t tell us what’s amiss. A doctor will have to make that call.”
Mrs. Clark turned her head away, but he caught a glimpse of tears.
“We’ll make it work, tulip,” her husband murmured.
“No,” she whispered. And the rest of it was too quiet to make out, but Peter caught “the rent” and knew she would not go to the hospital.
Had his mother made the same decision? Would she have survived childbirth otherwise?
He stood. “I’m taking you to the emergency room. Now.”
Mr. Clark looked as if he was trying to find a response, but it was Mrs. Clark who got there first. “Thank you very much, Omnimancer, but we’ll manage.”
He leaned in and lowered his voice. “I’m not an idiot, and I’m not leaving you like this. I will cover the bill.”
Her face flushed—still a too-pale shade. “That is very good of you, sir, but we cannot accept charity.”
“I’m the town omnimancer, and I have a budget,” he said. “Charity has nothing to do with it.”
“Oh,” she murmured, all her animating anger and color gone. “But I—I thought you weren’t getting any assistance from Washington.”
He wasn’t. Which made everything he did in Ellicott Mills a sort of charity. But few people here saw it that way, and ultimately—given his ulterior motives—they were right.
“I have a budget,” he repeated, and willed her not to ask where the money came from. “It’s not a large one, but keeping expectant mothers healthy is at the top of my priority list. I’m bringing my car around. Anna, can you watch at the window and tell your father when to carry your mother down?”
She nodded.
Mr. Clark swallowed a sob. “Thank you.Thankyou.”
And so Mr. Clark returned to work and Mrs. Clark and her three children rode in the Pierce-Arrow to the hospital, where, after a very long wait, a doctor declared her “unquestionably anemic.”
Afterward, Peter dropped the Clarks off at their apartment, popped over to the general store to put in a rush order of ferrous gluconate for Mrs. Clark’s iron supplement brew and returned home ten minutes after Beatrix’s quitting time to find the house empty.
She’d successfully avoided seeing him all day. She’d masterfully kept him from asking his usual question last night. He stood at the threshold of the brewing room, stomach churning, all but certain now that the whisper campaign was starting tonight.
He jumped in his car and sped most of the way to her house, parking out of sight on a side road. A trio of leaves in his hands, a spellword on his lips, and he ran the rest of the way in blessed invisibility.
Her car was in the garage—that was a relief. He stopped beside it, weighing what to do, when his decision was made for him by the sight of Beatrix and Miss Knight striding out of the house, their destination clear.
