He didn’t know what to do with himself. Something fluttered in his chest, and he knelt amid the gaily wrapped boxes that seemed like symbols of more than just appreciation. For the first time since he’d come home, he felt as if he might actually belong here.
Silver glinted from behind the tree, a present he hadn’t noticed. He reached for it, brought it into the light and caught sight of the tag.Peter, it said, in that handwriting that looked so much like his.
He couldn’t help himself. He opened it. Inside was a diaphanous angel tree-topper and another note.You deserve a proper Christmas.
He sank back against the foot of his bed, head in his hands. Then he pushed himself to his feet and walked out of the house.
Beatrix wason her hands and knees on the kitchen floor, trying to make the old tiles look less dingy, when the doorbell rang.
“Omnimancer!” Rosemarie’s voice carried over with ease, but whatever she said after that was lost to the roar in Beatrix’s ears.
She thought he would wait until that night’s dream to ask. There was only one reason to come in person.
If he called on her Vow, she would have to tell him. The horror he would feel—and she would feel it too, like a flood. It wasn’t simply that he might order her to stop. What if she lost her nerve and ran back to all four women with a plea that they not even start?
“Beatrix!” Rosemarie called.
No.No. Lydia’s life was at stake. She simply wouldn’t do it. She put her forehead to the cool floor, trying to calm herself, and got to her feet.
“Omnimancer,” she said as she walked into the foyer. Her voice quavered. She left it at that.
“I’m sorry to bother you after hours, but I find I need to ask you about one of the ingredients you ordered for the headache brew,” he said.
She led him to the dining room, knowing the conversation would have nothing to do with brews or ingredients. The moment they crossed over the invisible demarcation line—inside which anything they said would be obscured—he immediately cast a revealing spell. The room glowed red. The only traces of magic beyond the air around his hands were the twined threads from her chest to his, the insubstantial proof of the Vows that would bind them as long as they both lived.
He dropped the spell and turned, wearing an expression that could only be anguish. “Beatrix … I have to?—”
“Do you distrust Rosemarie?” she said in a rush. Anything to delay this moment. “Do you know something I don’t?”
He blinked. “No. No, I just wanted to have a plausible reason for being here in case the magiocracy has managed to sneak in any recording devices under our noses.”
She stared at him, her veneer of calm further thinning. “Do you think they would do it without using magic?”
“Not really.” He sighed. “I’m just being paranoid.”
Which meant he surely had not missed how suspicious his day had been.
“Beatrix—”
“Wait, Mrs. Clark!” The words burst from her, heartfelt—if also a distraction. “What happened? Is she all right?”
“Oh—yes, she’ll be OK. Anemia. Easily treated with a supplement brew. The mayor said he’d put in a rush order for the key ingredient we don’t have.”
Beatrix let out a breath. Impossible to think of Mrs. Clark’s pregnancy difficulties without also thinking of her own mother dying after giving birth to Lydia.
“Listen, I … I need to tell you something,” Peter said.
Tell? Not ask? He wasn’t looking at her. He put his hands on the dining room table and stared down at it.
“I followed you to your meeting tonight,” he murmured. “I spied on you.”
Her heart gave an almighty jerk. She swayed on her feet.
“I was so sure you were going to start your whisper campaign,” he said. “I had to know. I felt that I had to do something.”
Into the widening silence, all she could manage was a brief, shaky question. “Invisibility spell?”
“Yes. Beatrix—I’m so sorry. I could see right away that I’d been wrong.”
