“Quick, go!” she said, grabbing the chair behind her and hanging on to it as if for dear life.
He didn’t stay to apologize. He just did as she said.
She leaned on the table,trying to calm down. Could their Vows be gettingstronger?Asking him to leave was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Even now, her will to stay in this room was only slightly more powerful than her desire to rush after him and take him to bed.
Perhaps she honestly wanted him. Perhaps the Vows had nothing to do with it.
Perhaps the Vows were even now wrapped around her brainstem, whispering that idea.Submit. Submit.
She picked up her knife, breathed in and out until her hands stopped shaking, and made herself finish the brew, exhaustion creeping up on her by degrees. She called through the closed lab door so the man who inspired every possible feeling in her knew where she was going, and fled his house.
The cold air on the walk to Mrs. Clark’s apartment was a relief. By the time she knocked on the door, she’d pressedeverything (lust, self-reproach, panic) into a tiny knot, and her lungs worked normally again.
Anna Clark opened the door, looking impossibly small for seven. Her blond pigtails stuck out at odd angles, as if she’d put them in herself.
“Hello.” Beatrix tried to smile. “I have a package for your mother.”
Anna stood up straighter, her anxious little face brightening. “Is it the medicine?”
“Yes. May I?—”
“Oh, please come in!” Anna grabbed her arm and dragged her to the bedroom, where Mrs. Clark lay with her two younger children cuddled up on either side of her. “Mommy, Mommy! It’s here! She brought it!”
“Miss Harper,” Mrs. Clark said, the exhaustion in her voice putting Beatrix’s into proper perspective. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”
Mrs. Clark was a sight to make the heart constrict. She looked washed out, except for the smudges under her eyes, and wispy curls stuck to her damp forehead. Beatrix found a spare pillow, propped her up and said, “Let’s get a dose into you this instant.”
“It’s going to be OK now,” Anna said as her mother swallowed a spoonful of iron supplement. “This will make youmuchbetter.”
She turned to Beatrix, face pinched with anxiety again. “Right?”
“Right,” Beatrix said, voice cracking. The memory of herself in Anna’s place, her own mother dying, was almosttoo much to take. They had to get Mrs. Clark safely through this pregnancy.
Mrs. Clark closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “Anna, could you play with your brothers in the living room for a few minutes? I’d like to talk to Miss Harper.”
Anna wrangled her recalcitrant siblings—the toddler twisting and arguing in her arms—and closed the door behind them.
“She must be such a help, your Anna,” Beatrix said.
Mrs. Clark smiled, and she no longer looked quite so ill. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Oh—I have instructions for you,” Beatrix said, taking the piece of paper from her pocket. “Four times a day, preferably on an empty stomach, but with food if it causes you any distress. Omnimancer Blackwell said you should notice improvement in a day or two.”
Actually, he didn’t; the brewing guide did. But it sounded more authoritative this way.
Mrs. Clark’s smile twisted into a wry quirk, slight but undeniable. “Did he say how long it would take until I feel human again?”
That surprised Beatrix into a laugh. “Not specifically, no.”
“This will be such a relief.” She shifted on her pillow. “I’ve been feeling worse and worse and just thinking, ‘Well, what did you expect, expecting?’”
Beatrix winced. “Is it really that bad even when you don’t have anemia?”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, that’s true. Everyone says such vague things if they say anything at all.”
“Like ‘beautiful’ and ‘miraculous.’” Mrs. Clark arched her eyebrows. “Funny how no one mentions ‘horribly uncomfortable’ and ‘exhausted.’ It must have slipped their minds.”
