“You can leave,” she said. “Go somewhere else, somewhere out of state. Distance will make a difference, Omnimancer—or don’t you want to fix the problem?”
He stared at her. Apparently Beatrix hadn’t told her everything.
“Miss Knight,” he said, trying to decide how to explain dreamside.
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re doing her more good than harm by helping the League,” she said, not bothering to wait. “You know what I think? I think you plannedthis.”
The accusation was outrageous and patently unfair. But it contained a kernel of truth. None of this would have happened had he not set out to rope Beatrix intoomnimancing, and he’d given zero thought to what his plan would entail for her.
“Get out,” he said.
“No.”
“Youmade her take that last Vow!” He slammed his fist on the desk. “This is as muchyourfault as mine!”
She stepped forward, glaring at him. “That’s an awfully thin claim, considering that I told her she could make it to me but you insisted she make it toyou. And now you’re tailing her to ensure her activities conform to your idea of a proper wizard’s assistant!”
He sucked in a breath. Beatrix had told her. It was harder to take, somehow, than Beatrix telling her about the Vows’ awful side effect—perhaps because that was accidental, whereas he had spied on her quite intentionally.
“Is the thought that Beatrix mightoccasionallybe beyond your control so terrible for you to bear?” Miss Knight asked.
“I’m not trying to control her,” he said, hating that he’d done just that with the first Vow, had controlled her so fully that she couldn’t have even blinked if he’d told her not to move. “Of the two of us, who has more influence with her—you or me? Have you thought about that?”
“Just what are you?—”
He yelped, his charmed locket burning hot against his chest. A wizard had just cast a spell within the town limits. He looked up to see Miss Knight pulling her own charmed locket from under the collar of her dress, eyes wide.
Oh God. “Did yours?—”
“Yes,” she said, the tension in that spare word echoing what he felt. The wizard was at the Harpers’. “Lydia?—”
Someone hammered on the front door with both fists. Beatrix, back from the Clarks’, no shave-and-a-haircut this time.
“Quick,” he said, running for the car, both women hot on his heels, and shouted “you drive” to Beatrix, hoping that wasn’t asking too much.
He leapt into the passenger seat and started the car from there. Beatrix threw the Pierce-Arrow into reverse, executed a rapid three-point turn and careened down the steep driveway, Miss Knight holding on in the back.
He got his internal organs under control and cast the spell that would show who tripped the lockets’ charm. The oak leaf turned to ashes in his hand and lifted into the air, swirling around. Then it resolved itself. High forehead. Dark glasses. Square jaw. Grim mouth.
He’d completely forgotten to tell Beatrix about seeing this man with Draden. Had that really happened only two days ago?
Beatrix zoomed down Main Street, face pale. “Garrett?”
“No,” he said, wishing it was, despite the nearly fatal run-in he’d had with the wizard. Garrett loved Beatrix, or thought he did. He at least might have some qualms about killing her sister. “It’s?—”
“Morse!” Miss Knight sounded appalled.
He turned in his seat, staring at her. “You know him?”
Miss Knight put a hand to her mouth—and then their lockets went hot again. Beatrix cried out, a heartrending sound. He cast the spell a second time; same result.
“It’s the wizard who tapped your phone last month,” he said, trying to remain calm. “Miss Knight, whoishe?”
But before she could answer, their lockets flared a third time, immediately followed by a fourth and fifth, and they were in an uproar: curses spilling from his lips, Miss Knight urging Beatrix to go faster, Beatrix making the hairpin turn onto narrow College Avenue at forty miles an hour. Spells kept coming. She was whispering something he thought was a prayer until he caught the words as she neared her house:This could be the day.
The day she lost her sister.
He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the horror of it, hardly able to think, and so it wasn’t until Beatrix brought them to a shuddering halt four feet from her front door that he realized their mistake. This was his car—his flashy, instantly identifiable car. Coincidence could explain why Miss Knight and Beatrix showed up at this moment, but his sudden appearance would make any intelligent operative wonder.
