Miss Knight bit her lip.
“Ella—”
“Draden was one of four men President Abbott was considering to be his running mate. I don’t know if youremember what happened? Two bowed out to ‘spend more time with family.’ The other—” Miss Knight took a deep breath. “The other died.”
“How?” he asked.
“Car crash.”
“Witnesses?”
“No.”
“Oh my God,” Beatrix whispered. “Oh no. Oh,God.”
“I don’t know that he had anything to do with it,” Miss Knight said quickly, shaking her head. “It’s just … awfully suspicious.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“How do you know what youdoknow?” he asked.
Miss Knight gave a shaky, bitter laugh. “I spent most of my life on the same street as Draden. I—heard things.”
He wasn’t entirely satisfied with this answer. But he couldn’t tell how influenced he was by his general dissatisfaction with Miss Knight, so he merely said, “Anything else we should know?”
She looked at Beatrix standing next to her, then back at what from her perspective was the gap in their circle, where he invisibly stood. She shook her head. “No.”
“Omnimancer …” Beatrix’s sister touched his invisible sleeve. “I hate to ask for more help when we’re already in your debt. But he cast a lot of spells.”
“I know,” Peter said. “I’ll check the entire house. Let me do the kitchen first and then you can all wait there. You don’t want to be in the rooms I’m searching because anyother cameras he might have installed will catch your reaction.”
“Won’t the cameras pick up your spells?” Beatrix asked.
“I don’t think so. In black and white, you shouldn’t be able to see the spell detector.”
“Check the car first, if you would,” Miss Dane said, and there were a few seconds of bleak silence at that.
“Yes,” he said, and went to do it. But the car, and the entire yard, was spell-free, so he circled back to the house.
Beatrix opened the front door for him. She dawdled in the hallway as he set his demarcation stones in the kitchen. This time there were three mystery spells glowing white.
He revealed and then re-concealed what each spell was hiding, one at a time. Another camera hung over the back door; audio-recording devices on the ceiling listened above the table and sink.
He tiptoed back to the hall. “Three recording devices,” he whispered in Beatrix’s ear.
She closed her eyes, every muscle in her face taut. Then she nodded and went out to bring the others inside.
He worked his way around the rest of the first floor, finding audio recorders in every room. The dining area they’d so carefully protected was fatally compromised. Downstairs, recorders had been hung all around the spacious basement.
He padded up to the second floor, feeling the weight of so many devices. A few could be avoided. But these wereeverywhere. Then it occurred to him to wonder what the wizard had done to the bedroom Beatrix shared with hersister, and he ran there, stomach twisting in awful anticipation. And indeed, it lit up brightest of all.
There were spells on the papers tucked in boxes inside the closet—copied, most likely. There were spells on the bedsheets, their purpose unclear but concerning; the bedding would have to go. The typewriter lit up white. So did three spots on the walls, under which were hidden audio-recorders. And last of all, his spells revealed two cameras—one pointed directly at Lydia Harper’s bed, the other at Beatrix’s.
He sat on the floor, eyes squeezed shut. So the magiocracy hoped to catch one or both of the Harpers at an activity inappropriate for unmarried ladies.It could be worse, it could be worse—and that was true, it could be far worse, but here was proof that Draden and his ilk weren’t so very different from him.
The last time someone had aimed a hidden camera at Beatrix in order to force her hand, after all, he’d done it.
CHAPTER 7
