He sat up in his dark bedroom, the real bedroom, breathing hard.What?
A split second later, his senses followed him out of the dream and he felt his charmed locket burning against his chest.
Well,fuck.
He grabbed a leaf from his coat, adrenaline making his movements jerky, and cast the identification spell.
High cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose.
Garrett.
Beatrix—he dove for his car keys on the nightstand as he zipped up his pants. The wizard might already be in her house, and she would be asleep, everyone there was asleep. He cast an invisibility spell on himself as an afterthought.
Five seconds later, his bedroom door opened.
Garrett. In his room. Just as invisible as he was.
Peter stood next to his nightstand, heart in his throat, trying not to move or breathe too loudly or think about the purpose for which Garrett had shown up in the middle of the night. Garrett, who was almost certainly assigned to the Army’s spies-and-assassins wizard unit.
He couldn’t tell where in the room the man was. Garrett moved with magically silenced feet. Peter had no idea how to replicate the effect, though even if he did, casting it now would give himself away.
He scanned the room, a bead of sweat trickling down his neck. With his back against the wall and the need to take shallow breaths, it was like their last encounter all over again.
Where was Garrett,where?
Something brushed against his shin. Fabric. A wizard’s coat.
The urge to run was overwhelming. He had never pegged himself as a coward before, but until he came back to Ellicott Mills, there had never been a wizard looking to do him physical harm, let alone one trained for combat.
He had two red leaves, the fuel powerful enough for teleportation spells, in a breast pocket of his coat. He could cast the spell and be gone.
But then he’d be down to a single red, with no way to acquire more. Two was already too few, given the types of emergencies Beatrix and her sister were likely to face. He’d promised her he would protect Lydia. He made himself stay where he was.
Then a voice—Garrett’s, angry—called out,“Gefaran!”Peter’s locket flared hot once again as Garrett teleported out.
He pushed off the wall, shaky, wary, and went through the entire house, demarcating each room and hallway to reassure himself that Garrett hadn’t simply teleported somewhere else in the building. Then he went outside, buried spare demarcation stones in a generous circle around the house and rigged up a second warning system with his grandmother’s locket, tucked away for years in a keepsake box. The locket already around his neck picked up on spells anywhere in town, other than those cast by him, Beatrix, Miss Knight and Miss Dane. The new one would flare hot only if the spellcasting happened in the house or immediately outside it.
After that he went to bed, but not to sleep. He stared at the now-closed door, heart thumping too fast in his chest, wondering what in the hell that visit had been about.
Ella disappeareddown the towpath that led to Ellicott Mills’ schoolhouse, and Beatrix stepped into the clearing beyond, the one where she’d danced with Garrett during their brief courtship. That had been in the fall, the leaves in a riot of color overhead and underfoot. Now the trees circling this space were snow-covered and dark.
“Beatrix …”
She spun about. Garrett was standing in the clearing. Here and now.
As she fell back a step in shock, he strode toward her, deep green coat swirling behind him.
“Stop,” she said, unaccountably afraid. “Don’t come any closer.”
He did stop, a wounded expression ghosting across his face, and she took a calming breath. Showing up in the middle of the forest after she’d told him never to come again was unnerving, but she wasn’t in any physical danger from him.
Then she recollected what he’d done to Peter and took another step backward.
“I asked you to stay away,” she said.
“Beatrix—this is important.”
For a split second she thought he’d come to warn her about her bugged house. Then he said, “What is Blackwell doing?”
