“Yes! But alsohazardous. What if something went wrong? You shouldn’t practice by yourself—I wouldn’t even be able to hear you scream.”
Ella shrugged. “I’m careful, I promise. Worst case, I’ll drop the soundproofing and then scream.” She grinned again, wider this time. “Now that our dear omnimancer thinks I want to mark homework here, I can practice every day and he’ll never suspect. You, too—just tell him you want to put off going home. Totally believable.”
This seemed like the worst deception yet. They would be using Peter’s own house to practice the magic he saw as a dangerous amount of power, and had urged her not to tell anyone about, for the express purpose of tellingandshowing thousands of women—all the while pretending that theysimply wanted to avoid the oppression of their bugged house.
Ella’s boots clicked against the floor as she lowered herself back down. “What’s wrong? Youcanstay and practice, can’t you?”
This could be the day.
“Yes,” Beatrix said.
By Friday of that week,Ella’s appearances after school had become such a routine that Beatrix heard her following Peter up the stairs while he was still confirming that no wizards had slipped in. A few minutes later, the attic door thunked shut behind him. Soon after that, a softshush-shush-shushon the stairs gave way to Ella, standing in the brewing-room doorway in stocking feet.
“Beatrix,” she whispered, vibrating with some strong emotion. “The magic-detection spell—the spell?—”
“What? What’s wrong?”
Ella ran around the table and grasped Beatrix’s arm. “He cast the spell in our room, and what showed up wasn’t bright enough, it was clearly just picking up the actualspellswe cast last week, so then I cast another detector when he left and knitted to make a hairpin float and itwasn’t white, Beatrix, itwasn’t white, do you realize what thismeans?”
Yes. Yes, she did. They could work magic without leaving telltale signs to give them away to the magiocracy. If theirknitting was subtle enough, they could practice right in front of a wizard and he would never know. Peter included.
“Now we just need to make this magic work properly,” Ella said, as if that were a minor issue, and darted back up the stairs.
As Beatrix brewed, she couldn’t help but wonder if Ellawouldmanage it. At the end of the afternoon, she ran up to the little room with an anticipation she couldn’t quell.
“Behold,” Ella said, spreading her arms.
Beatrix looked around. Nothing seemed different. “What?”
“This time I turned areddress purple.”
The groan escaped before Beatrix could catch it. There was no scenario in which different-colored clothes would be a necessity. “Ella …”
“No, bear with me, it’s actually more impressive than it sounds. Note the shocking ankle-revealing hemline?” Ella twirled, her stockings just visible above her prim schoolteacher lace-up heels. “Come over here and feel it.”
“Your hemline or your ankles?”
“Both.”
Beatrix humored her. Kneeling, she reached for the top of Ella’s shoe—and touched fabric. Invisible fabric in front of her legs. “What?—”
“My dress! See, I’m making my shoes and a bit of my legs appear to show through.”
“All right, thatisimpressive,” Beatrix said, staring at the illusion, the inch or two of Ella that wasn’t actually her. It was indistinguishable from the rest of her. Wizards couldturn themselves invisible, but there was no spell, as far as she knew, with results like this. “How are you doing that?”
“Practice, like I said. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Beatrix considered it a moment longer before scrambling to her feet. “As amazing as that is, we really have to focus on sensing magic.”
“You can only try to find an invisible crabapple for so long before you start to go crazy. By the way,” Ella said with exaggerated nonchalance, “I accidentally squashed it.”
Beatrix grinned at her. There was no way to accidently squash a crabapple, invisible or not. “Oh?”
“Yes. While stomping around the room. Who could have predicted such a thing?”
Beatrix held back a laugh. Her own level of enmity for the crabapple was equally high, but they needed to make this work.
“Just try it for twenty minutes,” Ella said. “Then, new crabapple. I promise.”
