That silenced him.
Lydia stood, looking him in the eye. “You can do this. I wouldn’t have asked you to take the lead if I had any doubts.”
He held her gaze, jaw tight. Beatrix gripped her chair. If he gave up, would anyone in the legislature be willing to take up the cause? What if he switched sides and told the wizards the League knew about the bugging?
“All right,” Gray said. “But from now on, don’t keep me in the dark. I’m serious.”
“I won’t,” Lydia said, offering him her hand. “Anything you need to know, I will tell you.”
He hesitated. But he shook on it. “Omnimancer?”
Peter nodded, pushing away from his desk. He glanced at Beatrix, and her heart—that co-opted organ—sped up. “Are you coming back later, Miss Harper?”
“Yes. If that’s all right.”
His half-smile spoke volumes. But all he said was, “This might take a few hours.”
So much of his life was now caught up in their problems. Even Garrett would likely no longer be an issue for him if not for her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and felt how very insufficient that was.
Gray’s officephone was indeed tapped. So was his home phone. He had an audio recorder hanging over each of his desks for good measure—one in Annapolis, the other on the outskirts of Ellicott Mills.
“On the bright side, it could be worse,” Peter said on the drive back to his house in Gray’s unmolested pickup truck. “You could have recording devices all through your house.”
Gray glowered at the road. “I am positively gleeful.”
“You can go to the press about this, you know.”
“You’d cast the revealing spell for the reporters?” Gray sounded highly skeptical. “You’d out yourself as a League supporter?”
He was right—there would be no way around it. Peter hesitated.
“Never mind.” Gray shook his head. “I don’t think it would help at this stage. How could I prove it was officially sanctioned? I mean, they could sayyoudid it.”
That was true. But it was also a convenient excuse for doing nothing.
“Did you?” Gray added, and it took Peter a second to realize what he meant.
“No, Senator, I did not install those bugs,” he snapped. “My phone is tapped, too.”
Gray made ahrmsound that was not a satisfying stand-in for an apology.
“For now, talk to your colleagues in hallways and meeting rooms,” Peter said. “That’s where most of the work gets done anyway, isn’t it?”
Gray glanced at him, frowning. “So you’re really, honest-to-God helping those ladies.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” The way Gray asked, it sounded as if he couldn’t conceive of a reason anyone would.
Thiswas the man they were counting on to get the Constitution changed and stop more attempts on Lydia Harper’s life? He stared at Gray. “You have doubts about whether the Twenty-fifth Amendment is a bad idea, do you?”
“Not even a shred of a doubt, but I’d have thought you’d have plenty.”
“Wrong is wrong.”
Gray was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’re interested in Lydia Harper, aren’t you.”
