“If only every citizen were as upstanding as you,” Beatrix said, getting to her feet. “Good day, Miss Sadler.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Oh, dear!” Miss Sadler put her hand to her mouth. “That must be the investigator now!”
They couldn’t be seen. Even if their disguises did pass muster, surely the presence of unexpected, unknown wizards would prompt the man to make inquiries the moment he got back to the office?
Beatrix opened her mouth to suggest they remain in the sitting room while Miss Sadler dispatched the investigator at the front door, but Miss Sadler got there first.
“Oh, silly me! Of course you can just leave from here—what was I thinking?” She gave “Wizard Smith” a beatific smile. “Ever since I heard such travel was possible, I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Another knock.
“Quickly now,” Miss Sadler urged.
Beatrix glanced at Ella, whose eyes communicated what she assumed: Ella had not somehow managed to master teleportation while neglecting to mention it. Neither of them could teleport the conventional way—that took an entirely different, highly specialized type of leaf—and Beatrix had managed it with knitting only once, when her sister’s life was in imminent danger.
Just one thing to be done. Beatrix pulled a handful of leaves from her coat, grabbed Ella by the arm and hoped—prayed—that she could manage the invisibility spell on the both of them at once.
“Heoloð,” she whispered—and mercifully, they disappeared.
Miss Sadler looked delighted. She put out a hand as if she wanted to see whether they were still there—good God—but at that moment a third knock sounded, and she rushed out of the sitting room to answer it, the old door complaining as she flung it open.
“My apologies,” she said. “Are you the investigator?”
“Yes,” said an irritated male voice. “I believe we had an appointment.”
“Yes, I know, and Iamsorry,” Miss Sadler said. “You see, I’ve just discovered that I was completely mistaken. I—I’m afraid I mistook a bit of very clever stage magic for the real thing. It wasn’tonthe stage, you see, and—well, even so, I feel very foolish …”
As Miss Sadler went on in that manner, Beatrix found Ella’s ear by trial and error. “Is there a way out the back?”
“I want to hear the end of this,” Ella whispered, and pulled her into the cramped space between a chair and the wall.
“—and I’ve only just realized my error, or else I would have called,” Miss Sadler said, finally coming to a stop.
The man—wizard?—sighed. “Fine. Next time, lady, besurebefore you ring the tip line.”
“Yes. I amverysorry.”
“Yeah. I get that a lot. Good-bye.”
They heard thepopof teleportation, the sound hitting Beatrix like a blow as the implications settled in. Wizards Smith and Brown hadn’t made a sound when “teleporting.” Now that Miss Sadler had seen and heard the real thing, they’d just given themselves away.
What were they to do?
Miss Sadler walked into the sitting room, her prim mouth grave. She picked up Beatrix’s plate of uneaten cake and cup of unsipped tea, close enough to where Beatrix and Ella were crouched that either of them could grab the hem of her dress if they were so inclined, and exited to the kitchen.
Think.Think.
The click-click of heels announced Miss Sadler’s return a few seconds before she arrived. As she picked up Ella’s nearly empty plate and cup—how had Ella managed to eat through the stress of it all?—she simply stood there, her back to them. Beatrix could read the future in Miss Sadler’s too-straight spine: She was coming to a decision. She would call the tip line again and tell the FBI everything.
They needed to stop her. Now. No time for a complex plan, no time to consult with Ella—Beatrix knew she had less than a minute to react. She thrust her hand into her pocket, pulled out a fistful of leaves and?—
Miss Sadler turned. Beatrix saw with a start that the woman was smiling in a patently soppy fashion.
“Thank you, Miss Sadler, for your service to our country,” their host murmured, gazing at the teacup in her hand. Then she put her lips to it, as if it were a person and not a piece of china.
Beatrix stared at her in blank shock. She leaned her head against the chair, hands shaking. What on earth could she have cast to stop Miss Sadler from calling that wouldn’t have stopped Miss Sadler from doing anything ever again?
