“I was convinced I’d open the door and my bedroom would be there as always,” he murmured, nodding his head.
“And so you made it and I could see it, too. Even though I’d never been there in real life.”
He smiled at her, eyes crinkling. “So you thought you’d put your hypothesis to the test by trying to gin up a completely different place?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. She’d tested her hypothesis for the purpose of keeping him from asking his nightly question, not in the interest of science.
If he asked her here, now, she would have to tell him. There was no way to dance around it anymore.This could be the dayrang in her ears—but if he asked her, the choice would be out of her hands.
If he asked her, it wouldn’t be her fault for telling him.
“Well, now we’ve replicated the results,” Peter said, and if he realized something was amiss, he didn’t show it. “What tipped you off? When did the idea occur to you?”
So she told him. She opened her mouth, and out it rushed.
“The night we appeared in the basement rather than the bedroom. The night I said I wanted to start a whisper campaign.”
He went very quiet. After a moment, he said, “I suppose we were still mentally in that room even after we left it.”
“Yes. So that’s where we showed up as soon as we started to dream.”
Her heart thudded in her ears as she waited for what he would say to that. She’d opened the door. She’d all but invited him in.
The silence stretched out. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her, was he? But she knew what she should do.Tell him. She licked dry lips.
“Peter …”
And then she opened her eyes with a start in her bedroom, woken by the alarm clock, and clutched at her covers in horror of what she’d almost done. Yesterday was unsettling, ofcourseit was, but she and Ella had handled it. And that awful thought she’d had as she crouched in Miss Sadler’s house was just that: a thought, a passingthought. She wouldn’t have acted on it. And she absolutely couldn’t tell him.
Never mind distracting him in their dreams. From now on, she would have to distract herself.
CHAPTER 14
Peter was crouched over the remains of the latest failed experiment when his charmed lockets flashed hot. Both of them, the one keyed to the entire town and the newly made one that picked up spells only on the property.
Had a wizard just dismantled the spell around the house?
His pair of lockets flared again, then a third time. Blood roared in his ears, his thoughts skittering in horrible directions. The wizard could be inside even now—Beatrix had no warning—whyhadn’t he made her a locket keyed to this house or the town, something beyond her own property? Too late to run down now, too late already! The intruder could beat him to the brewing room, see her breaking federal law?—
Peter thrust his hand into the pocket that held his two precious red leaves, grabbed one and materialized the nextinstant in the brewing room. Beatrix stood at the other end of the table, eyes wide, her astonishment crashing over him.
“Miss Harper,” he hastened to get in before she could ask what on earth he thought he was doing. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Where were we?”
Either the situation was odd enough to set off her internal alarm or his gut-clenching anxiety had splashed over to her, because she said, “Just about to start the migraine tincture, Omnimancer,” as if it were perfectly normal for him to teleport into the room to help her with medicine she required no assistance to make.
“Of course, thank you,” he said, looking at the brew she’d just finished, still green from the spell she’d cast to check its efficacy. If she’d been seen or heard, the jig was already up.
He tucked the vial behind ones filled with other medicines, hands trembling. Brewing would be interesting in this condition.
“Omnimancer …” Beatrix bit her lip. “Do you expect any visitors today?”
“Yes,” he said, perhaps a bit too emphatically. He took a deep breath to counteract the adrenaline and said, “You know we can’t go a day without the town adding to the request list.”
Beatrix nodded, eyes watchful. It was a small relief, at least, that she’d grasped the seriousness of the situation.
But then they had to actually make the tincture. He fumbled with his mortar and pestle, straining to catch some proof of an invisible third in the room. Should he cast thespell detector? No—better to make the wizard think they had no idea he was here, surely?
Peter picked up his container of pomegranate juice, realized his hands were shaking, and turned it over to Beatrix rather than attempt to pour it into the beaker himself.
