He’d never heard her say anything so foul-mouthed outside their linked dreams. He laughed without meaning to and was hard-pressed to stop. Finally he pulled himself together and checked the rest of the house, finding nothing.
“Did you use a red leaf to teleport in like that?” she asked in the attic when he’d finished.
He gave a grim nod. The irony of using up a valuable, irreplaceable red to go such a small distance was not lost onhim. “I really didn’t have a choice. Stupid of me not to have made you your own warning charm for the house. Do you have a spare locket?”
“Yes, I’ll bring it tomorrow. But perhaps you should key it to the town instead.”
He thought about her walking—often alone—in the forest. “You’re right. Just assume if the charm goes off that the wizard is close by, wherever you are.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll make the same ones for your sister, Miss Dane and Miss Knight. What happened to Miss Knight, by the way?”
“Meeting with parents. Won’t be over tomorrow, either.” She frowned. “Peter—do you think Garrett was simply trying to see if his fevered imaginings were right? Or was he assigned to do this for some reason?”
He didn’t know. It was a disquieting thought.
When he went to bed, though, his mind had circled back to the one certainty of the day: He was down to his last red. Soon he might have none left. The magiocracy manufactured them and controlled their use, supplying only federal employees and select wizards outside the government, and trying to get some on the black market seemed a very bad idea.
“Beatrix,” he said the moment they appeared dreamside, “let me teach you how to teleport.”
“What?”
“We know you’re capable of it. You just need to figure outhowso you can do it on demand. What better place to practice than here?”
She stared at him. “Youwantme to—to do leafless magic?”
“No, but we’re one red away from zero, and that fills me with dread.” He stood up and held out a hand to her. “Please?”
She took it. But she still looked skeptical. “What we’re doing here isn’t magic. It’s manipulating the world. If I ‘teleport’ in here, I’m not moving, I’m changing our surroundings—or the way we perceive them, anyway.”
He led her out of the room and down the stairs. “I’m not sure that’s so very different from magic. Especially the kind you can do.”
“Except I can’t,” she murmured as they reached the ground floor. She saw his questioning look and added, “That night I figured out how—that was an aberration. I’ve managed very little since then.”
That was a relief, mostly. He couldn’t kick the uneasy feeling that she’d tapped into something dangerous. He knew how his spells were powered—what was the power source for her magic? If it was something internal, some fuel she was drawing out of herself, what would that do to her?
But teleportation was an exception. Their ability to rapidly go somewhere—or get out of somewhere—could be a matter of life or death.
He opened the front door and stopped, staring. He’d expected Ellicott Mills as it really was, the pitch dark dead of winter. Instead, dawn light sparkled on his car and the town was a riot of color. He stepped onto the porch anddrank in the flowers, the budding trees, the rabbit scurrying off nearby.
“It’s beautiful,” he murmured. “You’re really good at this.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I’ve never liked winter, but I’m especially eager to see the back of this one.”
Persephone, yearning for spring and freedom. He sighed. No escape from Hades in this case.
“All right,” he said, “try teleporting down the hill, just shy of the forest.”
“What if I teleport into a tree?” Beatrix waved a hand. “I mean, I assume I wouldn’t be injuredhere, but what if I did something like that in real life?”
“Remember, the key to magic is intent. You can’t teleport into something solid unless you wanted to do that for some inscrutable reason.”
“Ah. Very convenient.”
“I don’t think wizards would do nearly as much teleporting if it didn’t work like that,” he said, making her laugh.
“How on earth did you learn to do it the first time?” she asked. “How doesanyonelearn?”
