“Well, I—I also included a clause that they were to take no action that would knowingly put their recruiter in harm’s way.”
That was it. The lever.
“Beatrix Jane Harper,” he said, “you are not to recruit or train women in magic use again. You will call on the Vows of your recruits so they will stop participating in this scheme and call on their recruits’ Vows to getthemto stop, and so on down the line, or else you will harm your sister, her efforts with the League and me—absolutelyme, because no amount of sealed lips will keep the magiocracy from hauling me off if they discover spellcasting women near Ellicott Mills.”
“No! Peter?—!”
“And do it now,” he said grimly.
She lurched to her feet and went for the door with an awkward, unnatural stride. She was trying to stop walking and couldn’t. “You’renotin danger—take it back, take it back!”
“No,” he said.
CHAPTER 20
It was done with remarkable efficiency. All four women were at home. In each case, Lydia said she had not known about Plan B, would not have authorized it, appreciated very much their concern for her safety but needed them to do all they could to end the campaign. Then Beatrix numbly called on their Vows with the words Lydia and Peter—the latter standing invisibly by—had demanded. Dot looked at her with sympathy, Marilyn with surprise, Clara with irritation. But it was Joan’s expression, the tight press of her lips and the weariness in her eyes, that truly haunted her.
When it was finally over, she endured an awful, silent dinner alone with her sister, everyone else having eaten already. Then she escaped upstairs to the one place in her house that might offer a bit of solace.
Her parents’ room looked just as it had when they were both still alive. She lay on their bed, inhaling the slightlymusty scent of an unused space, and tried to remember the feeling of cuddling up between them here.One more hug, then off to bed with you.
What would her mother and father have thought of everything she’d done the last few months? What would they have thought of Lydia’s work and the risks she didn’t want to acknowledge?
The door creaked, and she jerked up, expecting Lydia. But it was Ella who tiptoed in. She held out a pen and a piece of paper with a single question:What’s happened?
Beatrix took them, heart twisting, knowing she should have informed Ella immediately.Lydia and OB discovered Plan B. It’s been undone.
“No!” Ella put a hand over her mouth, glancing at the ceiling where they knew an invisible audio recorder listened to their every word. “Oh, I—I have a rip in my dress,” she said, voice trembling. “How did this happen?”
Beatrix violently scrawled a single word.Vow.
“I tried not to name you,” she whispered in Ella’s ear, “but I had no control. I’m sorry.”
Ella just shook her head, the twist of her lips communicatingnot your faultjust as well as words could have, and put up a finger to indicate that she would be back. She returned with matches. They watched the note burn to ash, Beatrix wishing the troubles named in it would disappear as easily.
Ella sat next to her on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder, offering silent support. Beatrix had never felt so close to her, and so very, very far from her sister. It wasn’tjust Lydia’s total disregard for her own safety. It was what she’d said about the importance of toeing the line:Have you forgotten what I’ve gone through to win this position and how easily I could lose it. She’d thought Lydia wanted change. Now she wondered if her sister’s true aim was power.
And she didn’t want to think of Peter at all.
But eventually, Ella squeezed her hand and went down to her own bedroom, and Beatrix lay back on her parents’ bed, knowing what awaited her. For all that she didn’t have to sleep in her bedroom with Lydia, there was no way to avoid sleeping—so to speak—with Peter. What would their dreamed selves do? Would they apologize to each other for the betrayals? Would they even care?
When she sat up abruptly in Peter’s room, flipped dreamside, he gave her a grave, assessing look from his side of the bed. Then he stood up and walked out.
She stared at the closed door, hyperaware of her heart thudding in her chest. They had never been apart in dreams. Even when they’d argued bitterly about her idea in the first place, weeks ago—even then, they’d thrown themselves at each other the moment they got dreamside.
She told herself this way was better. No yelling. No crying. No confrontation.
She lay on his bed in the silent room, alone, utterly bereft.
Peter letBeatrix in the next morning for her shift, wishing he knew what to say to her. An entire dreamside spent searching for the words was too short.
He still felt angry and wronged. But also deeply sorry, because her fear for her sister was perfectly justified. Guilt had set in, too. She’d gone to some lengths to shield him from her bad idea, and he’d ripped it apart without offering a sufficient alternative.
Still, he kept circling back to this: He couldn’t trust her anymore. Not because she was untrustworthy—simply because she would do literally anything she thought would protect her sister. There would be a Plan C, a Plan D, a Plan E, and at some point she would slip past his defenses. Would she care so very much then about not throwing him under the bus?
He went off to the attic, chest tight.
Hours later, as he finished a late lunch on his own in the kitchen, the telephone rang. “Blackwell,” he said, around his last bite of sandwich.
