Draden gave him a look of pure exasperation. “Fine. I’ll clarify it. But you have to clarify that my only obligations regarding ‘anyone likely to harm’ your wife are people specifically working on my behalf. I don’t want to be compelled to run off to your little town if I get word that someone there is plotting to keep her from”—he waved a hand dismissively—“winning a pie-baking contest.”
Peter glared at the man. Pie-baking contest, indeed. “Fine.”
They exchanged their contracts, altered them and exchanged them again. The new language on the paper Peter was expected to sign specified, in long, elegant handwriting, that the assignment was “to increase the explosive scope of Project 96 to a five-mile blast radius.” His stomach clenched.Five miles? The explosion they’d tested behind his back was a mile and a half.
“I don’t think it’s possible to get an explosion of that?—”
“I’m not changing it,” Draden said. “Or anything else. Do we have a deal?”
Peter schooled his face into an expression he hoped gave nothing away.
“Yes,” he said. “You first.”
Draden raised an eyebrow. He took both contracts, copied them out on blank paper, and brought them back to Peter to look over. The contract for him to sign was identical to therevised version. The vice president’s had an extra sentence, and he could feel the blood draining from his face as he read it:This contract is contingent upon Peter William Blackwell taking a Vow to Gerald Anthony Morse; otherwise, it is null and void.
Shit, shit,shit.
He had no idea Vows could have contingencyclauses.Martinelli would have known that—Martinelli had known so many things he wished he’d asked about.
Draden thrust a pen at him. “Sign.”
Mechanically, he did. Morse was already setting down demarcation stones in overlapping circles. He couldn’t think of a way out. Refusing at this stage—even if he promised to work on the weapon—seemed like a very bad idea. But what would they do when he couldn’t complete his Vow?
Draden stepped into a circle. Peter positioned himself in the other one, thinking of Beatrix. Nine months ago, she stood in the interlocking circles to make a Vow similar to the one he now faced—to work against her will for someone she despised.
As he watched Draden cast the spell and eat the pomegranate pips, Peter wondered how much of this current hell was something he’d set in motion by leaving the Pentagram and refusing to come back.
“Now your turn,” Draden said, snapping him from that miserable thought to the original one—that he couldn’t see a Vow through.
Draden stepped out of the circle. Morse stepped in and grabbed Peter’s hand, letting him feel the protection spellbefore dropping three leaves in his palm. A warning:Don’t bother.
Peter looked at the fuel in his trembling hand, blood racing through his veins, and thought of the test he passed against all odds at thirteen. It was obvious what he had to do: Believe. Believe with all his might that he could cast this spell. And why not? He hadn’t tried to work any magic for, what, two days now? For all he knew, he just needed that extra time.
He cleared his throat.“Ic gehate!”
Nothing happened.
“Ic gehate!”he called out again, willing a spark of magic to rush down his arm.“Ic gehate—Ic gehate!”
No response.
“See, Morse,” Draden drawled from the corner of the room, where he was leaning against the desk, “this is what you get when you rough a man up and leave him tied to a chair for hours. He fails to …perform.”
That assumption was better than the truth. But the dark amusement in Draden’s voice—and the double entendre he clearly meant—made Peter’s face flush hot. Morse said nothing, his own face a blank.
“How about some food and rest, then?” Peter snapped.
“Keep going,” Draden said, waving a hand. “It’ll take eventually.”
So Peter kept trying, with the same lack of results. He said the spellwords over and over, weak with fatigue and despair—the threadbare hope he’d managed to wrap around himself utterly gone.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Draden said finally, whatever enjoyment he’d wrung from the scene wearing thin. “Pathetic. Wrap this up, Morse.”
Peter caught a flash of red in Draden’s hand. The vice president teleported out with a pop.
The next moment Morse caught his casting arm in a painful grip, dragging him into the other circle, putting them toe to toe. God, how tallwasthe man? Bigger than Garrett, surely?—
“When he tells me to wrap things up,” Morse said, barely above a whisper, more words than Peter had ever heard him utter, “he doesn’t care how.”
