“How did you introduce me to Mae for the first time?”
“How did Iintroduceyou? Give me a break, that was years ago.” He frowned. “Wait, I think I actually remember. ‘This is the guy I’ve been complaining about,’ or something like that.”
Peter nodded. “And what’s your name for me? Besides ‘boss’?”
“Whippersnapper,” Martinelli murmured without hesitation.
Peter had to swallow hard at the sound of that well-worn, charming insult. He’d thought he would never hear it again.
“God, I missed you,” he whispered.
Martinelli smiled, clapping him on the shoulder. Then he said, “Now please tell me what the hell is going on.”
Peter recounted the last day, starting to shake as the memories he’d been trying to hold at bay swamped him. Somewhere in the middle of it, Martinelli put an arm around him, saying nothing, just listening. The words kept coming until almost everything was out, including his botched Vow and Morse’s accusation.
Then he leaned in, whispering as quietly as he could: “He’s right. I can’t cast anymore.”
Martinelli pulled back. “How?—”
But Peter put up a hand to stop the question. The answer was far too dangerous. “The point,” he whispered, “is that he thinks Beatrix has been spellcasting for me. He’s going to make me try again in the morning, and if I can’t do it …” He grasped Martinelli’s arm for support. “He said he’d kill her.”
Martinelli stared at him, mouth open.
Peter pressed a hand to his throbbing head. “What on earth can I do?”
“I …” Martinelli swallowed. “I don’t know. But we’ll figure something out.”
Peter rocked back and forth, overcome. There was no way out. He’d sentenced Beatrix to death. (How many people knew what Morse did to spellcasting women and the men who taught them? Surely not many—not Garrett, even. GoodGod, what was the rationale behind it?)
“Hey,” Martinelli hissed, grabbing his arm. “Hold it together!Think—we always end up with a better idea when we’re both working on it.”
That was true. With a herculean effort, Peter shoved his thoughts away from the nearly certain disaster and toward the possibility, however slim, of averting it.
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Any way to escape now that there’s two of us?” he murmured. “Air ducts we could reach if one of us stands on the other’s shoulders, maybe?”
Martinelli’s mouth twisted. “Room’s magically sealed. You can feel the spellwork if you touch the walls. Can’t undo it because I’m not allowed any leaves—they get someone else to cast for me when work requires a spell. Oh, also, the tele-vision camera monitoring is round the clock.”
“You’re sure? Even overnight?”
“Yeah, I’ve tested it by yelling out complaints at various hours. ‘I’m cold,’ ‘I’m starving,’ ‘I need a headache pill.’ They always bring me something pretty quickly.”
“Wherearewe? The test site?”
“Pretty sure we’re somewhere else. They did something to me so I couldn’t move or talk and carted me out the checkpoint in a body bag.”
Peter shuddered.
“They relocated me a couple times, and everything’s been equally nondescript,” Martinelli added. “No earthly idea where we are, sorry.”
Peter supposed he should have realized immediately that they weren’t in the New Mexico complex. Morse had teleported into a hallway with him—to get into the test site, you had to go through that checkpoint. The guards did have a device that could open a hole in the anti-teleportationshielding around the place, but only if operated from inside the checkpoint. Anyone trying to use a “can opener” elsewhere in the complex would set off alarms. And the device didn’t work at all from the outside.
After another pause, Martinelli said, “What if you pretend to be nonresponsive? Looks like you got roughed up—it’s entirely believable.”
Peter almost snorted at the thought. “I’ve already been in one coma this year. I don’t think they’d believe another.”
“What? Whathappened?”
