“No! It’s too dangerous. We don’t know anything about the setup—what if they check everyone who comes in for hidden spells? Let me get the lay of the land, and maybe I can figure out where?—”
“You’re not going to be allowed to wander around in there, Ella! And we can’t afford to be cautious. An ‘imminent attack’—that’sbad.Something’s going to happen soon.”
Ella crossed her arms. She sighed. “OK. On one condition: You’ll knit yourself invisible.”
“No—”
“That’s the only way you won’t be found out if they cast an invisibility counter-spell or the magic-detector.”
Beatrix stared at the floor, considering her options, none of them good. Ella was right. But oh, therisks.If the key to going crazy was knitting in a high-stress situation, this was custom-made for it.
“Come with me to see Lydia,” Ella said. “Call it a test run.”
A bad idea. Terrible, in fact.
“All right,” Beatrix whispered.
She wasout of practice to start with, and she’d never tried knitting anyone invisible. Doing it to them both took quite a while. When they finally arrived at the hospital, they found a policeman sitting at the visitors’ desk, eyeing everyone coming in. They walked by, no one the wiser.
The police officer stationed outside Lydia’s room posed more of an inconvenience. Their plan was to wait until Joan or one of the other League leaders came out to use the facilities, then ask for help getting in.
The women’s bathroom was at the end of the hallway, so they crept alongside the wall opposite the one the officer leaned against. They had to be more careful this time, without other passersby covering up the sound of their footsteps. Beatrix was hyperaware of her own breathing. Ella, behind her, gripped her hand harder as they neared theguard. Beatrix took another careful step and—she almost cried out in surprise—rammed right into something.
Something invisible.
A large hand grabbed her. Panicked, she wrenched away and ran flat out the other direction, jerking Ella along with her. She had to get into the right mindset for teleporting—something she’d managed only half a dozen times in her life.
“What—?” Ella hissed at her.
“Wizard!”
Two feet shy of the intersecting hallway they’d come from, she hit a barrier—also invisible—and bounced back.God Almighty!
They had to go now.Grass, sidewalk, smell of exhaust, trash can, Capitol?—
She’d just felt the magic catch when the man ran into her and all three of them—Beatrix, Ella and the wizard she was desperately afraid was Morse—were sucked into the jump to Spirit of Justice park.
They came out the other end overbalanced, falling in a confused mess onto the sidewalk with a sharpthunkthat sounded like a head connecting with the concrete. Beatrix scrambled to her feet and ran, fumbling in her pockets for leaves.“Bemelde!”she hissed, aiming her hand in the direction she’d come from.
A wizard in a blood-red coat snapped into focus on the ground, face down but stirring. What if Ella was also lying there, knocked out? The spell countering invisibility wouldn’t work on knitting. Beatrix looked around, saw no one, and hissed as loudly as she dared,“Pssst! Pssssst!”
She was just about to run back, as terrifying as that was with the wizard now pushing himself to his knees, when Ella thudded into her.
“Let’s go!” Ella whispered. “Quick!”
Beatrix hastily pictured Ella’s apartment.Flowered couch, old radio with a chip on the side—the wizard stumbled to his feet—worn rug by the door, calendar on the wall, slight odor of mothballs?—
Ella, apparently giving up on her, tried to cast the teleportation spell under her breath twice. It didn’t work, and the image Beatrix was building in her mind faded.Couch, old radio, worn rug, calendar, mothballs, she thought frantically as the wizard (not Morse, younger than Morse) fired spells in quick succession. With each attempt he turned, going from wildly off to dangerously close in a matter of seconds.Couch, radio?—
Ella’s third attempt clicked. They collapsed onto the rug, doing nothing for a moment but gasping air in great, shaky breaths. Then Beatrix cast the spell detector, needing a second try herself, so badly was her voice trembling. All that glowed white were a few places they’d cast spells earlier that day, but she pushed herself up to put a hand through each one and ensure it wasn’t hiding anything.
“We have to go back to the hospital,” she said, fear making her voice shake. “They’ve changed their minds! That wizard was waiting to attack Lydia?—”
“No, he was waiting foryou.” Ella sounded dead certain. “Don’t you think he would have already made his move, otherwise? Shoved the guard from the door, shouted yourname, and made a commotion running in to announce himself as invisible Peter Blackwell?”
Beatrix had to admit the sense of that. But then a different reason for alarm occurred to her: The wizard in the scarlet coat grabbed her as soon as she bumped into him—too quickly if he’d been surprised, confused or assuming her to be a colleague.
Had he known she might arrive cloaked in invisibility?
