The moment Anderson removed the device, the hole snapped shut. He turned to Ella with a grin, hand out. Ella reached into her coat and extracted her brother’s ID with a flourish, a littleta-daof a performance.
The wizard gave an appreciative guffaw. “Whole thing is silly, I know. I mean, who else could you be?”
“Better safe than sorry, eh?” Ella said, and Beatrix had to fight the dangerous urge to laugh from sheer nerves and the momentary absurdity of the situation.
The guard touched his device to a spot where the bubble barrier connected with a larger domed barrier arching over the mansion property. She and Ella walked through, setting off along the circular path to the house, a white brick building with an impressive tower. When they reached it, the door swung open before Ella could raise her fist to knock.
Morse.
Beatrix’s blood roared in her ears. Only when Ella nudged her did she recollect that she had to go in first.
“We’re leaving in ten minutes?” Ella asked as Beatrix edged inside.
“Yes. Where have you been?”
Morse’s question had a sharp-elbow quality to it, no trace of deference in the tone. Beatrix put ten feet between them.One wrong move—brushing into him, sneezing—would be the end.
“Went to the Radcliffe yesterday to read up on my father’s speeches about the growing hostilities,” Ella was saying, stepping inside. “Stayed too late and fell asleep there by accident.”
Ella actuallyhadgone to the Radcliffe, the city’s sprawling twenty-four-hour library, and made sure librarians noticed her before teleporting out from a secluded spot. Beatrix looked at Morse to see how he would take it. He said nothing, which seemed to be his default state.
“I’ll be in the sitting room, then,” Ella said curtly, gesturing to it, giving Beatrix a moment to slip in first. There they waited until the man on whose orders Peter had been kidnapped, Lydia nearly killed, Rosemarie sent to parts unknown and Beatrix falsely arrested strolled in.
A blandly handsome man, Vice President Draden. He glanced at the person he thought was his son, the child he apparently valued far more than his daughter, with an indifferent expression.
“Still coming?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well.”
“Thank you for your trust in me, Father. It means a great deal to me.”
Halfway through this pseudo-heartfelt declaration, Draden walked past, fixed a slightly off-kilter photograph of himself with the president, and strode back out with a tossed off “come along, then.” Perhaps he was upset about his son’scrimes after all and disliked having him around? But as Beatrix followed Ella out, it struck her: There had been no censure in the way Draden spoke to his “son”—no emotion at all. It was the complete absence of caring.
She shivered as she stepped into the warm June air.
They walked back down the path to the checkpoint, Ella hanging back several paces from Morse, Draden and his detail of two Secret Service agents—one wizard, one typic. Beatrix stepped into the checkpoint beside her, keeping an eye on Morse, standing just a few feet to her right.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the guard said to Draden, still respectfully but with a wariness that had not been there when he thought he was chatting with Frederick.
Draden did not acknowledge him. Beatrix took soft, shallow breaths as Morse shifted, bringing himself even closer.
The moment they were out of the checkpoint, the wizard agent teleported away with the vice president and the other Secret Service man. Ella took Morse’s arm—Beatrix clung more tightly to her; this was it—and the green lawn blinked out, the world reforming around them as endless sand, scrub and gorgeous blue sky. The temperature was at least ten degrees higher here.
Morse set off behind them. As she turned, she saw for the first time out of dreamside the exterior of the military complex that Peter fled ten months earlier—and to which she urgently hoped he’d been dragged back.
It looked out of place here: gray, squat, ugly. She walked with Ella to the entrance, the door held open by a uniformedsoldier, and scooted in first to avoid having the door shut in her face. They were in a vestibule of sorts, the vice president flanked by Morse and one of the agents.
Then she saw the security setup. Her heart spasmed.
The other Secret Service agent was standing inside a shield barrier similar to the one around the vice-presidential checkpoint, putting items from his pocket onto a conveyor belt and talking to one of the guards—a typic—as a wizard guard performed the spell that reversed conventionally cast invisibility. That was all fine. What wasn’t: The floor lit up around the three men’s feet. Every time someone moved, it made abipsound.
Oh,no.
Ella stretched and gave a soft groan: “Oh, myback.” Beatrix exhaled and squeezed her arm, trying to communicate that she’d got the message. Piggyback, right—that was the way through.
Then the guard started patting the agent down, including his back, and panic got its pincers into her. This was her only chance to get in, and she couldn’t see how to get past the checkpoint.
