It wasn’t possible for Peter’s heart to sink further, but it gave a good attempt at it. “You have another transmitter.”
“Yes. I think ahead.”
Peter handed over the instructions, knowing he was giving Morse what Draden needed to execute his plan. The fix wouldn’t take more than an hour. If the vice president’s cronies still wanted to set the weapon off the following day, nothing would stop them.
Morse checked Peter for leaves using the same method as before, stripping the clothes off him, except this time not bothering to put him under a restraining spell—what threat did he pose, after all? It was Martinelli’s turn next; Peter averted his gaze. Then the man turned to Beatrix.
“No,” Peter growled. The word burst out automatically. It really couldn’t compare to the fact that Morse would soon kill her, but no, no,no.
“I’ll leave her underthings on,” Morse said in his usual emotionless way.
As he inspected her coat, shirt and pants, Beatrix stood, head lolling, in a man’s undershirt. Peter put his coat around her shoulders and took her limp hand, remembering what she’d said about corsets the morning after their wedding. A shining moment of happiness when he’d thought their lives together would be measured in decades instead of weeks.
Beatrix’s clothes slithered back on, popping his coat off into his hands. He turned and saw Morse wriggle his fingers at Martinelli, making the man’s hand jerk out and grasp his arm. He did the same to Beatrix, and Peter knew Morse was about to take them all away—perhaps separate them.
“How did you realize we were here?” he asked to delay that moment. To have even a few more seconds with his hand in Beatrix’s. “How did you get in?”
Morse smiled—an unsettling sight. “I found your tripwire yesterday evening.”
“But you can’t have teleported in then.”
“No, I came in this morning.”
“We had a shield around the room.”
“I removed it through a crack in the door.”
“You would have set off the tripwire!”
Morse’s smile widened. “I teleported around it first.”
“Fuck.”
“You’re clever, Omnimancer,” Morse said, “but not as clever as you think.”
The second after that knife-plunge of an assessment, he pulled them all into a jump. They landed outside a room that proved to be the one Peter and Martinelli had so recently escaped. Red Coat, slouching in a chair by the table, clattered to his feet.
Morse pushed Peter to the floor. Beatrix joined him a second later, collapsing on him as the wizard released the marionette spell. Martinelli sat on his other side, trembling.
“Stay here. Do not take your eyes off them,” Morse told Red Coat. “I presume you can handle that?”
“Y-yes. Yes, sir.”
“This woman must remain asleep. That’s critically important.” Morse handed Red Coat a vial. “Dose her again if you see her beginning to wake.”
“Uh …”
“She is dangerous,” Morse hissed.
Red Coat shot a nervous look at Peter and Martinelli that seemed to reevaluate them as more than simply kidnapped scientists. “And the other two? What about them?”
“You can protect yourself against two unarmed men, I trust.”
“Yes.” Then—as if concerned that his delivery hadn’t been adamant enough: “Ofcourse.”
Morse leaned in and murmured something that made Red Coat snigger. Then the man swept out.
Peter leaned against the wall behind him, numb. Beatrix’s head slumped onto his shoulder. All his choices, all hiscleverness, led inexorably to this.
