Most of all, Plan B.
Greene took the first photo, his camera’s bulb letting out a spine-tinglingpoof. She tried to smile. He kept cocking his head and rearranging them. Look here. Sit there. Stand together.
Finally he said, “Don’t look at me this time. Look at each other.”
She glanced down as she turned toward Peter, trying to slow her breathing, to delay the moment. He took her hand,the one now adorned with his grandmother’s ring. She forced herself to look up.
Signs of distress were all over his face—subtle but clear. He reached out with his free hand to cup her cheek. Then he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers, letting out a shuddering breath.
Poof-poof-poof-poof.
“There we are,” Greene said. “That’ll do, thank you.”
Peter stepped back, resolutely not looking at her, and she stood with her heart racing, thoughts in a jumble. If he didn’t love her, he might feel a driving obligation to continue on as if he did. He might consider that her reputation was at stake. He might think of how he upended her life once already, or how she saved his life—never mind that his association with her was what endangered him.
Whether shewantedto marry a man who no longer felt for her what she felt for him would probably not occur to him in the midst of all that roiling guilt.
She heard “Gray” and forced herself back into the stream of conversation around her.
“A press conference?” Hickok was giving Lydia a skeptical look. “He doesn’t have the votes to get out of committee—a press conference isn’t going to change that.”
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Lydia urged. “Please stop by.”
Hickok shook her head. “There’s nothing to cover. What’s the headline? ‘Senator Reiterates Support for Own Bill’?”
A press conference with no press—Beatrix could just see it. If Hickok wasn’t interested, that was a bad sign.
“It’s a … a two-part event,” she said, with only the germ of an idea about what the latter part could entail. “The second piece is what you’ll really want to see, or so I hear.”
Hickok turned to look at her. “Oh? Do tell.”
“I can’t, not yet,” Beatrix said. “But Gray’s not giving up without a fight. Two o’clock Thursday—there aren’t any important hearings scheduled then, I promise.”
Hickok didn’t look fully convinced, but she said, “All right. Two o’clock Thursday.”
Oh, good. Now she just had to finish thinking up this promised event, get Gray’s permission and arrange it.
All in all, that seemed less stressful than thoughts about Peter.
As they walked out, Lydia whispered, “We need to tell the senator before he hears it somewhere else,” and it took Beatrix a moment to realize her sister wasn’t talking about the press conference. Lydia was right: They would have to try to catch him tonight at home.
She spent the first part of the drive there pondering the event she promised Hickok, which was suitably distracting for a while, but then she recollected that they still hadn’t found a place for Peter to stay.
She stole a glance at him. His head was turned away from her, exhaustion apparent by the way he’d slumped in his seat.
She couldn’t simply ask how he really felt about her—not now, not only because wizards might be listening in but alsobecause this would be a terrible conversation to have with her sister and Rosemarie trapped in the back seat. It would have to wait until they got dreamside. For now, while he couldn’t cast spells, that was the only safe place to talk.
This day of holding back three-quarters of what she wanted to say, of second-guessing every word, would have been hard enough without suddenly doubting something she’d taken as a rock-solid fact. She needed to know where she stood with him. Maybe she was imagining the whole thing.
She slowed for the turn onto Gray’s driveway with a memory replaying in her head—saying “I love you” as they walked out of the hospital and getting no reply.
She lifted her chin as she walked in the dark to Gray’s door. She would not cry. She was stronger than this. She had survived the death of her parents, a pseudo-assassination attempt on her sister’s life, a magical contract that subverted free will and a nearly successful attack with a weapon of mass destruction, for God’s sake. How could a broken heart compare?
She knocked on the door, feeling no better for the internal pep talk. The senator opened it, blinking in surprise. Then he saw who was standing on the front lawn and quickly closed the door behind him.
“Omnimancer,” he murmured, shaking Peter’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Lydia cleared her throat. “We thought you should know?—”
