The sardonic twist of his lips was full of fellow feeling. He dipped his head to hers, whispering, “What, this paragon of courage? I refuse to believe it.”
Had they still been under Vows, she would have kissed him. She wouldn’t have been able to help herself, as close as he was, standing in the dark with no one looking their way. It was hard enough now, her skin tingling where he touched her.
But she was not under a Vow, and she didn’t know how he felt. She gave a strained laugh.
“Very good,” Gray said from what seemed like a mile away. “All right, then. Coming, Omnimancer?”
“Yes.” Peter looked at her, opened his mouth, closed it, and ultimately said nothing to her but “good night.”
Dreamside filled her head as she drove off with her sister and Rosemarie. What would he say there?
The answer, she discovered when her alarm rang the next morning and she sat up in bed with a start, was nothing. There had been no dreamside or anything like it. No dreams at all.
She crept downstairs to prepare for work, unsettled and alone.
CHAPTER 8
Hickok—Peter had presumed to call her “Miss Hickok” and was quickly disabused of the notion—met him at the hospital the following morning. She went through it like a conquering army.
She compared his bed to the one in the picture and concluded they were identical. She interviewed nurses and doctors, extracting information about his coma, Beatrix’s devotion and the WA’s efforts to wrest him away. She browbeat the hospital’s public-relations man into making the chief executive available, then browbeat him into admitting that yes, hedidfind it odd that the WA would take the action it did.
Eventually Hickok left in a swirl of gray skirt and orange hair for her next targets, which Peter understood to be governmental. He could go home, but to do what? He couldn’t omnimance yet. He couldn’t work on R&D for hisProject 96 disaster, the massively deadly bomb for which there was no defense. And he certainly couldn’t do a thing about his other problems: dreamside AWOL, bills looming, Beatrix forced to marry him, Martinelli dead.
He hesitated on the street outside the hospital, his eye caught by a payphone.
Inside the booth, he flipped through the telephone book and found the right listing:Martinelli, Timothy and Mae.The line connected on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Martinelli?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“This is Peter Blackwell. I—I worked with your husband for years, and?—”
She began to sob, and he realized his mistake. He’d thought she would be sad, but not despondent—she’d left her husband, after all. But perhaps that simply made it worse.
“I’m so sorry—I shouldn’t have bothered you,” he said, feeling terrible. “I only wanted to tell you how horrified I was to learn that—anyway, I’m very sorry, and I’ll let you go.”
“No! No, don’t hang up! Iwantto talk about him, but no one…” She again lapsed into sobs.
He pressed his forehead against the cool glass, wishing he knew what to say.
“I will get myself under control,” Mrs. Martinelli said shakily. “I swear I will. Would you come see me—please?”
“Yes,” he said numbly, and took down the address.
Two trains and one bus later, he arrived at the house. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac, a home clearly meant for the children the Martinellis had tried so hard to have. Mrs. Martinelli opened the door, a small figure in the airy hallway, wisps of dark hair escaping her bun.
“Thank you for coming,” she whispered, and led him to a sitting room decorated with fine antiques. He looked around, trying and failing to connect it with the perpetually rumpled Martinelli.
“Won’t you have a seat?” she asked.
He perched on an uncomfortable chair, gripping his cane with both hands. She sat across from him on an ornate couch.
“We met at a Pentagram dinner,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m surprised you remember that. It must have been at least two years ago.”
