The journalists chuckled. Peter shifted next to her, his hand brushing hers—there and just as quickly gone, like a man snatching back his fingers from a hot stove. She closed her eyes. He didn’t want to touch her, and she somehow had to pretend she was gloriously happy.
“Too often,” Gray said, his tone shifting from humorous to serious, “we accept injustice because we’re accustomed to it. ‘That’s just the way it is,’ we say, if we think about it at all. It takes people to stand up and declare, ‘No, this is wrong, and we must change it.’”
She looked in time to see him gesturing from one end of the stage to the other. “Well, we’re standing up. We all know it’s wrong that Americans are excluded from national office—from running our country—purely on the basis of a genetic quirk that has no connection with intelligence or good sense. And I’ve introduced a bill to help change it.”
These were her words. She listened to Gray deliver the rest of the speech she wrote for him, this man who’d originally thought it laughable—purely on the basis of a genetic quirk—that she presumed herself qualified for the job.
“My thanks to all these staunch supporters,” he said. “And now two of them will explain why they consider this effort so important.”
First came Joe Levine, president of the United Sugarworkers Union. Then—“Miss Lydia Harper, president of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic,” Gray said.
Beatrix scanned the crowd. Knowing rationally that the wizards weren’t trying to kill her sister was not enough to silence the voice in her head that drove her to Plan B, the voice she now associated with knitted magic.Maybe there is a risk. Be prepared. Take action.
No. She forced herself to focus on her sister.
As the applause of Lydia’s local leadership quieted, she began her speech—one carefully crafted with Rosemarie to persuade the many typic men who might see, hear or read it later. In the legislatures considering bills like Maryland’s, the number of female elected officials came to a combined total of two.
“Once, every little boy in our country could decide he wanted to grow up to be president. No law stopped him,” Lydia said. “Our democracy was built on this idea—that we can pick our representatives from a wide pool. That good men are not banned from serving simply because they weren’t born with a select pedigree. We’re here today not to ask, not to beg, but todemandthat right back.”
“Smile,” Rosemarie hissed into Beatrix’s ear. “Or at least stop scowling.”
“Perhaps you know that the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic once tried to do exactly what its name suggests,” Lydia said as Beatrix managed the second part of Rosemarie’s request but not the first. “But prohibiting magic is not the solution our country needs. No, what our country needs is a prohibition ontypic discrimination. A prohibition onwizard supremacy. A prohibition on making decisions with little consideration of how they affect the overwhelming majority of the country!”
Poof-poof-poof. Beatrix jerked as the cameras went off in Lydia’s face, but that was all it was. Cameras, not spells. Her sister continued speaking in that rousing voice she only broke out for events, so attention-grabbing that the reporters who did not come for this were nevertheless scribbling fast to keep up.
“Our effort is nationwide,” Lydia said. “In every state, supporters are working to undo the un-American Twenty-fifth Amendment. Legislators in forty-three states have agreed to sponsor bills to call the constitutional convention necessary to do so. Senator Gray’s bill will be the first to come to a committee vote. The first battle of the war.”
She paused. The room was silent, save for the scrape of pen on paper and the thudding of Beatrix’s heart.
“And make no mistake, thisisa war,” her sister said. “Behind the scenes, wizards are working hard to keep the discriminatory Twenty-fifth in place. The senators on the committee that will send Senator Gray’s bill for a full vote or pronounce it dead on arrival have beensurprisinglynoncommittal.” Lydia paused to let that sink in. “Well, we’reabout to visit them now with something that might help them make up their minds—petitions signed by their own constituents.”
Beatrix realized she was holding her breath and forced herself to exhale.
“Thank you, Senator, for your steadfast leadership,” Lydia said, and stepped back—safe.
Beatrix knew she had to stop bracing for the worst. It diverted her mind from the real problems they had. But all the rational thought in the world wasn’t enough to keep the memory of the crane falling toward her sister from making her hands twitch and her lungs burn.
“Any questions?” Gray said, quickly adding, “About the bill, please.”
Just two hands went up. After Gray handled both, he said, “If that’s all, the League will deliver their petitions and?—”
Just like that, the room was in an uproar. Reporters shouted what were either questions or objections, most of them starting with “Omnimancer.”
“Omnimancer Blackwell and Miss Beatrix Harper will answer your questions on the way, so come along,” Gray bellowed over the din.
This had seemed like a bad idea to Beatrix when Gray had suggested it the day before. Now—as they were jostled out of the room, the reporters surging behind them, still trying to get their questions in all at once—she felt the beginnings of a panic attack hooking into her.
Peter leaned in. “Do you want to whip them into shape?”
She glanced at him. His lips quirked and he looked suddenly just as he had when she knew without a doubt that he loved her. That zipped through her, swamping the panic with equally strong but muddled feelings—yearning and horrible hope chief among them.
His smile faltered. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, a bald-faced lie, and turned to look at the press as they reached the first office belonging to a senator on the committee considering Gray’s bill. She took a deep breath.
The men and one woman—Hickok—all fell silent, waiting to see what she was about to say.
“I’m afraid we couldn’t hear any of your questions,” she said, “so let’s take them one at a time. We’ll start at the front. Once you’ve had your turn, move to the back.” She tried not to look at the flashing bulbs of the busy cameras. “Everyone will get a turn if they wish.”
