“I’ve found things go much better when you let Beatrix sort them out,” Peter said, and the newsmen chuckled as a group.
“Go ahead, sir,” she said, gesturing to a reporter in a pinstripe suit. Her hand trembled.
“Gregory Taylor,Los Angeles Herald Examiner.Tell us about that first day you came back home, Omnimancer. What was it like? I understand Miss Harper didn’t want to work for you?”
“Well, I’d just convinced her boss to lay her off so I could hire her,” Peter said, raising his voice to overcome the lack of a microphone. “No one would appreciate that. And sheand her sister had already been having mysterious problems with League organizing that they suspected were caused by wizards, so the fact that I’m—” He stopped and looked at her. “Did you believe I was in town to undermine you?”
“Yes,” she said. “At first.”
“It’s a wonder you ever fell in love with me,” he murmured, no humor to it at all.
It went on like that for a long while. Question after question after question, asked outside multiple senators’ offices, the whole thing overlaid with the sense that Peter was pretending nothing was wrong between them. Just as she was.
Finally, outside the last office, they were down to just three reporters who hadn’t gotten their question in yet.
“Jonathan Ashburn,Chicago Daily News.How does it feel to be called the twenty-first century Romeo and Juliet?”
Ironic, that was how it felt, with a side of heartbreaking. She cleared her throat and went with “unnerving.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well,” she said dryly, “they die, you know.”
Peter threw back his head and laughed. It sounded so true—so unforced—that she caught herself staring at him. She desperately wanted to talk to him, actually talk to him, without an audience.
He leaned toward the reporters, as if to impart a secret, and said, “Romeo and Juliet were also half our age, I might add.”
The second-to-last man, eye-catching in a yellow fedora, called out, “Then what famous couple of literatureareyou like?”
She resolutely did not meet Peter’s eye. She knew he would be thinking the same thing she was. Hades and Persephone—not an answer they could very well give.
“We’re just Beatrix and Peter,” she said. “And honestly, we’re not interesting enough for all this attention. It’s the typic-rights movement that ought to interest everyone, because it’s been fifty years since typics could help run our country. It isn’t this way everywhere?—”
“Canada, for instance,” drawled the man in the fedora. “Are you pro-Canuck, Miss Harper?”
She blinked at him, thrown by this. “I’m pro-American,” she managed. “As I’m sure you know, many of our allies allow typics to run for national office, and disaster has not ensued.”
“What doyouthink, Omnimancer?” asked the last reporter. “Doesn’t all this hurt your feelings just a bit, this typics vs. wizards stuff?”
“There’s nothing magical about politics,” Peter said. “Let anyone run for Congress or president, and may the best person win.”
“Anyone?”The drawling, fedora-wearing reporter smirked. “Even a woman?”
“Of course,” Peter said.
Beatrix’s heart sank. Gray’s warning about misogynist colleagues whose votes he needed rang in her ears.
“I’m sure, though, that Americans will want typics with experience,” she said, “and those are the men so capably running our states.” She swallowed, hoping it was enough—that clear endorsement of sexism.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lydia and other members of the League step out of the last office. The petition delivery was done.
“Senator Gray and Lydia Harper will answer any further questions you might have,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Let’s get out while the getting’s good,” Peter murmured as the rest of the press conference attendees milled about. She led him around a corner, glad to escape.
“Wait!”
It was Hickok, rushing up the corridor after them.
