‘ROMEO’ NOT SUCH A CATCH AS AN EMPLOYEE?: Peter Blackwell’s engagement to an anti-magic activist and allegations about Washington corruption have made him a media darling. But my well-placed sources tell me that he wasn’t so popular at the Pentagram.
“He would scream at people at the slightest provocation,” one former colleague tells me.
“I think he’s unhinged,” says another.
Omnimancer Blackwell, who left the Pentagram last year, claims he never screamed at anyone and is not unhinged. But then he would say that …
March 11, 2021
Enough of the Spotlight, Town Begs
By Steven Litterton
El Paso Herald-Poststaff
ELLICOTT MILLS, Md. — America is riveted by the tale of Washington’s star-crossed lovers, the wizard and the typic-rights activist. The couple’s community, on the other hand, is sick of it all.
“I’ve been asked for my opinion about it by thirty-one reporters,” said Sam Croft, Ellicott Mills’ mayor. “Isn’t there anything else going on in the world?”
March 12, 2021
Roger Rydell Dishes the Dirt
TROUBLE IN PARADISE?: Washington’s Romeo and Juliet have not been seen together a single time this week. But Omnimancer Peter Blackwellwasspotted in six locations with a different woman — his fiancée’s sister, the striking Lydia Harper.
At two rallies in Maryland, an event in Virginia, coming out of the headquarters of the powerful Metalworkers Union in Washington, lunchingal frescoat a park, walking down the Mall in the nation’s capital arm-in-arm … they’ve been quite busy.
Give the two pictures below a once-over. He leans in to say something to her, his hand on her shoulder, his lips practically brushing her ear. She looks up at him, smiling radiantly. Word to the wise: Perhaps Beatrix Harper should spend less time at work…
Beatrix gave the photographs in Rydell’s column more than a once-over. She shouldn’t have, but she did, and found his description far more accurate than was typical for him.
She looked up as Lydia perched on the couch next to her, so she caught her sister’s reaction, the deep blush that could signify nothing or everything. Lydia scribbled a note:What an odious idiot that man is.
Beatrix nodded, gave her a hug and kept to herself the painful thought that it would be entirely understandable if Peter had developed feelings for Lydia now that the Vows were broken. Even setting aside her sister’s beauty, education and political accomplishments, wouldn’t he prefer a woman who had never lied to him?
She slipped out of the house without eating breakfast and lingered in the forest, where no one had yet thought to look for her. Then she dashed for the train and locked herself in the bathroom, the plaintive calls for “Miss Harper!” muffled by the thick door.
She couldn’t face the reporters, no matter how bad this looked.
“Well,you’re certainly much better than you were before.” Wizard Hillier took off his stethoscope and gave Peter a penetrating look. “But how do you feel?”
Peter opened his mouth to say “fine,” couldn’t, and sighed. “A bit … overwhelmed.”
“I’d be shocked if you felt otherwise.”
The doctor’s calm manner made him a hard man to read. Peter couldn’t help himself: “What’s your opinion about my support for repealing the Twenty-fifth Amendment, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I wholeheartedly agree with you.” Hillier sat on the edge of his borrowed desk, crossing his arms. “And I think your efforts put you in a very uncomfortable position.”
No kidding. Half the roughly one hundred letters he’d received in the last few days were from appreciative typics, but the rest were from wizards. To a man, they were irate.
Fortunate that there was nothing one could cast on paper that would harm the recipient.
“You understand what you’re up against?” Hillier asked.
“Well,” he said, a bit flippantly, “the hate mail has been educational.”
Hillier’s expression turned grim. “Take it seriously. We live in a society built on discrimination. Some who see themselves as the beneficiaries will go to great lengths to keep things as they are.”
