At some point, Peter’s seat had started vibrating. He’d turned to find the boy next to him shaking his seat and the ones attached to it with the nervous movements of his legs.
“Hey,” Peter had hissed.
The boy had stopped, glancing at him for perhaps half a second before looking away. “Sorry.”
He couldn’t say now, twenty years later, what had tipped him off. Maybe it was the eyes. Or he recognized the voice. Whatever it was, he’d realized with a start that he was sitting next to Mrs. Harper’s daughter, her hair tucked in anoversized cap, her contraband shirt and pants nicer than any he’d ever owned.
He’d glared at her. Never mind that what she wanted to do was flat-out impossible (or so he’d thought). It was the principle of the thing that outraged him: She hadeverything, and she wantedthis, too? Did she have no conception that for some of these boys—forhim—this dividing line was their last chance?
The county executive, up on the stage, had bellowed the names of the final group: “Collins, Cardozo, Brown, Blackwell, Bell, Applebaum, Abramowicz, Able.” He’d walked up, his legs somehow both stiff and wobbly. He’d looked into the audience, trying but unable to pick out Nan in the sea of faces.
The tall, dashing wizard on the stage strode about, adjusting their spellcasting stances. “Excellent, you don’t need to do a thing,” the man had said to Beatrix Harper, the imposter, before shaking his head and telling Peter to press his shoulders down.
“Ahebban,” all the boys—and one girl—had called out several times over, getting a feel for the word. They’d listened to the wizard explaining that if at first you didn’t succeed, say it again, chant it, give the magic a chance to catch.
Peter felt failure settling on him before it had even happened. He started to lower his arm.
Then Beatrix had murmured, “You candoit.”
She hadn’t been talking to him. She’d been muttering to herself, eyes on her own hand. But something about it hadbuoyed him. She’d known shecouldn’tdo it, and yet there she was. What did he have to lose?
The wizard handed out leaves. The shifting and coughing and other noises in the auditorium stopped.
“All right, gentlemen,” the wizard said. “Cast!”
Peter had let the air in the room fill his lungs. He’d looked up at the ceiling, so far away, then at the five-pound weight at his feet.“Ahebban!”His stomach had tingled.“Ahebban!”The sensation had spread up his back.“Ahebban! AHEBBAN!”
Down his arm the tingling, prickling, fizzing feeling had rushed, bursting from his fingers in a sparkle of light. Up the weight had shot—all the way to the impossibly high ceiling.
He’d fallen to his knees in shock.
The rest of that day was a muddle with just a few clear memories. The wizard clapping him on the back, telling him he’d go far. Nan clambering onto the stage, her cane clattering to the floor as she threw her arms around him—that was when it finally felt real, and shock gave way to elation. Telling her that he would be able to take care of her now, just as soon as he graduated. Stepping off the stage to a line of people who were suddenly very interested in him.
And some minutes later: Seeing Beatrix Harper, now wearing a dress, hair slightly mussed, face solemn. He’d put out his hand. She’d taken it, her mother glowering behind her.
“Congratulations, Peter,” Beatrix had said, and then—in a whisper: “What did it feel like?”
“Like I wasn’t really alive, and now I am,” he’d said. A distinct memory. Word for word. “It’s incredible. Magic is justincredible.”
Now—twenty years after that day—he bitterly contemplated a life without it.
His livelihood, gone. What did he know that didn’t require spells to see through? How could he marry Beatrix in good conscience?
For that matter, how could he keep his casting inability a secret so it didn’t affect the Twenty-fifth repeal campaign? He could just imagine Rydell’s take:Now we know why he wants typic rights!
He shifted in Gray’s spare bed, wondering whether he had, in fact, become a typic. It seemed just as inapt to call him that as it would be to call him a wizard. He no longer fit anywhere. He’d held the keys to the forces of the universe for twenty years, taking them increasingly for granted but never once tiring of them, and now they were gone. His terrible invention ripped them away.
Hoist with your own petard, Hades. Beatrix said that to him once, meaning the Vows, but it was even more true today.
He turned onto his side and squeezed his eyes shut.
“All right, then,”Miss Dane said. “We’re agreed.”
Peter, leaning on one of the chairs they’d dragged into the empty bedroom, did not entirely swallow his bitter snort.Oh yes, they’d agreed. What else was there to do? He wouldn’t let on that he no longer could spellcast. Beatrix would only cast if they were both together in an apparently empty room with lights they could switch off, and only then if it were truly necessary. That was the extent of their plan.
“What about your R&D?” Beatrix said, bringing to mind a problem he hadn’t thought of as he’d laid in bed the night before, feeling sorry for himself. Weapons defense. Finding a counter to his misbegotten creation was the reason he’d come home in the first place, hired her against her wishes and set everything in motion. And now …
“That, surely, is necessary,” she added. “We could work on it together here?—”
