Beatrix rummaged in her purse and handed him a scrap of paper with Rydell’s number on it. “Best use the pay phone.”
The columnist wasn’t at the other end of the line, but his answering service picked up.
“Mr. Rydell’s phone!” a woman chirped. “Give me the dirt and I’ll get it to him!”
He wondered if anyone had literally given Rydell dirt. Down the back of his shirt, for instance. “This is Peter Blackwell. I’ve got?—”
The high-pitched scream that cut him off was alarming until the woman abruptly stopped to say, “Oh, Omnimancer! I’m awfully glad you’ve called! My friends are going to be sojealous!”
“I’ve got news he’s been waiting to hear. Can you reach him tonight? It’s important.”
“Sure thing!”
“I—”
“My name is Olive, by the way.” Now she was giggling.
“Um—”
“You and Miss Harper are simply the mostromanticcouple, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “Regarding that—we’ve just gotten married.”
Olive let out another high-pitched scream, followed by an exuberant “yay!”
He gave her a few details, which sheooo’d over as she wrote them down. He emphasized how spur of the moment the wedding had been, and how Rydell was their first call.
Olive gave a blissful-sounding sigh. She promised to pass the message on. “Call anytime, Omnimancer! And congratulations!”
He hung up, shaking his head. Then he rang the papers in Baltimore and Washington, getting reporters stuck with the Saturday night shift who perked up considerably when they found out who he was and why he was calling. Yes, he said over and over, he was very happy. Yes, Mrs. Blackwell was very happy as well. (Mrs. Blackwell was actually laughing to herself at the repetitive nature of the questions, but amusement was a form of happiness, surely?) Finally, he hung up for the last time.
“Well, Omnimancer Blackwell,” said his longed-for wife, her crooked smile making promises that sent a jolt down his spine, “Mrs. Blackwell would be very,veryhappy to go home with you. Ecstatic, in fact.”
They covered the ground to his—their—house at a rapid clip. He unlocked the door with hands trembling from nearly six months’ pent-up desire, and only just had enough forethought to change the message on their answering machine to confirm that yes, they were married, and turn off the ringer on their phone so they would not have to face the flood of media calls that was sure to come.
Up the staircase they went, his heart racing from the memory of their first trip this way dreamside. This time—for real, this wasreal—his lips were not on hers, and his hands stayed demurely at his sides. It was too dangerous to have Beatrix check the entire house for magiocracy spellwork. They simply had to assume they were being watched in most of it.
Beatrix, leading the way, reached the top of the stairs and came to a dead stop. “Your—that is, our?—”
“I moved it,” he said, smiling as she stared at the empty space that used to be his bedroom. “Down the hall.”
Her amazed expression when she saw what he’d done was ample repayment for the hours he’d put into it.
The walls were a forest, trees reaching their branches to the ceiling on wallpaper he’d leveled several dozen curse words at while putting up. The lights from his Christmas tree, repurposed to line the floorboards, glimmered like fairies in the semi-darkness. His bed and other furniture were gone, exchanged for a somewhat battered but beautiful maple four-poster, with nightstands and two wardrobes to match.
“Oh,” Beatrix said, more gasp than word. “Peter, it’sbeautiful.”
He closed the door, locked it and switched off the lights. Beatrix cast the shielding spell and spell-detector while he loudly pretended to do it, too euphoric from the wedding and what awaited them to feel anything but the barest pinprick of regret over his magical incapacity. They found nothing in the room or its attached bathroom, which, given their previous emptiness, was exactly what he had expected and why he’d picked them.
He turned the fairy lights back on. Beatrix stood before him, dress glowing, face rapt, looking at his handiwork. Then she turned and gazed at him with exactly the same expression.
“Am I really here?” she murmured. “Is this a dream?”
He again had the dizzying sensation of being back in time—in an actual dream—and asking her that. He took twosteps forward and brushed his fingertips down her cheek. “I remember walking here. Running, in fact. And I distinctly remember marrying you.”
She kissed him. It was still such a new experience beyond dreamside that his stomach swooped and his heart raced, not in the disturbing, all-consuming fashion of the Vows but in the sweaty-palm manner of a teenager who couldn’t believe his own luck. She wanted him. Shemarriedhim. Dayside Beatrix was in his arms, unbuttoning his shirt, her fingers—her real fingers—brushing his bare chest for the very first time.
He hada constellation of freckles under his collarbone. She had never seen them before—his dreamside chest was unmarked. She put her lips to them, charmed by the discovery, wondering if perhaps what she’d seen of him dreamside was simply her sleeping mind’s attempt to fill the gaps in what she knew he looked like.
