Gray’s arrival nine minutes late felt like an eternity of waiting, as anxious as she was to go so she could get to Peter. She would miss the train she’d hoped to take, shrinking her hour at the hospital to forty-five minutes.
“Here are the notes,” she said quickly, “and here?—”
“Shhh,” he admonished her under his breath. “Don’t talk. Just go.”
In an equally quiet voice, she said, “I simply wanted to point out there’s also some research here for?—”
“I thought I made clear that you arenotan aide.”
She mastered the urge to snap. She could not do without this paycheck.
“Oh, perfectly clear,” she murmured. “I’m just the sort of secretary who wants her employer to succeed, despite all the forces lined up against him.”
Including his own idiocy, she did not add. She stalked out.
CHAPTER 3
By now, he had a good sense of what time it was. A nearby church bell tolled the hour, and Peter could distinguish between day and night based on when Beatrix was by his side. But the evening before, he couldn’t get dreamside—or at least, it was all wrong and he couldn’t find Beatrix in it. And today, she’d never arrived. Had something happened? Was she in trouble? He listened to the bell announcing seven o’clock and had to fight back panic. Minutes passed with nothing but the sounds of nearby medical equipment and farther-off medical staff to distract him.
Then someone clattered into the room. “I’m—I’m here,” Beatrix gasped. “What a day.”
She said nothing for a moment, catching her breath, sliding her hand into his—he thought; it was always so hard to tell if the pressure he could barely feel was on his hand orsomewhere else. He concentrated and thought he caught the whisper of a chill, of cold fingers on hospital-warmed skin. Maybe.
“I have a job,” she whispered. “I finally found something. That’s why I’m so late.”
Oh.What a relief. He didn’t know how many days—weeks?—this ordeal had been going on, but she couldn’t afford to be unemployed for long. He waited for details, but she immediately launched into news from town (Sue Clark and her baby were still doing all right, Mayor and Mrs. Croft just celebrated their fortieth anniversary), which he appreciated but didn’t want to hear as much as her own news.
She didn’t want the wizards to know, if they were listening in. Something about her job was better kept secret. What could it be?
He worried over that while she read stories to him from that day’s newspaper (“Congress deadlocked over Canadian Aggression Act,” “White House unveils security plans amid fears of foreign spies”). A job related to the League? But there was nothing in the League’s sphere of influence that came with a paycheck.
It hit him as she read a dry piece about the Maryland legislature. Senator Gray. It might be Senator Gray she was working for.
This didn’t make him feel much better. He didn’t think Gray was a spy, but Peter had no great amount of confidence in the man, either. Still, if Gray hired Beatrix, he had more sense than Peter had given him credit for.
She fell silent. He made himself stop thinking about Gray so his attention wouldn’t be divided, and that was when he realized he could feel her hand in his—really feel it, her winter-chapped fingers rubbing his palm absently.
Then she pulled away. “I have to go or I’ll miss the train,” she said heavily. He felt something else—her lips on his forehead? That wasn’t as clear, but hefeltit, he absolutely did. Could he be improving? Surely that was a good sign?
He should try to move again. He hated the exercise in pain and futility, but there was always a chance that this time it would work. And really, it was striking how much he was now able to sense his hand. He paused, noticing that the feeling had receded, not quite to what it had been before, but certainly no longer at the level of sensation when Beatrix had been holding it. That was curious—a side effect of the Vow, no doubt. Before his coma, the slightest physical contact with her would zip through him with relentless force.
The click of the door closing told him Beatrix was gone. He geared himself up for the attempt and tried to move the hand he could more or less feel.
He was incapable of screaming, or else he would have. The pain wiped away all rational thought, leaving only the awareness that he’d managed little to no movement. Then he mercifully blacked out.
When he came to, it was all he could do not to attempt a soundless yell that would set the cycle off again. This wasimpossible. It was like being electrocuted—as if he were a penned-in cow trying to break free. Or back in that fiendish final exam in his sophomore-year undergraduate magicalinnovation class, this time for all eternity. (If you figured out how to get out of the sealed-off and booby-trapped room the professor put you in, you passed. Otherwise, you flunked out of the entire magicist track, which Peter now fervently wished he had done.)
The church bell tolled ten o’clock. He made himself relax, drift, because getting into dreamside was the only hope he had left.
Nothing changed for what felt like hours. Then he snapped to attention at the sudden realization that he was standing—in pitch-black darkness no different from what passed for consciousness in his coma, but standing nonetheless. He had to be dreaming. This was just what had happened the night before.
“Beatrix?” he called. “Beatrix!”
But just like the night before, he got no answer. Surely she was here somewhere? He’d never had these sorts of self-aware dreams before they made their Vows to each other. Something had happened to dreamside, but this had to be it.
He put his limbs to good use and jogged forward, bellowing her name, hands outstretched to warn him if anything was in his path. He called and called until his voice was hoarse, coming across nothing whatsoever in this dark wasteland.
“Stop!”
