As they stood in the hallway afterward, Beatrix still too much in shock to feel all that she knew she soon would, the news hit: California voted no, too.
It was over.
They had lost.
The drive home was quiet.But once they were in the bare second-floor brewing room, spells cast, it all came gushing out like caustic floodwater.
“What onearthwere youthinking?” Rosemarie bellowed at her.
“I didn’t—” she said.
“Had you taken out a front-page ad declaring your intention to emasculate every last man, it wouldn’t have been much worse!”
“Ididn’t—” she tried again, but now Lydia had taken over. “You know the wizards are watching us! This contract you made Peter sign, this completelyunnecessarycontract—Bee, how could you have been so foolish?”
“I didn’t ask him to do it!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Ididn’t, and I don’t know how the magiocracy found out about it—” She turned to him. “You didn’tshowit to anyone, did you?”
He frowned. “Of course not. Only you.”
“The point is that these words should never have been put on paper,” Rosemarie barked at him.
Lydia threw up her arms. “Exactly!”
Beatrix, unwilling to go that far, turned to him and asked, “Why didn’t you tell them it was a fabrication?Why?”
He was staring at them, mouth open. “Let me see if I understand this. You”—he gestured at Rosemarie and Lydia—“think I shouldn’t have drawn up the contract at all, and you”—gesturing to her—“think I should haveliedabout it?”
“The wizards must have broken into our house to copy it in the first place,” she cried. “Don’t tell me I’m immoral for saying we shouldn’t have helped them discredit us!”
He pressed his fingers to his temples. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Look—you want women to have equal rights, you’ve spent years on the effort, and now you’re all suggesting that what I did to ensure my wife would not have her rights violated by me was a horrible mistake I should have disavowed.”
He paused, as if to let that sink in. Then he snapped, “Are you pressing for women’s rights, oraren’tyou?”
All her earlier misgivings about not rocking the boat, not saying anything that would upset misogynists, rushed back at her.
Rosemarie simply looked annoyed. “Typic rights will help everyone. For the last hundred years in the fight for women’s rights, we’ve lostground. You saw what happened today—the mere hint of equal rights and we’re done. So kindly refrain from telling us wherewewent wrong.”
“What happened today is what you get when you make your true aim a secret instead of being upfront about it and convincing people on your own terms,” Peter said, voice cold.
Rosemarie scowled at him. “Don’t be naïve.”
“I don’t see how that’s any more naïve than assuming that if you allow typics to run for national office, more rights for women will magically follow!”
“I think we’d better go.” The steel in Lydia’s voice made Beatrix rush to comply. They all needed to cool down, that was clear.
But she couldn’t get the spells undone quickly enough to prevent Rosemarie from getting in one last dig.
“If you felt so strongly that we were going about this the wrong way, you would have said it before,” she snapped. “You’re just desperately trying to cast the blame off your own shoulders.”
Peter’s jaw hardened. Beatrix all but pushed Rosemarie and Lydia out the door, heartsick, and ferried them home without saying a word. When she returned, she found him sitting on the porch with his arms around his knees, looking beaten down.
“Peter,” she began, then trailed off. He’d meant well—so very well.
He sighed, gesturing behind her. “I think that’s Gray.”
It was. She watched with mounting anxiety as the senator’s pickup truck advanced up their driveway. They’d been separated in the post-vote scrum of reporters and she couldn’t find him afterward, so she had no idea what he’d said to the inevitable questions about whether he would tryagain. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him—not so soon, and certainly not without Lydia.
And then there was the matter of her job.
