“Then let’s not. What’s the point.”
She heard the rustle of newspaper pages turning. After a moment, he said, “I have to admit that I’m tempted to read Rydell just for the potential amusement factor.”
“What?” She opened her eyes. He held the column up for her, and she started to laugh. She couldn’t help it.“ROMEO’S NEO-SUFFRAGISM BLAMED ON SELF-HATE?Sayswho?”
He scanned the piece. “Psychologists. All anonymous, it looks like.”
“Perhaps they suffer from self-hate, too.”
His lips turned up. She grinned at him. But the humor was fleeting, because she considered that tomorrow’s column would be along the lines ofSTAR-CROSSED JERKS GET JUST DESSERTS. She took a sip of her lukewarm tea and pushed it away. She wished she hadn’t said anything to Hickok.
She wished she’d woken up ten minutes earlier this morning.
She wished the bills had come before they were married.
She wished she hadn’t figured out how to manipulate magic in a way that led to evil and madness, hadn’t taught Ella, hadn’t missed the warning signs that ended with Peter at the brink of death and his best friend vaporized and?—
“Look at this,” he said, passing her theWashington Herald.
“Veep’s Son ‘a New Man,’” declared the headline on the local gossip column. The item described how the carousing Frederick Draden had given up his Baltimore apartment and moved into the vice-presidential mansion, “the better to help his father.” Apparently, he’d woken up one day and decided he was wasting his life.
“Forgive me if I assume that threats of being cut off from the family money might have played a bigger role,” Peter murmured into her ear.
She nodded, still too caught in if-onlys to smile at his dark humor. He stood up and held out a hand. “Why don’t we make some brews?”
They looked through the to-do list of medicinals in the old brewing room and settled on four of the most pressing that required items they still owned. Upstairs, after she’d cast the usual spells, he said, “Nowhit gewærlæceþ.The tripwire.”
She stood in one corner of the room, near the door, and cast the spell while focusing intently on where she wanted the tripwire to reach. She thought the magic caught, but there was no way to tell by looking at it. There was nothing to see.
Then Peter reached past her and touched the door. Shefeltit, as if someone holding the other end of a string in her hand just pulled it taut. The vibration went right down her arm.
“Works?” he asked.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“What about here? And here?” he said, touching other spots on the door.
“Yes,” she said. She put her hand through the invisible, insubstantial tripwire—more of a tripwall, really—and got no response. An extraordinary spell. How did it recognize the caster, so to speak? She thought of Garrett sending the tripwire around her house, the physical contact of his lips on her skin enough to turn it topsy-turvy so it would go off only if she crossed it. She shuddered. But still: extraordinary.
“Have you cast it before?” she asked.
He shook his head. She was about to say how amazing it was but caught herself just in time.
They worked without talking, falling into the rhythm of brew prep, thechunk-chunk-chunkof their knives, the tap of glass containers on wood, the drip-drop of liquid the only sounds. She felt—if not exactly better, at least engrossed.
Then the telephone rang. The spidery horror rose up again, stronger than before. The Pentagram.
Peter looked up at her, eyes wide. “Quick—let me out!”
For a second, just a second, she had the urge to trap him in the room. She turned and unspelled it with shaking hands.
His boot heels sounded like hammers on the steps as he rushed down. She leaned against the doorway, wrapping her arms around herself. She heard his “hello,” out of breath and tense.
A pause. “Yes—good morning,” he said, sounding faintly puzzled.
Another stretch of silence. “Oh! That’s very kind, but I don’t think we could accept”—a short gap, a laugh—“no, no, I’m not suggesting anything of the sort …”
She ran down the stairs, hearing several more bits of his side of the conversation, and got to the kitchen just as he hung up. He gave a bemused shake of the head and leaned in to whisper, “Someone who’s never met us just said she’s contributing $5,000 toward our bills.”
