Revolutionary (Clandestine Magic Book 3) by Colleen Cowley

Author:Colleen Cowley [Cowley, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Slender Sky Books
Published: 2020-11-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

It wasn’t quite five o’clock in the morning, but there was no chance of going back to sleep now. They dressed in silence and headed downstairs. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of tea in her hands that she didn’t want to drink, when she heard a soft thunk, followed by three more thunks that sounded like rolled-up newspapers hitting the front door.

She closed her eyes. How she’d hoped, when Hickok showed up yesterday, that a story could help. But now it didn’t matter. And honestly, what had she been thinking? What assistance had she expected to get?

Peter’s chair slid backward against the floor. She listened to the slow thud of his footsteps as he went to collect the papers.

“Hickok’s story is out,” he said when he returned. “Headline: ‘Latest disaster for Romeo & Juliet: Crushing bills.’”

“I don’t want to read it,” she whispered.

He sighed. “Neither do I.”

“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? Says who?”

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 of STAR-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 the Washington 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, “Now hit 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.

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