Owen took the flute from me and put it on top of his pack, then he turned to face me. “And now, um, we have to do something that will attract them. There’s, uh, a certain energy that may draw them.”
I nodded, not sure where he was going with that, but then I remembered what he’d said when we’d investigated the creek in the town a few days ago, and before I had a chance to respond, he’d taken me in his arms and was kissing me.
It was as good as I’d remembered, whether or not it had any heart behind it. And I was pretty sure it had some heart behind it. You didn’t kiss someone like that and not mean it. I knew I meant it when I kissed him back. The whole thing was rather wildly romantic, kissing on the water’s edge in the moonlight. There was something primal and, yes, magical about it that made it dangerously easy to get carried away.
And then a voice from around the level of our feet said very loudly, “Ahem!”
We sprang apart—well, we separated our lips, but we still held onto each other pretty tightly. I didn’t know about Owen, but my legs had gone all watery, and I wasn’t sure I could have stayed upright if I hadn’t been hanging onto him. Then when I got a good look at what was around us, I held onto him even tighter.
I almost felt like the heavens had come down to surround us. Pinpricks of light filled the creek’s gully, going all the way up the banks on either side. They were in the trees above us and floating in the water below us. When I got a better look, I realized the pinpricks were the eyes of hundreds of little creatures. For most of them, all I could see was their eyes. Judging by what I could see, I was rather glad that most of them remained hidden.
The one who’d spoken to us was in the water. She leaned against the rock where we stood, barely outside Owen’s barrier. She looked a lot like the fairies I knew, except she didn’t have wings. Her hair was long and stringy, almost looking like seaweed, and it draped over her slender body. Aside from the strategically placed hair, the part of her that was visible above the water was naked. There were several more creatures like her—naiads, I assumed—in the water.
The ones in the trees were like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were roughly the same size and shape as the water creatures, but their skins were mottled like tree bark, and their hair was short and shaggy. Their fingers and toes were long and thin, a lot like the “fingers” on tree frogs, and they clung easily to trunks and tree branches. They must have been the dryads Owen mentioned.
There were also little sparks of light zipping in and out among the bushes on the creek banks. At first I thought they were fireflies, but then I realized they, too, were the eyes of creatures. These were tiny, and it was hard to see exactly what they looked like because they never stayed still long enough for me to see more than a blur of movement.
“I take it you wanted us to pop up, given that circle you created before you put on your show,” the naiad who’d gotten our attention said. “If you’d only come here to make out, you wouldn’t have bothered with the prep work, and boy, wouldn’t that have made things interesting.” She fluttered her eyelashes suggestively, then added, “And I think you might have been trying to signal the next river with the amount of aura you were sending out. My, such passion.”
Owen released me and knelt to speak to her. “I’ve come to call upon your people for assistance,” he said formally. I felt awfully exposed standing there, surrounded by all those not-necessarily-friendly faces, so I knelt beside Owen. He put his arm around me as he continued speaking. “There’s new power here that doesn’t belong, and I’ll need help to send it away.”
“Your power doesn’t belong here, either,” she said with a burbling laugh that reminded me of the sound of a small waterfall.
“I plan to leave of my own accord when this is over.” He glanced at me and added, “I may return as a visitor, but I wouldn’t be using magic then.”
A gruffer voice spoke from above us. “The power has been drained. Our energy may soon be depleted.”
We looked up and saw one of the dryads hanging from a limb over our heads. “Yeah, I noticed.
That’s why I’m here,” Owen said. “There is an outsider teaching people here to use power. He brought even more people like him here, and he’s determined not to let me stop him. I can’t face all of them alone, but with your help, I should be able to drive them away and bring the situation back to normal for you again.”
“We could drive them away ourselves,” the dryad said.
“That would be perfectly all right with me,” Owen said with a crooked smile. “Be my guest. But this is a trained wizard. I know him, and I can make plans against him to direct our fight so that we use no more power than necessary and bring harm to no one.”
“And it’s you alone, facing all those naughty power wasters?” the water creature burbled.
“I have allies. Merlin is here with me—Myrddin Emrys.” I hoped he wasn’t assuming too much.
Sure, Merlin would be on our side against the bad guys, but would he go along with Owen’s plan?
But dropping that name got their attention. They all perked up, and the little perpetual motion machines slowed down long enough for me to see they looked like wild miniature elves. I decided they must be pixies. “He has returned?” the dryad asked.
“He has,” Owen confirmed. “He has work to do and is needed in this time.” His voice had been soft and conversational, but when he spoke next, it was firm, with a trace of iron in it that reminded me of Merlin himself. “Now, will you help me?”
“What have you to offer us as a gift?” the naiad asked. I didn’t like the way she looked at Owen. It made me wonder what offering she had in mind. After all, it had been our passion that drew her to us.
“We have music,” Owen said.
There was a murmur among the gathered creatures, and then the dryad said, “That is acceptable. We will listen.”
Owen nodded to me, and I picked up the flute. I was fairly sure I could still play “The Star Spangled Banner” from memory, but the flute part to that was mostly high trills, so on its own it wouldn’t be very effective. Teddy had made me learn to play “Princess Leia’s Theme” from Star Wars, but that seemed wrong to me, somehow. As I’d told Owen, about the only thing I was sure I could still play was the school fight song. After four years of playing it for every pep rally, at the start of every half of every football game, after every score, at the end of the game, and at random times when the team needed a boost, it was forever drilled into my psyche.
I took a deep breath and played a test note to make sure I could still play at all, then adjusted the alignment of the instrument. I made the mistake of looking out at my audience before I started playing, and it made me even more nervous than chair tests had back when I was in school. As scary as my band director had been, he was nothing like hundreds of magical creatures, and the outcome hadn’t been nearly as important as the fate of this corner of the magical world.
The sound wasn’t as bad as I’d feared once I started playing. Because “The Washington and Lee Swing” wasn’t the sort of thing you’d think of for placating magical creatures, I slowed it down to give it a haunting, plaintive sound. That was also the only way I kept my fingers from getting tangled as they remembered nearly forgotten fingerings.
When the last note had died away, there was silence, except for the sound of running water. I had to resist the instinct to shout “C! H! S!” at the end of the song, as we had always done at football games.
Then a series of clicks and whistles rang out. “Very nice,” the naiad said. “We accept your offering.
How may we help you?”
“I need you to be ready to come into the town when I summon you,” Owen said. “I will bring our enemies to you. I don’t want them killed or seriously hurt. I just want the apprentice wizards to be taken out of the equation so I can deal with their master without their interference.”
“We will protect you and your lady,” she said with a bow. With a sidelong glance at me, she
added,
“Though your lady needs no protection from magic. And when we have done as you asked, we would like more music, unless you have another gift for us.” She batted her eyelashes meaningfully at Owen.
“Yes, of course,” I hurried to respond. I could even practice something, now that I knew I needed to.
“Then we have an agreement. You may leave now, and we give you safe passage.”
Owen broke the circle with his foot as I put my flute away. I would have preferred that he wait until we were ready to go, but it appeared to be a show of trust. I felt as though tiny hands were touching my hair and clothes while I waited for him to gather his things, but when he took me by the hand to lead me away from there, all the pinpricks of light parted, leaving us a clear path. The pixies followed us all the way to the car, keeping a respectful distance, which generally meant running in circles around us as we walked.
“I meet the most interesting people when I’m with you,” I said once we were safely in the car and on our way home. I hoped the quip covered up the fact that I was shivering. I knew it wasn’t from the cold, but I wasn’t sure if it was a reaction to having been surrounded by all those creatures or if I was still feeling the aftereffects of that kiss. He’d barely touched me since he’d been here, so being hit with a kiss like that out of the blue had really done a number on me.
“I just hope we can count on them,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove. “Spirits like that are notoriously unreliable. For one thing, they’re very old, so time means little to them, and matters that are important to us look trivial to them. They get comfortable where they are and become less inclined to stir themselves. But they might show up to hear more music.”
“I guess that means I need to find more music.”
“What you did tonight was perfect.”
“What I did tonight was play my school fight song at a slower tempo. Can’t we just bring a CD player and give them something really good?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s the act of creating music that has the effect on them. A recording doesn’t work.”
“I hope you actually have a plan for dealing with Idris working in that crazy genius brain of yours.”
“Nothing elaborate. I’ll merely give them what they want.”
“Which is you.”
“Exactly. And then I’ll lead them to the creek area, where I’ll have reinforcements.”
“So your brilliant plan is to use yourself as bait.”
“Sometimes there is brilliance in simplicity.”
“And is the boss likely to go for that?”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
He went with me to work the next morning, against my objections. While the would-be wizard army hadn’t yet made it to the feed-and-seed store, I didn’t like him being out and about. He wouldn’t even take the baseball cap I offered him. I wore the necklace that alerted me to magic in use, and I could tell he wasn’t using an illusion to hide his appearance. That would have been a waste of power, but it might have kept him safer. At one time, I’d wondered if he was maybe a little too perfect, but as I got to know him better, I was learning that he was as flawed as the rest of us, one of his major flaws being that he was stubborn. Since I was a real prizewinner in that category myself, I supposed it took one to know one.
I was able to convince him to stay back in the office, where he was somewhat hidden from anyone who wandered into the store. Dean showed up for work on time, for a record-setting two days in a row, and came back to the office to talk to us. “You’re driving them crazy, staying out of sight like that,” he said to Owen. “After a whole day of searching, they haven’t seen you yet. Some of them are starting to wonder if you really exist. One group went home this morning. I’m not sure if they were discouraged or just not feeling well. They were all complaining of headaches.”
“That evens the odds a little,” I said, trying to be optimistic. It sounded like my magical candles were doing their job.
“I’ll give them a show later today to help bait the hook,” Owen said. “What I’d like is to engineer a showdown tonight, get them all in one place, and then teach them a good lesson.”
“There’s a meeting this evening around sunset,” Dean said. “That might be a good time to show up.
What kind of lesson do you have planned?”
“The magical version of shock and awe. When I’m through with these people, they’ll never want to go near magic again.” There was a dangerous glint to his eyes that made me glad there wasn’t nearly as much power to draw upon here as there was back in Manhattan. That meant he might not be able to do too much damage.
Sherri called from the front of the store, “Katie! Someone’s here to see you.”
I excused myself and went to the front register, where Rod and Merlin stood. Sherri was practically draped across the counter and drooling at Rod, who eyed her in return. He quickly moved his gaze away from her when I approached. I guessed it took a leopard awhile to change its spots completely.
“I assumed we might find you at your family business,” Merlin said.
“Yes, I’m here.” My voice involuntarily went up in pitch from nerves.
“And I take it we might find Mr. Palmer here, as well?”
I wished I had a way to warn Owen, but I had a feeling he’d be expecting something like this. “Yes, he is. Come on back.” Sherri gave us all a really funny look, but I decided to leave it to Dean to explain it to her.
The office was little more than a glorified broom closet, so adding two more people made it uncomfortably crowded. Still, it was probably the safest place to meet. Owen jumped to his feet when Merlin entered the room. He’d gone pale again. “Sir,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Ah, Mr. Palmer,” Merlin said, his voice calm and casual, and not at all like he was chewing out a wayward employee. “I trust you’ve recovered from your illness.” I knew it had to be sarcasm, but it sounded totally sincere. Owen gulped and nodded. “Good, because we will need your help to resolve this situation, and after that, we have much to discuss.”
Owen gulped and nodded again. “Yes, sir.”
Dean cleared his throat, so I introduced my brother to Merlin and Rod. “Meet our local wizard,”
Owen added.
“And Dean, this is Rod, another friend from New York who also works with us, and my former boss, Merlin.”
“You mean, like in the stories?”
“One and the same,” Merlin said. “Although I’m currently functioning under the name Ambrose Mervyn. It’s a more contemporary translation of my original name.”
Dean gaped at him. “You mean, you’re the real Merlin?”
“It’s a long story,” I put in. “We can discuss it later.”
“In the meantime,” Merlin said, “We need to develop a plan for dealing with Mr. Idris.”
Owen cleared his throat. “Um, actually, I sort of have something set up already. Dean says that Idris and his students will be meeting tonight on the town square at sunset. I’ve already gained the support of the local nature spirits to help us. They’ll be along the creek in the city park. I’ll show myself to the students, who are likely to give chase, and I can lead them into a trap. The naiads, dryads, and pixies will take care of the students, leaving us free to deal with Idris. It feels like the available power in this area keeps getting weaker and weaker, and he’s stronger than I’ve ever seen him, so it may take all of us.”
Merlin regarded him for a long moment. I almost thought I could see the wheels turning in his head as he evaluated the situation. The longer he stared at Owen, the redder Owen turned. Finally Merlin said,
“You seem to have taken care of the planning for us. It’s a good thing you were here in advance to set everything up.”
“Yes, I suppose it is, sir,” Owen said with a totally straight face.
“What’s all this conspiring?” a voice said from the doorway. We all turned to see Granny standing there, leanin
g on her cane and glaring at us. Before I could introduce her, she caught sight of Merlin and smiled. “Well, hello there,” she said. “And who might you be?”
“Uh, Granny,” I said, “this is my boss, Mr. Ambrose Mervyn.”
“Ah, Merlin,” she said with a nod. “It’s good to know you’re back. You’re not here to do anything foolish like put Arthur back on the throne, are you? I doubt he’d fit in well in a constitutional monarchy.”
“That is purely legend. Arthur is well and truly permanently dead,” he said with a smile.
I was still goggling over my grandmother talking about constitutional monarchies, so it took me a moment to remember to introduce her. “Sir, this is my grandmother, Bridget Callahan. And Granny, over there is my friend Rod.”
“My good lady,” Merlin said as he took her hand and kissed it, and she blushed and tittered like a schoolgirl. For a man his age, he was quite distinguished-looking, maybe even handsome, and he was probably the only person I knew who was older than Granny, although he was more than a thousand years older, so I could see how that might make her a little flustered. “You have a lovely granddaughter.”
She turned to me. “I suppose you’re up to more magical mischief making, with this new lot here.”
“She knows?” Rod asked.
“She is. Magical, I mean,” I replied.
“This family would make a fascinating study for the genealogy group,” Owen said. “They seem to have the magical gene and the mutation for immunity in nearly equal numbers. I’ve seen some clans in the British Isles that function that way, but—”
Rod cut him off. “Owen! Later.”
“Oh, right, sorry.”
“We do have something going on that we have to plan for, Granny,” I said.
She entered the room and sat in my desk chair. “Maybe I can help.”
“That’s really not necessary,” Rod said.
She shot him a glare that could have curdled milk. “You lot have my grandchildren mixed up in this.
You’ll not shut me out.”
“You’ve already been very helpful,” Owen said gently. “You gave me perfect directions to find the local magical folk, and they’re going to help us tonight.”
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