Much Ado About Magic

by Shanna Swendson

  “Wow. Yeah, I guess that’s proof. But do you know why he did it?”

  “That’s the part that has us stumped,” I admitted as I set the bag of food on the coffee table, pulled off the ball cap, and took a seat on the sofa. “Do you know?”

  “I think so. The pattern’s been there all along, if I could have just seen it. Why didn’t I see it?”

  “Merlin says he was using a spell—like Rod’s old attraction spell—to make everyone like and trust him.”

  “Oh. I should have seen that. I’ve spent enough time with Rod to know what that looks like, and of course you’d be immune to it.” He looked up at me and winced. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I was a real jerk about that, too.”

  “There are sometimes real drawbacks to having magical powers,” I said with a smile I hoped was soothing. “I may not be able to do all the amazing stuff you do, but I can see the truth.”

  “And you’d think I’d remember that. Now, about Ramsay. I think he did the same thing with my parents that he’s doing with Idris. He found someone young, promising, and gullible, then encouraged and supported them behind the scenes to challenge the magical status quo. The Morgans were his protégés, just as Idris was.”

  “Owen,” I said softly, ready to tell him that there was no proof that they were his parents.

  “Don’t worry,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m not fooling myself into thinking they were good people who were misled. If they were good, they couldn’t have been used that way. But I do think Ramsay was using them. Their story looks a lot like what happened with Idris. They worked for MSI, had some big, unorthodox ideas, they were fired, and then they reappeared in a way that would have required more backing than you could reasonably expect someone like them to have.”

  “That does sound familiar. But why would Ramsay bother? What did he get out of it? As hobbies go, there are probably better options.”

  “I don’t think he got what he wanted out of it, other than maybe a step up in the magical world. That situation made him a hero, but he didn’t achieve his goal, so he had to do it again.”

  “Again I ask, why?”

  He scrambled around in the pile of books on the floor by the sofa and handed one to me, dropping it in my lap. He’d opened the book to a page describing Merlin going into magical retirement, to be brought back at a time when he was needed by the magical world.

  I looked up at Owen, who stared expectantly back at me. “It was all about Merlin,” he said with a triumphant grin.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think Idris was an opponent worthy of Merlin, so I’ve been wondering. But why?”

  “The very idea of Merlin has always been a deterrent to anyone who wanted to make a bid for taking over the magical world.” He gestured toward the books scattered on the floor. “Over and over again, that’s come up, throughout magical history. They know that even if they do take over, that will trigger Merlin’s return, and they couldn’t hope to win against him. It’s used as a threat, like ‘Give yourself up now, and we won’t bring Merlin back.’”

  “So Merlin is the nuclear bomb of magic.”

  “Precisely. And that means that if you want to rule the magical world in a way that isn’t hampered by the checks and balances set up within MSI and the various councils, you’ve got to get Merlin out of the way, permanently.”

  “And that’s impossible to do while he’s safely snoozing in a crystal cave somewhere.”

  His face lit up in a huge grin, and he patted me on the knee. “Exactly!”

  Taking a stab at completing his thought, I ventured, “And so the way to deal with Merlin is to manufacture a situation designed to require him to be brought back. Then you could fight him head-on and get him out of the way once and for all.”

  “I knew you’d get it!”

  “But that would require a lot of confidence. You’d have to believe you could beat Merlin head-to-head, or maybe that you could cheat well enough to win.”

  “People with low self-esteem seldom try to take over the world.”

  Suddenly, I realized exactly why Owen’s foster parents had practically encouraged his nearly crippling shyness. Someone who had to psych himself up to have a conversation wasn’t likely to try to take over the world. I couldn’t imagine seeing Owen as a potential threat, but then I wasn’t the person entrusted with a frighteningly powerful kid whose early years sounded like the kind of life that often breeds serial killers—even if they didn’t know about his parents being evil.

  “So, Ramsay comes along, and he thinks that the only thing in the way of his ambitions is Merlin,” I said, thinking out loud. “He creates a threat, getting a couple of bright people who work for him to play evil genius. But it must not have worked, since he had to try again, nearly thirty years later. What went wrong?”

  He reached for a book lying facedown across the arm of the sofa. “For one thing, he wasn’t in charge then. He couldn’t bring Merlin back. He had to convince his predecessor that the threat was great enough, and his predecessor wasn’t known for being excitable.” He pointed at a picture of a stern, gray-bearded man. Remove the beard and give him a pair of glasses, and you’d have had my high-school principal. “That meant he had to escalate the threat. And then—” he blanched and had to swallow hard, as though he was in some discomfort “—it seems my parents rather liked the idea of taking over the magical world and became a real threat, one that had to be dealt with immediately, before Ramsay had a chance to make a case for reviving Merlin.”

  He paused and frowned. “It sounds really weird to say ‘parents.’ I’ve never had any, so it’s a new concept for me. It’s even weirder to say ‘parents’ in this context. I mean, I’m talking about Mom and Dad trying to take over the world.”

  I got a sense of imminent unraveling, as though he’d taken about as much as he could and was in danger of losing it at any minute. “Owen, there’s something you should know,” I hurried to say while he took a breath. “They may not be your parents. It could just be Idris or Ramsay messing with you. Merlin didn’t know about who you were. He did suspect this was a possibility, and I’m sure if he did, then James and Gloria also suspected, but there doesn’t seem to be any official proof.”

  “I think it’s true,” he said softly. “It feels true. I should have suspected, if I’d even bothered to think about it or had done any research. But I thought it was healthy for me not to worry about where I came from.”

  “Even if it is true, no one lied to you. They weren’t keeping deep, dark secrets from you, just suspicions. I guess Ramsay suspected, too.”

  “Or he knew. He was the one who killed my parents, so he could have been the one to drop me off at that fire station and hope I’d be lost in the system. I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t kill me. Anyway, Ramsay had to stop the Morgans before they could be caught by anyone else, interrogated, and be linked to him. He bides his time, builds power, makes good alliances, and then Idris comes along, giving him the perfect opportunity to set up a new patsy, and then we need Merlin, and now the stage is set for Ramsay to take out Merlin.” The words spilled out of him like bullets from a machine gun, and when he was done, he let out a deep breath.

  “Then he could rule the world,” I finished. “Even better, he’s got things set up so that if Merlin fights him, Merlin’s the one who looks like the bad guy. We’ll have to prove to the magical world that he’s evil before we can even oppose him.”

  “It’s rather brilliant, when you think about it.” He suddenly sank against the sofa, like the mania had burned itself out, leaving utter weariness. “And how do we prove it?”

  “You may be the key.” I explained what Merlin, Rod, and I had discussed earlier. “So,” I concluded, “our next step is to play ‘Owen Palmer, This Is Your Life.’ You said you were left at a fire station. Do you know which one? Or would James and Gloria have that information?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. And I don’t see how helpful digging into
it would be. If Ramsay really was trying to hide the Morgans’ baby, would he walk right into a fire station and say, ‘Hey, I found this on my doorstep’? He’d have probably left the baby where it would be found and where nothing could be traced back to him. That’s if he didn’t just kill it.”

  “But we won’t know until we ask.”

  “It’s a waste of time. There’s someone out there trying to take over the magical world, and I don’t think you can stop that by having a few nonmagical firefighters—if you can even find anyone who was working there then—say that someone who kind of looked like a younger version of Ramsay dropped an abandoned baby off at a fire station thirty years ago. Ramsay would probably spin it so he looked like a hero, anyway. We need a better plan than that.”

  “In other words, you aren’t ready to deal with James and Gloria. Or with who you might be.”

  “No, that’s not it at all. I just don’t think digging through my nearly nonexistent baby book is going to do any good.” But he had turned bright red, so I knew I was on to something.

  “Then do you have a better plan?”

  “I’m working on it.” Making an obvious attempt to change the subject, he said, “And how are things at the office today?”

  “Well, there’s a protest going on in front and customers are leaving left and right, so obviously the conference was a huge success.”

  “Customers are leaving? It’s not because of me, is it?”

  “I have no idea. Merlin’s meeting with some of them—in full Merlin mode, which you really have to see. I have a feeling it has more to do with Ramsay putting the whammy on them.”

  “And?”

  “What?”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Apparently, his wasn’t the only face that gave away feelings too easily. “And one of Ramsay’s reasons for joining Spellworks was the fact that MSI was harboring you—and that you were the one causing all the trouble.”

  His shoulders sagged and he seemed to wilt. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. He’s a real jerk. Which is why we need to bring him down. You’re sure you don’t want to see if James and Gloria know anything?”

  He shook his head. “No. And I’d better come up with a better plan, right away.” He began pulling papers together and stacking books.

  “Maybe you’d think better with some food and rest,” I suggested.

  “I don’t need another mother,” he snapped. “I think I’ve more than met my quota of mothers.”

  I stood up and put my ball cap back on as I fought to control my temper. “Excuse me for caring about your well-being. How insensitive of me,” I said, forcing my voice not to quaver.

  I made it all the way to the door before he called after me, “Sorry about that. I’m just—well, I’m not good company at the moment.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.” I turned to give him a faint smile. “I’ll check on you later.”

  As I headed down the stairs, it occurred to me that Owen wasn’t the only one who could talk to James and Gloria. Facing Gloria would be only slightly less scary than going alone into the dragons’ lair, but even if getting the information didn’t prove to be the key to beating Ramsay, I thought Owen needed the answers about his past before he could move forward.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I went home to change into some nicer clothes, fix my hair, and freshen my makeup. Gloria wasn’t the sort of person I wanted to face at anything other than my best. I checked the train schedule on Marcia’s computer, then took the subway to Grand Central and caught the Hudson line. The little town where I got off the train looked different from when I’d last seen it. I’d been there for Christmas, when there was snow on the ground. In summer, the lawns were lush and green, with brightly colored flower beds.

  I hadn’t called ahead, so there was no one to meet me at the station, and there were no cabs in sight, but it wasn’t too far, just up a steep hill, so I set off walking to the home where Owen had grown up.

  The town was a magical enclave, populated with magical people of all kinds, so it wasn’t odd to see fairies running errands and gnomes working in gardens. I couldn’t help but wonder what these people thought of the rumors about Owen. When I’d been here for Christmas, they’d all adored him. Did they regard him with suspicion now?

  My feet had spawned a blister or two and I was slightly out of breath by the time I reached James and Gloria Eaton’s home, a brick gingerbread-like concoction on a hill over the town. The house didn’t look quite as magical as it had with an icing of snow on the peaked and turreted roof, but the flowers in the garden made up for that. I was tempted to check to see if they were made of gumdrops.

  It took a few minutes after I knocked on the door before James came to open it, his elderly black dog at his side. His appearance took my breath away. He seemed to have aged a dozen years since I’d seen him last, and I’d have bet that most of that had come since yesterday. He’d already been white-haired, but his skin stretched tighter across his cheekbones, his eyes looked hollow, and his shoulders were stooped. “Katie! This is a surprise,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, I probably should have called first, but I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, we should talk. Do come inside.”

  James was being cordial enough, but then he was the easier of Owen’s foster parents. Gloria would be another story, I was sure. She was the only person I’d seen really able to scare Owen. There was something about her that made me want to stand at attention whenever I was near her.

  That made what I saw next so shocking that I couldn’t believe my eyes. Gloria, who was tall, stiff, and quite formidable, lay slumped on the sofa, looking even older and more frail than James did. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, like she’d been crying for days. She may have scared me, but my heart went out to her.

  When she saw me, she struggled to sit up. “How is he?” she demanded, only a trace of her usual starch in her voice.

  I hesitated, not sure how to answer. Did she want to be reassured, or did she want the truth? Oh, who was I kidding? This was Gloria. She’d want the truth. “I honestly don’t know. He’s being weird. And stubborn.”

  “I wonder where he learned that?” James muttered, and I had to fight not to laugh.

  “I think it’s getting to him, but it’s taking a while to sink in,” I said. Even though I hadn’t been invited to do so, and Gloria was someone who took that sort of thing seriously, I sat on the chair across from the sofa. “The big question is, is it true? If it is, who really knew? Right now, Owen doesn’t seem to want to even think about it, but I believe it’s important to get to the bottom of this. What did you know?”

  James sat next to Gloria on the sofa and said, “The situation is, as you may imagine, complicated. We didn’t know who he was, but we did know he was a special case because his abilities were unusually strong in someone that age and because of the difficulties he’d already gone through. That can be a recipe for disaster if the child isn’t properly trained.”

  “The Council wanted us to train and monitor him,” Gloria continued. “But we were not supposed to become emotionally involved. Doting, overly permissive parents have been the downfall of many a powerful child. In the nonmagical world we had the rights of foster parents, but within the magical world, guardianship rested with the Council, and they could take him away at any time. We had to remain neutral so we could objectively observe his progress.” Her voice cracked. “It was a difficult situation—if we showed signs of loving him too much, we would lose him, and yet we soon came to love him too much to bear the thought of losing him. Our inexperience as parents probably meant we weren’t able to strike quite the right balance, and we erred on the side of duty.”

  “We had always wanted children of our own, but we were not blessed in that way,” James said, placing a hand over his wife’s. That simple gesture brought tears to my eyes.

  Gloria gave a crooked smile. “And then one day they brought us this little boy.
He was so small—he was rather sickly at first. He hadn’t been taken care of very well. He was so quiet, and we later learned his vision was weak. I was expected to treat him as though he was a pupil at a single-student boarding school, and I was his matron. If I ever seemed too attached to him, then I would have been deemed unfit for my job.”

  Tears spilled from her eyes, and I was pretty sure my own cheeks had become wet. “That must have been awful for you.”

  “It was wonderful and awful, all at the same time.”

  “We were very proud of him,” James added.

  “It was only much later when we heard the rumors that Mina Morgan had been pregnant and noticed the timing,” Gloria said. “Then we figured it out.”

  “Do you think anyone official knew? Someone on the Council, maybe?” I asked.

  James shook his head. “I never got that impression. And I was afraid to ask in case no one did know. We didn’t want to be the ones to attach that stigma to Owen.”

  “We may have been a little stricter with him after we became suspicious,” Gloria said, sitting up straighter, “but that was for his own good. We wanted to be sure he was nothing like his parents. If something had gone wrong with him and we hadn’t mentioned our suspicions, then we would have felt responsible.”

  “So, if you didn’t know, and the Council didn’t know, and Merlin didn’t know, then how did Idris and presumably Ramsay know?” I asked. “Does Ramsay have evidence, or is he merely putting two and two together like you did and making a wild accusation?”

  “We’ve known Ivor Ramsay for a very long time,” James said. “He knew we were bringing up Owen, and he knew what we knew about Owen’s background, but he never showed any signs of suspecting that Owen was anything more than a particularly powerful magical child.”

  I braced my hands on my knees and leaned forward. “I presume you’ve heard about Ramsay’s announcement about taking over Spellworks?” They both nodded. “We believe he’s been behind it all along, and it’s all part of a plot to either discredit or do away with Merlin so he can eliminate that deterrent and go for absolute power. I think that if we can show that Ramsay knew who Owen was all along, then we can prove that he isn’t the noble, upright guy he’s claiming to be, and that’s the way to get to him. If he knew, then that means he’s been the one hiding that secret from the magical world, and then that brings up the question of why. I was wondering if you have any information on where or how Owen was found in the first place. He said something about a fire station, but that was all he would tell me. He’s reluctant to look into this, and I suppose I can understand that, but we need to figure it out.”