The hotel’s cocktail lounge turned out to attract more than just business travelers. It was a popular neighborhood post-work watering hole. “It’s just like on TV,” Nita said as we entered. “There are actual single young people here! And drinks in fancy glasses!”
Her enthusiasm was contagious enough to make me temporarily forget my worries. After we’d found a table and ordered drinks—Nita got a cosmopolitan, of course—Marcia asked, “How did your parents take the news about your move?”
Nita tossed back her hair. “Not well at first. There was some screaming and crying, but then my brother reminded them that I’m an adult, and if they took me home against my will, it would be kidnapping. Once I described the hotel, my dad got excited. Now he’s bursting with pride that his daughter works in such a fancy place. He’s convinced I’ll end up running it. Telling my mom about all the Indian men here worked on her. She thinks I’ll be married soon.” We all drank to parents realizing that their daughters had grown up.
When Nita had her fill of pink drinks and scoping out New York singletons in the bar, we went to a restaurant with a sidewalk café for dinner. After the earlier rainstorm, the evening felt fresh and cool, so it was pleasant outdoors. “This is so awesome!” Nita gushed, staring around the sidewalk. “I feel like a rock star.” Then her jaw dropped as she gasped. “Oh my gosh! I totally forgot to tell you! I saw that guy from that band today. They must be playing in New York.”
“What band?” Gemma asked.
“You mean Katie didn’t tell you? Well, not long before she came back here, this rock band stayed in our motel. They must have been getting away from it all or writing an album, or something, but they caused some problems and my brother threw them out.”
“That band?” I blurted as my heart sped up and got stuck in my throat. When Idris had come to my hometown to teach magic to previously undiscovered wizards, Nita had decided (with some nudging from me because I thought it might explain some of his eccentric wizard behavior) that Idris was a rock star hiding out in a small town. It took all my self-control not to sound demanding as I leaned across the table and asked, “Where did you see him?”
“Not too far from the hotel, when I went out to lunch. I thought about going up to him and saying something, but then I remembered that my brother kicked him out of the motel, and I didn’t think he’d be all that thrilled to see me.”
Marcia got a look of sudden revelation, her mouth opening into an O, but I kicked her under the table before she could say anything. I’d told her about my adventures back home, and I could tell she’d figured out who the rock star really was.
I wanted nothing more than to jump up right then and run to the hotel to search that whole area, but I reminded myself that Nita had seen Idris around noon, and he probably wasn’t still hanging around. Then I remembered that I still had Owen’s cell phone. “I’m going to make a quick trip to the ladies’ room,” I said. “Be back in a sec.”
It was counterintuitive to head inside to talk on the phone, since it was noisier and the signal was weaker indoors, but this wasn’t a conversation I could let Nita overhear. I scrolled through the directory. Surely Owen had Sam on speed dial. Ah, there he was. I placed the call and hoped that Sam had whatever communications technology or magic he used working.
The gargoyle answered on the second ring. “Hey, Katie!” he said.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“You’re calling from Owen’s phone, and he’s not in a place where he can make phone calls at the moment. Who else would it be? So, what’s up, doll?”
“I’ve heard about an Idris sighting earlier today.” I gave him the time and approximate location as Nita had described it. “We need to check it out. If we can capture him and get him to talk, that might help Owen’s case. And I’m sure I could think of some ways to make him talk. I’d certainly enjoy trying.”
“You and me both. I’m on it, sweetheart.”
The evening ended early, since Nita was working mornings, and her eyelids were growing heavy by nine. As we left the restaurant, Marcia grabbed my arm and said, “Want to go do something else?” She didn’t let go until Gemma said she was heading home with Nita to call Philip. When they were gone, Marcia said, “What’s going on? You and Rod have both been acting weird since Wednesday, and I can’t get him to tell me why. You won’t talk in front of Nita. So now that Nita’s gone, spill.”
I gave her the short version, to which she responded with a low whistle and a shake of her head. “No wonder Rod’s been nuts, and I’m amazed you’re as sane as you are. You think this guy Nita saw is Idris?”
“It sounds like it. Or it could be a real New York wannabe rock star who looks like him.”
“Let’s go check it out.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I found Idris, aside from maybe knocking out a few teeth and sitting on him until Sam got there, but I was tired of inaction. Marcia and I headed back to the hotel to canvass the neighborhood, and as we walked, I brought her up to date on all the recent happenings. By the time I was done, she was ready to go after Idris with her bare hands, too.
I took mental note of the businesses in that general area. There might have been a Spellworks store Idris was visiting, but I wouldn’t see it because those stores were mostly illusion, and Marcia wouldn’t see it because the stores were veiled against the nonmagical. However, I didn’t see any cheap-looking, nearly blank storefronts with no signage—the way Spellworks stores looked to me—so I doubted that was what brought Idris to the area. No, he must have been going to one of the hundreds of restaurants and delis, which didn’t mean he frequented the neighborhood. “We’re probably wasting our time,” I said after we’d been walking for an hour.
“It was a thought,” Marcia said with a shrug.
My shoulders sagging from weariness and futility, I turned to head home and ran smack into Idris.
“You!” we both said simultaneously. I hurried to grab his wrist before he could run, and Marcia grabbed his other arm. “I ought to knock your lights out,” I said.
He smirked. “For what? Telling the truth?”
“Truth? What truth? Do you even have any proof, or were you just parroting what Ramsay told you?”
He froze in shock. “How did you know that?”
“How else would you have known about Owen? You would have been a toddler when all that happened, and there aren’t any records about Owen’s identity in the company. Besides, it became pretty obvious when Ramsay announced he was taking over Spellworks.”
“He what?” Idris shrieked.
I couldn’t hold back a laugh. “You mean, you didn’t know? His whole scheme was to get you to stir up trouble, and now he’s swooping in and taking over, probably shoving you to the curb because your name’s as tainted as Owen’s. You’re too associated with the bad spells they’re now selling protection against and you spoke out against Spellworks. I don’t think he’ll welcome you back.”
“Ah, but didn’t you hear? I was falsely accused by MSI. It was all a cover-up by Owen, who was hiding his own evil schemes by blaming me, and they forced me to speak against Spellworks. But now the truth is out, and, you know, if something happens to Merlin, we’ll know who has evil in his blood and probably decided to take out his biggest rival.”
I tightened my grip on Idris’s wrist and dug in my fingernails. Now I really wished I had Sam’s talons. “Oh, really?” I said. “Is that the plan, take out Merlin and blame Owen? Then I suppose Ramsay will deal with Owen and look like a big hero.”
Idris gasped and tried to back away. I got the feeling he wasn’t supposed to have shared that.
“When’s this murder supposed to take place, huh?” I demanded, tightening my grip to the point I was probably drawing blood. “Because Owen was arrested today.”
“You never know what might happen when a desperate criminal tries to escape.”
The burst of panic that shot through me then was so strong I couldn’t come up with a snappy res
ponse. Could they possibly know that Merlin was seriously considering helping Owen escape? Where was Sam? Had he sent someone yet? Although Idris couldn’t use magic on me, I didn’t think Marcia and I were physically capable of subduing him and bringing him in on our own, and I was worried what he’d do to Marcia if he bothered to notice her.
“You must really hate Owen if you were willing to give up a salary,” I said, hoping that would distract him from casting a spell on Marcia or from trying to escape.
“What do you mean?”
“As I recall, the deal you made with Merlin when they decided to let you speak means any money you make from Spellworks will just vanish,” I reminded him. “And in case you were wondering, that clause was Ramsay’s idea. Your boss was setting you up. If things went wrong, then you were the one left to look bad, and you don’t even get anything out of it.”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “Oh, damn. I forgot about that.”
“If you come with us, I’m sure we could work something out,” I said. “What’s the point of sticking with the bad guys when you don’t get anything out of it?”
A flash of terror crossed his face. “I can’t. I won’t,” he stammered as he started shaking. He looked like a person trying to fight a compulsion—or else like a bad mime attempting to do the “walking against the wind” routine.
That’s when I realized what had to be going on with him. “He put the whammy on you!” I said. “Ramsay’s got you under a compulsion of some kind, right? He was using one of those attraction or charisma spells—” I barely cut myself off before adding “like Rod used to use” in Marcia’s presence “—on everyone else, so of course he’d have you under a spell. You really couldn’t tell us who you were working for. It wasn’t all just an act.”
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop,” he whimpered, moving his arms like he wanted to put his hands over his ears, but Marcia and I hung on and kept his hands down.
“We can help you,” I said. “Now that we know about it, we could break the spell. You could help us beat him, and then you’d be free.”
He gave a scream of fury and lunged away from me, but I refused to let go even as he tried to wrench his arm from my grasp. My purse slid off my shoulder and I couldn’t get it out of the way without releasing him.
“Hey, buddy, drop the purse and leave the ladies alone,” a guy passing by said, raising his fists at Idris in a threatening way. Idris took advantage of the distraction to worm away from us and take off. Of all times to run across a chivalrous New Yorker who wasn’t willing to look the other way, I thought with a groan. “You okay, ladies?” the guy asked.
I curled my fingers up so he couldn’t see the blood under my fingernails. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“You need to call someone? Or need someone to walk you home?”
“No, thank you, I’m okay. It’s not far. Thank you for coming to our rescue.”
He reluctantly let us go, and we hurried away. I fumbled for Owen’s cell phone as we walked, then hit redial and got Sam. “I found him,” I said. “Idris. He got away, but he can’t have gone far.” I gave the location and the direction Idris had run. “But Sam, it’s worse than that. They’re planning to make it look like Owen kills Merlin trying to escape.”
“Just relax, doll, we’re keeping the boss safe, don’t you worry, and we do have a plan.”
“Katie, it’ll be okay, right?” Marcia said when I got off the phone. I couldn’t tell if she was looking for reassurance or offering it.
“I don’t know. Everything’s out of control, and I have no idea what we can do.”
Chapter Nineteen
I took the train to James and Gloria’s town on Sunday afternoon, and James met me at the station. When I got to their house, I saw that there were new family photos on the fireplace mantle and bookshelves in the living room. On my first visit, I’d thought it odd that there were no pictures of Owen growing up, but they seemed to have decided that showing pride in their foster son could no longer be held against them, and they’d gone all-out. Gloria left me in there to get settled while she made tea, so I took the chance to study the pictures.
As Rod said, Owen had been a small, skinny kid with thick glasses. Until his late teens, he’d shown only hints of the good looks he’d grow into. The family portraits had a distinct sense of distance to them, as though he felt he didn’t really belong in them. He didn’t smile in many of the pictures, only in a candid shot where he was playing with a large German shepherd and seemed unaware of the camera and in one that must have been taken at Halloween with an older boy I recognized as Rod, with both of them wearing costumes. Owen was dressed as Robin Hood, while Rod wore a tux and carried a toy gun, so I assumed he was James Bond.
“They cannot tell me I’m not allowed to feel like a mother anymore,” Gloria’s voice said behind me, and I turned to see her standing straight and upright, a tea tray in her hands and her chin raised defiantly. I knew I wouldn’t want to be the Council member making accusations against her boy. Her expression softened a little as she added, “I heard what you said to him at his house the other day. Thank you. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but you were right.”
“Well, he is a special guy, and I think you had a lot to do with that.”
It was a more comfortable visit than my first one, but it was still awkward staying in the Eatons’ home without Owen there, especially given the reason that Owen wasn’t there. I’d hoped that they might know something about whatever Merlin had planned, but they didn’t know any more than I did. I had a feeling none of us got much sleep that night.
The next morning, they made me drive their ancient but perfectly maintained Volvo, since James said his eyesight wasn’t up for driving outside their village. I had to move the seat forward and then adjust to driving something other than an old pickup truck with a stick shift. Having Gloria in the front seat watching everything I did didn’t help matters.
The Council’s headquarters was farther up the river in one of those mansions built by nineteenth-century robber barons—at least, that’s what it looked like, but the building seemed so ancient that it could have been transplanted directly from Europe. It looked like a spooky old-world abbey, and the entire place reeked of magic. My skin hummed from the power, and I wondered what it felt like to magical people.
The entrance was innocuous enough, with a butler meeting us in a foyer that wouldn’t have been out of place in any old mansion, but then he led us deeper into the house to a great hall, and I knew this wouldn’t be a pleasant social occasion.
The room was beyond imposing. The ceiling went higher than I would have thought possible in the building I’d seen from the outside, and it was braced with heavy beams the size of giant trees. The floor was made of flagstones worn smooth with time, and the walls down one side were paneled in dark, intricately carved wood, while the other side held stained-glass windows depicting the history of magic.
At the head of the hall stood a massive rectangular table set on a stage so that it loomed over everything. The chairs behind that table were equally massive, the backs going well above the height of even the tallest man, and they had magical symbols carved into them. I noticed that the floor also contained those symbols, formed out of a darker stone, but they were difficult to see unless you were standing back and got a broad view. In the middle of the pattern, directly in front of the high table and reaching almost to the front row of wooden spectator benches, was a circle formed out of the darker stone. I wondered what those symbols did—maybe they were wards or one of those magic-dampening fields?
Gloria turned to James and said, “Go help him get ready.” James nodded and left, carrying a garment bag. “They had best let him prepare to face this,” she said, her tone making it clear they would answer to her if they didn’t. She led me to the front of the room, where we took seats on the front row of benches. She sat with her back perfectly straight, her hands braced on her knees.
James joined us a few minutes la
ter, sitting on Gloria’s other side. “He said he was thankful for the suit, but he was perfectly capable of dressing himself,” he reported.
Gloria took his hand and asked, “How is he?”
“Calm. He doesn’t look like he’s slept much, though. He did have all his limbs and fingers, and I didn’t see any bruises, so I don’t think they’ve mistreated him.”
“They wouldn’t dare.” She checked her watch. “I cannot wait to get this farce over with.”
More people trickled in. I recognized some of the Eatons’ neighbors, along with many of my friends from MSI. Rod sat by me, and then Ethan sat by him. Ethan leaned across Rod to say, “I offered to provide representation, but they assured me my law degree wouldn’t be of much use here.”
“I’m sure he appreciates the gesture,” I said with a weak smile.
“The situation is insane, anyway,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”
“That’s because it’s entirely trumped up,” Rod muttered. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Uh oh, my parents are here.” I felt a faint burst of magic, and I assumed that meant he’d dropped his handsome illusion, or at least adjusted it so it didn’t affect his parents. I could see why, since he looked just like his father, and it wasn’t exactly a compliment to change his appearance so drastically.
I managed not to respond too strongly when Owen’s boss entered. I knew that meant things were quite dire, since Mr. Lansing rarely left his office, thanks to a magical industrial accident that had turned him into a giant frog. He had an illusion that made him look human to most people, but it took a lot of effort, so he usually sent Owen out on his behalf. I saw the frog, since illusions don’t work on me, and seeing a giant frog walking around is more than a bit disconcerting.
Jake came in and sat near the back. He wore a conventional suit and had his hair neatly combed, so it took me a moment to recognize him. Isabel sat next to him, and Trix was with her. Sam and a few other gargoyles perched in the rafters. The whole gang was there.
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