“And what does that mean?” I demanded.
“It means he received too much power for the human body to manage, though not as much as Ramsay left himself open to.”
That still didn’t mean much to me, but Owen was the one who was good at explaining magic using nonmagical metaphors. “So it’s bad?” I asked.
“It could be,” Merlin acknowledged. “The full impact remains to be seen.”
Rudolph joined us. Almost as an afterthought, he pounded his staff against the floor to break the wards. Emergency crews then rushed into the chamber. I watched with a sense of despair as they carried Owen away.
James, Gloria, Rod, and I followed to the building’s medical facility, where I sat holding Gloria’s hand in a waiting room while the healers did their magical healing thing and James paced. “He’ll be fine,” I said, wishing I had the power to make that be true. “I don’t think he’d have done something like that if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.”
“I’m afraid he did know what he was doing. He knew what he risked, but he also knew the danger of not acting. I am very proud of him,” Gloria said, holding her chin up, even though her voice trembled. Now I was worried. If Gloria was practically writing his eulogy, that was a bad sign.
The chief healer came out then and said, “We’ve done what we can for now. Physically, there appears to be no permanent injury. The full extent of the magical damage remains to be seen. He will likely remain unconscious for a day or so.”
They let us in to see Owen half an hour later, and seeing him didn’t reassure me. I’d never seen him so pale. The bruises on his face from his capture stood out in stark contrast to the pallor. When I tentatively touched his hand, I was surprised that it was warm—not normal warm, but he looked like he’d been carved out of ice, so I was expecting him to be frozen. Gloria straightened and smoothed the covers around him, then adjusted his hair so it didn’t fall into his eyes.
We stayed there until the healers made us leave, then I went home with James and Gloria. I told myself it was because they needed someone there for them, but I also didn’t want to be alone, and I wanted to be with people I could talk to about what had happened. Besides, they needed someone to drive them back and forth to the Council infirmary.
The next morning, we arrived at the infirmary to find Merlin already there. “It appears that both Mr. Idris and Mr. Ramsay have been stripped of their powers,” Merlin reported. “The power surge was too much for Mr. Ramsay, and it both burned him and burned out his powers. The link between him and Mr. Idris that maintained the compulsion spell fed enough power into Mr. Idris to damage his powers, as well. The same thing happened to a couple of other people who must have been under a similar spell.”
“What will become of them?” I asked.
“That will be for the Council to decide, but I can’t think of a worse punishment for those two than to be forced to live normal lives.”
“I’m not sure Idris knows the meaning of the word normal,” I said, even as I worried about what this might mean for Owen. He hadn’t received nearly the jolt Ramsay had, but he’d been the one controlling and directing that power.
Rod came running up to us. “He’s waking up!” he said, panting. We didn’t need to ask who he meant.
We all hurried into Owen’s room to find his eyelids fluttering. I took his hand and gave it a squeeze, and he whispered, “Katie?”
“I’m here.”
Gloria squeezed his other hand. “As am I. We’re all here.”
“You’re okay?”
“Everyone is fine,” Gloria said soothingly. “It’s over, and we’re all safe. How do you feel?”
He scrunched his eyes into a wince and groaned slightly. “I have a splitting headache. What happened?”
“You overloaded Ramsay’s power draw,” James said.
“Did it work?”
“Quite well,” Merlin said. “The building still stands. Ivor Ramsay has no magical power left. He’s completely burned out. There also seems to have been a similar effect on Phelan Idris.”
“Remind me never to do that again.” Owen finally opened his eyes, then shut them quickly against the light. He wriggled into a sitting position, and Gloria rushed to adjust the pillows for him.
“If we are fortunate, another situation like that will not arise during your lifetime,” Merlin said.
The longer Owen was awake, the more he looked like his usual self. There was even some color returning to his cheeks. He glanced around the room, giving each of us a faint smile, then he suddenly frowned. “Wait, who are you?” he asked Rod. “You look familiar, but…”
“Amnesia?” Rod asked.
“Rod? What happened to you?”
“I don’t think he sees your illusion,” I said, getting a queasy feeling in my stomach.
Merlin frowned and placed a hand on Owen’s forehead, like he was checking for fever. “Odd,” he said. “Try to do a spell—something simple and non-taxing.”
Owen frowned and shook his head as his forehead creased in concern. “Nothing’s coming. I can’t find the power.” His voice wavered ever so slightly.
Then Merlin did something with his hands and asked, “What do you see?”
“Nothing.” Owen half closed his eyes, like he was running an internal diagnostic on himself. “Wait a second, there’s no magic at all.”
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“It means he’s lost all magic,” Merlin said, looking somber. “Not only can he not do it, it doesn’t affect him.”
The greatest wizard of his generation, now utterly without magic? It was a tragedy that didn’t seem to have yet sunk in for Owen, who looked rather shell-shocked. I wanted to cry, hug him, and kiss him, all at the same time. Since I was in a room with his parents and our boss, I settled for blinking away tears. I wasn’t even sure what I was crying about. I’d meant what I said when I told him I didn’t care whether or not he was a wizard. I supposed I was crying for his loss.
“I am most grateful,” Merlin said, his voice rough enough that it sounded like he was fighting back his own tears. “I do not think I could have continued defending myself while Ramsay drew power that way.”
Owen tried for a smile that came out lopsided. “At least they can’t be afraid of me or accuse me of trying to take over the world,” he said, just a little too enthusiastically, like he was forcing himself to put a brave face on the situation.
*
Owen came home a couple of days later—that is, he went to James and Gloria’s house. He was up and around but still shaky enough that he let Gloria fuss over him. I suspected he rather enjoyed the maternal attention, and there was no doubt that Gloria thoroughly enjoyed finally being able to fuss over him openly. Most of the time, it seemed like he didn’t notice the lack of magic, since he seldom used it away from work, but every so often he’d move a hand ever so slightly, then blink and wince when nothing happened. He didn’t talk about it, though, and I wasn’t sure what to say. He seemed calm enough, but I suspected he was still in shock.
Merlin came by a couple of days after that to report that Ramsay had been given a lifetime sentence, while Idris was being exiled from the magical world. “And all charges have been completely dropped against you,” he told Owen. “Including the escape and evasion charges.”
Owen nodded. “That’s good to hear. I wasn’t looking forward to being a fugitive.”
I smiled more than the joke was probably worth, but it was good to see his dry sense of humor returning.
“Did you have any particular plans for the future?” Merlin asked him.
Owen shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it. I know immunes are rare enough that you still need me, but I’m not sure I’d want to work in Verification.”
“Believe me, you don’t,” I muttered.
“Yes, magical immunes are rare, but what you are is unprecedented,” Merlin said. “I have not known of a magical immune who was fully trained as a wizard,
and that may be incredibly valuable. You see, we have in our vaults some magical works that are so potentially dangerous that we cannot allow anyone with any magical ability to so much as read them. But you have the expertise to decipher them and understand what they might mean, with no risk of accidentally enacting any of the spells they contain.”
He’d said words more magical than any spell. Owen’s eyes lit up. “You mean the Codex Ephemera?” he asked breathlessly. “I thought that was just a legend. And you want me to read it?”
“If you are interested.”
“If I’d known we had that, I might have wiped out my powers ages ago.” He gave a wry half smile. “And that might have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“I will take that as a yes,” Merlin said with twinkling eyes. “Take some time off, and when you’re ready to come back to work, report to the vaults.”
That afternoon, Owen and I walked down to the park by the river. “You seem to be feeling better about life,” I said. “Are you going to be okay—with all of it? Your parents, the magic thing, and all?”
He settled his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into him. “Yeah, I think I’ll be okay,” he said after a while. “My parents were who they were. I can’t change that. The magical world won’t ever see my mother as anything but a villain, but at least I know what she did. As for the power loss…” He shrugged and sighed. “That’s taking some getting used to. It may not be permanent. With time, the power could come back.”
“On the bright side, they can’t accuse you of being a magical supervillain when you’re immune to magic,” I said.
“No, and I can read things that are too dangerous for magical people to read. I could contribute a lot to our knowledge of magic.” He glanced down at me, then smiled, “And I’ll get to see the way the world looks to you.”
“So you are going to be okay?”
There was a long pause, and then he said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“If you’re looking for more bright sides, they can’t make you take the lead if there are any more magical threats. But then again, that didn’t exactly help me, so maybe you’re still stuck with being a hero.”
He laughed and squeezed my shoulders. “Have I said thank you?”
“For what?”
“Where do I begin? For being a big help, for believing in me, for giving me a swift kick when I needed it.”
I turned within the circle of his arm to face him and put my arms around his neck. “Any time.”
“You mean the kicking part?”
“I mean all of it.”
He bent to kiss me, gently at first, and then more ardently. When he broke the kiss, he whispered in my ear, “I know the circumstances were a little crazy when I said it the first time, but I meant it. I love you.”
I kissed him, then said, “And I know I was yelling at you when I said it the first time, but I meant it. I love you, too.”
We stood like that for a long time, our arms around each other and my head resting on his shoulder. Then he said, “I did say that we’d go away somewhere when all this was over, and it does seem to be over.”
“Yeah, it’s over. So, any vacation ideas? I mean, other than that motel in the Poconos. I don’t think they’ll let us come back.”
“There’s this library in an old abbey in Wales I’ve always wanted to visit…”
I laughed and kissed him. You could take the magic out of Owen Palmer, but I didn’t think anything would ever really change him. And I was just fine with that.
About The Author
Shanna Swendson is the author of the Enchanted Inc. series of humorous contemporary fantasy novels, including Enchanted, Inc., Once Upon Stilettos, Damsel Under Stress, Don’t Hex with Texas, and Much Ado About Magic. She’s also contributed essays to a number of books on pop culture topics, including Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl, I Learned from Judy Blume, Serenity Found, Perfectly Plum and So Say We All. When she’s not writing, she’s usually discussing books and television on the Internet, singing in or directing choirs, taking ballet classes or attempting to learn Italian cooking. She lives in Irving, Texas, with several hardy houseplants and a lot of books.
Visit her Website at http://www.shannaswendson.com.
An Excerpt from No Quest for the Wicked
The Enchantment isn’t over!
Slated for release as an eBook in October, 2012, Book Six in the Enchanted, Inc. series, No Quest for the Wicked.
Now that the Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. team has defeated the nefarious Spellworks, the only “competition” in town, Katie Chandler doesn’t have much to do as director of marketing, and she’s starting to question her role at MSI. Her boyfriend Owen Palmer, on the other hand, is in hog heaven, translating an ancient and powerful magical manuscript.
But then he finds that the cryptic text describing the location of an enchanted gem known as the Eye of the Moon has radically changed. This deadly stone gives its holder enhanced power over others and a craving for more power. It once caused a terrible war before it was safely hidden and then lost – and now it seems to be in New York and set in an elven brooch that renders its wearer invulnerable. Whoever has this brooch could take over the world.
Katie and Owen must find it before anyone else does, and they’re not the only ones searching. They’ll need all the help they can get, including Katie’s visiting grandmother. But who can they trust when their allies fall under its spell? Not to mention the new enemies who are deadlier than anything they’ve faced before.
An impossible mission …
I’d reached the part of my mission where stealth was most essential. One wrong footstep, one breath that was a little too loud, and the game would be up. The door ahead of me was ever so slightly ajar. It looked as though anyone could walk right through, but the door wasn’t what kept out intruders. Anyone who tried to pass through that doorway would wake up in a body-shaped dent on the opposite wall.
Anyone, that is, who didn’t have my particular qualities. For me, that slightly ajar door was the most challenging obstacle. I’d need to open it wider to get through, but there was the risk that would make enough noise to give me away. I slid my toe into the gap, shivering as I crossed the powerful wards. Moving my foot slowly forward, I eased the door open, bit by bit, then I paused and held my breath, listening carefully. The scratch of a pen confirmed my fear that the room was occupied.
At this time in the morning? How early did I have to get up?
At any rate, it was time to make my move. I slid my body into the gap in the doorway, edging sideways into the chamber. I’d made it all the way into the room when a crunching sound made me freeze. I glanced down and saw that I’d stepped on a wadded-up piece of paper. After holding my breath a few seconds without noticing any reaction from the room’s occupant, I kept going, watching more carefully where I stepped.
I’d almost made it to the paper-and-book-strewn table in the middle of the room when the occupant said, without looking up from his work, “Katie, what are you doing here?”
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
About the Author
An Excerpt from No Quest for the Wicked
Much Ado About Magic Page 28
