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One day, I thought, I'd get the nerve to ask him about it.
Late that afternoon, Trix tapped on my door. "There's an emergency meeting. He wants you in there."
I grabbed my pen and notepad, wondering what was going on. Would this be my first big meeting as Merlin's personal verifier?
When I saw who was gathered for the meeting, I doubted it. It was the same group as on Friday, minus Gregor and the accounting gnome. Owen looked grim and distracted, and he gave me only the slightest of nods as I entered. There was an aura of gloom and doom that hung over the room. I took my seat at the table silently.
Merlin kicked things off. "Owen, why don't you tell us what you've discovered today?"
"Idris has a new spell on the market, and it's quite dark. We're back to square one."
"What is the new spell?" Mr. Hartwell asked.
"It's basically the spell he was working on when we dismissed him. It seems he finally got it ready to sell."
"This could be a sign of panic on his part," I pointed out, "if the poor quality and whatever we were doing had an impact. He needed to get something on the market that he knew would work while he hurried to fix the other spell."
"That doesn't mean we don't have a problem," Owen said with a deep sigh. "This one works, and we don't have a way to counter it. It's good—no big energy drain, it's effective, it's everything he promises it to be. It's still all about influence, but not quite in the puppet-master way the other spell was—he was reaching too far with that one. This one just makes the victim incredibly open to suggestion. The victim still has some degree of free will, but he is strongly drawn to wanting to please the caster.
In the wrong hands, it could be devastating. The victim won't ever realize anything's wrong, unlike with that other spell."
"And if it works as advertised, it means none of our marketing messages are going to be very effective," I said. "We can no longer stand on the position that our spells work and have been thoroughly tested." I think I was more upset about this development than I had been about being attacked. It made weeks of work practically useless.
They all turned to me, and I wished I hadn't spoken. "Katie, do you have any ideas?"
Merlin asked.
I shook my head. "Sorry, but I can't think of anything right now. It seems like our real differentiator is that our spells can't be used to do harm. The people who don't want to do harm or use other people won't be interested anyway, and nothing we say will influence the people who do want to use others. 'Just say no' wasn't very effective for Nancy Reagan, and I doubt it will help us much."
I was sure I saw disappointment in Merlin's eyes, and I felt bad for letting him down.
I'd let myself get a big head from my earlier successes and had managed to forget that I was a small-town girl with a business degree and a year working as a marketing assistant. "I'm sorry," I said after a while. "I'll have to think about it."
"Please do," Merlin said, and I fought to blink back tears. I turned away from Merlin to see Owen looking at me with compassion in his eyes. I realized he was in pretty much the same boat I was, where all his previous successes meant next to nothing now.
"How long until you have an effective counterspell that will render this one meaningless?" Merlin asked him.
"I don't know. I'm not sure we ever will. As I said, this was the spell he was working on when he left, and we've been looking for ways to counter it ever since then, yet we still haven't come up with anything. I've been over all of his source material. I've taken that spell apart and looked at it inside out and upside down. I'm afraid it's airtight."
"No spell is perfect. You can find a weakness." This was a whole new side to Merlin that I hadn't seen before. Until now, although I knew intellectually that this was the Merlin, it hadn't really sunk in that this was the man who had put Arthur on the throne, who had been instrumental in all those great deeds they still told stories about. I could see that legend in the man who sat at the head of the table now, and it was rather intimidating.
Owen flinched, a flush spreading upward from his collar, and he nodded. "I'll keep at it."
"Minerva?"
She shrugged. "Still nothing. I'm not getting any portents, one way or another, which means the situation is still in flux. We can influence the outcome."
"We'll get the sales force out on the streets, with verifiers to see where and how this stuff is selling," Mr. Hartwell said. "I can even call in some old debts and get customer names, so we know who to track." He must not have wanted Merlin coming down on him, so he was being proactive with the information.
"Good," Merlin said curtly. "If he succeeds here, then we know he'll continue trying.
We can notallow this to succeed. We had these problems in my time, and it nearly tore Britain apart. I've read enough of the history I've missed to know the same thing has happened here, and fairly recently." That caught my attention. Had there been other magical wars the rest of the world didn't know about? Then maybe this situation wasn't as dire as I'd feared, since we'd all clearly survived. I made a mental note to go back to reading those books Owen had loaned me.
"But this is the first challenge we've faced that's come in business form," Merlin continued. "That gives it the slightest aura of legitimacy, which makes it appealing to those who might be wavering between light and dark. Few of those would sign up for the side of evil in a magical war, but give them a legitimate-looking product, and they'll be tempted. Corrupt them a little bit, and it's easy to corrupt them further. We must stop this now." I felt a surge of magical charge at his words and shivered.
Okay, so maybe the situation was as dire as I feared.
I racked my brain for a way I could help, but I was getting nothing. I couldn't see a
