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I explained quickly about the things Mom had seen and what I’d observed. When I finished, Sam nodded. “Okay, looks like I’ll be staking out the square here for a while, get an idea what the perp’s up to, and then I can figure out what to do about it.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ve also found something I want to check out.” I told him about the magazine ad.
He made a whistling sound, like the wind blowing across the top of a Coke bottle. “That’s not good.
You think that’s what our local wizard is up to?”
“Could be. There’s a Web address, so I’ll go look it up, and I’ll keep you posted on what I find. Want me to stop by on any particular schedule?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m officially on the case, so you can stand down. I’ll find you if I need you. This place ain’t a tenth the size of Manhattan, and I can find you there.” Actually, the incorporated landmass of the town wasn’t too much smaller than Manhattan Island, but I knew what he meant.
“Okay, then. Let me know if you need anything. Oh, and remember that you might have to be careful.
People are more likely to notice little oddities and ask about them here than they are in New York.
News spreads fast. Plus, my mom’s immune, and I think my grandmother might be, too. I have other relatives around, so there’s no telling how far that trait spreads.” It would be ironic if this town turned out to be the nonmagical capital of the world from being the home of more immunes than any other place. That would actually explain a lot about how boring the place was.
“Got it. Now shoo so I can get on with my stakeout.”
Once I got back to the store, it took me awhile before I had time to look up the magic school. We were busy with customers, and then even when the afternoon rush died down, I kept having family members pop into my office. They finally got busy again with their own work, and I pulled the folded-up magazine out of my bag, then typed the Web address into my browser.
It took the site forever to load, which made me wonder how much bandwidth magic required. The initial page looked a lot like the ad, but instead of the contact info in the ad, there was a button to click on if you could see the ad and wanted to know more. I clicked on it, then waited for the next page to load.
When it came up, the Spellworks logo was at the top of the page. My stomach did a backflip before tying itself into a square knot. That company was our enemy, and that meant Phelan Idris was behind whatever was going on in town.
I had to hold my breath while I read so I could concentrate, and moving my computer’s mouse was difficult with my hands shaking. The Web page said that if you could read this site, you had magical powers—which wasn’t entirely accurate, as I very well knew, but I didn’t expect them to explain the concept of magical immunity in their initial “magic is real” paragraph. There had to be something else in the site to weed out people like me. It went on to describe all the benefits of having magical powers, including the usual stuff like wealth, influence over others, and making the world work the way you wanted it to. Of course, there was no mention of learning the proper context for using your power, but then a code of ethics wasn’t something I’d expect to see in a sales pitch, so I didn’t count the ethical lapse against Idris this time.
For an introductory fee of five hundred dollars and then a monthly fee of two hundred dollars, you could learn to use your powers. The site promised that within two months, you could start using magic to more than make up for the amount you spent on the lessons. Lessons would be taught online using streaming video, with message boards for interacting with the instructor and with other students. The rest was the usual “act now” stuff, including info on paying by credit card for automatic monthly payments.
I clicked around on the page, trying to find more information, but everything appeared to be password protected. Oddly, I didn’t see anything to click on in order to sign up for the classes. That must have been their trap to weed out immunes. The “sign up now” button was probably an illusion that I couldn’t see.
This was big. If Idris was out to teach people how to do magic his way, the world could be in a lot of trouble. On a whim, I tried Googling every phrase I could think of that might lead me to magic lessons, but I didn’t ever get the Spellworks site in the search results. At least it didn’t look like random people playing around on the Internet could stumble on the site. The question was, how widely were they advertising this? Was it just around here, and what was the purpose in teaching a bunch of amateurs to do petty parlor tricks?
When I’d wrapped up my work for the day, I headed straight to the courthouse to find Sam. I took a magazine stuffed with printouts from the Spellworks website and sat on a bench, trying to look like I was just casually sitting there, reading the magazine. Sam flew down from the roof to join me. “The perp must’ve heard of my reputation and took off,” he said with a grin on his grotesque face. “Not a single sight of ’im. And boy, is this town of yours slow, or what?”
“Tell me about it. Believe it or not, this is pretty exciting as things go around here. But I have something you need to see.” I pulled the pages out of my magazine to show to him. “It’s not quite what was on the website—maybe magic doesn’t come through on the printer—but I think you can get the idea. They’re recruiting new wizards. Can they do that? Are there really people out there who don’t know they have magical powers?”
He shrugged. “Hey, that’s not my area of expertise. I just do security, you know? But there’s gotta be someone out there who doesn’t know he’s really a wizard. We can’t catch ’em all. This definitely looks bigger than a single rogue wizard to me. It might be easier to put a stop to this here than in New York.”
“Why’s that? All our people and resources are in New York.”
“But there’s no power here. The magical lines are weak in these parts, which is why you don’t have a big magical community. Magical folk tend to settle around lines of power. We get a few of our big guns down here who are highly trained and who’ve got their own reserves of power, and fighting off the bad guys will be a snap. In New York, there’s enough power flying around to put everyone on a more even footing. We just need to figure out who our local wizard is, grab him, and then we can use him to draw Idris out.”
“Cool.”
“Hey, ain’t it funny that you headed down here to get away from all that, and then it comes to you anyway?”
“Yeah, it’s a real scream.” From what Sam had said, it didn’t sound like the specifics of my decision to leave had been widely broadcast. I may not have escaped from magic, but I had still separated myself from Owen so he wouldn’t be tempted to make the wrong choice in a showdown, so I figured I’d still accomplished something by leaving. “You’ll tell headquarters what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry, I got it under control.”
Before I could respond to him, someone called my name from across the courthouse grounds. I turned to see Nita waving at me. Then she ran full throttle toward me, so fast that Sam had to scramble to get off the bench before she plopped down on top of him. “What are you doing here?” she asked me.
I tried to keep my eyes from following Sam as he flew back to the courthouse roof. “Oh, you know, just hanging out.”
She raised an eyebrow. “At the courthouse?”
“The grounds are nice. It’s like a park. And my family isn’t here.”
