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Idris looked at him for a moment, then blinked and turned his attention back to me. “What was it like?” he asked. “What happened?”
“That’s not what we’re here to talk about,” I said. “What we need to know is who set you up to do all this. You may not have thought it through, but I’m betting that whoever’s behind this did.”
Idris leaned back in his chair and attempted to cross his legs, but was hampered by the chains on his ankles. He bent over to investigate and fell out of his chair. The chains on his wrists that were bolted to the table kept him suspended, hanging at an odd angle. He twisted to try to pull himself back into his chair and somehow got the chains tangled up. I wasn’t sure how he managed to get into that pretzel-like position. It took real talent to be that inept.
“Uh, guys, a little help here,” he called from under the table. “Wow, Katie, you really ripped your stockings. And did you know you were bleeding? Well, not anymore. It’s dried. But there’s a scab on your leg where your stockings are torn.”
Owen jumped out of his seat and went around the table to help Idris. I tensed, suspecting a ruse or a trap, but Idris really was stuck. Owen untangled the chains, then pulled him back into his chair.
Owen rolled his eyes at me as he came back to his own seat. “Now, as we were asking,” he said with a sigh of waning patience, “who was behind this scheme to put you in business?”
Still giggling, Idris said, “You two are so great together! And I can’t believe you haven’t thanked me yet.”
Owen and I glanced at each other. He looked as confused as I felt. “Thanked you for what?” I asked Idris.
“For getting you two back together. If I hadn’t been teaching Katie’s brother magic—and I didn’t know he was your brother until you told me—then Owen wouldn’t have had to go to Texas, and you two wouldn’t have worked things out.”
The tips of Owen’s ears turned red, not in the adorable bashful way, but more in a “Mount Vesuvius is about to erupt” way. Owen tended to focus on a single thing to the exclusion of everything else—including food and sleep—if there was something he wanted to accomplish. That made Idris, who couldn’t sustain a single thought for more than a minute, very frustrating for Owen to deal with. “Who. Are. You. Working. For?” he asked through clenched teeth. If it hadn’t been for the magical dampening field, I had a feeling that the room would have been vibrating with barely controlled magic. As it was, I still detected a slight magical tingle.
Idris flinched. “I told you, I don’t know. I dealt with the money lady. She’s the one who might know who the boss is.”
We knew who “the money lady” was. The trick was finding a way to capture and question her. She was a highly respected magical banker—not someone you could drag off the street and throw into the backseat of a car. She knew how to work both the magical and mundane systems.
“Do you know why they set you up in business?” I asked.
“To make money. Duh.”
“But have you made money?” Owen asked. “You’ve had a lot of expenses, setting up those retail locations and buying actual advertising space instead of just using illusion. What were sales like?”
“Those ads were really cool, weren’t they? And they all have my picture, so I’m famous!”
Before Owen could blow a gasket at yet another digression, I hurried to ask, “But did they work? Did you have a lot of customers?”
Idris shrugged. “I don’t know. I just developed the spells.” He turned to Owen. “I mean, do you know how much money each of the spells you come up with makes?”
“I keep spreadsheets,” Owen said dryly. “I also think about what might happen if people actually use the spells.”
“Back to the why question,” I said, “there has to be a reason for Spellworks beyond the money. If it was just money, it wouldn’t have been this secretive.”
“I was just trying to come up with spells that MSI didn’t have, and that leaves a pretty limited range, let me tell you,” Idris said with a weary sigh. “I was stuck with the things you aren’t willing to do, and I figured there had to be someone who’d want something like that, but couldn’t find it. And, generally, the people who want something like that aren’t smart enough to come up with it on their own.”
That almost made sense—which was a change for Idris. It sounded like he didn’t know Spellworks had changed its focus to protective spells. I took another approach. “Surely you’ve tried to guess who was behind it all,” I said, leaning forward and dropping my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I mean, someone as clever as you are must have some idea, even if you don’t know for sure.”
I expected him to puff his chest out with pride, sit up straighter, or otherwise react to my compliment, but instead he went deathly pale and shrank into his chair. “No, no, I have no idea,” he muttered, shaking his head back and forth.
“Not even a teeny little guess?”
“No!” he shouted.
I glanced at Owen and saw that a little crease had formed between his eyes. He chewed his lower lip for a moment, then said softly, “We can’t protect you from him if we don’t know who it is.” Idris just sat and shuddered. “Or I suppose we could turn you loose since you don’t seem to know anything,” Owen added with a shrug.
Idris came halfway out of his chair. “No! Not that! I’ve failed. And I don’t think they need me anymore. They’ve got the spells already, and I don’t think it’s about the spells.”
Owen and I exchanged a glance of triumph. Finally, a slip.
“What is it about, then?” Owen asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
