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“Yeah, I know. I’m going to play Florence Nightingale for Rod after work. He’s such a big baby. Do we need to quarantine you?”
n’t have to wait too long. Soon, the door opened and someone in a lab coat came out, carrying a couple of shopping bags. He stopped to sneeze halfway through the doorway, and I jumped to catch the door for him while he groped for a handkerchief. “Thanks,” he croaked.
“Bless you,” I said, meaning it quite sincerely. Once he left, I headed into the department and hurried to Owen’s lab. The lights were out, and there was no sign of Jake, so he must have been sick, too. There were bookcases in the lab, but a quick skim of the titles I could read told me that these were all books about magic itself, not magical society.
Owen kept his office warded, so I felt a slight tingle as I passed through the doorway, but nothing held me back because the wards didn’t work on me. I was sure I’d recognize the books I needed when I saw them, but I didn’t see them on the bookshelves. That left the desk, which would be a challenge to search because it was so cluttered and because, in spite of the clutter, Owen knew exactly where everything was. Move one thing, and he’d know someone had been in there.
I remembered giving the books back to Owen not long after I’d joined the company. I visualized the scene—he’d taken the books from me, said I was welcome to borrow them at any time, and placed them… there, on the corner of his desk. I went around the desk, sat in his chair, and gingerly lifted a few file folders to find the books exactly where he’d put them, all those months ago.
Taking mental note of the books’ position, how they were placed, and the order in which they were stacked, I pulled out the one I recalled having the most information on the recent history of the magical world. I flipped straight to the back, where there were blank pages, although there were fewer blank pages than I recalled. The book had updated itself to include events that happened since I’d last read it. I glanced over the article about the growth of Spellworks, out of curiosity, then flipped a few pages back to the story about the last serious threat to the magical world.
It sounded pretty similar to the way this battle had started, with a brilliant and eccentric young wizard named Kane Morgan who was fired from MSI when he and his wife began using dark magic no other wizard dared to tap into. It sounded far worse than today’s magical mischief. The book said that the Council had discussed restoring Merlin, but before they had a chance, the Morgans tried to seize power, and it was another young MSI wizard, one Ivor Ramsay, who saved the day by defeating the bad guys in a surprise attack.
“Yeah, that would get you a fast promotion,” I muttered to myself. And it would explain the hero worship, as well as Owen’s resistance to my suspicions. It was like I’d accused Luke Skywalker of being Darth Vader, even after he’d destroyed the Death Star. I could even see why they might have jumped the gun on bringing Merlin back for something relatively minor this time around. They were afraid of taking too many chances.
There wasn’t much more about Ramsay, aside from him being promoted to company president about twenty years ago and being chairman of the Council for a couple of terms. As Owen said, he’d had just about all the power anyone could want. He didn’t need to concoct an elaborate scheme to take over when he was already there.
But still, there was something about Ramsay that just bugged me, and if he was behind this, then that meant he had something far more nefarious than normal power in mind.
The part about Merlin’s return was still sketchy, like it was a placeholder article that would be fleshed out when enough time had passed to lend historical perspective. Not only did this book get added to, it expanded along the way. I could have sworn some of the information about that last crisis hadn’t been there the last time I read this book.
I put the books back where I’d found them, made sure the folders on top of them were back in place, and then left Owen’s office, still deep in thought. I went home early because there wasn’t much I could do with everyone else gone, and my to-do list of things I needed from other people was haunting me. The subway was emptier than normal—even accounting for non-rush-hour ridership. And then it occurred to me that there were no obviously magical people on board. Not a single pair of wings, no pointed ears, no gnomes, and no one was causing magical mischief. It was as though the entire magical population of Manhattan had vanished.
As soon as I got home, I called Marcia at work. “Is your office still flu-free?” I asked.
“So far, knock on wood.”
“My company has been pretty much wiped out.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m going to play Florence Nightingale for Rod after work. He’s such a big baby. Do we need to quarantine you?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know if there is such a thing, but this looks like some kind of magic flu. The only people I know who are sick are magical people, and I don’t know of anyone nonmagical who’s sick. Owen’s sick, too, and I’ll be going over there. I’ll leave a note for Gemma.”
“Keep me posted,” she said. “You have my cell number and Rod’s number, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know what I find out.”
If there was a magical flu, I’d need Owen’s help to figure out what we could do, even if he was sick. In case I needed to do like Marcia and play nursemaid, I threw some overnight things into a tote bag. On my way to Owen’s place I bought a container of hot-and-sour soup from the Chinese restaurant next door to my building and a jug of orange juice from the corner grocery.
Normally, Owen’s door just opened for me when I showed up, since his weird brand of ESP told him I was coming, but the plague must have knocked out his magical senses—or else he was mad at me. I had to hit the buzzer, and I hoped I wasn’t waking him from a nap. After a long pause, a scratchy voice said, “Yeah?” over the intercom.
“Owen, it’s Katie. I need to talk to you. I’ve got soup.”
He didn’t respond, and I held my breath. Then the door opened, and I went inside and ran up the stairs. His front door had already opened for me. I found him sprawled on the sofa, his cat staring at him warily from her perch on the sofa arm at his feet.
I couldn’t blame her for her wariness. He looked like hell, worse than I’d ever seen him, and I’d seen him after he’d been practically ripped to shreds by a harpy. The circles under his eyes were nearly as dark as his hair, he had a day’s growth of stubble on his jaw, which made his cheeks look even more hollow, and he was pale enough to almost be gray.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he croaked, squinting at me. His glasses lay on the coffee table, and I doubted he’d bothered with contact lenses in the state he was in. “I don’t want to give this to you.”
“I don’t think you can give it to me. Not that I plan to kiss you right now, regardless.” However, I did have an urge to give him a hug. When he looked like this, he brought out all my latent maternal instincts. I cleared a spot among the books and papers on the coffee table and set down my bags. I opened the soup, stuck a spoon in it and handed it to him. “Here, this should open your head and give you some energy. You can eat while I talk.”
He pulled himself to a sitting position and swung his feet around to the floor. I sat beside him, waited for him to eat a few bites, then asked, “Is there such a thing as an illness that strikes only magical people?”
He swallowed, coughed, and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t heard of one.”
“I noticed that it’s only the magical people who seem to be sick. The immunes at work are the ones still going, and Marcia said nobody is out at her office. So either there’s an illness that only affects magical people or there’s some massive spell being cast all over Manhattan that makes magical people sick.”
Owen groaned and leaned back against the sofa, like the effort of eating a few spoonfuls of soup and listening to me had utterly exhausted him. I reached over and took the soup from him before he spilled it on himself. “I really don’t need this right now,” he said.
