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Owen frowned, closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “I think there’s a conduit here. It’s hard to tell because nothing’s being transmitted right now.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He looked up from the charms and faced me. “Most of the time, affecting someone magically requires either line-of-sight contact or possession of something belonging to the subject. These things—if they’re what I think they are—work like having something belonging to the subject, only in reverse. The person who created these things would be able to magically affect anyone in possession of one. They form a link between the creator and the holder.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Owen called to Jake, “I need containment chambers, right away.”
“On it, boss.”
Owen turned back to me. “I can set these up to monitor anything they receive without it affecting us. Then I may be able to do something to feed back into the system and cancel any spell that’s sent out. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do much until they use the link, and then I’ll have to act quickly.”
“In the meantime, you’d better make a company-wide announcement about getting rid of these,” I said. “We don’t want our people to be affected.”
“I’ll get Sam on it.”
He sounded so discouraged, I patted him on the shoulder and said, “Look on the bright side. Us shutting off the flu spell may have helped. If people who didn’t buy them immediately felt better anyway, fewer people may have bought them, and that means fewer people will be affected by anything else they do with these.”
“We can only hope,” he said with a weak attempt at a weary smile as he headed into his office to call Sam.
While he was gone, I watched Jake place glass domes over the charms and amulets and tried to think like a magical megalomaniac. I didn’t know if I was flattering myself by amplifying the importance of my conference, but that was something coming up quickly that might have influenced the timetable for getting those conduit charms into the hands of as many people as possible. If someone wanted to bring MSI down, that would be a great place to hit.
Owen came back into the lab. “Sam’s making a company-wide announcement that these things are a security risk, and people are supposed to turn them in or they’ll be confiscated.”
“Good,” I said with a nod, then I asked, “When you get your bursts of foresight, how does it feel?”
He frowned in thought. “It’s an odd sensation, like a shiver and a brief bout of queasiness. Why?”
“It’s probably too late to call the whole thing off, but I suddenly have a very bad feeling about the conference, like it’s all going to go horribly wrong.”
“That’s not precognition. That’s logic. I don’t see how they’ll be able to resist hitting the conference, and that could be good for us. That may be what flushes the person behind all this out into the open so we can deal with whomever it is.”
I tried to hide my growing sense of unease with a smile that probably looked maniacal. “Well, that’s certainly a new way to think about it. The best-case scenario is that everything will go horribly wrong.” With a sigh, I added, “And now I’d better get back to planning the final details of the maiden voyage of the Titanic. I need to make sure we hit that iceberg.”
On the way back to my office, I passed Sam in the hallway. He was flying at breakneck speed, with several of the amulets dangling from his feet as an angry woman chased him. “Can’t talk now, doll,” he said as he flew by. “It’s contraband!” he shouted down the hallway at the angry woman. “You’re not gonna get the flu without it.”
I hoped the rest of the company was more cooperative about giving up the charms, or we’d be in big trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
The last few days before the conference suddenly became insanely busy. The crew creating the enchanted pavilions in the park set up the venue, then Rina took care of the decorations. I went uptown a few times to check on progress and make sure everything on the to-do list was getting done. I tried to anticipate every possible thing that could go wrong, hoping I could prevent a disaster.
“You’re sure no one nonmagical can see this?” I asked a building crew leader on one of my visits. It looked like an old-fashioned circus had set up in the middle of Central Park, and I couldn’t imagine that no one would notice.
“Not only can no one nonmagical see it,” he replied, “but no one who’s not on the guest list, either. That’s why we need to get the latest version of the guest list and keep it updated.”
“Yeah, I could see where that would be important,” I said, making a note. It would be awful if someone showed up and wasn’t able to find the place. And if anyone did wander in off the street because they saw the set-up and wondered what was going on, then we’d know we had a new magical immune to recruit. I hoped the spells were enough to keep out unauthorized bad guys, but I still suspected that the main bad guy was one of our speakers. I wondered if I could get away with “accidentally” removing Ramsay from the guest list.
The morning of the conference dawned bright and sunny, with a slight hint of a breeze and lower humidity than normal. The beautiful weather could have been a good omen, but it didn’t make me feel much better. I was afraid it only meant we’d have a pretty backdrop for the magical showdown or whatever else happened. When I got to the park, Rina was putting the finishing touches on the décor and on the welcoming breakfast. “How does it look?” she asked.
“It’s fabulous,” I told her, in all honesty. She’d really outdone herself. The assembly area looked like a forest, with the food and drink stations set up on large fallen logs or massive boulders. Magical medieval instruments hovering overhead provided a lilting soundtrack, and ethereal nymphs floated around the scene, carrying trays. I was tempted to find some little thing to mess up so that could be the worst thing that could happen and I could relax, but I knew it wouldn’t work. Whatever was going on was far bigger than Murphy’s law.
We still had about half an hour before the guests were due to arrive and I needed someone to shake me back to sanity before I snapped, so I went out to the enclosure where Owen had transported his dragons. The moment I stepped through the doorway, a voice called, “Duck!” and I did so without stopping to question why. A split second later, a gust of flame shot right through where I’d been standing. “Sorry about that,” Owen said, running over and giving me a hand up. “They’re a little jittery. I don’t know if they’ve picked up on my stage fright or if they’re still adapting to the new surroundings.”
One of the dragons gave a roar that petered out into a whimper, and then it curled up into a ball on the ground, wrapping its tail around itself. Owen raised a hand and closed his fist, and the light in the tent dimmed. That seemed to soothe the dragons. Then I took another look at Owen. He was dressed in jeans and a sooty T-shirt, not at all like he was prepared to make a presentation. “This is a new look for you,” I remarked.
He glanced down at his clothes. “Don’t worry, I’ll change before I go on, but after I spend the day with these guys, anything I’m wearing will be a mess. Did you need something?”
