AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lyle frowned at Owen. “You’re Owen Palmer, aren’t you? Is it true?”
Owen sighed wearily. “Is what true? There are so many rumors about me going around that I like to know exactly what I’m confirming or denying. I’m not evil, if that’s what you’re wondering, and I have no plans to take over the world.”
“And yet you seek the Eye of the Moon.”
“It wouldn’t do me any good.” Owen spread his hands helplessly. “No more magic. I found the location in the Ephemera I’m translating.”
“You have no magic?” The elf quirked a slanted eyebrow.
“None whatsoever. I want to keep this thing out of the wrong hands. That’s all. I need to report this to my boss. He should know what’s happening, and then we can decide how to handle it. This could be a touchy situation.”
“You wizards won’t take our Knot from us.”
“That’s what I mean by touchy. I’m not here officially, but my boss wouldn’t want the Eye to fall into the wrong hands.”
“I don’t want the Eye in Merlin’s hands, either.”
“I don’t think he’d want it. But he will know what to do with it.”
The elf nodded again, as if in agreement, and then, moving almost too quickly for the human eye to see, he darted away and jumped into an elevator just as the doors opened. By the time we realized what he was doing and went after him, he was gone. Without magic, Owen couldn’t do anything more to summon another elevator than push the button. Lyle must have done something to magically tamper with the elevators, because it took longer than I would have expected for another one to arrive.
I thought Owen would blow a gasket. “He played me!” he sputtered. “I should have known better.”
To calm him down while we waited, I said, “He ran off without finding out who bought it. Something like that, you probably don’t pay cash. There has to be a record of the sale.”
“Yeah, but they don’t pass out customer information like that to just anyone.” He groaned. “I know how I could get it, but at the moment …” I patted him reassuringly on the arm, well aware of how much it bothered him to have lost his powers. Although he didn’t use much magic in his daily life, there had been so many little magical things he’d taken for granted.
“Those two aren’t exactly acting like your usual Tiffany employees,” I said. I went back to the counter. “Excuse me,” I called to the sobbing sales staff.
“I told you, it’s useless. It’s gone,” the salesman sobbed.
“Curse you, Jonathan Martin,” the saleswoman spat. “He’ll never love it like I did.”
“Or like I did,” the salesman said, and then they collapsed on each other in tears.
I returned to Owen just as another elevator finally arrived. “Who needs magic?” I said with a grin. “Lyle may have a head start, but we know who bought it.” When the elevator let us out on the ground floor, I grabbed Owen’s hand and tugged. “Come on, the subway will be quickest for getting back to the office.” While I guided him through the crowds on the sidewalk, he called the office to explain the situation.
When we got into the subway station, he kept staring up the tunnel, his fingers twitching like he was trying to magically summon a train. “Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath.
“That spell doesn’t work, trust me,” I told him, taking his hand so he’d quit trying to use magic he no longer had. “I use it all the time, and for most of us, the more we want a train to come, the slower it will be. What did the boss say?”
“We’re to see him as soon as we get back.”
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“I can’t tell. I probably should have said something before we went, but I didn’t know then, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.”
A train did finally arrive, and when we got back to MSI headquarters, we headed straight up to the executive suite, where Merlin was waiting for us in his office doorway. And, yes, this was the Merlin, the great wizard of legend. He’d been in a kind of magical coma for a long time, waiting to be revived for the magical world’s time of great need. It turned out that he’d been revived for a bogus reason, but it looked like he was planning to stick around instead of going back into magical hibernation.
I’d seen Merlin go through a lot of stuff in my time with the company, some of it pretty hairy, but I’d never seen him quite so shaken. He appeared almost feeble. If I’d seen him around town looking like this, I’d have offered to help him cross the street. “Good, good, you’re here,” he said. “Come in, and we can make plans. I’ve already got Prophets and Lost tracking down the purchaser.”
As soon as we were inside the office, Owen said, “I should have told you when I found the change in the Ephemera.” He sounded like a schoolboy who’d been called to the principal’s office.
“And I should have taken action when I sensed the Eye’s arrival early this morning,” Merlin said. “I thought I was mistaken. I’d hoped it was impossible.”
“You sensed it?”
“You think I wouldn’t have felt my own creation?”
