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I counted at least ten puritans. Granny and Rod moved in to flank Owen and me, but we were still badly outnumbered. With Thor and Earl out of the picture, we were down to a skilled wizard who was one of the world’s greatest illusionists, a crafty old woman well-versed in folk magic and adept with a cane, and two magical immunes, one of them wounded. The only physical weapon among us was Granny’s cane. I wondered if I could get my hands on Thor’s tiny battleaxe.
When Sam reached us, presumably with some allies, that would even the numbers somewhat. I had an army of followers, but I wasn’t sure if they cared who held the Eye. They’d defended me from Thor, but I suspected that if someone got past them to take the brooch, their allegiance would switch in a heartbeat. I glanced over my shoulder and found that we were nearly alone, most of the park denizens having melted into the darkness upon the outsiders’ arrival. So much for my loyal subjects, I thought.
“Okay, now what?” I whispered. “Back into the park?”
“They’d come after us,” Owen replied.
“I could make us invisible,” Rod suggested.
“They’ve already seen us,” Granny pointed out.
Indeed, they were heading straight for us, and Thor’s battleaxe wouldn’t have helped much, even if I’d grabbed it, because these guys were armed with guns.
The lampposts cast a sinister glow on the barrels pointed directly at us. “You’re right, they are hypocrites,” I whispered to Rod. “I thought they were opposed to modern technology. At the very least, shouldn’t they be using crossbows?”
“You’re trying to apply logic to fanatics,” Owen said, sounding strangely calm. I would have worried that he’d gone into shock from blood loss, but he was always like that in a crisis. The worse things were, the calmer he got. His voice was at Minnesota winter levels of “cool.” Our situation was dire, indeed.
“Hand over the brooch,” the ex-minion said, gesturing with his gun.
While Owen got cool under pressure, I got mouthy. It was a failing that had gotten me in trouble more than a few times. “I thought you were trying to stop people from using technology instead of magic,” I said. “Obviously, you don’t practice what you preach.”
“All tools are acceptable for purifying the world,” he said stiffly.
“That’s a very clever justification,” I said. “I bet you can rationalize just about anything.”
“You have no use for the brooch, so there’s no point in you losing your life over it,” another one of the puritans said, sounding perfectly reasonable, almost friendly.
“I have plans for it,” Owen said, sounding equally friendly and reasonable.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Palmer,” the friendly puritan said, nodding. ”I can see why you might desire the Eye. You’ve certainly been persistent in seeking it. But I understand that it would do you no good now. Or do you hope to use it to restore your powers?”
“I may not be able to use it, but I know people who can, and, quite frankly, I think they’ll do a much better job of stirring up the kind of chaos you want than that woman would have,” Owen said.
I was sure he was bluffing. We’d been through too much together for him to have fooled me about the kind of person he was. Taking it on faith, I chimed in. “Yeah, I used to work for her, and you’d have only had a petty charity circuit power struggle. What we have planned is much, much more spectacular. You’ll get a lot more attention for saving the world this way.”
“That is, if you can defeat us,” Owen said mildly with a slight shrug. I really, really hoped he was bluffing and that the stone wasn’t working on some tiny residual trace of magic in him.
While I knew we were just trying to convince the puritans that we weren’t a threat to their plans, not everyone in what remained of the crowd did. There were a few gasps, and while some people stepped forward, ready to challenge us, others slipped away into the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rod giving Owen a worried stare. He’d known Owen since they were kids, so surely he didn’t believe Owen could possibly go bad—or did he have a better understanding of Owen’s background than I did?
The puritan acted less convinced that Owen posed a danger than Rod did. “I would have expected you to try to destroy it,” he said. He reminded me of Merlin—a professorial type who might have been a mentor or a favorite uncle. Ideological differences aside, he, Merlin, and Owen might have gotten along pretty well. They could have geeked out over the same medieval magical texts.
“Merlin tried to destroy it soon after it was created, but nothing he tried worked,” Owen said. “There’s no magical way to destroy it, and no way to defend against it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my boy. Do you see us lusting for power and grabbing for the Eye?”
“You’re holding guns on us and demanding it,” I said. “So, yeah.”
“We do not desire the Eye for what it is, only for what it will allow us to do.”
“And I have my own plans for it, which don’t directly contradict yours,” Owen said. “Maybe we could work together and plan this a little better.”
The man laughed, but his laugh had a patronizing tone. It reminded me of the way I reacted when my nieces and nephews made up silly jokes they thought were hilarious but that made no sense whatsoever. It was a laugh calculated to appease a child. “You, work with us? You are the very people we oppose.”
“Do you think I’m on the same side as the people who put me on trial for being born?” Owen asked, and either he was a better actor than I could have imagined or there was a germ of truth in what he said because he spat out the words with an uncharacteristic bitterness that I found disturbingly convincing.
Not sure I liked the way the conversation was going, I jumped in with a question. “I’m curious, how will turning the Eye loose on the world purify magical society?”
“Katie!” Rod protested, sounding truly concerned.
