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After holding me for a couple of minutes, he said, “So, now that we’ve dealt with my issues, are you ready to talk about what’s going on with you?”
“Well, since I’m not throwing things, that’s not an immediate crisis, and we have work to do.”
He placed his hands on either side of my face, kissed me, and said, “Fine, but at some point, you’re going to have to stop avoiding the discussion. I won’t forget.” Then the two of us headed into the manuscript room.
He pulled a stack of paper toward himself, lifted off the top half, and handed it to me. “I labeled it as I was transcribing. Look for the word ‘spell’ in the margins and pull those pages.” I shuffled quickly through the pages, handing the “spell” pages to him as soon as I had a handful. From there, he turned the rest of his stack over to me while he read more carefully through the spells, sorting the pages into piles. After he’d gone through the whole stack, he picked up one of his piles. “These are the ones the doorman used and a few others that fall into the same era that seem like they might also be used for attack or defense.”
“Is there anything in those spells that might give us a clue what this is about? Are they related to the Eye?”
“No, they’re actually after Merlin’s time, probably from one of his immediate successors. At the most, maybe two generations later. But they are all from the same era and I think they can be traced back to the same wizard. I’m not sure what that tells us, but there’s probably some old grimoire out there from that time period, and the doorman could have read that. Now, let’s go get your grandmother and get back to the others.”
When we reached Merlin’s office, he was standing at the conference table with someone I assumed, based on the beads, scarves, and scent of incense, was from Prophets and Lost. “Ah, there you are,” he greeted us as we crossed the threshold. “I just heard from Mr. Gwaltney. They haven’t found the brooch or Ms. Perkins yet. I trust your search was successful?”
Owen held up the stack of spells and opened his mouth to say something, but whatever he was about to say came out as “Ouch!” when Granny’s cane jerked and rapped him across the shin so hard that the sound of it made me hop on one foot for a second.
She looked up at him with an expression of fake innocence. “Oh, dearie me. I’m so sorry. My muscles must still be twitching from all the excitement earlier. I can’t seem to control myself.”
The P & L person finished adding colored pushpins to a map of the city lying on the conference table. “There, those are our latest findings,” she said. “Red is confirmed sightings. Blue is where we’ve picked up an aura that could mean something. Green is potential visions of the future.” The pins spread over most of the Upper East Side, with a few blue and green pins trickling down to Midtown.
“Thank you,” Merlin said. The woman nodded as she picked up her notebook and left, her scarves wafting behind her.
As soon as she was gone and the doors had closed, I whirled on Granny. “What was that for?” I demanded.
“Loose lips sink ships,” she snapped.
I groaned inwardly and was about to tell her that just because someone dresses funny, it doesn’t mean they’re suspicious when Merlin said, “She is right about that, though I suspect she could have conveyed the same warning without resorting to physical violence.”
I gestured to the doors where the P&L lady had exited. “You think she’s the mole?”
“We’ve narrowed it down to that department.”
“But why stop me from saying anything when you just said everything that was going on?” Owen asked as he straightened from rubbing his sore shin.
Granny grinned. “That’s because we’re setting a mole trap!”
Chapter Nine
“A mole trap?” I repeated dumbly, shocked to learn that my grandmother was involved in espionage. Not that I should have been at all surprised. She always did keep close tabs on everything my family and everyone else in my hometown did.
“Minerva is sending her staff members here on errands, one by one,” Merlin explained. “While they are in the room, I take phone calls or have conversations about where our searchers will go next. Sam and his people are watching those locations, and if something happens in any of those places, that will reveal our mole’s identity. But now that we’re alone, what was it you wanted to tell me, Mr. Palmer?”
Owen sat at the conference table and handed the pages of spells to Merlin. “These are the spells that fake doorman used. I realized I’d seen them in the Ephemera. I’d guess they’re from about a century before the Norman invasion, based on the language and syntax. We’ve been building on these spells for centuries, so there are now far more effective ways to accomplish the same things. No one uses these anymore, which actually made them difficult to counter.”
There was a polite rap on the door, and Merlin waved a hand to open it. A young woman entered, and at first I didn’t think she could be one of Minerva’s mole candidates, since she was dressed professionally with her knee-length black skirt, medium-heel black pumps, crisp white blouse, and a chignon at the nape of her neck. “I’ve got some new readings for you, sir,” she said, handing Merlin a folder.
“Thank you,” he said, opening it. Then his desk phone rang, and he put down the folder to answer it, indicating with a gesture that he didn’t want the woman to leave. “Oh, hello, Mr. Gwaltney,” he said into the phone. “Ah, so no luck at the salons. Where are you now? Well, it’s only a few blocks down Eighty-second from where you are on Lexington to get to the museum. Perhaps our best hope is to wait for her to arrive at the museum. Please keep me posted.”
After he hung up, he smiled at the woman. “My apologies.”
“I understand completely, sir,” she replied.
He went back to the folder and flipped through the documents. “Is there anything you need to explain in here?”
“I’m sure it’s all self-explanatory for you, sir.”
“Very well, then. My thanks to your department for all your hard work today.”
She nodded in acknowledgement and strode briskly out of the office. “Are you sure she works in P and L?” I asked when she was gone. Most of Minerva’s department tended to dress like they were working at a carnival fortune-teller’s booth, so she didn’t look the part.
