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“Not in what happened today, but he’s something of an expert in the field.”
“Funny, he doesn’t strike me as much of a dancer.”
I almost didn’t recognize Owen’s place when we got there. He must have done a magical cleaning spell because all the usual piles of books and papers on the dining table and sofa were gone. I suspected it might be dangerous to open the door of the guest room upstairs. “Hey guys, sorry I had to bail on you,” he said when he met us at the door to usher us inside.
“Is James okay?” I asked.
“He’s fine. He just needed me to look something up for him. So, do we want to order pizza now or wait a little?”
“Talk first, pizza later,” Nita said firmly.
“Or we could order pizza, then talk while we wait for it,” Marcia suggested.
“Brilliant idea,” Rod said, kissing her on the cheek.
We wor
ked out the pizza order, which was probably more complicated than explaining that magic is real, then Owen asked if anyone wanted something to drink or a snack. “No, I just want to know what’s going on,” Nita said, before any of us could respond. That was probably good, because I think we’d have been tempted to keep asking for things to delay the inevitable, like a little kid demanding a glass of water, a story, and a monster check to delay bedtime.
Owen glanced at Rod, rubbed his hands together, ran his fingers through his hair, then said, “Well, what you experienced today, that was magic.”
Nita’s head jerked in an involuntary spasm of surprise. “Whoa, that’s not what I expected to hear, I’ve gotta admit. You’re kidding, right?”
I suspected that somewhere in the complicated guidelines for discussing magic with outsiders, denial was considered grounds for not having to spill the beans. Owen glanced at Rod, then at me. Both of us nodded. He took a deep breath before continuing. “What did you think it was?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Mind control, maybe?”
“It was. But it was magical mind control. Someone did a spell that made people dance that particular dance.”
“And in a kind of trance, so when they snapped out of it, they just felt tired but didn’t remember any of it,” Rod added.
“Then why didn’t it affect the rest of you? And why do I remember it?” she asked.
“Because …” Owen began, then braced himself to say, “Rod, Philip, and I are wizards. We have some experience with this sort of thing, so when we recognized what was happening, we created a magical shield to protect us.”
I chimed in. “Magic doesn’t work on me, so I was able to leave the shielded area without being affected, but when you followed me, you lost the protection and fell under the spell. When I dragged you back to the shield, you were protected again. I guess you remembered it because you didn’t experience the end of the spell that seems to have wiped their memories.”
She looked around at all of us. “You’ve got to be joking. Is this all some prank on me? Wizards? Like Harry Potter?”
“Not entirely,” Owen said. “For one thing, there’s no specific school just for learning magic. We go to ordinary schools. Magic is an extracurricular activity.”
“In this country,” Rod corrected. “I think there’s an elite magic-only boarding school in England.”
“We also don’t need wands to do magic,” Owen said, raising his hand and making a gesture. A bottle of wine materialized in his hand.
Nita yelped and jerked backward, falling against the back of the sofa. “Omigod!” she cried out. “Was that for real?”
Owen touched the bottle with his free hand, and it turned into a bottle of soda.
“No, turn it back into wine, because I think I’m going to need it,” she said. She turned to Gemma and Marcia. “What about you? Are you witches, wizardesses, or whatever?”
“‘Wizard’ is a gender-neutral term,” Rod said.
“We’re totally ordinary, like you,” Gemma said.
“But you know about magic.”
“Kind of by accident,” Marcia said. “I got kidnapped by an evil wizard, which was a rather rude awakening to the whole thing.”
