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“Normally, we’re not allowed to tell outsiders,” Owen explained. “There are only exceptions when someone finds out on their own and them remaining in the dark is possibly more dangerous than them knowing.”
She whirled on me. “But you know.”
“As I said, magic doesn’t work on me. I’m what they call a magical immune. That’s a pretty valuable trait to magical people, so I work for a magical company. And that’s how Marcia and Gemma got dragged into all this. Marcia got kidnapped by a magical bad guy, and Gemma was involved, and they learned about magic that way.”
“So this has been going on, all this time, and you never said anything?” Nita said, her eyes flashing.
“I couldn’t! I even asked. I knew you were bound to see or hear something, and I thought it would be better to control the way you learned, but they specifically told me I couldn’t tell you.”
“There are some fairly harsh penalties,” Rod said. “Katie could have lost her job. At least this way, we have evidence that you saw a magical working for yourself, so it’s not on us. The fault lies with the person doing public magic.”
“What about when you were back home last year?” she asked. “Was that what was going on? Those disappearing windows, and those weird guys who came to stay at our motel?”
I nodded. “Some rogue wizards were in town.”
“You didn’t say anything then?”
“You didn’t notice the magic then.”
“I’m pretty sure I noticed weird stuff.”
“At that time, I was trying desperately to be normal. It was right after that kidnapping incident. One of my friends had been in trouble at least partially because of my work, and I didn’t want to have that happen again, so I didn’t want to drag you into it. But there’s a lot more magic here, so it’s a lot harder to avoid.”
She stood and wiped her palms on the legs of her jeans. “I don’t even know what to think about this. But I do need to think about it.”
“The pizza will be here soon,” Gemma called after her as she walked toward the door. “Don’t you want to stay and have some?”
“I wouldn’t want to infringe on the in-crowd,” Nita snarled.
I jumped up to go after her. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to leave you out,” I said when I caught up with her on the sidewalk in front of Owen’s place. “You’ve got to understand just how big a secret all this is. I wasn’t the one to tell Gemma and Marcia. They’d never have known if they hadn’t been put in danger.”
“You didn’t know about this back when we were in school, did you?”
I thought that the fact that she was talking to me was a good sign. “No. I only learned about a year after I got to New York.”
“And who told you?”
I gestured with my head toward Owen’s building. “Owen and Rod. As I said, me being immune to magic is valuable to them. They apparently noticed me reacting to things I wasn’t supposed to be able to see because they use magic to hide magical things. So they had magical things happen around me to see how I reacted, then invited me for a job interview, and that’s where they told me the whole thing. Well, actually, I guess their boss really told me, but they got it started.” I decided to leave out the fact that their boss was Merlin because I figured that was a little much to deal with, for now.
I put my hand on her arm and was relieved when she didn’t flinch away from my touch. “I know this has been so weird, but I’m really glad that you know now. I can quit hiding things. And it’s all so very cool. There are wonderful things you’ll be able to see and do now that you know. The parties are amazing.” I figured I’d hold the news about the magical wedding until she was more adjusted, because knowing she’d been left out of that would be crushing. I knew how I’d feel.
“There are parties?”
“Oh yeah. And magical music, too.”
“When you took that weird job not too long ago, was that part of it?”
“Yeah. It was an undercover assignment.”
“Oooh! Undercover?”
“Yeah, believe it or not, I work in the security department. And one of the things I’m dealing with is that there’s someone out there who wants to expose magic to the world.”
“Would that be so bad, though?”
“It might. The rules to keep it secret require magical people to behave themselves. If it’s not a secret, there’s less keeping them from using their power for bad things. Plus, ordinary people might not react well, and things could get dicey if magical people struck back. Next thing you know, you’ve got an evil wizard ruling the world. Which is why the secrecy rules are so tight. Whoever pulled that little stunt today at the festival will be in big trouble, for multiple reasons.”
“Okay, so telling people like me would indirectly lead to Voldemort taking over?”
