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I sank onto the sofa, suddenly feeling weak. I’d been too busy thinking at the time to be truly scared, but now that I was safe, it was hitting me just how potentially dangerous that situation had been. If Trish hadn’t been there, would they have kidnapped me? “I don’t suppose you’ve got something with chocolate in it,” I said. “Because I need a drink, and I need chocolate.”
“I know just the thing. Trish?”
“Can you do a martini?”
“I should take offense at that question. Of course I can do a martini. Have a seat and make yourself at home. It may take Owen awhile to get here, and there’s no point in talking about it until then, or we’ll have to repeat ourselves.”
While Rod mixed up drinks, I said, “Do you have a computer I could use?”
He gestured toward the laptop on the coffee table. “It’ll automatically connect to the network,” he said.
I looked up the Abigail Williams blog to see what they had to say about the event. They were promoting the big, public demonstration, but hadn’t yet reported on what had happened. I hadn’t noticed anyone photographing me, but I wondered if finding a new “pure” one would count as news. They hadn’t said anything about the founder being “pure,” so maybe their public anti-magic crusade was separate from their quasi-religious cult. The other big blog, which I suspected was related to the other group whose meeting I’d attended, didn’t mention the event at all.
Owen arrived a lot sooner than I expected, which made me worry about what he’d done to ensure that kind of rapid travel. Speeding up subway trains when people looking out for magic were nearby wasn’t a great idea. “What happened?” he asked as soon as he entered. “I assume we were successful in protecting the wards. We had to do some quick thinking.”
“I couldn’t tell, obviously, but most people acted like it was a big bust and walked away,” I said. “You were involved with that?”
“It was an emergency all-hands-on-deck situation. Everyone in the building concentrated on maintaining the veils. I need to work on some safeguards for the future. We’ve never worried about our veils being attacked before, but it seems to be a possible threat now.”
“We’re already lookin’ into it,” Sam said. “We’re switching up a few of the spells, so it should snarl up their next attempt.”
“But the real news is that Katie seems to be the new prophet of an anti-magic cult,” Trish said.
/> “What?” Owen blurted.
“The woman from the bridal sale was there, and she recognized me,” I said. After a few sips of the chocolate concoction Rod had produced, I was relaxed enough to calmly discuss the frightening situation. “She heard me talking about veils when I called Sam to warn him and dragged me in front of their leader to accuse me. They thought I was a magical person sabotaging them, and they decided to test me. I seriously thought we were heading into witch trials territory, but they had this device that seemed to register magic, and apparently it gave an unusual reading for me, a reading they only get from their fearless leader, who I’m pretty sure is an immune.”
“What kind of device?” Owen asked.
I described it to him, as well as I could without knowing how it worked. “I guess maybe it reads magic from people? Their baseline must be set for ordinary people, and the needle goes over to one side for wizards and drops to the other side for immunes.”
“Hmm. I’m pretty sure I have an idea of how that could work, theoretically. I haven’t considered building something like that. We use other tests for magic.”
“Invent later. Focus now,” Rod said. “It looks like we’ve got a chance to get someone really on the inside of that group. We might be able to get a sense of where they’re getting their information.”
“I’m not so sure I’m keen on going in as the new chosen one,” I said. I downed a big swallow of the chocolate martini to try to erase that mental image.
“Seems to me like that would really give you the scoop,” Sam said. “They aren’t going to hide stuff from the chosen one, are they?”
“Let’s go back a step. Don’t you think that if they were being manipulated by wizards, they would know it?” I argued. “They have a wizard detector. I’m probably not going to find out which wizard is behind this from inside this group.”
“They may be getting tipped off by that other anti-magic group, and you could track that connection,” Trish said.
“I have to agree with Katie,” Owen said. “This group sounds awfully cultlike, and getting caught up in that could be dangerous, even as the new chosen one. Maybe especially as the new chosen one. Bad things happen to chosen ones if they fall off their pedestals.”
I didn’t know if he’d done it on purpose, but that made me want to do it. He hadn’t listened to me about the danger of meeting with Matilda, so I wasn’t inclined to listen to his cautions. “Then again, it might be our best shot,” I said. “I’m going to have to be careful no matter what, since Abigail Williams, or whatever the leader’s name is, is an immune and she knows about our headquarters. They could be staking the area out to identify people who come and go, and they’d notice if I’m among those people. If I have to be careful, I might as well use my chosen one status to see what I can learn. They may not know they’re dealing with wizards, but I do, and I might recognize someone. I might even get evidence against them.”
Owen scowled, and I said, “It’s not like I’m going to be in any danger of being burned as a witch. I’ll be the one deciding to do the burning!”
“Besides, it’s her job, and I’m her boss, so I decide what assignments she takes on, and I think Katie-bug should do this,” Sam said.
“There, that settles it,” I said, but I felt more queasy than triumphant. What was I getting myself into?
15
Things were awkward when Owen and I left Rod’s place to go home. I was still irked at him about going through with that lunch, and he was irked at me about the plan for me to infiltrate the anti-magic group, even though Sam had assigned it. It didn’t help matters when he said, in an “oh, by the way” casual tone, “Matilda called me this afternoon.”
“Already?”
