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17
“Spells? What are you talking about?” Owen said.
Rod gestured to the shining web around him. “Someone’s whammied you but good.” He groaned. “And I bet it started right under my nose.”
“Are we safe talking about it?” I asked.
“I think his wards will keep this private,” Rod said.
“Yeah, but what about him? I think it’s safe to say he’s compromised.”
“But he won’t get anything out past the wards, and we’re not letting him leave until we’ve got this cleaned up.”
I thought for a second that Owen would attack Rod. He raised his hand, and the spell Rod had used to make the magic visible made Owen’s hand flash with a bright white light. I moved in between him and Rod, hoping that either he would hesitate to attack me, in spite of the whammy, or my immunity would save me. But then Owen closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and made an obvious effort to get himself under control. “Can you do something about it?” he asked, his voice strained.
“Sam’s on his way over, and he may be able to help,” Rod said. “These are pretty well woven, so it could be tricky.”
“Would it help if I were unconscious, so I’m not fighting you?” Owen asked.
“Maybe, but I don’t think I can get past all this to knock you out safely.”
“I was thinking more in terms of a potion. Katie, the blue bottle in the liquor cabinet.”
I followed his instruction and found the bottle. “You keep a knockout potion in your liquor cabinet?” I asked as I brought it to where Owen had sat on the sofa.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Rod quipped. “Liquor is basically a knockout potion. It just varies on how much it takes and how quickly it kicks in.”
“You never know when a knockout potion will come in handy,” Owen said. “It takes forever to brew, so I do it in batches. Three drops should do it. There should be some soda in the refrigerator that will mask the taste a little bit.”
It was somewhat reassuring that it apparently had a bad enough taste that it had to be masked. That meant no one could easily sneak it on anyone. I found the soda, poured a glass, and uncapped the blue bottle. The smell was horrible and intense enough that I thought it might knock someone out without them having to drink it. I was getting a bit woozy just from smelling it. I added three drops to the soda and hurried to recap the bottle before I passed out. I brought it back to the living room and handed it to Owen. “Here you go.”
“You may have to make me drink it,” he said. His arm was rigid, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he tried to force the glass to his lips. His hand moved as though to throw the glass, but Rod intercepted it.
“Okay, that’s making things interesting,” Rod said. He held the glass against Owen’s lips. “Open wide.” Owen instantly closed his mouth, then sweat dripped down his face as he slowly forced his mouth open. Rod quickly poured the drink into Owen’s mouth. A little trickled out the corners of his mouth, but he managed to swallow most of it. His eyelids fluttered, then he slumped to the side. Rod caught him and lowered him until his head rested on the arm of the sofa. “That should make this easier,” he said.
For him, maybe, and for Owen, but looking at him lying there, the web of spells still surrounding him, was hard on me. I felt terrible for my bursts of jealousy about the way he’d been acting. It hadn’t been his fault at all. On the other hand, would I have noticed that something was wrong sooner if I hadn’t dismissed my own qualms as nothing more than jealousy? I’d known they were doing something to target Owen, and it hadn’t occurred to me to make sure he was truly okay.
A rapping on the front window shook me out of my self-recrimination, and I hurried over to open it for Sam. “Sorry it took me so long. I was still uptown,” he said as he hopped inside. “Too bad I can’t do that fancy teleport thing you guys do.”
“Yeah, well maybe I shouldn’t have done it because I may be too drained to handle this properly,” Rod said. Now that Owen was out and Rod didn’t have to play it cool in front of his friend, he looked really concerned. “They’ve got him all tangled up. I don’t know how she could have done it while I was right there, watching. I didn’t notice any magic.”
“When she met with her contact, they used some kind of bubble spell,” I said. “Maybe they did that, but blocking you from sensing the magic rather than blocking the sound.”
“And because I could see them, I assumed everything was aboveboard,” Rod said, shaking his head. “But the fact remains that we’ll have to be careful untangling all this.”
“Do these spells explain why he was so determined to meet with her again, and why he wouldn’t listen to me?” I asked.
“Probably,” Rod replied, and I tried not to sigh out loud in relief. “They were definitely making him compliant. There might also be a surveillance component here.” He squinted at the web of spells. “They wouldn’t have been able to monitor him live from warded spaces like his house or office, but they might have been able to download information when they were around him. I still don’t see how I could have missed this.”
“A lot of us missed it,” Sam said. “How did you notice it, Katie?”
“He just seemed weird, not like himself. He wouldn’t listen to my suspicions about Matilda, not even when I told him what I overheard. I checked him for fever, and I felt something. One thing Abigail Williams did when she kidnapped me for that cult meeting was teach me to detect when magic had been used on someone, and that’s what this felt like.”
“Good work,” Sam said.
“At least something worthwhile came out of that freaky cult meeting.”
“Okay, let’s start dismantling this,” Rod said, rubbing his hands together. He picked up one of the shining strands and gently unwound it, like he was picking out stitches. “That’s the protective one that holds the rest together. Good thing he was out, or he’d have fought me. Next we’d better go after the surveillance.”
