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I started to make a scathing response, but then several things clicked together in my brain. “Hmm, an event with cute guys in uniform. Public. On live TV. And Owen’s there. I know what they’re going to hit—the baseball game!”
The others all turned to me. “Oh, wow, you’re right!” Marcia said. “Why didn’t we think about sports? Big crowd, live television. Duh!”
“Do they know about his bachelor party?” Gemma asked.
“Yeah. The suspect even talked about it with her contact.” My phone rang, and I answered it.
“Kathleen?” It was Carmen. “They just had a release faxed over that said something big was happening—”
“At the stadium,” I finished her sentence.
“You knew?”
“I guessed. But thanks for confirming it.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“If I’m very lucky, nothing that anyone will notice.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
I groaned as I ended the call. I didn’t know if she was coming out of personal curiosity or planning to do a story. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her the truth. I’d figured out the target on my own, after all. Then again, the news that it would be Saturday had helped me figure it out, and would she have told me that if I hadn’t come clean with her?
I immediately called Rod, but didn’t get an answer. The game shouldn’t have started yet, but they were probably already at the stadium because they liked to watch warmups and batting practice. After several rings, it went into voice mail. Was that because he’d turned his phone off for the game or because reception was lousy at the stadium? I supposed it didn’t matter, but I left a message, anyway. “Whatever they’re doing, it’s happening at the game, so get Owen out of there, if you can,” I said.
My next call was to Sam, and he took care of rallying the troops. When I finished that call, I said, “Now, how do we get to the stadium?”
Marcia took command at that point, herding us to the nearest appropriate subway station. “Y’all don’t need to come with me,” I said before we reached the turnstiles. “It could get hairy, and you don’t have the magical immunity I do, so you could be affected.”
“All for one and one for all!” Nita proclaimed enthusiastically. I was especially worried about her because she didn’t yet know the darker side of magic.
“You do know this is probably going to be more Voldemort and less Narnia,” I warned her.
“Duh, Hogwarts had a death count. I know what I might be getting into,” she said.
“Okay, but if I warn you about something, you’ve got to do what I say, immediately. No asking questions, no arguing.”
“Got it,” she said with a salute.
But I wasn’t sure she did.
I really had no idea what we were getting into. What would someone do at a baseball game to prove that magic was real?
We entered the station and Marcia got us on the train we needed. It became more and more crowded as we neared the stadium, full of fans wearing team colors. It was like rush hour, only more monochromatic. I wondered if there were even still ti
ckets available for the game, with this many people going. What if we couldn’t get into the stadium? We didn’t have a magic user with us who could cheat, and I wasn’t sure cheating magically was a great idea when we might run into people who were opposed to magic because they thought it was cheating. Then again, if they were doing something blatantly public, did they even care about stirring up the anti-magic factions anymore? Why worry about a few bloggers when you had TV networks spreading your story?
When the train stopped at the stadium, we joined the flood of people pouring out through the doors. I hooked my arm through Nita’s so we wouldn’t be separated. I tried to keep Gemma’s head in sight. Fortunately, she was tall enough to serve as a beacon.
“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in one place,” Nita said.
“You’re lucky. You don’t commute during the normal rush hour,” I replied.
“This is what it’s like going to work every morning?”
“Well, maybe not this bad.”
Gemma found a spot by a wall, with the throng flowing past her, and I fought my way toward her. Just before I reached her, my phone rang. I didn’t dare stop to answer it, so I hurried forward, hoping the call wouldn’t go to voice mail before I got to the wall. As soon as I was close enough to the wall to not be trampled, I grabbed the phone without even looking at the caller ID readout. “Hello?” I shouted into it.
