“I guess not,” Dean agreed, looking sheepish.
The coffeemaker stopped, and Owen, who was wisely staying out of the family discussion, found a mug and poured a cup for Granny. “I might be able to help return the goods,” he said. “The magic is easy enough for me, and with Sam’s help, we can hide the activity from the patrols for long enough to get in and out.”
“I’ll help, too,” Teddy said. “I’m not sure what I can do other than stand lookout, but I think I ought to be there.”
“You just want to watch and see how it works,” I said.
“Well, yeah.”
I looked to Owen, who shrugged. “We may need all the lookouts we can get.”
Granny fixed Dean with a steely glare. “So you will make proper restitution?”
He looked like a ten-year-old who’d been caught stealing candy. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you won’t use your power for nefarious purposes in the future?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good. We’ll deal with your criminal nature once you’ve taken care of this.” She turned to Teddy.
“You’ll have to see to it that he behaves. He can’t pull a fast one on you.”
Teddy grinned. As the next-to-youngest in the family and the youngest boy, being asked to play watchdog on his older brother was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. “I’ll watch him like a hawk.”
“What’ll you be watching, Teddy?” Mom asked as she came through the back door with an armload of groceries.
His mouth hung open, and he looked so guilty I was amazed she didn’t notice. “I, uh, was talking about the next time Molly and Frank ask Beth and me to watch Davy. He gets into everything if you don’t watch him.”
She shook her head wearily as she put the grocery bags on the counter. “I swear, that child. If Molly would learn to say no and set some limits, it would do him a world of good. Now, boys, there are some more groceries outside you could carry in.”
Dean, Teddy, and Owen moved to head for the back door, but Mom stopped Owen. “You’re company. We won’t put you to work.” She flashed him a flirtatious smile. “That will have to wait for your next visit. By then, you’ll count as family.”
“I’ll look forward to that, then.” He turned to me and said, “Katie, weren’t you going to show me that thing today?”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but I knew an escape plan when I heard one. “Oh yeah, that thing I was going to show you. How long until dinner, Mom?”
“At least a couple of hours.”
“That should be plenty of time if we head out now. We’ll be back in time for dinner.” We passed the boys on the back steps as they came up with arms loaded with grocery bags. When we were out of earshot, I asked, “The thing?”
“I thought we’d pay a visit to our friend.”
“Ah yes, the town welcoming committee should be there to greet him.”
“I’ve been in Texas a few days, so I think I’m getting the hang of this southern hospitality. I’d feel bad if someone didn’t welcome him to town.”
We took his rental car and drove to the motel. “His car’s parked in front of his room,” I said. “So he’s probably still here.”
“That’s good. I think we need to have a chat with him.”
“You think he’ll let us in the door?”
“He will if he doesn’t know it’s us.”
“You might need to hide us in general. Nita’s probably still staking out his room with a digital camera from the lobby window.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I might have given her the impression that he was the lead singer of an up-and-coming rock band.”
We got out of the car, and I noticed that the door to the housekeeping closet was slightly ajar. I stepped in, grabbed an armload of towels, and said, “We could be housekeeping.”
“Good idea.”
On the way to Idris’s room, Owen whispered something under his breath. I felt the tingle of magic building around us and wondered what we looked like. At a nod from Owen, I rapped on the door and called out, “Housekeeping!”
I held my breath while we waited for a response. After nearly a minute, I knocked again and jiggled the door handle. Then, finally, Idris opened the door a crack. “What is it?” he snapped.
“Fresh towels,” I said, barging forward, Owen in my wake. Idris stepped reluctantly out of our way.
He had a laptop computer, a cell phone, and a bunch of papers spread out on the bed, along with a Texas map. When we were well inside the room, the door abruptly slammed shut, even though no one touched it, and I felt the magic surrounding us fade away.
“You!” Idris cried out, staring in shock at Owen. I dropped the pile of towels on the foot of the bed, and he turned to notice me. “You, too! What are you doing here?”
Owen and I looked at each other. This wasn’t quite the reaction we’d been expecting. I’d thought he’d be lying in wait for us, ready to pounce if we didn’t get to him first. “You mean, in this room or here, in this town?” I asked.
“Here!” he sputtered.
“Well, I live here—I mean, I’m from here and my family is here,” I said, “and he’s here to stop your latest evil scheme. You didn’t know that?”
He reached over and closed his laptop, then pulled a pillow over his papers. “Why would I know that?”
“Because you’re here. Why else would you be here? This isn’t the kind of place people decide to visit on a whim because they want to get away from it all. I mean, what are the odds that you’d show up here, of all places?”
He gathered his wits about him a little more securely, drawing himself to his full height to tower over Owen and crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s none of your business.”
“Actually, considering you’ve been teaching my brother how to do magic, it is.” He looked truly blank, as though he had no idea what I was talking about. “Dean Chandler? The guy who called you in the middle of the night about some wards he ran into? I assume that’s why you’re here.”
The expression on his face was priceless. Dad would say he looked like he’d been pole-axed. He forgot about towering over Owen and sat down on the bed. “That’s your brother?”
“One of them. You didn’t notice that we have the same last name and we’re both from Texas?”
“You’re from Texas?”
I turned to Owen. “I thought that was tattooed on my forehead. Everyone in Manhattan knows I’m from Texas.”
“It’s not really a rare last name, either,” Idris mumbled. “I take it those wards he ran into were your work,” he said to Owen.
“Yes, those were mine, and they did their job of stopping him before he could make a really big mistake. I thought that’s why you were here, because you knew I was here.”
“No, I’m here because there’s no record of a wizard here, and my lessons haven’t gone up to wards yet. I was worried I might have competition or that someone was on to one of my students and might expose him.”
“Wait a second,” I said, “you came all the way here to this town that’s barely on the map and that most people in Texas haven’t even heard of, just because you thought there might be another wizard here who could step in and steal your students or expose them for doing magic?”
He got the kind of expression Dean used to get when he realized he needed to come up with a good explanation for something, fast. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t nearly as smooth as Dean. “Well, um, uh, from the sounds of things, my student was attracting attention, and um, if someone warded the bank, it meant someone with power knew something was going on.” He pulled a pillow into his lap and fiddled with it, then realized he’d removed the covering from his papers and moved it back. “I haven’t taught dueling yet, so I wasn’t sure my student would be able to take care of himself. He might have needed backup, and if a student got exposed, then it would ruin my operation.”
“Your attempt to build a magical arm
y of your own, you mean,” Owen said. He didn’t look like he was enjoying Idris’s discomfort nearly as much as I was. He just looked tired and fed up.
Idris didn’t deny Owen’s assertion. “Yeah, if you want to put it that way. And, um, well, I was kind of looking for an excuse to get away from New York.”
“Evil scheming is very hard work,” I said in mock sympathy. “You need fresh country air to recharge yourself.”
“It is! It was fun at first, but man, these people I’m dealing with are intense. I thought it was great to get the funding, but wow, now they want reports and results, and stuff. It’s like if I don’t have every magical person in the world as customers, I’m doing something wrong, and now they want me to find even more magical people so we can grow the market and outnumber your customer base. Oh yeah, and they use phrases like ‘grow the market’ and ‘customer base,’ which is so not my scene. It was a total buzzkill.”
“That’s what happens when you go into business,” Owen said. “What did you expect?”
Idris acted like he hadn’t heard him. He was on a roll. “And then there’s this crazy broad who keeps meddling in my life. I can’t even look at a woman without her showing up to get in the way. It’s like someone cursed me. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had any action?”
This time, I managed to keep a straight face while Owen cracked up. We both knew exactly who that crazy broad was, and that was a very accurate description for my erstwhile fairy godmother, who’d nearly driven Owen and me apart in her attempts to make sure we got together. I’d managed to get her on Idris’s case to make sure he worked things out with his girlfriend, who was currently in MSI custody. Apparently fairy godmothers didn’t think that forced separation was an excuse for infidelity.
“What?” Idris asked Owen.
“Oh, nothing,” Owen said, fighting to suppress a smirk.
Idris turned to me. “So, my local student here is your brother? I guess that means you caught him and stopped him from doing anything else.”
“Yeah, we kind of read him the riot act. He’s seen the error of his ways. He won’t be taking any more lessons from you, and he’ll be warning the others about what you’re really up to.”
“He’s also going to get some real training so that he can keep watch over this area for us, and he’ll be registered with the Council,” Owen added. “You might as well head back to New York. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
A look of panic crossed Idris’s face. “I’ll refund his money, but he’d better not be blabbing to the other students on my message boards. He can’t do that to me! I carried out my end of the deal. I can’t help it if he chose to use his power to commit crimes.”
“Your lessons contained step-by-step instructions on how to commit specific crimes using specific spells,” Owen pointed out. “The entire course was on using magic to get rich.”
“That was only an example. When you do those problems about trains running into each other in math class, do you really think that means you’re supposed to go out and crash trains into each other?”
“No,” I said, “but if you’re taking home economics and there’s a cake recipe in a textbook, I do think it means you’re supposed to follow those directions to bake a cake. It’s not just a hypothetical example of what happens when you combine flour, sugar, and eggs.”
“That’s different! And you can’t register him! I’ll look like a failure.”
“News flash,” I said. “You are a failure. Maybe you should quit now while you’re still ahead.”
“I can’t quit. Do you know what they’ll do to me? I have to stop you. If you go through with this, you give me no choice. I swear, Palmer, this time I will bring you down.”
Owen turned to look at him, staring at him silently for long enough that Idris started to sweat. Finally, Owen gave him a crooked grin. “This time, huh? You mean unlike all the other times?”
“I got away those times. The last time I almost got your girlfriend.”
Owen shrugged. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll have to take you into custody now.” He took a step toward Idris, his hands raised. The sense of magic in use in the room grew stronger, and I stepped backward so I’d be out of the way of the magical fight that was about to break out. Just when it was getting intense enough to give me a headache, Idris vanished into thin air. Owen lunged toward where he’d been, but it was too late. “How’d he do that?” he asked. “I can’t do that here, so there’s no way he could do that.”
“Well, he did. He’s not here, so it’s not like he just went invisible.”
“This is not good,” he said, the tension in his voice contradicting the incredible understatement of his words. He raised his hands again, his eyes half closed, like he was listening for something. After a while, he shook his head. “He used a lot of power, but I’m not sure where he got it.”
I reached over and took his arm. “Come on, we’re not getting anything done standing around here.”
With a weary sigh, he went along with me. On our way out of the room, I locked the door behind us, in case Idris hadn’t taken his room key when he vanished. He’d have to use that much power again to get back into the room. I dropped the towels off in the housekeeping closet, then we got back into Owen’s rental car.
“What do you think he’ll do?” I asked.
“He may make a go of convincing your brother not to drop his program or let the other students know what’s going on. Or he could challenge me to a duel on Main Street at high noon. With him, you never know.”
Dean and Teddy were still hanging around at the house when we got back. They met us on the back porch. “What time should we meet tonight?” Teddy asked.
“A quarter to midnight behind the bank. We should all park in different places so it’s not too obvious that someone’s congregating,” Owen said.
“Okay, quarter to midnight,” Dean said, nodding. “Is that because there’s more power at the witching hour of midnight?”
“No, it’s because by then everyone here will be asleep, making it easier for us to sneak out, and there won’t likely be anyone wandering downtown. It also seems to fall between two different police patrols of that area.”
“Oh,” Teddy said, looking disappointed. It was a shame how boring and ordinary magic often turned out to be.
“You’re still planning to return those goods?” Owen asked Dean.
“Yeah. It doesn’t look like I have a choice if I want to keep my wife.” I bit my tongue to keep from saying that it wouldn’t be a big loss. Besides, Sherri was turning out to be okay.
“Then make sure you’ve wiped off any fingerprints and wear gloves. Box everything up in separate boxes for each store.”
Dean’s eyes went wide, and the color drained from his face. “Fingerprints?”
“Don’t you think they’d check if stolen goods suddenly reappeared and they still had no suspect?
Returning the goods is a mitigating factor, but it doesn’t erase the fact that you committed a crime.”
“How are you going to explain to Beth why you’re taking off in the middle of the night?” I asked Teddy.
“I’m always taking off in the middle of the night when I get an idea and head to the test crops,” he said with a shrug. “She’s used to it by now.”
“I’ll see you two tonight, then,” Owen said.
“Do we need to bring anything?” Teddy asked.
“I’ve got it taken care of. Wear something dark that won’t stand out too much if light hits it. And you’ll need gloves, since we’ll be handling stolen goods.”
My brothers were waiting for us behind the bank shortly before midnight, both of them looking like cat burglars in their all-black clothing. Teddy was the most eager of the two. I wasn’t sure if it was because of his curiosity about magic or because of Dean’s reluctance to give back all his loot.
“We’ll deal with the wards first, since that’s our priority,” Owen told them. “Then if we have time
, if I have the energy, and if the coast is clear, we can start returning the stolen property. You did bring it, didn’t you?” he asked Dean.
“It’s in my trunk. Sherri had everything already boxed up.”
“I hope you thought to wipe off her fingerprints so she won’t be suspected,” I said, finding it hard to believe I was actually looking out for Sherri.
“Of course I did.”
“Good,” Owen said. “Okay, here’s the plan. Sam will veil the area, so no one who happens to pass by will see what we’re doing. You should still be quiet and not do anything to draw attention to yourself because no veil is perfect. The less there is to see, the easier it is to disguise it. Stay out of my way, and if I tell you to do something, you’ll do it without hesitation or question. Have you got that?” He sounded so firm and commanding that I might not have been able to resist tackling him if my brothers hadn’t been there.
They nodded, apparently also getting that sense of power from him, but obviously with a totally different response. “Got it,” Teddy said, while Dean gave a cocky salute.
We crept around the corner to the front of the bank, where Sam waited for us on the sidewalk. “I got you covered, boss,” he said. “All of you. You did tell these two to keep it quiet?”
“Yes. It’s under control.” Owen turned to me and said, “I’d like you to be standing by. I probably won’t need you because breaking wards is easier than setting them, but I’d rather be ready, just in case.”
“I’ll be here,” I said.
As he went to work, I was torn between wanting to watch him and wanting to see how my brothers reacted to what he did. So far, they’d seen little more than parlor tricks, but this would be real magic on a level they hadn’t yet experienced.
He sprinkled some shimmery powder in a line under the doorway, then stepped back, held his hands out, and did that half chanting/half singing thing he’d done when he set the wards. The wards again flared into visible light, then that light collapsed into the powder, which burst into blue-white flames that shot into the air.
Of course, that was the exact moment a police car drove by on patrol. When did our local police force become so effective?
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