“You hid it well,” Mac said dryly. “So the elves have us captive, huh? I guess we saw something we weren’t supposed to.”
“That’s what we think. I was hoping you saw more than we did.”
“Just a portal. Who else is here?”
“We’ve seen a few people we know from MSI who’d gone missing,” I put in. “There had been a lot of reports of missing elves, so I imagine they’re here, too.”
“And you say memories break the spell?” Mac asked.
“Bringing up a vivid memory from the real world seems to work,” Owen said. “For us, it was an accident that we simultaneously came up with something that reminded us of each other.” He turned pink and left out exactly what that something was. “My story from when I was a kid worked for you, so I hope that’s all it takes for us to wake up everyone else. You’ll have to bring your partner out of it, since you know him best.”
“But be careful,” I added. “There are people we think might be monitoring us. If they notice we’ve remembered, they might do something.”
“If you’re worried about that, then you’d better act natural now,” Mac said. “There’s a guy across the park who’s watching us.”
I was facing away from our possible watcher, and my back itched between my shoulder blades at the thought of being observed. It took all my willpower not to turn around to see who it was. I was afraid that even using the compact mirror trick to see behind me would be too obvious. “Is he an elf wearing gray?” I asked.
“Yeah. You’ve seen him?”
“Even before the spell broke last night, I did something that I shouldn’t have been able to do if the spell was working—probably because I’m losing whatever magic I had. They’ve been following me since then. I’m trying to convince them that one part of the spell may have broken, but the big spell is still okay.”
“What do you think they’d do if they knew you’d broken the spell?” Mac asked.
“Probably put us back under it,” Owen said with a shrug as he moved a piece on the board. I didn’t know enough about chess to know if it was a real move or if he was maintaining the pretense.