She didn’t take her eyes away from the window when she responded, “Of course. This is the most exciting thing to happen to this place in ages.”
“The band wasn’t all that good,” I said, already worried that I’d set her up for disappointment.
“It doesn’t take much to be the most exciting thing to happen here,” she replied dryly.
I was glad I’d parked on the side of the office away from Idris’s room, so even if he was so bored or paranoid as to be staring out the window, he still wouldn’t see me. When I got home, the barn was empty, so I headed into the house. The door to Dean and Teddy’s old room was shut, and I had a feeling that’s where the guys were. I knocked lightly on it and got out the “It’s” part of “It’s me”
before the door swung open.
“That must be really handy,” Teddy said. His eyes had a wide look of surprise and awe, like he was still taking everything in. He and Owen sat on one of the beds, most of the magic course pamphlets spread between them, while Dean sat on the other bed, watching the other two suspiciously. It almost looked like a slumber party for overgrown boys.
“So, I guess y’all are all squared away,” I said, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind me, in case Mom came back or Granny showed up.
“Yeah, Owen gave me the whole story,” Teddy said. “It’s absolutely incredible, isn’t it? I mean, all those years I spent playing Dungeons and Dragons, and it turns out to be real, and we never even knew. Just think of the trouble Dean could have gotten into if he knew he had magical powers all along. Though I guess he managed to get into enough trouble with them now.”
“And think of how amazing my tattletale abilities would have been if I’d been able to catch him,” I said. Then I turned to my other brother. “Dean, you wouldn’t happen to have called anyone at your magical correspondence school about what’s been going on, have you?”
“Well, there is a customer service number you’re supposed to call when you’re ready for the next lesson or if you have any problems.”
“When was the last time you called it?”
“Um, uh, well, last night, when I couldn’t get into the bank. You’re supposed to let them know if something doesn’t work, and being bounced off the door wasn’t in the troubleshooting list, so I called right away, and then they transferred me to someone higher up, so I guess it was a bigger issue than I realized.”
“That’s why Idris is here, I bet,” I said to Owen.
“What did you tell them?” Owen asked. He’d gone pale, and I could see the tension in the muscles around his jaw.
“I described what I was trying to do and what it felt like. Then they asked me if anything had changed around town—if there was anyone new. I said my sister’s boyfriend was visiting.” His voice trailed off, and he then added a sheepish, “Oops. But I didn’t know it meant anything at the time. I was just excited because they’d let me talk to one of the main guys at the company. It would have been like running across a bug in Word, calling Microsoft tech support, and being transferred directly to Bill Gates in the middle of the night. So, uh, why does this matter?”
“Because the guy running Spellworks just showed up in town,” I said. “He has to know you’re my brother, and that means he has to know Owen’s here and was behind the wards on the bank.” It rankled me more than a little that Phelan Idris had known my brother had magical powers before I did.
“He got here fast enough,” Owen said.
I shrugged. “Well, this might be an even bigger crisis for him than it is for us. Us finding out in this way could put a stop to his little magic school before he hits critical mass. You know, it was really stupid of him to actually sign up one of my brothers.”
“That’s typical,” Owen said. “He couldn’t resist getting a reaction out of you and showing off. As usual, he got sidetracked by looking for a reaction instead of following through.”
I sat on the end of Teddy’s bed. “Did I really screw things up for you, Katie?” Dean asked. He actually sounded contrite.
“No, in the long run you’ve helped. If you hadn’t been mixed up in all this, we might not have found out about this scheme until it was too late. It would have been nice if we could have avoided having Idris come here, but here may be the best place to deal with him. It’s harder to do magic here without the proper lines of power, and when it comes to raw magical resources, there aren’t too many people who can top Owen.”
