“Yeah, we’ll have to cross this place off the list for potential honeymoon spots,” Owen said with a wry grin. “We probably won’t be welcome back.”
I had to work very hard not to visibly react to that, even as my heart practically leapt out of my chest at hearing him refer to potential honeymoon spots. It was probably just a joke, I told myself sternly.
After a long silence, he said, “I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you.”
“Thanked me?”
“For thinking clearly when nobody else was. I can’t imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t figured out what was going on.”
I thought of and then discarded about a dozen responses, finally settling on, “I guess you’d have had to buy the Spellworks cure.”
“I guess so.” There was another long pause, and then he said, “I wasn’t avoiding you. I mean, before I got sick.”
“I was starting to wonder,” I said with a weak laugh. “When a guy disappears after you’ve argued, it’s generally a bad sign.”
He winced. “Sorry about that. I should have thought about how you’d take it. I got busy trying to fix things in my own way—if we could figure out what was going on, then we wouldn’t have anything to argue about.”
“Well, maybe in the future you could respond to my messages or send up an ‘I’m alive and I don’t hate you’ balloon every so often.”
He grinned at me. “I’ll remember that. In case you hadn’t noticed by now, I’m not too good at communicating and relationships and all that.” His grin gradually faded and he looked more serious. I wondered if I should say something, but then it looked like he might say something, and I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I kept quiet and watched him.
And then the motel door opened and Ethan came outside with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know who got the coffee,” he said, “but I think I love you.”
Owen turned scarlet before he broke eye contact with me and looked up at Ethan. “That was me.”
“In that case, I meant ‘love’ in the spirit of friendship and brotherhood. Thanks, man.”
“You’re welcome,” Owen said. “Need a reheat?”
I was left wondering what he was about to say to me, but it would have to wait because we had work to do.
Chapter Eleven
We went back inside, where Merlin was now also awake. While Merlin and Ethan ate, Owen talked me through what I would have to do. I wasn’t sure what he’d done to Ethan’s radio, but it was wrapped in duct tape and I felt a faint vibration when I held it. “I’ve already got it mostly set, but when you find the transmitter you’ll have to turn the radio on and rotate the tuner dial until the radio is in sync with the transmitter. Wear your magic-detecting necklace and you’ll be able to feel it.”
“But how will we find the transmitter?”
“The radio will vibrate more the closer you get, and you should feel it in your necklace.”
“Okay,” I said, turning the radio over in my hands. It didn’t look like anything magical at all, and yet this little thing could affect every magical person in the Manhattan area. “You’re sure this will work?”
“Magic is a very uncertain art, my dear,” Merlin said. “We always have to leave room for the unexpected.”
As soon as Ethan had finished his coffee and doughnut, he drove me to the nearest train station. While he drove, I used his cell phone to alert my roommates that we were being called to action so Gemma could get her friend’s building pass. As I’d expected, they were more than eager to take part. I’d be lucky if they hadn’t created clever disguises by the time I got home.
And I wasn’t lucky. They met me at the door of our new apartment wearing Bermuda shorts and loud Hawaiian shirts. “See? We’re tourists!” Gemma said.
“You’ve got a pass to the building,” I reminded her. “That means you aren’t a tourist.”
Her face fell. “Oh. Right.”
“You can be the local showing us around. But I refuse to wear a Hawaiian shirt.”
“And Bermuda shorts make my thighs look fat,” Marcia said. “I’m changing.”
“Or maybe black catsuits,” Gemma mused.
“No!” Marcia and I vetoed her, and I added, “We’re going in legitimately. Looking like cat burglars would probably draw unwanted attention. Unless you want to scale the outside of that building at night.”