“Evil?”
“Yeah. That.”
She tilted her head to the side and frowned as she considered. “Not evil, really. But I think a lot of people who don’t know him might be worried that he could become evil, like he won’t be able to help himself.”
“So his chances of ever having a normal life among magical people are pretty slim, huh?”
“People will have to see that they can trust him. And his big prison break isn’t helping. I am trying to tell everyone I know that he’s a good guy.”
“Thanks, Perdita.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help?”
I looked at her, with her long, shapely legs and perfect ringlets, and remembered her talent for disaster. “Maybe,” I said thoughtfully. “Let me get back to you on that, okay?”
My e-mail had piled up to the point it was tempting to just delete the whole in-box and start over again, but I figured anything other than defeating Ramsay would fall into the low-priority category, so I skimmed the headings, checked my voice mail, then went up to Merlin’s office. “I hope you don’t have anything to report to me on Mr. Palmer’s whereabouts,” he said as soon as I set foot in his office. I paused, shaking my head, and he added with a wink, “Since I am a member of the Council—Rudolph seems to have forgotten that additional agenda item in the confusion—I would have to report the location of a dangerous fugitive.”
“Of course,” I said. “You probably don’t even want to know that he’s safe and okay, for the moment.”
“No, I certainly would not want to know that. However, I might have some interest in the status of your assignment.”
“The status hasn’t changed and has been complicated by recent events, but I have some ideas and should have progress to report soon.”
Jake and another guy in a lab coat then ran in, shouting, “We did it! We did it!”
“That’s very nice to hear,” Merlin said. “But what did you do?”
“We’ve cracked the spell behind those charms and amulets. We can negate it entirely. Want us to do it?” Jake said, panting in his eagerness.
Merlin thoughtfully stroked his beard. “No, I think it would be best to wait for a truly opportune moment. We’d like them to think they’ve got control, or else they might come up with something new. But good work, lads.”
That bit of news was encouraging. It felt like things were coming together for us. I headed back to my office, where I found Sam chatting with Perdita. “So, whaddaya need, doll?” he asked.
“I need to lose my followers a couple of times—not enough that they’d know they’d really been lost, but enough for me to slip away for a while.”
The three of us hashed out a plan, and then when lunchtime rolled around, my new accomplice Perdita and I headed out for a Chinatown shopping trip. We tried on hats and sunglasses, and I bought some things I thought might work as disguises. Then Perdita’s natural clumsiness kicked in, and she lost her balance, tripping and falling against a sidewalk display rack, knocking it over—right in the path of both Mr. Bones and Mack. The shopkeeper came out, yelling in Chinese, while Perdita stammered apologies and set about helping put everything back in place. In the commotion, I darted around the corner.
It was a couple of long blocks to the fire station, and I slowed to a walk for the last block when I was sure I wasn’t being followed so I wouldn’t be too out of breath when I got there. Corelli was out in front again, and he waved as I approached. “Hey, Katie, couldn’t get enough of us, huh?” he called out.
“You know it. Is Vinnie in?”
“Yeah, come on. He’s been wondering what happened to you.”
“It’s not me. It’s my boyfriend getting all weird now that we seem to be closing in on where he came from.”
“I can see that,” he said with a nod. “To be honest, there’re days when I wouldn’t mind not knowin’ the rest of my family.”
“I know what you mean.”
Vinnie was in the kitchen again, and he grinned when he saw me. “So, you got my boy with you?”
“Sorry, Vinnie, no. I can’t seem to talk him into coming down here. But I think I have an idea for making him curious. I know you can’t give me that envelope, but I thought maybe if I showed him a picture of it with those instructions on it and a picture of you, then he’d want to know more.”
He wiped his hands on his apron. “Sure thing, doll. Right this way.” He led me to an office, where he pulled open a file cabinet and shuffled through some folders, finally coming up with one, from which he took a somewhat yellowed business-size security envelope.