I didn’t have to wait too long. Soon, the door opened and someone in a lab coat came out, carrying a couple of shopping bags. He stopped to sneeze halfway through the doorway, and I jumped to catch the door for him while he groped for a handkerchief. “Thanks,” he croaked.
“Bless you,” I said, meaning it quite sincerely. Once he left, I headed into the department and hurried to Owen’s lab. The lights were out, and there was no sign of Jake, so he must have been sick, too. There were bookcases in the lab, but a quick skim of the titles I could read told me that these were all books about magic itself, not magical society.
Owen kept his office warded, so I felt a slight tingle as I passed through the doorway, but nothing held me back because the wards didn’t work on me. I was sure I’d recognize the books I needed when I saw them, but I didn’t see them on the bookshelves. That left the desk, which would be a challenge to search because it was so cluttered and because, in spite of the clutter, Owen knew exactly where everything was. Move one thing, and he’d know someone had been in there.
I remembered giving the books back to Owen not long after I’d joined the company. I visualized the scene—he’d taken the books from me, said I was welcome to borrow them at any time, and placed them… there, on the corner of his desk. I went around the desk, sat in his chair, and gingerly lifted a few file folders to find the books exactly where he’d put them, all those months ago.
Taking mental note of the books’ position, how they were placed, and the order in which they were stacked, I pulled out the one I recalled having the most information on the recent history of the magical world. I flipped straight to the back, where there were blank pages, although there were fewer blank pages than I recalled. The book had updated itself to include events that happened since I’d last read it. I glanced over the article about the growth of Spellworks, out of curiosity, then flipped a few pages back to the story about the last serious threat to the magical world.
It sounded pretty similar to the way this battle had started, with a brilliant and eccentric young wizard named Kane Morgan who was fired from MSI when he and his wife began using dark magic no other wizard dared to tap into. It sounded far worse than today’s magical mischief. The book said that the Council had discussed restoring Merlin, but before they had a chance, the Morgans tried to seize power, and it was another young MSI wizard, one Ivor Ramsay, who saved the day by defeating the bad guys in a surprise attack.