Owen ignored him, pulling out a chair across the table from Idris and seating me before taking his own seat. He then fixed Idris with a stern, steely gaze.
Idris squirmed, but with him, you could never tell if he was uncomfortable or just fidgety. After a long silence he blurted, “It’s not my fault, you know.”
“What’s not your fault?” Owen asked, his voice calm and almost casual.
“Whatever happened to Katie. Look, I know I’ve set some things on her that were not so nice, but she was never really hurt. I only wanted to scare her. I was having a little fun, seeing what she could do, you know? But I’ve been in here all this time, so I couldn’t have made anyone attack her.” He broke away from Owen’s stare and turned to me with wide, pleading eyes. “You know that, right, Katie?”
I had a feeling his concern was more for the trouble that he was in than for anything he’d done to me. With my best shot at a stern glare, I said, “Actually, it was your fault.”
He shook his head. “No, no, no, no. It wasn’t me.”
“But it was someone using one of your spells that caused the incident. And the guy who choked me”—I pointed to the red welts on my neck—“was under the influence of a spell you sold. So, yeah, it was your fault. This is what’s happening because of your business.”
He stared openmouthed at me. Then he shook his head. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” Owen asked. “What did you expect would happen when you made spells like that widely available?”
Idris looked at him for a moment, then blinked and turned his attention back to me. “What was it like?” he asked. “What happened?”
“That’s not what we’re here to talk about,” I said. “What we need to know is who set you up to do all this. You may not have thought it through, but I’m betting that whoever’s behind this did.”
Idris leaned back in his chair and attempted to cross his legs, but was hampered by the chains on his ankles. He bent over to investigate and fell out of his chair. The chains on his wrists that were bolted to the table kept him suspended, hanging at an odd angle. He twisted to try to pull himself back into his chair and somehow got the chains tangled up. I wasn’t sure how he managed to get into that pretzel-like position. It took real talent to be that inept.
“Uh, guys, a little help here,” he called from under the table. “Wow, Katie, you really ripped your stockings. And did you know you were bleeding? Well, not anymore. It’s dried. But there’s a scab on your leg where your stockings are torn.”
Owen jumped out of his seat and went around the table to help Idris. I tensed, suspecting a ruse or a trap, but Idris really was stuck. Owen untangled the chains, then pulled him back into his chair.
Owen rolled his eyes at me as he came back to his own seat. “Now, as we were asking,” he said with a sigh of waning patience, “who was behind this scheme to put you in business?”
Still giggling, Idris said, “You two are so great together! And I can’t believe you haven’t thanked me yet.”
Owen and I glanced at each other. He looked as confused as I felt. “Thanked you for what?” I asked Idris.
“For getting you two back together. If I hadn’t been teaching Katie’s brother magic—and I didn’t know he was your brother until you told me—then Owen wouldn’t have had to go to Texas, and you two wouldn’t have worked things out.”
The tips of Owen’s ears turned red, not in the adorable bashful way, but more in a “Mount Vesuvius is about to erupt” way. Owen tended to focus on a single thing to the exclusion of everything else—including food and sleep—if there was something he wanted to accomplish. That made Idris, who couldn’t sustain a single thought for more than a minute, very frustrating for Owen to deal with. “Who. Are. You. Working. For?” he asked through clenched teeth. If it hadn’t been for the magical dampening field, I had a feeling that the room would have been vibrating with barely controlled magic. As it was, I still detected a slight magical tingle.
Idris flinched. “I told you, I don’t know. I dealt with the money lady. She’s the one who might know who the boss is.”
We knew who “the money lady” was. The trick was finding a way to capture and question her. She was a highly respected magical banker—not someone you could drag off the street and throw into the backseat of a car. She knew how to work both the magical and mundane systems.
