“I need to talk to you when you have a moment. And not here. Somewhere private.”
He glanced at Sam, who said, “I’d probably get more work done with you out of my way.”
Owen stood and absently brushed his hair off his face. “I’d feel better talking somewhere other than in this building, if you don’t mind. Let me get a coat out of my office, then we can go outside. I could use some fresh air. We can get lunch while we’re at it.”
I followed him back to his office, which was a cozy den full of old books. He gestured for me to enter first, then paused like he was watching to see what would happen as I crossed the threshold. Nothing did happen. He frowned and came through the doorway.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“I’m testing something. I still don’t have it right. I can block anyone magical, but an immune can get past the wards. It may take a physical barrier to deal with that.”
“You suspect an immune?”
“Right now, I suspect almost anyone.”
While he took his suit coat off the back of his chair, something up near the ceiling in a corner of the office caught my eye. “What is that?” I asked.
He followed my gaze, then shook his head. “What’s what?”
“Did you have a verifier go over your office while you were doing your security sweep?”
He turned red. “I didn’t think of it.”
I kicked off my shoes and climbed up onto the armchair in that corner of the office. “It looks like one of those webcam things.”
“Interesting.” He climbed up beside me and waved one hand in the general direction of the camera. “Ah, there it is.” The camera flew into his hand. He waved his other hand over it, then blinked. “Oh, I see what you mean.” I assumed he’d magically removed whatever veil had kept it hidden from him. He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “It looks like someone’s spying on me.”
I tried to be as cool about it as he was even though my theory about the suspect being in R&D had been shot to hell. “Huh. Imagine that. Who’d have guessed it?”
He waved his hand over the device again, then it floated back up to its position. “Now it’ll tell them what I want it to tell them. I’ll track down where it goes later. First, lunch and talk.”
Just then, Jake came rushing toward the office. “Hey, boss, glad I caught you before you went to lunch,” he said, then cried out as he tried to cross the threshold. “Hey! What was that about?”
Owen’s ears turned pink as he waved a hand and Jake took a tentative step through the doorway. “Sorry about that. I’ve been tinkering with the wards.”
“You’re blocking me out now?” Jake was the very picture of aggrieved innocence. He looked like what would happen if Jimmy Olsen from the Superman comics joined a punk band, and I still had a hard time imagining him betraying his boss, but it seemed like Owen hadn’t cleared him.
“I’m blocking everyone. If I’m in here, I’ll let you in. If I’m not, it can wait. Now, what did you need?”
While they talked business, I put my shoes back on and looked around for anything else that didn’t belong. In Owen’s cluttered office that was a challenge. I’d only spotted the camera because it was too high-tech for its surroundings. If it had been hidden inside a book, I never would have seen it.
Owen sent Jake off to correct something in the spell he was working on. Then he took his overcoat from the hook on the back of his office door and held it out for me. “Here, this way you won’t have to go back to your office.”
I shrugged into the oversize coat while he put on his suit coat. “You’re going to freeze,” I said. The wind cutting across the island was icy.
“I’ll be fine, trust me. I have my own resources, remember.”
Oh yeah, that. I knew what he was capable of, but he was so matter-of-fact in the rare times I saw him do magic that it was easy to forget what he was.
As we passed Sam, who was still working on the security device, Owen said, “Don’t let anyone from outside the department in while I’m gone.”
“With luck, I’ll have this thing fixed before you get back to get in my way,” Sam growled, shooing Owen away with one wing.
When we were out of the building, Owen said, “Talk first, then lunch? I doubt we want to discuss this at a restaurant.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
He led the way to the park at City Hall Plaza, where we sat on a bench near the fountain. “This should be safe enough from eavesdroppers. The sound of the fountain muffles conversation.”