At the moment, though, Idris wasn’t there, and the pixies were keeping the fight away from Owen, which I hoped would help him save his strength for when it would really be needed. So far, the battle was going our way, with us having the advantage on land and in the water. We even had our own air force. Sam swooped down from the sky to buzz the battling wizards. He had a laughing pixie riding his back. The pixie blasted the students’ backsides with magical sparks, making them leap into the air as each blast of sparks hit them. Meanwhile, more pixies swarmed the ground, getting underfoot and tripping people left and right. Anyone who fell down was in big trouble. He might find his shoelaces tied together or his jeans unbuttoned so that when he tried to stand, his pants would fall down and then he’d fall over so the pixies could get him for more mischief.

Then one of the students saw Owen and yelled, “Hey, there he is!” Soon, we had all the students who weren’t currently entangled with a magical creature, running from an illusion, or in Sam’s strafing path after us. Owen sent a fireball into the crowd, dispersing them like a bunch of bowling pins hit by a well-placed ball. “Did you novices really think you could take me on?” he shouted. He sounded awfully intimidating, unless you knew he was a total sweetheart who was almost meek about doing magic, like he didn’t want to be noticed.

One of the student wizards sent his own fireball flying back at Owen. This ball was much smaller and dimmer than Owen’s had been, and it flickered in and out. Owen reached up and snagged it like he was catching a pop fly, then he held it hovering above his hand. As he held it, it grew bigger and brighter. Then with a flick of his wrist, he tossed it back at the wizard who’d formed it. “Nice try,”

Owen said as the fireball hit its target and the student fell over. When he hit the ground, a trio of pixies gleefully pounced.

While Owen fought, I looked around for any sign of Idris. I could imagine him being coward enough to make other people fight his battles, but I couldn’t imagine him not being there for the fight at all.

Then again, this was Idris we were talking about. He had the attention span of a gnat and could very well have been sidetracked by something shiny on the way from the courthouse square to the park. If a pretty girl had walked by, we might not see him for hours, so long as she wasn’t repelled by his body spray or by his personality. For all I knew, he was off at the Dairy Queen having a banana split and wouldn’t remember that there was a fight going on until he finished.

I felt a surge of magic coming toward me and whirled to see what it was just as Owen neatly deflected it. He was tiring now, breathing hard, with sweat-dampened hair clinging to his forehead. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

He nodded as he raised his hand and muttered something that sent a student wizard staggering away.

“I’m fine. I don’t think I’m tiring as much as these guys are.”

“Maybe you should have kept one of the necklaces.”

“No!” I was surprised at the vehemence of his response. “Dabbling in that level of darkness isn’t worth it.”

“You gave one to Dean. You weren’t going to risk letting him go over to the dark side, were you?”

“Dean isn’t me.” He pulled me out of the way of an oncoming attacker and then sent that attacker flying to land on his back, where the pixies immediately swarmed him. “The more power you have and the more power you’re able to tap into, the more dangerous dark magic is. It’s practically harmless for Dean. For me, it’s a line I don’t dare cross.”

Owen was quite possibly one of the nicest guys in the known universe, and he wasn’t particularly ambitious about power, so I had a hard time picturing him turning into the magical equivalent of Darth Vader. I had a feeling his foster parents had instilled a healthy fear into him as a preventative measure. Bad magic was dangerous enough that you didn’t want to rely on someone’s discernment, not when that someone was as powerful as Owen was.

Owen tugged at my sleeve. “I want you to walk through the middle of the fight. It’s all magic, so they can’t hurt you. I don’t think they know about immunes, so they won’t understand why they can’t affect you. Play it up. See if you can get Ted to do the same thing. They’ll think you’re the most powerful wizards ever. I want them to feel so outclassed that they’re afraid to come near magic again.”

Although I knew intellectually that all those flying fireballs and influence spells would have no effect on me, that didn’t mean walking out into them was my idea of fun. I took a deep breath, put on a serene expression, and headed into the middle of the action. It took a lot of self-control not to flinch at the things that came flying my way. Instead, I bestowed beatific smiles on the student wizards who waved their hands in my general direction. The expressions on their faces as spells passed harmlessly around me were priceless. I couldn’t remember anyone ever looking at me with that kind of awe.