Merlin was powerful, but he was also very, very old. He raised his hands to fight Idris, but the spell he threw at Idris wasn’t enough to be more than an irritant.

I couldn’t bear to watch, but I couldn’t tear myself away. I looked around for anything that could help Owen and realized that Granny, with her bottle full of sprite, was the only other magical person still standing. “Granny, your sprite!” I called out, hoping this was one of the things she was right about instead of being crazy. She stepped toward Idris, threw her bottle in the air, and swatted it with her cane like she was hitting a baseball for fielding practice. The bottle shattered in midair, the shards falling around Idris. Owen stayed on the ground, scrambling out of the way. I pulled away from Dean and ran to Owen, hauling him to his feet. He wrapped his arm tightly around my waist, almost cutting off my breathing, but I was so glad that both of us were still alive that I didn’t mind. With our arms around each other, I helped him back to where Dean stood.

Idris ignored his escaping quarry, he was so busy brushing himself off. At first I thought he might be brushing glass away, but then I realized that the bottle hadn’t been empty. Something had been in there, and that something was now free. It was hard to tell what that something was, it was moving so fast, like the cartoon Tasmanian devil, a whirlwind of destruction uttering incoherent snarls of rage and madness. Blood flew, along with bits and pieces of what I assumed were Idris’s clothes.

Granny came over to join Owen, Dean, and me. “They don’t like being captured, and they take it out on anyone they can as soon as they’re free,” she said with grim satisfaction. “Besides, being cooped up in a bottle like that is enough to drive anyone crazy. I forgot how long ago it was I caught that thing.”

Idris fell to his knees. “I give! Stop it! I surrender!” Merlin said something sharp in a foreign language and snapped his fingers, and the sprite’s mayhem ceased as the sprite vanished. Idris was left bloodied, his clothing shredded. He whimpered a little in relief once he realized the sprite was gone. Then he did something I never would have expected: He broke into sobs. “Oh please, you’ve got to help me. I need your protection. I throw myself on your mercy.”

Merlin stepped out of the way before Idris could grab onto his pants leg and cry on his shoes. Then he said sternly to Idris, “So, you surrender yourself to us? You place yourself under our power so that your power becomes our own and cannot be used against us?” There was something about his tone and the precise formality of his words that told me this was a ritual of some sort, possibly even a binding one.

Idris pulled off his necklace and handed it to Merlin, then he clasped his hands together and said, “I surrender myself to you. I place myself under your power so that my power becomes your own and cannot be used against you and yours.”

Merlin nodded. “Very well. Now, what is it that you need our protection against?”

“These people I’ve been working for. I want out. It’s going too far. I was having fun before, doing my own thing, you know, but they’re serious. I don’t know, it’s like they really want to take over the world, or something, and they were using me to get it started. And guess who’d have taken the blame if they got caught or if something went wrong. But I didn’t know how to get out. These people would track me down and come after me if I tried to get away. They were like the Firm, you know, only with magic. No one leaves, and all that. I’m in huge trouble for failing. They might even kill me for not raising a proper army. You’re the only one who might be able to protect me.”

Owen and I came over to stand beside Merlin. “You’ll tell us everything you know?” Owen asked.

Idris scooted around on his knees to face Owen. “I don’t know much. I only met the moneybags lady in person. I think she’s got a boss beyond that, and that’s the person calling the shots, but I don’t know who that is. I do know I’m scared of him.”

“We will protect you in return for whatever assistance you can provide us.” Merlin gestured Rod to come join us. “Mr. Gwaltney, will you see to him?”

Rod did something complicated with his fingers, and soon a thread of liquid light twined around Idris’s wrists. Then he pulled Idris to his feet and walked him over to where the other prisoners were.

Merlin faced the gathered prisoners, revived them with a snap of his fingers, and said firmly, “It is over. This ends now.” His voice had the weight of a millennium of authority, and it seemed to resonate with the prisoners even if they didn’t know who he really was.