“I think so. The pattern’s been there all along, if I could have just seen it. Why didn’t I see it?”

“Merlin says he was using a spell—like Rod’s old attraction spell—to make everyone like and trust him.”

“Oh. I should have seen that. I’ve spent enough time with Rod to know what that looks like, and of course you’d be immune to it.” He looked up at me and winced. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I was a real jerk about that, too.”

“There are sometimes real drawbacks to having magical powers,” I said with a smile I hoped was soothing. “I may not be able to do all the amazing stuff you do, but I can see the truth.”

“And you’d think I’d remember that. Now, about Ramsay. I think he did the same thing with my parents that he’s doing with Idris. He found someone young, promising, and gullible, then encouraged and supported them behind the scenes to challenge the magical status quo. The Morgans were his protégés, just as Idris was.”

“Owen,” I said softly, ready to tell him that there was no proof that they were his parents.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m not fooling myself into thinking they were good people who were misled. If they were good, they couldn’t have been used that way. But I do think Ramsay was using them. Their story looks a lot like what happened with Idris. They worked for MSI, had some big, unorthodox ideas, they were fired, and then they reappeared in a way that would have required more backing than you could reasonably expect someone like them to have.”

“That does sound familiar. But why would Ramsay bother? What did he get out of it? As hobbies go, there are probably better options.”

“I don’t think he got what he wanted out of it, other than maybe a step up in the magical world. That situation made him a hero, but he didn’t achieve his goal, so he had to do it again.”

“Again I ask, why?”

He scrambled around in the pile of books on the floor by the sofa and handed one to me, dropping it in my lap. He’d opened the book to a page describing Merlin going into magical retirement, to be brought back at a time when he was needed by the magical world.

I looked up at Owen, who stared expectantly back at me. “It was all about Merlin,” he said with a triumphant grin.

“Yeah, I didn’t think Idris was an opponent worthy of Merlin, so I’ve been wondering. But why?”

“The very idea of Merlin has always been a deterrent to anyone who wanted to make a bid for taking over the magical world.” He gestured toward the books scattered on the floor. “Over and over again, that’s come up, throughout magical history. They know that even if they do take over, that will trigger Merlin’s return, and they couldn’t hope to win against him. It’s used as a threat, like ‘Give yourself up now, and we won’t bring Merlin back.’”

“So Merlin is the nuclear bomb of magic.”

“Precisely. And that means that if you want to rule the magical world in a way that isn’t hampered by the checks and balances set up within MSI and the various councils, you’ve got to get Merlin out of the way, permanently.”

“And that’s impossible to do while he’s safely snoozing in a crystal cave somewhere.”

His face lit up in a huge grin, and he patted me on the knee. “Exactly!”

Taking a stab at completing his thought, I ventured, “And so the way to deal with Merlin is to manufacture a situation designed to require him to be brought back. Then you could fight him head-on and get him out of the way once and for all.”

“I knew you’d get it!”

“But that would require a lot of confidence. You’d have to believe you could beat Merlin head-to-head, or maybe that you could cheat well enough to win.”

“People with low self-esteem seldom try to take over the world.”

Suddenly, I realized exactly why Owen’s foster parents had practically encouraged his nearly crippling shyness. Someone who had to psych himself up to have a conversation wasn’t likely to try to take over the world. I couldn’t imagine seeing Owen as a potential threat, but then I wasn’t the person entrusted with a frighteningly powerful kid whose early years sounded like the kind of life that often breeds serial killers—even if they didn’t know about his parents being evil.

“So, Ramsay comes along, and he thinks that the only thing in the way of his ambitions is Merlin,” I said, thinking out loud. “He creates a threat, getting a couple of bright people who work for him to play evil genius. But it must not have worked, since he had to try again, nearly thirty years later. What went wrong?”