“Hey, buddy, drop the purse and leave the ladies alone,” a guy passing by said, raising his fists at Idris in a threatening way. Idris took advantage of the distraction to worm away from us and take off. Of all times to run across a chivalrous New Yorker who wasn’t willing to look the other way, I thought with a groan. “You okay, ladies?” the guy asked.

I curled my fingers up so he couldn’t see the blood under my fingernails. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“You need to call someone? Or need someone to walk you home?”

“No, thank you, I’m okay. It’s not far. Thank you for coming to our rescue.”

He reluctantly let us go, and we hurried away. I fumbled for Owen’s cell phone as we walked, then hit redial and got Sam. “I found him,” I said. “Idris. He got away, but he can’t have gone far.” I gave the location and the direction Idris had run. “But Sam, it’s worse than that. They’re planning to make it look like Owen kills Merlin trying to escape.”

“Just relax, doll, we’re keeping the boss safe, don’t you worry, and we do have a plan.”

“Katie, it’ll be okay, right?” Marcia said when I got off the phone. I couldn’t tell if she was looking for reassurance or offering it.

“I don’t know. Everything’s out of control, and I have no idea what we can do.”

Chapter Nineteen

I took the train to James and Gloria’s town on Sunday afternoon, and James met me at the station. When I got to their house, I saw that there were new family photos on the fireplace mantle and bookshelves in the living room. On my first visit, I’d thought it odd that there were no pictures of Owen growing up, but they seemed to have decided that showing pride in their foster son could no longer be held against them, and they’d gone all-out. Gloria left me in there to get settled while she made tea, so I took the chance to study the pictures.

As Rod said, Owen had been a small, skinny kid with thick glasses. Until his late teens, he’d shown only hints of the good looks he’d grow into. The family portraits had a distinct sense of distance to them, as though he felt he didn’t really belong in them. He didn’t smile in many of the pictures, only in a candid shot where he was playing with a large German shepherd and seemed unaware of the camera and in one that must have been taken at Halloween with an older boy I recognized as Rod, with both of them wearing costumes. Owen was dressed as Robin Hood, while Rod wore a tux and carried a toy gun, so I assumed he was James Bond.

“They cannot tell me I’m not allowed to feel like a mother anymore,” Gloria’s voice said behind me, and I turned to see her standing straight and upright, a tea tray in her hands and her chin raised defiantly. I knew I wouldn’t want to be the Council member making accusations against her boy. Her expression softened a little as she added, “I heard what you said to him at his house the other day. Thank you. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but you were right.”

“Well, he is a special guy, and I think you had a lot to do with that.”

It was a more comfortable visit than my first one, but it was still awkward staying in the Eatons’ home without Owen there, especially given the reason that Owen wasn’t there. I’d hoped that they might know something about whatever Merlin had planned, but they didn’t know any more than I did. I had a feeling none of us got much sleep that night.

The next morning, they made me drive their ancient but perfectly maintained Volvo, since James said his eyesight wasn’t up for driving outside their village. I had to move the seat forward and then adjust to driving something other than an old pickup truck with a stick shift. Having Gloria in the front seat watching everything I did didn’t help matters.

The Council’s headquarters was farther up the river in one of those mansions built by nineteenth-century robber barons—at least, that’s what it looked like, but the building seemed so ancient that it could have been transplanted directly from Europe. It looked like a spooky old-world abbey, and the entire place reeked of magic. My skin hummed from the power, and I wondered what it felt like to magical people.

The entrance was innocuous enough, with a butler meeting us in a foyer that wouldn’t have been out of place in any old mansion, but then he led us deeper into the house to a great hall, and I knew this wouldn’t be a pleasant social occasion.

The room was beyond imposing. The ceiling went higher than I would have thought possible in the building I’d seen from the outside, and it was braced with heavy beams the size of giant trees. The floor was made of flagstones worn smooth with time, and the walls down one side were paneled in dark, intricately carved wood, while the other side held stained-glass windows depicting the history of magic.