Much Ado About Magic

Page 69

He reached for a book lying facedown across the arm of the sofa. “For one thing, he wasn’t in charge then. He couldn’t bring Merlin back. He had to convince his predecessor that the threat was great enough, and his predecessor wasn’t known for being excitable.” He pointed at a picture of a stern, gray-bearded man. Remove the beard and give him a pair of glasses, and you’d have had my high-school principal. “That meant he had to escalate the threat. And then—” he blanched and had to swallow hard, as though he was in some discomfort “—it seems my parents rather liked the idea of taking over the magical world and became a real threat, one that had to be dealt with immediately, before Ramsay had a chance to make a case for reviving Merlin.”
He paused and frowned. “It sounds really weird to say ‘parents.’ I’ve never had any, so it’s a new concept for me. It’s even weirder to say ‘parents’ in this context. I mean, I’m talking about Mom and Dad trying to take over the world.”
I got a sense of imminent unraveling, as though he’d taken about as much as he could and was in danger of losing it at any minute. “Owen, there’s something you should know,” I hurried to say while he took a breath. “They may not be your parents. It could just be Idris or Ramsay messing with you. Merlin didn’t know about who you were. He did suspect this was a possibility, and I’m sure if he did, then James and Gloria also suspected, but there doesn’t seem to be any official proof.”
“I think it’s true,” he said softly. “It feels true. I should have suspected, if I’d even bothered to think about it or had done any research. But I thought it was healthy for me not to worry about where I came from.”
“Even if it is true, no one lied to you. They weren’t keeping deep, dark secrets from you, just suspicions. I guess Ramsay suspected, too.”
“Or he knew. He was the one who killed my parents, so he could have been the one to drop me off at that fire station and hope I’d be lost in the system. I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t kill me. Anyway, Ramsay had to stop the Morgans before they could be caught by anyone else, interrogated, and be linked to him. He bides his time, builds power, makes good alliances, and then Idris comes along, giving him the perfect opportunity to set up a new patsy, and then we need Merlin, and now the stage is set for Ramsay to take out Merlin.” The words spilled out of him like bullets from a machine gun, and when he was done, he let out a deep breath.
“Then he could rule the world,” I finished. “Even better, he’s got things set up so that if Merlin fights him, Merlin’s the one who looks like the bad guy. We’ll have to prove to the magical world that he’s evil before we can even oppose him.”
“It’s rather brilliant, when you think about it.” He suddenly sank against the sofa, like the mania had burned itself out, leaving utter weariness. “And how do we prove it?”
“You may be the key.” I explained what Merlin, Rod, and I had discussed earlier. “So,” I concluded, “our next step is to play ‘Owen Palmer, This Is Your Life.’ You said you were left at a fire station. Do you know which one? Or would James and Gloria have that information?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. And I don’t see how helpful digging into it would be. If Ramsay really was trying to hide the Morgans’ baby, would he walk right into a fire station and say, ‘Hey, I found this on my doorstep’? He’d have probably left the baby where it would be found and where nothing could be traced back to him. That’s if he didn’t just kill it.”
“But we won’t know until we ask.”
“It’s a waste of time. There’s someone out there trying to take over the magical world, and I don’t think you can stop that by having a few nonmagical firefighters—if you can even find anyone who was working there then—say that someone who kind of looked like a younger version of Ramsay dropped an abandoned baby off at a fire station thirty years ago. Ramsay would probably spin it so he looked like a hero, anyway. We need a better plan than that.”
“In other words, you aren’t ready to deal with James and Gloria. Or with who you might be.”
“No, that’s not it at all. I just don’t think digging through my nearly nonexistent baby book is going to do any good.” But he had turned bright red, so I knew I was on to something.
“Then do you have a better plan?”
“I’m working on it.” Making an obvious attempt to change the subject, he said, “And how are things at the office today?”