Mac’s brow creased, and he said vaguely, “I don’t remember.”
“Then I guess we should keep playing.” Owen indicated the board, and Mac leaned forward to make his move.
The moves went rapidly back and forth again for a while, and then they slowed down as each of them thought about his moves—though I got the feeling Owen was only pretending to think and knew exactly what he was going to do. During one pause, Mac asked, “Who taught you to play chess?”
“My father—foster father, actually, but he was the only father I ever knew. He started teaching me when I was just a kid. That was what we did in the evenings for fun.”
I watched Mac carefully to see how he reacted. He rubbed his temples, then he shook his head, like he needed to clear it. “Some fun for a kid,” he said, making his move.
“I was a strange kid,” Owen said with a shrug. “I thought it was fun. What I really liked when I got a little older was when my parents’ friends came over and I got to play against them. I’m not sure they liked it so much, though, being beaten by a scrawny little kid with thick glasses. I had to sit on a phone book to reach the board. I think my father thought that was the fun part, watching his friends react to the way I played.” He moved a piece, then said, “Check.”
Mac looked like his attention was barely on the game, and he didn’t even react to Owen’s move. I didn’t know anything about chess, but I knew that Owen’s “check” was bad for Mac. He stared at the board for a long time, and I got the impression that he was really seeing a different board from a different game.
Owen went on like he hadn’t noticed. “The first time I asked to learn to play, I must have been about five. I’d started kindergarten, but they quickly moved me up because I was bored. I was so little, and those kids were so much bigger than I was, and I kept beating them in everything, so they hated me. I had an older friend who tried to defend me, but my parents were worried we’d get in trouble for fighting, so they got me a dog.” He paused as Mac finally made his move, made his own move in response, then continued.
“They figured that the dog would scare off anyone who tried to hurt me on my way to and from school. It was a small town, so no one minded that this dog would walk me to school and then run home, and he always knew when to head back to the school to get me. He must have heard the bell and knew it was time. Anyway, that dog was very protective of me, and one day I was playing in the front yard after school when one of my parents’ friends came over. The dog didn’t know he was a friend, and I had to call him away. It was probably the first time I’d seen an adult look scared.”
Mac froze, his eyes distant, and Owen glanced at me before going on. “Later, the friend and my father were playing chess, and I watched the whole time. I think that made the friend almost too nervous to play because that meant the dog was there, also watching him. After that, I asked my father to teach me to play.”
Mac blinked, then whispered, “Owen Palmer?”
“It worked,” I murmured under my breath. I’d been kind of hoping it wouldn’t, in spite of what big-picture implications that might have had.
“Don’t react,” Owen said softly to Mac. “We’re being watched.”
“Watched? By whom? What are you up to, Owen?”
“I’m not up to anything,” Owen protested, visibly fighting to keep the appearance of cool. “I’m as much a victim here as you are.” He quickly described the situation as we understood it, then asked, “What’s the last thing you remember from the real world?”
“You and Katie went into that warehouse, and we followed you. I didn’t think it was anything, but McClusky’s a hard-liner and didn’t want to risk letting anything slide. There was a portal open in there, and then some elves came into the room and grabbed you two. We moved to intervene, and I guess they got us because after that, the next thing I can recall is being here.” He paused, looked at Owen, then at me, and said, “Wait a second, altering consciousness …”
Before Mac got around to connecting the dots on his own, Owen plunged ahead. “Yes, it works on us. Something happened when we destroyed the brooch, and now neither of us is magically immune. In Katie, it’s very likely temporary. She’s already losing her powers, and that’s why the spell seems to have been weaker for her. She fought it, and that allowed her to snap both of us out of it. I’m still not totally certain what it means for me, but I haven’t used magic outside the office since then.”
