He sent the three attackers flying away from him with an impatient wave of his hand and paused to wipe his forehead with his sleeve as the pixies pounced. Moments later, a few more students joined the fight. These were the more determined ones who hadn’t yet been scared off or defeated. I hated that Owen had to face them now, when he was tired. Then again, I supposed they were tired, too.
I took his hand as the students surrounded us. He gave me a nod of thanks, and then our palms grew warm where they met. The extra power allowed him to dispatch those guys easily. He was no longer trying to put on a show. He was merely getting them out of his way as quickly as possible. These guys slumped to the ground, sound asleep. They didn’t even stir when the pixies picked through their pockets.
Owen released my hand. “Thanks. That helped.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m tired, but I don’t feel like I’m in any danger.”
There was a burst of light and sound from the other side of the park, where Merlin, Rod, and Granny were. It looked like the fighting had intensified over there, but I couldn’t see any of the students.
Almost all of them were out of the fight by now. Next to me, Owen tensed and took a step back toward the trees. “What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” He threw a fireball in the air, and it exploded like a firework, lighting the whole park. “What do you see?” he asked.
A figure was walking through the park. Merlin, Granny, and Rod didn’t seem to see it at all. I could, though. It looked like Idris had finally finished his banana split and shown up. “It’s Idris,” I said.
He walked straight toward us, a smug grin on his face. “You either need to find better students, or they need better teachers,” Owen said when I nudged him to let him know that Idris was near.
“Still leaning on the girlfriend, huh, Owen?” Idris said.
“Better than tricking flunkies into doing what I can’t,” Owen replied. I took his response to mean that Idris had unveiled himself to Owen. “Give it up, why don’t you? Your army is out of it, and the power lines here aren’t strong enough for you to do much against me.”
“Under normal circumstances, maybe. But who said these are normal circumstances?” Idris tugged on a leather thong around his neck and pulled out the necklace Nita had noticed in her photograph. At our look of surprise, he said, “What? You thought I hadn’t already made one for myself?”
I should have anticipated he’d do something like that. Of course Idris would have made one for himself first and kept it on, but I wasn’t sure what we could have done about it, short of having Teddy strip him of anything that looked suspicious while Ramesh covered him with his shotgun and Nita held her baseball bat over his head. I hadn’t even known that there were magical magnifiers back when I first saw that photo of Idris, though that did explain how he’d been able to teleport. I supposed we could have had a contingency plan in place, but that was all twenty-twenty hindsight when a fresh Idris faced us, wearing that necklace, and Owen was so visibly exhausted.
I grabbed Owen’s hand and nodded to him. It was just in time as Idris sent a wave of power at us that gave me goose bumps. Our joined hands went white-hot as Owen deflected it, and while Idris had to react to his own spell coming back to him, Owen took a step back, even closer to the trees around the creek bed. I had a feeling he was either getting closer to our allies, or he was getting closer to one of those necklaces.
A wall of magical fire rushed at us, and Owen doused it. Having him draw power from me had been pleasant—even kind of sexy—before, but this bordered on painful, the difference between a nice, hot bath and a tub of scalding water. I also felt the drain of energy. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
“Are you still relying on your girlfriend to get you out of tight spots?” Idris asked with a sneer. Owen didn’t waste his breath replying. Instead, he waved his hand and the earth under Idris’s feet shook, forcing him to jump backward.
While they fought, I looked frantically around for our allies. You’d think that the size of the battle they were fighting would have drawn some attention. We should have had spectators by now, but in the fading light of Owen’s fireball, I saw the others still clustered around the entrance, watching the student wizards, who were lined up like prisoners. They didn’t seem to realize what was going on.
That figured. Idris must have veiled us from the others. That was the only way he’d have been willing to take Owen on. It also explained how he’d reached us in spite of walking right past Rod and Merlin.
