Real medics in fire department uniforms came in and went to work on the injured man. While they worked, Owen took my arm and walked me away from the shop. As we left the scene, I took off my jacket and cap and Owen made them disappear. “Now do you mind explaining how you dealt with all that?” I asked.

“The hostages will remember the robber shooting himself. The police will find a magically created body. None of them will remember us.”

“That’s too bad,” I said with a sigh.

“What do you mean?”

“No one will remember my kick-butt action heroine moment.”

The strain on his face faded as he grinned. “What did you do? That shield spell dropped like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“I kicked an imaginary gun out of his hands. It was much cooler than it sounds.”

He put his arm around me and pulled me to him in a hug so tight it squeezed the breath out of me. “It sounds cool enough,” he whispered. “Thanks.”

When he released me and I caught my breath, I asked, “Who were those other guys? Did you believe them about just wanting to help?”

“Not really. I’m guessing we had more Spellworks plants, setting up a situation where they could save the day. I wish I could have grabbed one of those bracelets. I bet that would help in figuring out that barrier spell.”

I ducked behind Owen as a TV news crew went by. “Are we still invisible?” I asked.

“Why?”

“My mother would never forgive me if I ended up on TV looking like this.”

Not that I had to worry about that. The Spellworks FBI guys were busy giving interviews and being praised by the hostages they’d supposedly rescued. The reporters didn’t even notice us.

Chapter Seven

The Spellworks guys were splashed all over the front pages of newspapers the next day, those rubber bracelets clearly visible in every photo. They wouldn’t mean anything to the average reader, who’d probably just think they were supporting some form of cancer research, but I had a feeling that anyone who’d gone to a Spellworks shop would know exactly what those bracelets were.

Sure enough, when I headed back to work after the weekend, the ads on the subway were all about how Spellworks spells had saved the day, and I noticed the brightly colored bracelets on a number of wrists. It was infuriating, to say the least. I’d risked my life going in there and distracting the wizard long enough for Owen to break the spell, and here they were claiming to be heroes for rushing in after the spell had been broken. They hadn’t needed the bracelets. I wondered if they even worked, or if they were just stealing the credit. It was a real shame that Owen wasn’t around for me to gripe to. All I could do was fume silently.

I was actually glad to see Perdita already at her desk when I got there, but before I could say anything to her, she looked up at me with enormous eyes and gasped, “Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“About Owen?”

My fraying patience came dangerously close to the breaking point. “What about Owen?”

“It’s all over the network—he tried to rob a jewelry store.”

“What? Where did you hear that?”

She waved a hand at the crystal ball thingy on her desk. “That’s what people are saying. There are pictures of him coming out of the store after some guys from Spellworks stopped the incident.”

“That’s not what happened. I was there. The robber was arrested by the magic police, and Owen was the one who broke the barrier spell the robber was using. You people need to get some real magical journalists so you can get decent reporting. What you’ve got is no better than most of the Internet for spreading rumors.”

“But–but that’s what people are saying, and there are pictures. He’s also been at a lot of those other magical incidents.”

“People are wrong. There are pictures because he was there to break things up—or they were Photoshopped, or whatever it is magical people do. Would he be here at work if he had tried to rob a store?” At least, I assumed he was at work. He’d become scarce right after dropping me off at my new place.

With his usual impeccable timing, Owen stepped through the doorway at just that moment, causing Perdita to yelp in fright. Owen gave me a baffled look, and I sighed heavily in response. “Have you checked the crystal network lately?” I asked.

“No. I’ve been working, and it’s a bunch of rumors anyway. Why?”

Perdita said, “You probably ought to see this.” Then she jumped out of her chair and moved well out of the way so that Owen could go behind her desk and look at the crystal ball. With my magic immunity and inability to do magic, those things were nothing more than paperweights to me.