"Yeah. I'm missing just one thing." He was rummaging through a filing cabinet.
"There it is." He added the file he'd just found to the pile, just then the crystal on his desk glowed and Hughes's voice said, "Mr. Wainwright to see you, sir."
"Thanks, Hughes. I'll be right down."
I went with him to meet Ethan, but before we got to the door of the R&D
department, I stopped him. He must have spent the morning digging through bookshelves and cabinets, for his hair was rumpled and his tie was askew. I straightened his tie, then brushed his hair out of his eyes. "There, that's better," I said.
His ears turned red. "Thanks."
But he was right back to professional cool as he greeted Ethan and escorted him up to R&D. He gavea perfunctory tour of the department on the way back to his office.
Ethan's eyes drank in every detail.
While Owen talked, I compared the two men side by side. Ethan was half a head taller than Owen, and both had slender builds, but Owen's shoulders were a little broader, proportionally speaking. He looked sturdier than Ethan. Owen was all sharp contrasts—nearly black hair, very fair skin, dark blue eyes—while there was something almost blurred about Ethan. His hair was brown, with the slightest hint of silver showing at the temples, and his skin had more color to it than Owen's did. His eyes were a silvery gray that barely showed up as a color. He wouldn't stand out from any crowd unless he tried, while Owen was likely to draw anyone's eye, unless he was making an effort to hide.
Oddly enough, I got the sense that their personalities weren't all that different. They were hitting it off well enough, so well that I wasn't sure Ethan really needed me to be his anchor. Today he was taking the magic in stride.
We got to Owen's office, where Owen gestured us toward the chairs facing his desk.
"Would you like some coffee?"
"Is it going to appear out of thin air?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Brace yourself," I warned. "But you do get used to it."
A mug appeared in Ethan's hand, and he only flinched a little bit.
"Katie?" Owen offered.
"No, thanks. I'm good."
Owen leaned against his desk, facing us. "Well then, I suppose we should get down to business. First, do you have any questions about what you learned yesterday?"
"Maybe one more demonstration, to prove to myself I didn't imagine all this."
"Okay." Owen took a quarter out of his pocket and held it in his right palm. He waved his left hand over it, and the quarter disappeared. Then he opened his left hand to reveal the quarter. "That was sleight of hand." He held his left hand palm up with the quarter in it, then the quarter rose to hover an inch over his palm, flip over, and land back on his palm. "That was magic. Can you tell the difference?"
Ethan frowned. "For one thing, I can't tell how you did it. For another, I think I felt something, like a charge."
Owen nodded. "You did."
"But I'm supposed to be immune to magic."
"You can still feel the energy at work. Everyone does. Most people just write it off as a shiver up their spine or static electricity. It's amazing how good the human brain is at rationalizing things it doesn't understand."
"Yeah, I spent the past year thinking that fairies were making a fashion statement and that elves had seen The Lord of the Rings too many times," I said.
"You know, I think I'm ready to believe you," Ethan said. "So what do you have on our case?"
Owen handed him a file. "This is Phelan Idris's employment record. I was careful to document everything, every assignment, every reprimand, every performance evaluation."
Ethan flipped through the file. "This is very thorough. Did you know he was a troublemaker from the start?"
"I had a feeling. No evidence, though. I just knew that I'd need documentation someday." He scratched his ear and looked embarrassed, although for once he didn't blush. "I have a touch of precognition— not enough to be a real seer, just the occasional flash of insight. This time it proved useful."