Rose Arms says his name is Merlin. That can’t be his real name.
He’s the Redacted City magic consultant. He said that he can’t actually do magic, he just studies it, but the sigils he wrote all over the walls blocked me from getting away so what else do you call it besides magic? He doesn’t look old enough to be a professor to me but he says that he is. He bragged about getting the Ormwood Award for Excellence in Human Sciences three times.
When I told him I didn’t know what that was he laughed like it was the best joke he ever heard.
I’ve never experienced it myself but wrestlers can attract some real kooks. Not just the break into your house and try and kidnap you kooks, but also “normal” freaks. Lady wrestlers in particular. There’s some weird shit going on out there with body pillows.
Merlin is like that only for magic. His barrage of questions was overwhelming. The swing from no one ever believing in magic to be being confronted with a magic groupie was overwhelming. He said that he had never been this close to a “practitioner of the arts” before. He reached out like he was going to pet me.
The Investors stopped him from fanboying out too much more and we got down to business. They had me cast my finding spell on Colt Python, on Kaisey, on Darla, and a bunch of other people I didn’t know. It worked on Darla this time. Merlin was overjoyed by that. He told me the room was set up to boost my signal strength but he was talking too fast for me to understand how.
“Be ready with counterspells” Old Man DA told me.
I said that I didn’t know any counterspells but no one was paying attention to me anymore. The headset guys were coordinating with law enforcement, or guys with guns at least, appearing on their laptops organizing a simultaneous strike on all the people I found for them.
Darla’s whole operation was rolled up in less than ten minutes. It was nice to have the law on my side for a change.
Also terrifying.
