Once Upon Stilettos

by Shanna Swendson

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “I have no idea. I hate to make accusations at this point, with so little evidence. We just need to be aware that something is going on.”

  “It would explain how Idris seems to be right in step with us, like him coming out with a new spell as soon as you found the counterspell for the last one.”

  “And since we beat him at that, I can imagine he’s keeping track of everything we do. That’s probably what he was talking about when he said I’d know what he was up to soon enough.”

  “How’d you do it?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  “Do what?”

  “Booby-trap your desk.”

  A faint pink stain appeared on his cheeks. It made him look even cuter than usual. “I set up some film canisters in the drawer. When I open the drawer, I use a stasis spell to keep them in place. But if someone didn’t know they were there and opened the drawer normally, they’d fall over. This morning they’d been disturbed. I also put a single strand of hair on each page, and they were all gone.”

  “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  He turned even pinker. “I read it in a book.”

  I was about to quiz him on what kind of book—the personal details I knew about him were depressingly few, and despite my best efforts not to, I couldn’t help searching for more—when Merlin’s office door opened and Merlin escorted his guest to the spiraling escalator that led down to the lobby. Merlin looked as unruffled as ever. The CEO of Amalgamated Neuromancy looked like he’d survived a hurricane—barely.

  “I take it that went well,” I remarked as Merlin approached the desk.

  “Quite. He was most cooperative. Now, Mr. Palmer, were you here to see me?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s rather urgent.”

  “Then come on, son. Let’s talk. I could do with a cup of tea.”

  They disappeared into Merlin’s office and I tried to get back to work, but I was troubled by what Owen had told me. We’d had intruders before—I’d caught one myself. The thought of one of our employees working against us was even more disturbing. What MSI stood for and what Idris stood for were polar opposites. We were all about finding safe ways for magical people to use their powers without revealing themselves to the rest of the world. Idris was all about using that power for domination. Had one of his henchmen managed to get a job here, or had someone at MSI gone to work for him?

  About fifteen minutes later, Merlin’s door opened and Owen came out. He still looked troubled, but he flashed me a smile that would have made me lose my balance if I hadn’t been sitting down. “I’ll see you later,” he told me as he left.

  Then Merlin appeared in his doorway. “Katie, may I see you for a moment?”

  I got up and headed to Merlin’s office, a flutter of nervousness forming in my belly. He didn’t suspect me, did he? I’d been instrumental in stopping Idris so far, even if I said so myself, and since I was nonmagical, I had no motivation for helping Idris use nonmagical people for his own ends.

  “Please, have a seat,” Merlin said when I entered his office. He remained standing as I perched on the edge of the sofa. “Mr. Palmer briefed you on the situation, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Do you really think we have a spy?”

  “It does seem likely.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “Not yet. I will talk to Prophets and Lost and see if they have any insight, but it’s very likely that this person would be veiled to their vision. No, this will require old-fashioned detective work to find the culprit.” He then looked at me long and hard, to the point that I felt like his eyes were boring holes in me. “Katie, I have an assignment for you.”

  I had a feeling I knew what he was going to say, but rather than make a fool of myself by jumping to an assumption, I asked anyway. “An assignment?”

  “I’d like you to help me find our spy.”

  “Me? But I’m not even magical. How am I supposed to track this person down?”

  “Any magic a spy uses to conceal his activities will be useless against you. That makes you uniquely qualified for this project.”

  “And I’m sure he’ll know that.”

  He gave me a sly smile. “Which is why I must ask you to tell no one about this assignment or otherwise give any indication of your task.”

  I stood up. Pacing seemed like a good way to work off the tension so I wouldn’t freak out in front of my boss. “You want me to figure out who our spy is without anyone figuring out what I’m doing? That would make me a spy, and I don’t know how to be a spy.” Everything I knew about spying I’d learned from watching Alias, and I doubted I could solve this by putting on sexy lingerie and a fake accent. Sure, I’d had a few bits of luck that made me look good, like catching an intruder trying to sneak into R&D under cover of invisibility, but that had more to do with being in the right place at the right time with my magical immunity. It wasn’t like I’d been out looking for invisible intruders. In fact, I was pretty sure if I’d gone looking for an intruder, I wouldn’t have found anything.

  I was clueless about surveillance, interrogation, and all that, which seemed pretty crucial for catching a corporate mole. I wasn’t devious enough myself to think a step ahead of someone devious enough to do something like spy for the enemy without them figuring out what I was up to. It took all my wits just to keep the secret of my job from my roommates. I wasn’t sure I could add another layer to all the secrets I had to keep.

  “But you are discerning. You have a way of seeing the truth, magical or otherwise. And I trust you completely. It would hardly do for me to assign someone who might be the spy to help find the spy, now, would it?”

  “That does make sense,” I admitted. “But the fact that you trust me doesn’t mean I’ll actually be any good at this.”

  “Who else would you have me choose for this task?”

  “Well, there’s Sam and his security team. Isn’t this their job?”

  “And everyone knows it’s their job. People behave differently when they know they’re being investigated. Mr. Palmer, as the spy’s apparent target, isn’t in the best position to investigate, though he may be helpful to you.”

  I knew when I’d been beaten. I could keep arguing about this all day or give in now, all with the same outcome. I stopped pacing and folded my arms across my chest. “Do you have any suspects in mind?”

  “Everyone in this company is a potential suspect until you have evidence to eliminate them.”

  “Even you?”

  “If you find evidence implicating me, I would prefer that you not dismiss it without investigating further.”

  I gulped. I wasn’t sure how many employees there were in total at MSI, and I doubted I’d met even half of them. My job as the CEO’s assistant and head of our marketing efforts gave me some excuse for visiting other departments, but looking casual would be a challenge.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “I guess I’d better get to work.”

  “Good luck. Oh, and Miss Chandler? I’d prefer to keep the presence of the spy a secret for the time being. We may retain some advantage if this person doesn’t know he or she has been discovered.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  As I returned to Trix’s desk, I mused that Merlin must not be aware of the company grapevine. Someone had to have noticed Owen’s angry stalk from his office. That would then be discussed and analyzed, and the conclusion spread around the entire company. I figured I’d be hearing about it by quitting time.

  It turned out that I’d underestimated the grapevine.

  I’d barely seated myself in Trix’s chair—which wasn’t too comfortable for someone who wasn’t hovering above it—when a voice startled me. “Lunch?” it asked.

  I looked up to see Ari. “Sure. Just a sec. I’d better check the boss’s calendar.”

  “Ah, they’ve got you filling in for Trix, huh?”

  “Yeah. Do you know what’s wrong with her or how she’s doing?”

  “Broken
heart,” she said, rolling her eyes. “She and that Pippin guy, the sprite park ranger, had a falling-out over the weekend. I imagine they’ll patch things up by next weekend, but for now she’s wallowing in her misery and said her eyes were too red and puffy for her to come to work.”

  “Poor thing. I probably ought to check on her.”

  “She’ll be fine. I’m not sure she wants to talk about it yet. When she comes back to work, she’ll want to discuss it in great detail, so you’d better save it for then.”

  “It looks like he doesn’t have anything major scheduled for a while, so I can probably get away,” I said, getting up. “I’ll tell him I’m stepping out. Will I need my coat?”

  “Nah, we’ve snagged a conference room and we can zap you something.”

  I stuck my head in Merlin’s open door and said, “I’ll be at lunch for a while. Is that okay?”

  He looked up from the book he was reading—Who Moved My Cheese?, and if anyone needed a guide on coping with major changes, it would be Merlin—and said, “I think that sounds like a very good idea. You’re lunching with other employees, I presume?”

  “Yes, I am.” It dawned on me that with this assignment, I’d never be truly off-duty. I’d have to keep my eyes and ears open even while I had lunch with my friends.

  We met up with another member of our group, Isabel, the Personnel secretary, in an empty conference room. Isabel greeted me with a huge hug, like she hadn’t seen me in months. The hug nearly cut off my breathing and circulation. Isabel was quite large—as in probably part giant. “What’ll you have for lunch, Katie?” she asked.

  “The usual,” I said, taking a seat.

  There was a zapping sound and a sandwich, a small bag of chips, and a cup full of what I knew would be Diet Dr Pepper appeared on the table in front of me. Two more zaps, and the others had created their own lunches.

  There were a few perks to working for a magical company. Getting lunch to order was one of them. When someone at MSI said they were zapping some lunch, they weren’t talking about a microwave.

  I steeled myself to be quizzed about my date with Ethan, but Ari surprised me by asking, “What was Owen’s deal this morning? He went tearing out of R and D like there was a crisis. I can only assume he was heading upstairs.”

  And thus the rumor mill began turning. I knew his actions wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

  I gave what I hoped looked like a casual shrug. “Who knows? He just wanted to see the boss. You know Owen. He probably translated something exciting and had to share with the one other person in the company who would be as excited as he was.”

  Ari shook her head. “No, it wasn’t his ‘Eureka’ look. He looked upset. But he did go talk to the boss?”

  Damn. I’d confirmed that. As vague as I was, I hadn’t been vague enough. “Yeah, but he seemed okay when he left.”

  “Interesting,” Ari said, then took a bite of her sandwich.

  “You guys see all the good stuff,” Isabel said with a sigh. “Nothing interesting ever happens in Personnel.” That “nothing interesting” meant Isabel had plenty of time to talk to people during the day, and as the one who handled all the employment paperwork, she knew everyone in the entire company. Now that she knew about Owen’s attack of alarm that morning, I had no doubt that it would already be an old story by the end of the day.

  I made a mental note to try talking to Owen about being a little more discreet, but the problem was that he so seldom made any kind of display about anything, the least little show of emotion was enough to set tongues wagging. If he’d been frowning slightly and walking a little faster than normal, his co-workers would have noticed it.

  “And how was your big date?” Isabel asked.

  “It was nice. We went to a wine dinner. Very classy.” I left out the part about foiling a magical scheme. That would raise the juice level a bit too much. An uneventful date was less likely to be the lead story on the office grapevine.

  “Somebody likes you,” Ari singsonged. “Those things aren’t cheap. He shelled out mucho bucks for that date.”

  I supposed that was true, but I tried not to rate dates based on how expensive they were. “It was very nice of him, then,” I said neutrally before taking a bite of my sandwich.

  Ari then spent the rest of the lunch hour regaling us with stories about her weekend. I could hardly believe she’d managed to fit in her visit to Bloomingdale’s to interrupt my shopping amid all that activity, but I didn’t have Ari’s energy level.

  While she talked, I tried to evaluate my friends as possible suspects. I hated thinking of them that way, but I knew I’d feel better if I could eliminate them from the list. Ari worked in R&D, but in the practical magic division rather than in theoretical magic with Owen, which still gave her access to the entire secured department. I got the impression that she had a thing for Owen, but he showed no signs of returning her interest. She had a devious streak and was the person to go to if you wanted a creative revenge plan against a cheating boyfriend. If she’d made a pass at Owen and he’d rejected her or—more likely—hadn’t even noticed, there was no telling what she might do to get back at him.

  But she was also a little on the flighty side—and not just because of the wings. I couldn’t imagine her being driven enough to care about corporate espionage. Work to her was a way to earn money for going out and having a good time. She lacked the motivation and determination for spying. The only way I could imagine her breaking into Owen’s office was if she was looking for personal information or blackmail material to force him to ask her out. I couldn’t eliminate her entirely as a suspect, but she wasn’t high on my list.

  Isabel was at the same time the perfect spy and the worst possible spy. She knew everyone in the company and everything that happened there, but she also couldn’t resist telling everyone everything she knew. If she’d been the spy, she’d have already let it slip to at least one person that she’d been in Owen’s office because she’d have to tell all about anything else interesting she found while she was spying. She was also the size of a pro-football linebacker, so she wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

  As Isabel zapped the remaining food wrappers and cups out of existence, I reflected that musing wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I had to find a reason to get out and about within the company to figure out what was going on, or my suspicions were likely to be based strictly on my personal feelings.

  I’d barely made it back to my desk when Rod Gwaltney, the head of Personnel and Owen’s lifelong best friend, stepped off the escalator and approached the desk, a stack of papers in his arms. “Hi!” I greeted him. “You’re a few minutes early, but I can see if he’s ready.”

  He flopped into the chair in front of Trix’s desk and draped one leg casually over the arm. “I don’t mind waiting. It gives us a chance to chat.”

  “Chat about what?”

  “Just wanted to see if you’d heard anything interesting. Word has it that Owen’s desk was broken into over the weekend.”

  Seriously, the CIA should have been recruiting at MSI. Finding one spy in a company full of them was going to be nearly impossible. Guiltily, I tried to measure Rod as a suspect. Deception was a way of life for him, given that he constantly wore an illusion that made him look outrageously handsome to those who were affected by magic while he put no effort into his real appearance. I generally considered that a harmless quirk, though. He might know everyone in the company, but he didn’t have full access. Then again, that lack of access often irked him, and he’d shown signs of being jealous of Owen.

  “Where’d you hear that?” I asked casually, with what I hoped was the right hint of curiosity. Whether or not he was a suspect, he was a good source of company information.

  He waved a hand. “Oh, around.”

  “Did they steal anything?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you.” He gave me a grin that made him look appealing in spite of his greasy hair, bad skin, and unfortunate features. If he’d do som
ething about his hair and skin and smile like that more often, he might be even more successful with women with his real face than he was with the handsome illusion and attraction spells he used. Or maybe not. He averaged about three dates per weekend; it would be hard to top that. I knew I’d find him more appealing without the façade, even if I only saw the real Rod no matter what he did. As long as I knew he was hiding himself, I had a hard time taking him seriously as a man. His spectacular social life was a sign that I was one of very few women who remained immune to his magic.

  “Why would I know anything about someone breaking into Owen’s office?” I asked with my own attempt at an innocence illusion. Since I didn’t have access to magic, I suspected it wasn’t very convincing.

  “Because I heard he came to talk to the boss about it, which means he’d have talked to you.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have anything to tell you. Maybe you should ask him.”

  He laughed. “We are talking about the same Owen here, right? You can’t get anything out of him that he doesn’t want to give. He only clams up tighter. I’ve known him since he was four, and he’s always been like that. All I know is that he’s put some even stronger wards around his office. Nobody gets in there without being cleared. Next thing you know, he’ll be taking DNA samples from anyone who enters.”

  “Seems like a reasonable precaution for these times.”

  He leaned forward, putting his elbows on Trix’s desk and giving me a puppy-dog-eye kind of look that I was sure was particularly effective when combined with his favorite attraction spell. “Come on, Katie, surely you know something. Owen sometimes even talks to you, which is more than anyone else gets from him.”

  Fortunately for me and unfortunately for him, I was immune to both the spell and the puppy-dog eyes. “Sorry,” I said with a shrug.

  He turned off the charm like it came with a switch. “Oh well, I thought it was worth a shot.”

  “Why are you so worried about this?” I asked him.

  “I guess it’s old instincts kicking in. I always tried to look after Owen when we were kids, and I’m still doing it even though he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself. To be honest, he was when he was a kid, too. Bigger kids only messed with him once.”