Enchanted, Inc

by Shanna Swendson

  Jake pointed toward the whiteboard. "See that?"

  Owen looked at the board, then one corner of his mouth crooked upward. "I wrote that? Well, I know I wouldn't have written that of my own accord." Then he frowned. "That's not even my handwriting." He turned to Jake. "It's yours."

  "You wrote it," I assured him. "I watched you."

  "You did write it," Merlin agreed. "Most interesting."

  Owen took a long swallow of tea. Some color was coming back into his face. If he blushed now, he'd almost look human. "Interesting, but possibly a flaw in the spell."

  He looked up at Jake. "You didn't do that on purpose, did you?"

  Jake shook his head. "No. I didn't specify what handwriting I wanted, just what I wanted you to write."

  "Then he really didn't test this thoroughly. If you were going to do such a thing, that's not the way you'd want it to work."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "It would make this entirely useless for forgery. If you wanted someone to purchase something for you, their signature would be wrong for a check or credit card. You couldn't make someone sign a legal document, because it would be your handwriting if you were the one dictating what to write. If the authorities got a handwriting sample, it would be your handwriting they'd be able to trace, even if you didn't leave your own fingerprints."

  All three of us stared at him. Who would have thought sweet little Owen had a mind devious enough to think so fully about the implications of something like this?

  "Boss, sometimes you scare me," Jake said after a long moment of silence. I was glad he'd said it before I did.

  "Just thinking logically," Owen said with a shrug, but his color returned to normal quite suddenly, which made me think he was probably blushing furiously. "Anyway, that's not the only weakness in the spell. Your victim would certainly know something was wrong, whether or not he remembered what he'd done. It doesn't work as advertised."

  "Can you fight it?" Merlin asked.

  "That, I don't know. We have to do more tests in a controlled environment. I can't think of anything offhand that I know would work. I didn't try to fight it this time, and I'd prefer to wait a while before going through that again." He shuddered, and Merlin patted him on the shoulder.

  "Don't worry about it, son," Merlin said. "This is enough, for now."

  "But it's not." The blush had faded, so Owen looked pale once more, and there was a worried crease between his eyes. "Whether or not it works properly, this spell is very, very dangerous. Used by the wrong person who didn't have a tight control on the amount of power he was applying, this could kill its victim. It's not enough for our people to learn a way of fighting back. We have to stop it. He can't put dangerous, untested things like this out on the market."

  "There should be negative word of mouth from anyone who tried it and didn't get the results they hoped for," I said, even though it didn't sound very encouraging.

  "We'll distribute this to our forces and have them be on the lookout," Merlin said.

  That caught my attention. Forces? What forces? Every time I thought I knew what was going on, I learned one more detail that threw the balance off again. But before I could question that, Merlin gave me a tight smile. "I mean, our sales forces, as well as our monitoring team. We should have an idea if anyone is using this in great numbers." Somehow, I doubted that was what he meant, but I didn't press the point.

  "I should get back to my office," Merlin said. "I'll send down a cordial that should help you recover."

  "Thanks," Owen said. He looked and sounded better every minute, but I still thought he should be at home, in bed, bundled up in blankets and with someone bringing him chicken soup. I wasn't volunteering, no matter how tempting a picture it made.

  I knew I ought to be getting back to my office, too, but I didn't want to. I wanted to know more about what was going on, and I wanted to make sure Owen would be okay. "What you need right now is some chocolate," I said once Merlin had gone. I dug around in my purse and found a square of Dove dark. "Here you go."

  "I don't think this is one of those spells that chocolate is a counter to," he said.

  "Chocolate makes everything better. And you could use the sugar."

  "Then thank you." He unfolded the foil, then popped the chocolate in his mouth.

  "You carry chocolate in your purse?" Jake asked.

  "Hey, not everyone can snap their fingers or wave their hand or do whatever it is you people do when you want a snack. I never go out without an emergency supply of chocolate."

  "That's a very wise policy," Owen said, giving me a smile that made my knees grow weak, no matter how hard I tried to resist him.

  "Are you going to be okay?" I asked him.

  He took a long, deep breath that he let out as a shaky sigh. "I think so. Eventually. I don't think I'll go to the gym tonight, though. I'll just go to bed early and sleep it off."

  "If it makes you feel any better, I have a headache now," Jake said, rubbing his temples. I handed him a square of chocolate.

  "This is unusual, isn't it? You don't normally get all woozy when someone does a spell on you, do you?" I asked.

  "Not our spells," Owen said. "We work very had to ensure there are no ill effects."

  "Yeah, by the time one of our spells gets out there, we've figured out everything that could go wrong," Jake added. "Now, this kind of thing isn't too uncommon for us in this department."

  "Occupational hazard," Owen said dryly, then winced. He looked like he had a headache, too.

  "What would happen to a nonmagical person if someone used this spell on them?" I asked, thinking of my friends.

  "Probably the same, very likely worse effects."

  "I didn't keep him under long at all," Jake said. "But I'm not sure how long anyone could keep someone under, if that short amount of time makes you feel like I do now. It's a big energy drain. We try to make our spells more efficient."

  Still thinking of my friends, I asked, "Is there anything anyone could do to protect themselves?"

  "That's what we're working on," Owen said. He sounded tired, both from what he'd just gone through and what he had ahead of him. "It would be safest to avoid dropping anything or loaning a personal object to anyone else. We don't know how substantial the object needs to be, but obviously, a pen is enough."

  I tried to think of a credible-sounding story I could tell my friends to explain why it wouldn't be a good idea to loan a pen to the stranger in line behind them at the bank.

  Maybe it was time for another good anthrax scare. Or was a new strain of Ebola going around?

  Unfortunately, I doubted they'd believe me unless it showed up in the news. I hoped my friends didn't run into any evil magical people who wanted to use them for nefarious activity.

  "Word will spread if the spell doesn't work as well as it's supposed to, and if it gives you a killer headache when you use it, right?" I asked, hoping they'd reassure me.

  "We can only hope so," Owen said. He sounded not just tired, but defeated.

  "You should go home and get some rest," I told him. "In the meantime, I'd better get back to my office before Gregor wonders where I am."

  "If he's concerned about it, he could find out where you've been easily enough,"

  Owen said. "Don't worry about him."

  "I'm not worried about him. I just don't want to deal with him." I turned to Jake.

  "Make sure he gets home okay."

  "I'll take care of him. C'mon, boss. Let me get you home. I feel responsible."

  "You are responsible." But Owen was grinning at his assistant, so I felt better about his condition. "And I can get home by myself."

  "You shouldn't go on the subway in that condition," Jake insisted. "You're just asking to be mugged."

  "Let them try." There was that edge to his voice again that sent a chill down my spine. I left him and Jake still arguing and headed to Verification.

  The moment I stepped through the door into the office, the green color began t
o rise in Gregor's face. By the time I made it to my desk, he was in full monster mode.

  "Where have you been?" he snarled. "That was a particularly long lunch."

  "I've been with Mr. Mervyn the entire time," I said, draping my jacket over the back of my chair. "A situation came up where he needed my help. You can ask him about it, if you like." I almost surprised myself with my calm tone, but I hadn't survived a year with Mimi without learning how to deal with a boss in the midst of an outburst, and there I didn't have the CEO on my side.

  Gregor changed back into his human form so rapidly he looked like someone had stuck a pin in him and let all the hot air out. Then just as rapidly, he swelled up again.

  The change was so sudden that it was more funny than scary. "And what's this I hear about you making recommendations about my department to Personnel?"

  Oh, that. It crossed my mind that maybe I should have at least pretended to follow the chain of command when I'd suggested having verifiers placed in other offices, but as it had grown out of my comment about having the monster boss in the one place where the employees could see the green skin, I hadn't really thought of talking to Gregor first.

  But I was in no mood to deal with someone desperately trying to hold onto whatever power base he could after what must have been a devastating demotion. "It grew out of a conversation I was having with Rod about other matters," I informed him with as much ice in my voice as I could muster. For a moment I allowed myself a fantasy of suggesting him as a test subject for that new spell.

  "You have a complaint to make, you make it to me."

  I faced him directly and said, "I've only been here three days, and I've seen enough already to know that this has to be the worst-managed department in the entire company. You're treating extremely rare and valuable people like cattle, and it's a miracle you haven't lost your entire staff by now. There, now I've complained to you. And now I'm going to talk to Personnel again."

  Actually, I was going to bitch to Rod about the way he must have broken the news to Gregor to piss him off like that, but Gregor didn't have to know that. He could stew about what I was going to report. I imagined he'd gotten in some trouble for lying about having his anger-management problem under control.

  I gathered my belongings and stalked out of the office in a beautifully dramatic exit, if I do say so myself. I just wished the big-picture stakes weren't too high for me to threaten to quit, but I couldn't get the image of a faint and shaken Owen out of my mind.

  For once, I felt like I had a real mission that I had to help carry out, no matter what the inconvenience to me might be. And if I could do something about that inconvenience, well, so much the better.

  I hoped Rod was ready for Hurricane Katie.

  twelve

  I still had a good head of steam going when I reached the personnel office. "Is Rod in?" I asked before Isabel had a chance to greet me. "He's in a meeting—an employee review up in P and L—but he should be back any minute if you want to have a seat."

  She didn't have to ask me twice. I sank wearily into the overstuffed chair in front of her desk.

  "Can I get you some coffee?" she asked. "How about a margarita?" She grimaced.

  "Ouch. Let me guess, Gregor?" I nodded. "How do people work under him?"

  "Don't ask me, sweetie. I just know there was a resounding sigh of relief when he was reassigned after his 'accident.'" She made air quote marks with her fingers and smirked. Then she perked up. "I can't give you a margarita on company time, but a group of us are getting together for a girls' night out tomorrow. You should come.

  You'd

  get to know some of the other women who work here. Let's face it, there are times when this place is positively medieval when it comes to women in the workplace. It helps for us to all pull together."

  "It sounds like fun," I said. The more people I knew inside the company, the better I could do my job. There was a nagging thought in my head that there was something I was supposed to remember about that night, but I flipped through my day planner and found nothing written in. "Sure, I'll come along. The others won't mind me being there, will they?"

  "They'd love to have you along." She winked at me. "You can tell us if any guys we spot are really cute or just using a cute illusion."

  As if on cue, Rod walked through the door. I hoped he hadn't heard Isabel's last comment. Then I wondered if Isabel even knew about his illusion. I tried to imagine how other people saw him. "Katie!" he greeted me, sounding surprised.

  "Can I have a word with you?"

  "Of course. Come in." I gathered my jacket, briefcase, and purse and followed him into his office. "How's your head?" he asked as I settled into a chair.

  I touched my temple, just then remembering what had happened the day before. Had it only been one day? It was hard to believe. So much had happened to me in such a short span of time. "It's fine. I'd even forgotten about it. It's not all black and blue, is it?"

  "It looks pretty nasty. Want me to mask it for you?"

  "I thought magic didn't work on me."

  "An illusion doesn't have to work on the person who wears it. It's a spell that follows you around and works on other people."

  "My roommates have already seen it, so it would raise questions if I came home with no lump on my head at all, but thanks for the offer."

  "Oh. Good point." He sounded truly disappointed. He probably wanted to show off for me, and here I'd gone and dashed his hopes. "I could just make it look not so bad, so they won't worry too much."

  I couldn't see much harm in that, so I shrugged and said, "Sure, why not?"

  He grinned, a truly delighted smile breaking out across his face in such a way that he looked truly attractive, even with his flaws and lack of grooming. Now I was glad I'd agreed. He rubbed his hands together, then placed one hand just above the knot on my forehead, closed his eyes, and muttered something under his breath. I felt the same charge and sense of pressure in the air that I'd noticed in Owen's lab, but on a much smaller scale. A second later he opened his eyes and backed away, a satisfied smile on his face. "There you go," he said. "I set it so it would wear off as the bruise fades away."

  "Thank you," I said, even though I felt like a character in the fable of the emperor's new clothes. I wouldn't be able to tell whether he'd really done anything, so I just had to go along with it and act like he'd done me a favor.

  He went around his desk, opened a drawer, and brought out a small hand mirror.

  "Here, take a look."

  "Remember, immune. I can't see it."

  He shook his head as he handed the mirror to me. "You can with this. It's an image checker, so you can see how well your illusion works. Even you should be able to see with this."

  I brought the mirror up to my face, and sure enough, the ugly lump on my head had faded to just a bit of blue and yellow, like a bruise that's about to go away. Catching a glimpse of Rod peering over my shoulder, I finally had a chance to see him as others did.

  Johnny Depp wasn't a bad comparison. He wasn't quite as classically handsome as Owen, but he had a slightly dangerous bad-boy allure to him, like he should be wearing a leather jacket and hanging out at a disreputable nightclub, where he'd have to fend off the women throwing themselves at him. He still wasn't someone who would draw my attention for more than a passing, appreciative glance, but I could see where some women might find him intensely attractive, especially when he threw in a love spell.

  Then I turned around, and he was just the Rod I knew, who wouldn't be half bad if he put the same effort into taking care of himself as he put into his illusions.

  "Thanks, it does look better. I bet that comes in really handy for covering zits," I said. Then I couldn't resist asking, "Does this mean you don't see your own illusion when you look in an ordinary mirror?"

  He shook his head, and there was a dejected look in his eyes. "Unfortunately not.

  You can see other people's illusions in a mirror, but not your own. It has something to do wit
h the reflection or refraction of the spell, or something like that. I was never very good with the physics of magic." Now I had to wonder at his self-esteem. How could he go around acting like he knew he was God's gift to women when he saw something else entirely in the mirror? Or did he ever look in the mirror at all? I didn't see how anyone could bear to go through life wearing an entirely different face. It would be weird to me. I'd rather just get my hair done and have plastic surgery, or else find a way to learn to live with myself the way I was. That would be a lot less confusing. Magic might come in handy, but I was starting to see that there were places where it caused more problems than it solved.

  "One of those image checkers might be helpful in my line of work, for comparing what really is there against the illusion," I said, when I realized I'd been silent too long.

  "We've tried, but haven't had much luck getting it to work. There's something about the mirror image that's distorting when it comes to in-depth image versus reality comparisons."

  "Still, I'd like to get one and tinker with it."

  "I'll requisition one for you." He put his mirror back in its drawer and sat behind his desk. "Now, what was it you came to see me about?"

  I'd almost forgotten. What with talking to Isabel about a girls' night out, getting an illusion cast on my bruise, and seeing Rod's illusion, my anger had faded. But as soon as I thought about it, it came rushing back. "It wouldn't hurt for you to use a little discretion when dealing with Gregor. He went all ogre on me, and he was seriously ticked that I'd gone behind his back."

  Rod winced. "Sorry about that. I keep forgetting that he's masking his anger issues, and I can't get a verifier into any meetings I have with him without having to talk to him in from of his staff. In the future I'll borrow a verifier from monitoring. He seemed perfectly fine when I was talking to him."

  "Well, I just got an earful, complete with fangs. I don't want to sound like a diva, but I'm not sure I can keep going back in there. I like it here, really, and I can see where what we're doing—what I'm doing—is important. But I don't want to dread this place."

  "Don't worry, you won't have to go back there—not as a permanent office location.