Much Ado About Magic

by Shanna Swendson

  Idris leaned back in his chair and attempted to cross his legs, but was hampered by the chains on his ankles. He bent over to investigate and fell out of his chair. The chains on his wrists that were bolted to the table kept him suspended, hanging at an odd angle. He twisted to try to pull himself back into his chair and somehow got the chains tangled up. I wasn’t sure how he managed to get into that pretzel-like position. It took real talent to be that inept.

  “Uh, guys, a little help here,” he called from under the table. “Wow, Katie, you really ripped your stockings. And did you know you were bleeding? Well, not anymore. It’s dried. But there’s a scab on your leg where your stockings are torn.”

  Owen jumped out of his seat and went around the table to help Idris. I tensed, suspecting a ruse or a trap, but Idris really was stuck. Owen untangled the chains, then pulled him back into his chair.

  Owen rolled his eyes at me as he came back to his own seat. “Now, as we were asking,” he said with a sigh of waning patience, “who was behind this scheme to put you in business?”

  Still giggling, Idris said, “You two are so great together! And I can’t believe you haven’t thanked me yet.”

  Owen and I glanced at each other. He looked as confused as I felt. “Thanked you for what?” I asked Idris.

  “For getting you two back together. If I hadn’t been teaching Katie’s brother magic—and I didn’t know he was your brother until you told me—then Owen wouldn’t have had to go to Texas, and you two wouldn’t have worked things out.”

  The tips of Owen’s ears turned red, not in the adorable bashful way, but more in a “Mount Vesuvius is about to erupt” way. Owen tended to focus on a single thing to the exclusion of everything else—including food and sleep—if there was something he wanted to accomplish. That made Idris, who couldn’t sustain a single thought for more than a minute, very frustrating for Owen to deal with. “Who. Are. You. Working. For?” he asked through clenched teeth. If it hadn’t been for the magical dampening field, I had a feeling that the room would have been vibrating with barely controlled magic. As it was, I still detected a slight magical tingle.

  Idris flinched. “I told you, I don’t know. I dealt with the money lady. She’s the one who might know who the boss is.”

  We knew who “the money lady” was. The trick was finding a way to capture and question her. She was a highly respected magical banker—not someone you could drag off the street and throw into the backseat of a car. She knew how to work both the magical and mundane systems.

  “Do you know why they set you up in business?” I asked.

  “To make money. Duh.”

  “But have you made money?” Owen asked. “You’ve had a lot of expenses, setting up those retail locations and buying actual advertising space instead of just using illusion. What were sales like?”

  “Those ads were really cool, weren’t they? And they all have my picture, so I’m famous!”

  Before Owen could blow a gasket at yet another digression, I hurried to ask, “But did they work? Did you have a lot of customers?”

  Idris shrugged. “I don’t know. I just developed the spells.” He turned to Owen. “I mean, do you know how much money each of the spells you come up with makes?”

  “I keep spreadsheets,” Owen said dryly. “I also think about what might happen if people actually use the spells.”

  “Back to the why question,” I said, “there has to be a reason for Spellworks beyond the money. If it was just money, it wouldn’t have been this secretive.”

  “I was just trying to come up with spells that MSI didn’t have, and that leaves a pretty limited range, let me tell you,” Idris said with a weary sigh. “I was stuck with the things you aren’t willing to do, and I figured there had to be someone who’d want something like that, but couldn’t find it. And, generally, the people who want something like that aren’t smart enough to come up with it on their own.”

  That almost made sense—which was a change for Idris. It sounded like he didn’t know Spellworks had changed its focus to protective spells. I took another approach. “Surely you’ve tried to guess who was behind it all,” I said, leaning forward and dropping my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I mean, someone as clever as you are must have some idea, even if you don’t know for sure.”

  I expected him to puff his chest out with pride, sit up straighter, or otherwise react to my compliment, but instead he went deathly pale and shrank into his chair. “No, no, I have no idea,” he muttered, shaking his head back and forth.

  “Not even a teeny little guess?”

  “No!” he shouted.

  I glanced at Owen and saw that a little crease had formed between his eyes. He chewed his lower lip for a moment, then said softly, “We can’t protect you from him if we don’t know who it is.” Idris just sat and shuddered. “Or I suppose we could turn you loose since you don’t seem to know anything,” Owen added with a shrug.

  Idris came halfway out of his chair. “No! Not that! I’ve failed. And I don’t think they need me anymore. They’ve got the spells already, and I don’t think it’s about the spells.”

  Owen and I exchanged a glance of triumph. Finally, a slip.

  “What is it about, then?” Owen asked.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “What are you so afraid of?” I asked. “And why did you agree to work for someone who scared you that badly?”

  Idris resumed his usual arrogant posture—part nonchalance and part smug superiority. “Who said I was afraid? You’re the ones who are afraid. You’re afraid of my spells. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it, Palmer? You couldn’t stand the competition when I worked here, so you got rid of me, and now you can’t stand the competition so you try to make it seem like it’s illegal. But the truth is, it’s time we got past the days of having a monopoly in the magical world.”

  “He doesn’t know anything,” I said to Owen.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. This has been a waste of time. Want to get some lunch?”

  “Lunch sounds good.” Without even acknowledging Idris, we got up and left the interrogation chamber. Once we were in the observation room, I glanced at the window and saw that Idris had gone pale and was back to fidgeting.

  Owen also looked at Idris through the window. “I’m starting to suspect that the whole thing—him surrendering and all—was just a ploy to drive me stark, raving mad,” he said. “And I think it’s working. We talked to him for, what, ten minutes? That was enough to make me have violent fantasies—and I’m not a violent person.”

  “He wasn’t that bad,” I said, keeping my voice calm and soothing. A really powerful wizard was the last person you wanted having violent fantasies. “This was actually pretty focused, for him. He might not know as much as we think he does.”

  “I think he knows more than he’s telling.”

  “Maybe he’s stalling for time,” I suggested. “Right now he’s safe. If you got everything you wanted from him, we might quit protecting him. Try letting him stew for a few days. That might panic him into being more cooperative the next time we talk to him.”

  Owen raised an eyebrow. “Have you always been that sneaky?”

  I watched as gargoyle guards unclasped the chains from the table and took Idris away through a hidden door on the other side of the interrogation room. “You know,” I said, musing out loud, “I have a feeling that either he really doesn’t know anything other than that he got himself into something bigger than he was prepared for, or he knows exactly who’s in charge, and he’s more afraid of that person than he is of you or Merlin.”

  Owen nodded somberly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Chapter Three

  After a quick lunch with Owen, I returned to my office to find Perdita out to lunch. I had a feeling this would be the most productive half hour of my day, so I went straight to work, but I’d barely gotten s
tarted when she bounced into my office, breaking my concentration. “Got anything you need me to do?” she asked.

  “Not yet. Could you please hold any calls and barricade the doors for the next couple of hours? I’ve got a meeting to get ready for.”

  “Except for that Owen guy, right?” she asked with a giggle.

  “I doubt he’ll be back today. He knows I’m busy.”

  She must not have caught the “busy” hint, since she plopped into my guest chair and draped one long leg over the arm as she twirled a red ringlet around her finger. “He is so cute. What does he do in R and D?”

  “He runs Theoretical Magic.”

  “Oh, so he’s smart, too. That’s absolutely dreamy. I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”

  “He does.” I tried and failed to hold back a smug smile.

  She groaned. “Of course he does. The good ones are always taken. Do you know who he’s dating?”

  I knew I was probably risking bad karma by enjoying this so much, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d never been on this side of a conversation like this before. “Me,” I said simply.The color fled from her face, which made the sprinkling of freckles on her nose stand out like new copper pennies. “Oh!” she gasped as a hand flew up to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Miss Chandler. I didn’t think—I mean, you don’t seem like—well, he’s so hot, and you’re—oops, I didn’t mean it that way. You’re cute, and you seem nice, and you have to be really smart to have your job, so I’m sure he sees something in you, even if you’re not magical.” Apparently realizing that she was only making matters worse, she shut her mouth and got out of the chair. “I’ll hold your calls and keep out visitors,” she said as she left, shutting the door behind her. I returned to my work with a sigh.

  By the time three o’clock rolled around, I had sketched out a proposed agenda for a customer conference and had a list of questions to ask Hartwell. When I emerged from my office, Perdita was at her desk, filing her nails. She immediately dropped her nail file. “Sorry about that, I just snagged a nail and wanted to fix it before it got worse or caught on something.”

  “That’s okay. I haven’t given you anything to do, so I won’t bust you for not doing it. I’m going to a meeting with Mr. Hartwell.” I started to leave, but turned back. “I don’t suppose you know Mr. Hartwell’s first name? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it used.”

  She swiveled in her desk chair to face the crystal ball communications thingy. After waving her hand over it for a few seconds, her slanted eyebrows shot up even higher than they normally went. “Oh, wow. Yeah, I can see why he goes by Mr. Hartwell,” she said. “I’m not sure I even know how to pronounce that. And I thought Elvish was a tongue-tangler.”

  “Thanks anyway.” I’d never been sure that Hartwell was human. He reminded me of an animated Ken doll, molded from plastic rather than flesh. The apparently impossible first name might have been a clue, but given what I knew of Perdita so far, his name might have been “George.”

  After an hour spent getting the details I needed from Hartwell to plan the event, I said—trying not to hyperventilate at the thought of what I’d have to pull off—“And now I’d better get back to work. I have plenty of it to do.”

  “It’s almost the end of the day,” Hartwell said with a genial plastic grin. “You might as well meet the whole gang you’ll be working with.”

  He came around his desk and took my arm, so I didn’t have a choice but to go with him. All the offices we passed were empty, though, so there wasn’t much of anyone for me to meet. When we got to the other end of the hallway, he threw open a door, and a shout of “Surprise!” erupted from within.

  Hartwell turned to me and said, “Welcome to the department, Katie.” The rest of the sales staff raised their glasses to me, and then they went right back to enjoying the party that was already in progress.

  “Wow, this is, um, well, unexpected,” I said. “You didn’t have to do this, really.”

  “Nonsense!” Hartwell said. “We love any excuse for a party.”

  And it certainly looked like they knew how to party. The conference room had been turned into the setting for a Hawaiian luau. Floating ukeleles played island music, and I could have sworn I heard the sound of the ocean. On the other side of the room, a group of gnomes did the limbo. They had a rather unfair advantage at the game.

  Selwyn Morningbloom, an elf salesman I’d met on my first day at MSI, strolled over to me, wearing a Hawaiian shirt that probably registered on a Geiger counter. “You haven’t been laid, have you?” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  He snapped his fingers, and a fragrant floral garland appeared in his hands. He draped it around my neck. “Lei-ed, get it?” he asked with a wink. “But let me know if you need help with the other version.” Fortunately, he danced away from me before I could spit out the response that was on the tip of my tongue. I never thought I’d see an elf in a Hawaiian shirt doing the hula.

  Perdita bounced over to me, carrying a drink in a coconut shell with a paper umbrella coming out of it. “Hey, boss! You look like you could use a drink!” she said. Then she stumbled and would have spilled the drink all over me if someone hadn’t pulled me aside at that exact moment. I didn’t need to look to see who it was. Only Owen had that kind of timing, and I recognized the feel of his arm around me.

  “Oops!” Perdita said, waving her hand to make the mess on the floor vanish. Then she handed me the coconut shell. “Most of the drink is still in there, though.” She giggled and swayed, and I got the impression she had a head start on me. “Oh, hi, Owen,” she said, giggling again. “Want me to get you a drink?” She hiccupped and giggled. “They’re really good—nice and fruity. You can barely taste the rum.”

  “No thanks, I’m good,” he said.

  One of the sales guys grabbed her arm and pulled her into a dance. I took a tentative sip of the drink and went into a coughing fit. “How much rum would it take for her to taste it? Want a sip?” I held the shell toward Owen.

  “No thanks, I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Nice timing, by the way. What brings you down here?”

  “I was looking for you. Since the day was nearly over I thought I’d see if you were ready to go, and no one answered the phone in your office, so I came down.”

  “And you’re just in time for the party.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound too enthusiastic. I patted him on the arm and looked for a place to stash my coconut shell before the drink ate its way through and got on my skin.

  He looked warily around the room. “Are you ready to go?”

  “I’m the guest of honor. I probably shouldn’t go until I’m sure they don’t have something planned.”

  I had to admit, though, that they probably wouldn’t have noticed if I left. The party was in full swing, nearing Saturday night at the fraternity house levels. I edged my way through the crowd toward Mr. Hartwell. Shouting to make myself heard over the gnome standing on the conference table and singing “Tiny Bubbles” into a karaoke microphone, I said, “This was really nice of y’all to do for me. Thank you.”

  “You’re not leaving already, are you?” Hartwell asked. Somewhere along the way, his suit had been replaced by Hawaiian garb, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was a few shades more tan. That made him look even more like the Malibu Ken I used to have.

  “Do you need me for anything else? I don’t want to run out on my own party, but someone’s waiting for me.”

  He glanced over my shoulder to where Owen hovered in the conference room’s doorway. “Palmer’s welcome to join us. It would do him good to mingle a bit, get to know the rest of the company instead of hiding in his lab like a mad scientist.”

  I’d reached the point that I wanted to be out of there before someone conjured up a whole roast pig, and definitely before someone started a fire dance. “I do have some things to take care of,” I hedged.

  “Okay, then, if you must go, let’s do the presentation now.” He went over
to the gnome singing karaoke, and I made my way back to Owen.

  The music stopped, and Hartwell spoke into the microphone. “As you all know, we’re here to welcome the latest member of our team, Miss Katie Chandler, our new marketing manager.” There was a round of enthusiastic applause. “Katie, why don’t you say a few words?”

  With a helpless glance at Owen, I reluctantly stepped over and took the microphone. “Wow, um, I wasn’t expecting anything like this. Thank you for making me feel welcome, and I look forward to doing whatever I can to help you all be even more successful in your sales efforts. So, um, thanks.”

  Before I could hand back the microphone and get away, music started up again. Voices from the crowd called out, “Sing for us!”

  I shook my head. “Trust me, y’all really don’t want me to do that. I’d break your machine.” They didn’t relent at my warning. I glanced over at Owen, who stood leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest and a big smile on his face. I considered dragging him up there with me, since he actually had a very nice voice and, unlike me, could even find the tune, but putting him in front of people like that would lead to me having to do CPR, and that would spoil the party for everyone.

  I looked around for the screen that had the words to the song, but I couldn’t see anything. It occurred to me that they were using illusion, which meant I couldn’t see it. I definitely didn’t know the song that was playing. In desperation, I said, “Let’s all sing together!” and pointed the microphone at the crowd. Several sales department extroverts stepped forward immediately to sing drunkenly into the microphone. I held the microphone for them and swayed to the music, acting like I was part of the group. By the time the chorus started, they’d taken the microphone from me and were enjoying the full spotlight. I slipped away, grabbing Owen on my way out of the conference room. The entire department kept singing.

  We went back to my office to shut down my computer and get my bag, and then made it unnoticed past the conference room door on our way to the exit. “No wonder we’re losing market share to Spellworks, if that’s how they spend their time,” Owen said as we left the office building.