Enchanted, Inc.

by Shanna Swendson

  As we clung to a pole together on the train, I asked, “Are you a big baseball fan?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call myself a big fan, but I like it. It’s so—” He groped for words. “—normal, and that’s not something I feel often.”

  His eyes looked troubled, and I wondered if magical ability might be as much curse as it was blessing. Hoping to make him smile again, I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, “I guess that’s when you’re not casting spells on the umpires.” It worked. He grinned and turned a rather becoming shade of pink.

  That evening, I hovered around my office a little past quitting time, hoping to causally step out into the hallway just as Owen walked by so we could go home together. Maybe I’d learn another personal detail about him. Unfortunately, he didn’t show. He must have been back to work on finding a counterspell. Reluctantly, I headed home alone.

  When I came aboveground at the Union Square station, I was glad he wasn’t with me. At first I didn’t pay much attention to the guy standing by the station entrance, playing a guitar and singing. Then I heard my name. He was singing Barry Manilow’s “Mandy,” but just saying, “Oh, Katie” over and over again in tune with the music, or rather, out of tune with the music. Afraid of what I’d see, I turned to find Jeff, the Naked Frog Guy, beaming at me. Still strumming and singing, he lowered himself until he was down on one knee. Please, don’t let him propose, I prayed.

  He had a look of utter devotion on his face that reminded me of Cletus, the not so bright but incredibly friendly black Lab we’d had when I was a kid. Unfortunately, Cletus wasn’t too discriminating. He’d give that same look of devotion to family members or burglars, whoever was willing to rub his tummy. I suspected this guy was much the same way. It had to be a result of the spell. I tried to remember how the frog prince spell went in fairy tales. Did my breaking the spell mean he was doomed to be in love with me forever? This would be a whole lot more fun if he just had to grant three wishes for me.

  I figured I had a couple of options. I could ignore him and keep walking, running the risk that he’d follow me. Or I could stop and tell him to give it a break, which might or might not do any good if he was under a spell. I decided that having a short conversation here was better than having my own personal troubadour following me through the streets of New York.

  I got as close to him as I dared, then hissed, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m serenading my maiden fair, the one whose gentle kiss saved my life.” He was back in Shakespearean surfer mode.

  “Well, knock it off. I don’t want to be serenaded.”

  “My humble offering doesn’t please you?”

  “It embarrasses me.” It should have embarrassed him, but once you’ve sat naked in Central Park, everything else is only minor humiliation. Then I got an idea. “You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  Within a heartbeat his guitar was back in its case and he was gone. I should have thought of that sooner. With a great sense of relief, I headed home.

  Thus began my second week at MSI. This week was a little more ordinary than the last one had been—or as ordinary as things were likely to get at a magical company. There weren’t any intruders—at least, not that I spotted—and I wasn’t called upon to help check out any new, potentially dangerous spells. I met with Mr. Hartwell a few times to talk about marketing, but I didn’t see Merlin at all.

  Presumably, Owen and his team were still testing the spell and trying to find a counterspell, for he went back to looking pale and tired most of the time. After another week with apparently no good news, he developed a worried crease in his forehead. We still rode to work together most mornings, but that was all I saw of him.

  I got in the habit of regularly eating lunch with Ari and occasionally with Isabel, and through them I got a better orientation about life in the magical world. During the next couple of weeks I also got a better sense of what my job really was all about. I went on sales calls, always checking for any of Idris’s spells that might have been hidden away and making sure that the shop owners were on board with our marketing messages. I also sat in on a few meetings and fine-tuned my ideas for a more effective way to do real-time, live verification.

  Settling into my job made it easier for me at home. Things went back to normal with my friends, except for the fact that I wasn’t being set up with a different guy every weekend. Gemma swore she was working on Project Boyfriend but hadn’t found the right guy for me yet. I enjoyed the break and the chance to spend more quality time with my friends. Gemma was still dating Philip the Frog, and for her, sticking with the same guy for more than a week meant she was getting serious. My own frog guy, Jeff, hadn’t shown up again, but I worried about what might be in store when he decided he’d been absent long enough for my heart to grow really fond of him.

  By my fourth week on the job, I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. The strange old building felt like home, and there didn’t seem to be anything odd about working with people who had wings. I’d learned to have my hands ready if someone offered me a cup of coffee, and I’d been spoiled by having whatever I wanted for lunch delivered instantly.

  That Thursday morning, I got a verification call from the sales department. I entered the department to find Selwyn, the elf I’d gone with on my first call, waiting for me. “Hey, Katie, babe,” he said, pointing his fingers at me like guns. “Ready for some action? I’ve got a few accounts I need to check on.” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper and added, “Not to mention looking out for a few other things, wink-wink, nudge-nudge.”

  “How are sales?” I asked as we made our way to the building exit.

  “We aren’t seeing a lot of inroads from our so-called competition, but then the competition isn’t selling anything that would affect what we sell. That marketing stuff seems to be working, though. Our sales are up, and that’s made most of our distributors more eager to work with us and less eager to take risks by carrying anything less than kosher.”

  We stepped outside and climbed onto the flying carpet. I now almost felt comfortable riding these things. I felt far more comfortable with anyone but Selwyn driving, however. He was the worst kind of show-off, and I think I only encouraged him by looking nervous.

  “So we’re doing okay?” I asked, trying to mask my flying anxiety.

  “Looks like it. They’ve only caught a few people using those spells, and they don’t appear to be as effective as they’re advertised to be. Word gets around about things like that.” I’d been keeping an eye on the news, looking for signs of inexplicable crime sprees, but it just seemed to be normal New York crime levels. Maybe things weren’t as bad as we’d feared, but then I doubted they’d have brought Merlin back for something so easy to solve.

  We reached our first stop, a music shop in the East Village. I wondered if this was where Jake had bought that spell. It was a seedy place I wouldn’t have gone into by myself, and I doubted they’d sell the kind of mainstream music I liked anyway.

  “This is a surprise inspection, so make it look good,” Selwyn whispered to me as he pushed the door open. “Hey, Marco!” he shouted.

  It took me a few seconds to figure out whether the being that stepped from behind the beaded curtains at the back of the store was human, and even though I guessed he was, I still wasn’t entirely sure. He was skinny enough to have been a male model in the days of heroin chic, and his arms and legs were long in proportion to his body, giving him an insectlike look. He had more metal hanging off his face than I’d had in my mouth with a particularly elaborate set of braces. He didn’t look happy to see Selwyn. “I’m good. Don’t need to restock.”

  Selwyn didn’t let his customer’s dour reaction dim his salesman’s enthusiasm. “Just checking in. I like to keep my finger on the pulse of sales, keep it real down here on the streets.” As Selwyn went into his pitch, I took it as my cue to scan the shelves. In addition to the records and CDs, there was an entire rack of spells. Most were M
SI spells, in their new packaging, but there were a few copies of the spell Jake had found. I caught Selwyn’s eye and nodded.

  He instantly dropped the smooth salesman’s air and grew cold. His eyes looked like chips of flint, and I was glad I wasn’t the one he was mad at. “So, you’re selling that trash,” he said, looming over Marco. If I wasn’t mistaken, he’d actually grown a few inches. Were elves stretchy?

  Marco wasn’t easily intimidated. In fact, he looked bored. “Yeah, so?”

  “So, it violates every ethical standard our people live by.”

  “Hey, man, I don’t make judgments. I just sell what the people want.”

  “And how badly do the people want it?”

  “We’ve sold a few. Not so much lately. Word’s out it doesn’t work so well.”

  “Does that mean you knowingly sell shoddy merchandise?”

  Marco shrugged. “Caveat emptor.”

  “Word gets out you’re selling bad stuff, and soon no one is buying any stuff from you.”

  “I’m just the distributor.”

  “We could find another distributor in this area. You aren’t making a lot of sales for us.”

  “And that means I’m not selling enough to miss you if you go. You’re gonna have to shake things up to make my customers happy. This whole make-the-world-a-better-place routine is stale.”

  “I can think of one very quick, very easy way to improve the world,” Selwyn said, with a layer of iron under his casual tone.

  Marco snorted. “Yeah, like the good guys would do that.”

  “We have before. You’ve been around long enough to remember that. When it all comes down, you’ll want to be on the right side.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but Marco seemed to. He paled, but kept his defiant stance.

  Selwyn gestured to me, and we left the store. “Fortunately, he’s in the minority,” he said as we climbed back on the flying carpet. “We’ll need to keep an eye on shops like that. It looks like that’s the primary distribution point.”

  “But it’s good to hear sales aren’t going so well.”

  “Just as long as he doesn’t fix the bugs. If he gets it to work, we’re in trouble.”

  I got to work the next morning—after a rare subway ride without Owen at my side—to find an e-mail notifying me of a meeting in Merlin’s office. I hurried upstairs. Owen was already there, looking shattered and uncharacteristically unkempt, his clothes wrinkled, his hair mussed, and a dark shadow on his jaw. I thought I recognized his tie from the day before. In a strange, almost disturbing way, that look was very appealing on him. Gemma needed to find me a prospect soon to jolt me out of this crazy crush.

  “So, that’s why you weren’t on the subway,” I remarked, trying not to pant or drool as I took a seat at Merlin’s conference table.

  He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I was here all night, working on a counterspell.”

  Mr. Hartwell and Gregor then joined us, along with a gnome I didn’t recognize. He was introduced to me as Dortmund, head of Corporate Accounting.

  Merlin had just taken his seat at the table when a plump woman bustled in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Guess I should have seen that delay coming, huh?” She turned to me and said, “Katie, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Minerva Felps, head of P and L.”

  She wasn’t what I expected of a seer. I was thinking more of a mysterious Gypsy woman like the fortune-teller at the county fair, or maybe someone ethereal and vague. But she looked more like a busybody aunt who made it a point to know everyone’s business. Then again, I suppose that was basically her job.

  Merlin called the meeting to order. He seemed to fit in this place and time better than the last time I’d seen him. He was losing a little of his lost quality. “Given that it’s been a month since we started more specifically addressing the possible threat from our new competition, I felt it was an opportune time to regroup and see where we stand. Mr. Hartwell?”

  “Sales are doing well, better than before we started Miss Chandler’s marketing campaign. I don’t know how it’s affecting our competition’s sales, but our bottom line is only being affected in a good way. We’ve seen a few of the competing products in stores where we have accounts, but none in any of our key accounts. They’re mostly in out-of-the-way places that most proper magic folk wouldn’t frequent.”

  “We’re getting positive feedback from the store owners,” I added. “Whether or not it directly addresses the threat, it might be good to keep the marketing campaign going. It certainly seems to have helped keep those spells out of the mainstream.”

  Owen massaged his temples with his thumbs. He looked so tired he didn’t even blush before speaking. “What helps us there is that it isn’t a very good spell. It’s a big energy drain, and it doesn’t work as well as you’d expect from a commercially produced spell. He was in a rush to get something into the market. But I know him well enough to know he won’t stop there. He’ll get it worked out, and then we’ll have problems.”

  “How are you doing on the counterspell?” Merlin asked.

  “I’ve got a counterspell for this one, as of about five this morning. I’ll just have to get it to Practical Magic for distribution. But it’s only good until he gets the problems corrected. Then I’ll have to start all over again.” He didn’t sound like he looked forward to that.

  “Is there any insight from Prophets and Lost?”

  Minerva shook her head. “Sorry, but this one’s a big blur. There aren’t any signs at all, let alone clear ones. Anything could happen. Now, we’re not picking up on any major disasters, and civilization does seem to be more or less intact for the foreseeable future, so I doubt we’ve got a major apocalypse on our hands that will change life as we know it. But I can’t tell if the good guys or the bad guys are going to win this one.” She shrugged. “That makes us about as useless as a screen door on a submarine, but there you go.”

  Merlin laced his fingers together on top of the table. “There we have it. We seem to have stood our ground well enough to avert an immediate crisis, but the danger certainly hasn’t passed. Mr. Palmer, could you anticipate what might be done to correct the spell?”

  “I could try to correct it myself. I doubt he’d take a vastly different approach than I would. We were trained by the same people, after all. I’m just not sure I’m comfortable doing so. It gets into an area of magic I’d rather not delve into very deeply.” If I wasn’t mistaken, there was fear in his eyes, but he quickly cast his gaze down to the table, so I couldn’t see for sure.

  Merlin’s eyes grew gentle. “Perhaps you can set this task for your staff, then supervise them closely.”

  Owen nodded without saying anything or even looking up. I remembered Rod mentioning that they were sometimes concerned about what Owen was capable of. It looked like Owen was concerned as well. Did that mean he was afraid he’d become evil if he played with darker magic? I couldn’t imagine him being capable of harming anyone, but there was a lot I didn’t know about magic or about Owen. I reminded myself that I’d known him for more than a month now, and all I knew about him as a person was that he liked baseball.

  “What can Sales do to anticipate a future crisis?” Merlin asked.

  Mr. Hartwell looked grim. “We’re continuing to put pressure on store owners, make them aware of the quality differences, but we can’t keep singing that tune if he fixes the spell. Meanwhile, there’s the risk they’ll call our bluff if we threaten to pull out of their stores. As long as we have spells in those stores, we have an excuse to investigate them. Once we pull out, we won’t be able to track what he’s selling. At least now we know where to go to get our hands on anything the moment it hits the market.”

  Merlin turned to Dortmund, the accounting gnome. “This may require additional budget. How are we set for funding?”

  “We’ve got plenty of gold reserves. Our stocks hadn’t been doing so well, but thanks to a hot tip from Minerva’s folks, we’re on an upswing. Bottom line is, we’ve got the money t
o do what we need to do. If we don’t spend it now, it may not matter much in the future. Like Hartwell said, sales are good. We’re not hurting.”

  “Very well, then. It looks as though we’re as prepared as we’re likely to be.”

  I noticed then that he hadn’t yet called on Gregor. I’d thought he must be there because of some verification project, like maybe to report on how things were going with using verifiers to sniff out intruders. But Merlin hadn’t asked him anything, and Gregor hadn’t volunteered anything. Now I wondered why he was even at this meeting. I certainly hadn’t missed seeing his shiny red face—or his green, scaly one, either.

  Merlin glanced around the table, then said, “There’s one more item for today’s agenda. As you all know, I’ve yet to select an assistant. I wanted the chance to get to know as many of the employees as possible before making my choice. With the crisis at hand, I feel it is crucial for me to have someone working with me whom I can trust utterly. And for that reason, I’ve selected Miss Chandler to be my executive assistant.”

  I had to give my head a little shake to clear it, just to make sure I’d heard what I thought I had. That was the job Kim had been counting on.

  Merlin continued speaking. “Of course, that’s if Miss Chandler is interested in the job.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.” Although I hadn’t even considered the possibility of getting that job, I didn’t hesitate to take it. I knew from my last job that the top executives’ assistants were the ones who really held the power in the company. This was definitely a vote of confidence in me.

  He smiled. “Good. I know I’m taking one of Gregor’s staff away from him, but I feel that my having verification abilities at hand is extremely important at this time. And Miss Chandler will be able to continue her other corporate functions as well. She will continue to head our marketing efforts, which have been so successful.”