I called in and left a hoarse message on the answering system the next morning before the office opened, then stayed in bed while Gemma and Marcia got ready for work. As soon as they were gone, I printed a few copies of my résumé from Marcia’s home computer, put on my interview suit, and put my hair up before taking it back down. They wanted me for my girl-next-door values, so there was no point in giving them a city girl.
This time, I let myself take the subway. I didn’t want to have to carry extra shoes, and I didn’t want to arrive at the interview tired and sweaty. I got off at City Hall and crossed the park, pausing to flip a penny in the fountain for good luck. Then, following Rod’s instructions, I crossed Park Row and headed down a narrow side street that apparently did exist, even if it wasn’t on any map. Again I saw what looked like a medieval castle, with an entrance that looked more like it belonged on a cathedral than on an office building. But the shield on the wall next to the giant wooden doors bore the same logo as Rod’s business card, so I knew this must be the place.
There was a gargoyle perched on the portico that sheltered the door, and I could have sworn I saw it wink at me as I gathered my nerves and stepped toward the door. I reached to push the door open, but before I touched it, it swung open on its own.
The interior was dim, most of the light coming through stained-glass windows set high in the walls. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw a security guard seated at a raised desk in the middle of the lobby. Instead of the polyester rent-a-cop uniforms you usually saw on building security guards, he looked like he was wearing royal livery, with the company logo embroidered on his sleeves at the wrists.
I stepped up to the desk and said, “I’m Kathleen Chandler. I have a ten o’clock appointment with Rodney Gwaltney of Personnel.”
He ran a thumb down a giant book that lay open on his desk and said, “Ah, yes, Miss Chandler. We’ve been expecting you.” He placed his palm on a crystal ball that sat on his desk and said softly, “Rod, your visitor is here.” Now, that was an unusual intercom system. The crystal ball was held by a pewter dragon sculpture that looked like something I’d once seen on sale at a Renaissance festival. The crystal glowed, then the guard looked back at me, smiled, and said, “He’ll be with you in a moment.”
It didn’t take Rod long at all to come down the sweeping staircase at the back of the lobby. “Katie, good to see you,” he said. “Right this way.” He escorted me toward the stairs, saying as he walked, “Unfortunately, we don’t have elevators in this building. I hope you don’t mind the stairs.”
“My apartment’s a walk-up. I think I’ll manage,” I said as I followed him.
If I’d been intrigued before, now I was downright curious. What kind of company would be based in a building like this? It was a pretty safe bet that I could rule out anything in the high-tech industry. I remembered what Owen had said the other day about predating computers. Something financial, maybe? That wouldn’t be out of the ordinary around here. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I muttered under my breath.
“What was that?” Rod asked.
“Nothing. Just feeling a bit like Alice.”
We’d reached the top of the stairs and now faced a pair of doors almost as impressive as the front doors. “Well, Alice, welcome to Wonderland,” he said as the doors swung open.
I’m not sure even Alice would have believed what I saw inside that room.
I felt like I’d stumbled into a Broadway-caliber production of Camelot. This was no conference room. It was a great hall, with soaring, Gothic-arched windows—complete with stained-glass crest insets—along one wall, banners hanging from a wood-beamed ceiling, and a giant round table in the middle of the room.
Seated around that table was an example of just about every weird type of person I’d seen in New York—the kind of weird that others didn’t seem to notice. There were a few women with fairy wings, several people with pointed elf ears, and some tiny gnomes like the figures I’d seen in parks around town and assumed were a bizarre form of animatronic lawn decor. The gnomes sat on pillows piled high in their chairs so they could reach the conference table, while the fairies floated inches above their seats.
Either the company was celebrating Halloween a month early and I’d interrupted an elaborate costume party, or there was something very, very weird going on. I voted for the latter. While I knew it was possible to strap on a pair of wings or add points to your ears with plastic tips, there was no way a normal person could shrink into a gnome, and these were very clearly living beings, not lawn ornaments.
Mixed in with the freak show were a number of people in ordinary business attire. I recognized Owen, looking particularly handsome in a pin-striped navy suit. He flashed me a smile, then ducked his head and blushed furiously.
Rod cleared his throat and gestured toward me with a flourish. “Ladies and gentlebeings, may I present to you Miss Kathleen Chandler. Katie, to her friends.”
I felt about twenty pairs of eyes on me as every person in the room turned to look. Feeling self-conscious, I gave them as big a smile as I could muster and fluttered my fingers at them in an awkward wave. Rod stepped forward to pull a chair out for me. I sat down, then he helped me scoot up to the table before taking the seat next to me.
He clasped his hands together on top of the table, and suddenly he was a polished business executive rather than a sleazy pickup artist. “As you’re all aware,” he began, “we’ve increased our recruitment efforts substantially in recent weeks. Unfortunately, immunes are few and far between, and they don’t last long in this city. The new varieties of antipsychotic drugs aren’t helping matters, because those apparently undo the immunity and make people susceptible again. That reduces the pool even further.”
“We’re working to find ways to counter that,” Owen put in, clearly in business mode, for he spoke strongly and clearly, and his skin tone remained even.
“In the meantime,” Rod continued, “it leaves us at something of a loss. We need immunes now more than ever, and there aren’t as many to be found. That’s what makes Miss Chandler here such a rare find. Not only is she entirely immune—according to every test we’ve put her through—but she seems to have held on well to her sanity and common sense.”
He might have spoken too soon about the sanity. I felt like I’d left it behind somewhere out on the street. I must have looked as confused as I felt, for an elderly man seated across the table from me remarked, “Obviously, she hasn’t yet been briefed.”
Rod snapped to attention, and I assumed this must be the head honcho. He was a distinguished-looking gentleman with silver hair and a neatly trimmed silver beard and mustache. It was hard to tell just how old he was, other than that he was quite old. “No, sir,” Rod stammered, having now lost all pretense of swagger. “I thought it was best to wait until—”
The boss cut him off. “Until she’d lost that precious sanity you were so proud of?” he asked, his voice stern but not unkind. He turned to me. “My dear, I believe we owe you an explanation or two.” His voice was deep and rich, with a hint of roughness, as though he’d recently gone a long time without talking. I thought I detected a trace of an accent, but I couldn’t identify it. When it came to accents, I was only good at figuring out which part of Texas someone came from.
“Do you believe in magic?” he asked. That’s not on the list of likely job interview questions, so I didn’t have an answer for him. It seemed to be a rhetorical question anyway, which was good, because I couldn’t get my chin off the table so I could answer. “What about elves or fairies? Are these real to you, or are they stories?”
I finally got my brain in gear. “Well, up until a few minutes ago, I would have said they weren’t real. But something tells me I would have been wrong. I’m not sure yet about magic.”
The boss looked toward Rod with a smile. “You did say she had common sense.” He turned back to me. “Magic is real. Unfortunately, the very qualities that make you valuable to us make it difficult for us to prove it to yo
u. You see, you are one of the rare human beings without the slightest hint of magic in you.”
That didn’t sound like such a good thing to me. After all, doesn’t everyone wish for a little magic from time to time? That’s the reason Harry Potter books fly off the shelves, little girls try to wiggle their noses after watching Bewitched on TV Land, and audiences clap their hands to cure Tinker Bell, no matter how silly that makes them feel. Being told that magic does exist but that I had no part of it was a huge disappointment, whether or not I was ready to believe they were telling me the truth about magic.
My distress must have shown on my face, for Owen, who was seated at the boss’s right hand, leaned toward me across the table. “That’s actually valuable to us,” he said softly, as though he and I were the only two people in the room. His words had the confident ring of his business persona, but his manner was shy. “Most people have only enough magic in them to make magic work on them. They can be influenced by spells or fooled by illusions. Meanwhile, those of us who are magical, who have the power to do magic for ourselves, also can be influenced by magic.” I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he’d used the words “we” and “us.” Did that mean Owen was a wizard?
“You, however,” he continued, “are of the rare breed who can neither do magic nor be influenced by magic. You see the world as it is. You see through the illusions we use to shield the magic from the rest of the world. Surely you’ve noticed things you can’t explain?”
Oh, boy, had I. I supposed I should have been freaking out about all these revelations, but they came as something of a relief to me. This meant I wasn’t going crazy after all. That, or I’d suffered a total psychotic break. “I’d just always heard New York was kind of weird,” I said at last. “I guess we don’t have magic back in Texas.”
There was laughter around the table. “No, you don’t,” a man about ninety degrees around the table said. “Just a few isolated pockets. For the most part, settlement in that area is too recent to have a fully developed magical culture, except among the native groups.”
That actually made a strange sort of sense. All of this did. “Okay, that explains a lot. But it doesn’t explain who you are or why you need me.”
All heads turned to the big boss. “We are Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc.,” he said. “Magic is our business—and I don’t mean the card tricks and fake wands that your people think of as magic. We create the spells that magical folk use to get through their daily lives.”
This made less sense. I shook my head. “But don’t you people have spell books handed down through generations? Or have I seen too many movies?”
Owen picked up the explanation. I wondered what his job here was. “While it is true that there are some timeless spells, we also need spells that keep up with the pace of modern life. None of the ancient spells passed down from our forefathers would be of much help in summoning a subway train, for example.”
“I thought that’s what you were doing,” I said. “Well, no, I didn’t think you were really calling the train, but I did think that’s what it looked like you were doing.”
He gave me a wry grin. “I didn’t even try to mask that spell—not that it would have mattered to you. Nearly everyone stands on the subway platform, urging a train to come soon. I’m just more effective at it than most people.”
I felt sick and dizzy. Maybe this was one of those dreams you have the night before a big event that you’re anxious about, where you dream the whole event but it’s gone horribly bizarre. At any minute I’d wake up and realize I’d dreamed the wildest job interview ever. I pinched my thigh under the table, but I was still there at the round table in the great hall.
“A lot of what we do also involves illusion to hide the nature of who we are or what we do,” Rod said, apparently not noticing that I was on the verge of a total meltdown. “That’s why you see so many things others don’t. One rule we have about magic is that nonmagical folk can’t see what we’re doing—although that does no good with people like you. Most people see only ordinary humans when they encounter fairies, elves, and other magical creatures. They see what we want them to see when we do magic.”
I nodded like I understood. I did, in a way. In fact, all of this made too much sense, and I knew I shouldn’t be buying such outlandish explanations so easily. I needed proof, but they’d built themselves an easy out if I asked for it. They could just say I couldn’t see what they were doing. Then I looked at the fairies floating above their seats and the gnomes seated on the piles of cushions. I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“It was your immunity to illusion that helped us find you,” Rod said. “Owen noticed you a couple of weeks ago, staring at something you shouldn’t have seen, and reported it to me.” I tried to remember what I might have seen a couple of weeks ago, but that seemed like a century and a half ago now. Then my brain zeroed in on the fact that it was Owen who’d noticed me from afar, and I felt my cheeks grow warm in a blush worthy of Owen himself. I reminded myself that it was my magic immunity Owen had noticed, not my great legs or bouncy, shiny hair, as Rod continued.
“So we began observing you, and you did appear to react to things that should have been veiled to you, but you weren’t extremely obvious about your reactions, so we weren’t sure. We’d noticed that you were most likely to take the subway on Monday mornings, so we set up the test for you. Owen made sure that the train I was already on arrived at the right time, and then we were able to measure your reaction to me.”
If I’d felt sick and dizzy before, I felt worse now. I didn’t like the idea of these freaks spending a week or so watching me. “How was I supposed to react?” I asked.
He gave me a sheepish smile. “What do you see when you look at me?” he asked. All the women in the room leaned forward with great interest, but I couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to phrase it. He must have noticed my discomfort, for he said, “Don’t worry, I know. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Well, um, well, your nose is a little big, and you could use a good skin-care routine,” I said with a wince. The other women in the room stared at him, then looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “But it wasn’t the way you looked that put me off that morning,” I hurried to add. “It was more your personality. You were kind of sleazy, and you acted like you thought you were hot stuff, which is never attractive.”
“All part of the test,” he said, as one of the fairies on the other side of the room rolled her eyes and a business-suited woman snorted.
“So, what was that supposed to prove, that I have good taste in men?”
“What you see isn’t what other people see. Let’s just say that the face I show the world is a far cry from the way you see me. I was also using a fairly intense attraction spell, both in the subway and with your friends. Your reaction to my appearance could have been just your personal preference, but believe me, if you could be influenced in any way by magic, you would have been affected by the attraction spell, no matter what your personal tastes might be.”
I remembered my roommates comparing him to Johnny Depp and wondered if that was the illusion he wore or the effects of his spell. Then I realized that I was taking all of this seriously. I’d yet to see any proof that magic really existed. I’d just seen that some rather unusual people could apparently walk the streets of New York without drawing unwanted attention. “That’s all very interesting,” I said, “but it’s not as effective a proof as you might think. I mean, there have been a lot of men everyone else seems to think are gorgeous while I’m not impressed. Take George Clooney. I don’t find him appealing at all, but everyone gushes over him.”
“Would you like something to drink?” Owen asked in what seemed like a major non sequitur or evasive action, until a small silver tray bearing a crystal goblet of water appeared in front of me with a poof and a flash of light that lingered for a second. I looked up at Owen, then he waved his hand and a red rose appeared on the tray next to the goblet. “Or would yo
u prefer coffee, perhaps?” The goblet disappeared and was replaced by a steaming mug. “Cream or sugar?” he asked with a mischievous smile that was almost as cute as the grin I’d seen Tuesday.
I tried to think of a way this could be a trick. I was sure there was some way he could have staged that. Maybe there was something in the table that could spring up at the touch of the right button. That might explain the initial appearance of the tray when I hadn’t been looking, but I wasn’t sure how the coffee could have just appeared. I tried to keep my hands from trembling as I reached to pick up the coffee mug. I brought it to my lips, but I could tell as it got near that the coffee would be too hot to drink.
“Too hot for you?” Owen asked, then waved his hand, and I felt a puff of cool air sweep past me. Now the coffee was just the right drinking temperature. I would have dropped the mug in shock, but the coffee smelled too good to waste just for the sake of a dramatic gesture.
“I don’t suppose you can conjure up some Valium?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Does this mean you believe us?” the head honcho asked.
I thought about his question. I knew that the more I considered things, the more excuses I could come up with to explain everything away, but I’d reached the point that any explanation I could come up with would only be hideously complicated, something worthy of Agent Scully. I’d spent my college years yelling at the television and complaining about how someone so supposedly smart could be so dense and insist on disregarding evidence that was so obvious.
The only noncomplicated way I could think of to explain people with fairy wings, the unreasonable attraction of every woman in sight to a man I found repulsive at the time, and the sudden appearance of refreshments out of thin air was that I was the victim of the latest television reality show. There could be hidden cameras recording my reactions. But then I remembered that I’d seen weird stuff from the moment I got to New York. They couldn’t have been following me all that time.
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