“I guess those are two guys we can cross off our lists of Mr. Right potentials,” Marcia said, interrupting my musings.
“How many million does that leave in the city?”
“It can’t be a million, not if we exclude men who are gay, married, or seriously involved, or that we’ve gone out with before. We’ve got to be down to the thousands.”
I had another category to add to that: men who weren’t quite human, and I wasn’t sure where men who could make things appear and disappear at will fit on the scale of eligibility. I was pretty sure that apple pie and picket fences weren’t what they were looking for in a woman. If my degree of ordinary was boring for normal men, I’d send magical men straight into a coma.
Tuesday morning came a lot more quickly than I expected. After dressing in my second-best suit, I took the subway to work, and I was relieved to see Owen standing on the platform at the Union Square station. It meant I wouldn’t have to walk into the building by myself. “Hi there!” I greeted him.
He turned his usual shade of pink before responding. “Good morning, Katie. I’m glad you’re joining us.”
“So am I. I’m excited about it. And a little nervous.” I figured that he, of all people, should be able to understand some nervousness about a new situation.
He gave me one of his mischievous grins, and my knees went just a bit weak. “Want to get to work early?”
“Oh, why not?”
Still smiling, he did something with his left hand, and sure enough, a train hurtled out of the tunnel to stop in front of us. “After you,” he said with a gallant gesture. There weren’t any empty seats, but we found an empty pole to cling to. “Want to make it an express trip?” he whispered to me.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I whispered back. “Let’s not inconvenience everyone else.”
He turned crimson. “I did summon another train right behind ours so they weren’t inconvenienced that much.”
“That was awfully sweet of you.” I wondered what he’d do if I kissed him on the cheek, but I was rusty on CPR, and I doubted it would be an appropriate way to interact with a coworker even if he didn’t have a heart attack.
It was bad enough that at every station, the momentum from the train stopping threw me up against him. He might not be a big man, but he was solid and sturdy. “Now I remember why I usually walk to and from work,” I said after one particularly abrupt stop. “It’s much less violent.”
We finally reached the City Hall station and left the train together. Owen wasn’t particularly tall, but he walked quickly enough that I had to work to keep up with him as he went through the park. He crossed Park Row against the light and away from the crosswalk, but there wasn’t any traffic at the time. I wondered if that was a fluke or something he did. In spite of all his bashfulness, I began to get the impression that he was a very powerful person who cleared a path for himself through all of life’s little inconveniences without even a second thought. The contrast was disconcerting.
Summoning subway cars and making coffee appear out of thin air seemed rather benign, almost like the parlor tricks one of my uncles liked to do at family gatherings, only much more useful. But this was a business, and apparently a rather large one, so I knew there had to be more to magic than that. It had to affect your way of looking at the world to know that you could control the elements like that. Would you expect to have that kind of control over everything? I decided I’d be safer if I focused on the impression of power instead of the bashfulness when I dealt with Owen. If I only let myself see the cute, shy guy, I’d underestimate him, possibly even to a dangerous degree. It was like dealing with the sales reps who used to come to our store. The nicest, most friendly good ole boys were the ones you really had to look out for.
As if reinforcing my mental lecture, as soon as Owen stepped through the doorway into the building he almost became another person, very confident and professional and matching that impression of power I’d just had from him. “Good morning, Hughes,” he said to the lobby’s security guard. “You remember that Miss Chandler is joining us?”
“Of course, sir. Welcome, Miss Chandler.”
“Katie, please,” I insisted.
“I’ll take her up to Personnel,” Owen said.
“Very good, sir. Have a good day, sir, Katie.”
“You, too,” I called over my shoulder as Owen led me toward the stairs.
“Rod will take care of your orientation,” he explained, winding his way through corridors. I wished I’d thought to bring some bread crumbs so I wouldn’t get lost, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. Everyone we passed greeted him with some deference. Now I couldn’t help but wonder just who this guy was. He couldn’t be much more than thirty, yet they treated him like he was the top brass. I should see past any illusion he used to make himself look younger. Maybe he wasn’t human at all and was some human-looking species that lived a very long time, so he could still look around thirty while actually being three hundred.
We reached a doorway and he came to a stop. “This is Rod’s office,” he said. “I’ll leave you to him, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“Thanks for leading the way.”
He turned a little bit pink, looked like he was about to say something, then turned and went back down the hallway. I steeled myself before stepping through the doorway into what appeared to be an outer office. The largest woman I’d ever seen sat at a desk with the newest model of iMac, along with a crystal ball thingy like the one on the desk in the lobby and an ordinary office phone. She wasn’t fat, just big all around. She could play linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys. Before I could open my mouth to say who I was and what my business was, she stood up, towering over me, and gave me a huge smile. “Katie! Sweetheart! You’re here!”
I had relatives who didn’t greet me that warmly at family reunions, and I’d never met this woman before in my life. “Hi,” I said. “Apparently I’m supposed to meet with Rod Gwaltney here.”
“Of course you are. Rod’s not in yet, but I expect him soon. Please, have a seat. Can I get you some coffee? A bagel?” Somehow, I’d expected something stranger than this, but this was the way I’d expect to be treated at any particularly friendly firm. “Some coffee would be nice,” I said, sitting down in one of the room’s overstuffed chairs.
“Cream and sugar, right?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
When the coffee mug appeared in my hand, I remembered that this wasn’t just any firm. “Oh!” I gasped, then tried to steady myself before I spilled coffee all over myself.
“Sorry about that,” the woman said. “I should have warned you if you’re not used to this sort of thing.”
“I imagine it will take some getting used to.”
“By the way, I’m Isabel, Rod’s assistant.”
“Nice to meet you, Isabel.”
“We are so glad to have you.” She glanced toward the doorway, then turned back to me and said in a conspiratorial tone, “That was young Owen Palmer who brought you here, right?”
“Yes, it was.”
She fanned herself with a piece of paper from her desk. “Oh my. Now, he would be quite the catch. Brilliant and gorgeous. That boy is going to go places. If only you could get him to talk to you when he’s not talking business.” Now, this felt like the kind of gossip session you’d find at any other company. As different as things promised to be when working at a business that was essentially Magic, Inc., so far there wasn’t anything different at all.
“He seems nice,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. The last thing I needed was to start a new job as the subject of office gossip. If I agreed he was gorgeous, there was a good chance that by noon word would have spread throughout the company that I was interested in him. Businesses were a lot like small towns in that respect. “In fact, everyone here seems nice, so far,” I added.
“We are a good bunch, though we do have a few skeletons in our closets.” I had a sick f
eeling she meant that literally. “And what workplace doesn’t have a monster or two?” She probably meant that literally as well. But I’d worked for Mimi, so as long as the monster didn’t try to eat me, I’d still be better off than in my old job.
Rod came through the doorway then in a snazzy suit right off the fashion runways. It didn’t go well with his otherwise sloppy personal appearance. I wondered what illusion he wore. Whatever it was, he used it as a disguise and didn’t even bother with his real appearance. The illusion must not have covered clothes. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered with the nice suit. I decided I was grateful for that. If magical people could dress themselves with illusion, I’d have been exposed to more nudity than I really cared to see. I also would have probably turned around and left New York as soon as I got here. One of my mother’s scare stories involved naked people freely roaming the streets.
“Katie, you’re here already!” Rod said when he saw me.
“I didn’t want to be late on my first day.”
“Come on back to my office and we’ll get you started.”
I picked up my briefcase and followed him. He got settled at his desk and gestured me toward yet another overstuffed chair. I had to give these people credit for having decent office furniture. A mug of coffee appeared on his desk, and he took it between both hands.
“We just have a little paperwork to do—IRS forms, health insurance, and the like—and then we’ll do an orientation so you’ll have a better understanding of how all this works. After that, we’ll get you set up in your office.”
I nodded while I tried to process the unlikely juxtaposition of tax forms and learning how a magical firm operated. “You deal with the IRS?”
“Of course. The IRS has their own set of wizards, and they never let us get away with anything.” It had never crossed my mind that I might not have to file taxes, so that wasn’t a big letdown, even if the idea of taxes and magic still didn’t go together in my brain. I was even more unnerved about the idea of the IRS having wizards working for them.
He had me fill out all the paperwork, then handed me a packet on the health plans. “Just look that over later, fill out the forms, and get them to Isabel,” he instructed. Then he grinned, opened a desk drawer, and pulled something out. “And here’s your MetroCard.”
I took it from him and tucked it into my purse. Now I had transportation freedom without having to think about the balance on my card. It was almost as good as having my own car again. That had been one of the biggest adjustments for me in moving from Texas to New York.
Rod settled back into his chair and said, “Now, do you have any questions?”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
“To be honest, I’m not even sure where to begin.”
“Then let’s take a tour. You can leave your things here.”
I followed him to the outer office and out into the hallway. He talked as he walked. “We do everything here from researching, developing, and testing new spells to distribution and monitoring of the spells.”
I felt like I was struggling to keep up, even if the struggle was more mental than physical. “How do you distribute your spells?” I asked. “In other words, how do you make money?”
“We sell them in magic shops, of course, as well as at other retail outlets.”
I came to a halt. “Magic shops? You mean those places that sell card tricks and top hats?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Have you ever gone into one?”
“No. I’ve never been all that interested in magic, to be honest.”
“That makes sense. You see reality instead of illusion, so it’s no fun for you. But you’d be surprised at what you’d notice in a magic shop. The props are for the general public, but if you know what you’re looking for, you can also buy any spell you might need. You’d see the spells for sale, while most people just in there looking for a trick deck of cards wouldn’t.”
“Not that the spells would do me much good,” I muttered.
“They also can’t be used against you. Although, none of our spells can be used to cause harm. Minor inconvenience, at the most. We’re very strict on quality control.”
“So, people can just go into a store and buy a spell? How do they pay for something like that?”
“We set our prices based on what went into developing the spell, how useful it is, and how many people are likely to need it. A simple spell that’s likely to be used just about every day to make life a little simpler may run about twenty dollars. A more complex spell for a specialized purpose might run into the hundreds. We do some custom work, but usually more for businesses than individuals.”
“Dollars?”
“Of course. What did you expect, wizard’s gold?”
Actually, I expected something along those lines. That must have shown on my face, for he laughed and said, “You’ve read too many books. We just have our own business, not our own economy. Now, here’s the sales department.”
We stepped into a suite of offices opening onto a central room. In those offices, the sales force sat talking on phones or into those crystal ball things. I noticed two who looked like ordinary humans—well, probably not entirely ordinary—two elves, and a gnome, who sat on top of his desk to talk into the crystal ball.
Rod waved his hand, which apparently sent a signal into the crystal balls, so that all the sales guys looked up at us. Those who were talking through whichever communications device wrapped up their conversations. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Katie Chandler. She’s joining the verification department. After today, feel free to call on her when you have a contract or need to go on a call to check out a vendor.” They all smiled and waved, then returned to their sales work. Rod turned to me and explained, “You’ll spend most of your time dealing with Sales. You may go with them from time to time to check on their accounts and make sure the sellers are being honest, and you’ll review all contracts before they’re signed.”
“I’m not a lawyer,” I pointed out.
“You don’t have to be. They know what should and shouldn’t be in the contracts. You just read them out loud, and they’ll know if something was added and hidden, or removed and replaced with an illusion.”
“Are magical people that devious?” I asked, almost afraid of his reaction to the question.
“People in general tend to be, don’t you think? True, the majority of the population is honest, but there’s always someone looking for a loophole. We just have more ways of creating loopholes.”
He led me out of the sales department and up a flight of stairs. We went into a large, dimly lit room. Various monitors, both the computer and the crystal variety, rimmed the room. “This is the monitoring department,” Rod said before introducing me to this group of people. “They make sure all our spells are being used properly. Unauthorized use can result in spell privileges being revoked. You may be asked to take a shift here occasionally. We generally have at least one verifier in here at all times. It’s a specialized verification job, but we sometimes need someone from the pool to fill in.”
We left that room and went up another flight of stairs. “What would be considered unauthorized?” I asked.
“The big one is using a spell to cause harm. Our spells are designed with fail-safes to prevent harm, but if you try hard enough, it is possible to work around them. There’s also not supposed to be any sharing of spells. Only the purchaser is able to use them, but there are those who try to come up with ways to get around that.”
“And if privileges are revoked?”
“You can’t use that spell again without repurchasing it. If it’s used for harm, you aren’t allowed to repurchase it at all. You may even be banned from other uses of our products.”
“Is that a big problem?” I didn’t like the idea of hundreds of magic users held back only by what sounded like the fine print on the back of the box and a pretty small group of monitors.
“Not really. The wicked encha
nter driven mad in his lust for power is yet another thing that you mostly just find in books and movies. It happens, but for the most part, if your life is already pretty good, there’s not much reason to go around hurting others. People with real psychological disorders are screened out early in life, so they don’t get their hands on spells to begin with, or else they’re rehabilitated.”
“That’s good to know.”
The next door didn’t just open for Rod. He had to press his hand against a metal plate and say something under his breath in what sounded like Latin before the lock clicked and the door opened. “This is R and D, Owen’s domain,” Rod said.
The area looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie, or something else involving mad scientists. A corridor ran between glass-walled labs, some full of bubbling bottles, others looking more like libraries. People wearing white lab coats walked around with clipboards, making notes. The occasional popping sound and flash of light came from labs as we passed.
“This is where the magic happens, literally,” Rod said.
We reached a final, larger lab. This one could have existed in any major university without anyone thinking anything of it, aside from the rather odd things written on the whiteboards that rimmed the walls. Owen stood in front of one of the boards, holding an old book in one hand and writing on the board with his other hand. Rod waited until he finished what he was writing before he said, “Owen.”
Owen blinked, then turned to see us and smiled. “So, you’re getting the grand tour?” he said to me, pink spreading up his face toward his hairline.
“Looks like it. It’s fascinating.”
“Owen heads our theoretical magic division,” Rod said.
“We try to determine what is and isn’t possible using magic,” Owen explained. “A lot of it is going back to the ancient texts and seeing if there’s a way to update the spells for the times, or finding out if the spells ever worked at all. Some of the ancient wizards elaborated a bit too much in what they recorded.”
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