I flipped the book open. “What do you want me to do?”
“If you don’t mind me reading over your shoulder, I’d like you to read what you see out loud to me, word for word.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“You’re immune. You couldn’t do magic if you tried. In fact, you’re the only one who’s safe reading it out loud. Anyway, there’s more to magic than saying some words.”
“Okay, here goes.” I was curious what a spell looked like, and this was my first chance. In a way, it was like reading a cookbook, with a list of ingredients, then some directions, and the incantation itself. Most of the words made no sense whatsoever to me. It was hard to concentrate on the details with Owen leaning over my shoulder. I felt his breath on my neck, right under my ear. I reminded myself that he was powerful, potentially dangerous, and probably not interested in me. When I got to the end, I turned to look at him. “Is it what you expected?”
“It’s clean. The spell may not be what we’d approve of, but he’s not trying to sneak anything in.”
“What did you think he’d do?”
“Who knows? Make it so that there was an implied contract where if you actually used the spell, you’d owe him something. That kind of thing.”
“He could do that?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Owen took the book from me and handed it to Jake. “And remember, no chickens. No bats. No clucking. No removal of clothing.”
“You’re no fun.”
“Yeah, but I’m your boss.”
“Okay, everyone stand back,” Jake said after he’d flipped through the booklet. Merlin and I moved to the side of the lab. I felt like I ought to put on safety goggles.
Owen moved to the other end of the room and took a few deep breaths, like he was trying to steady himself. Instead of turning his usual ten shades of red, he’d gone very pale. Even his lips were bloodless. Jake didn’t look much better. He’d turned a grayish shade beneath his freckles. As often as I’d fantasized about zapping my boss with a curse, it would be another thing entirely to be asked to do it, especially when you had no idea how it would actually work.
“Would you get a move on?” Owen snapped through clenched teeth. “You should already know how this works from hearing Katie read it.”
“Just making sure,” Jake said. His voice shook. I glanced at Merlin and noticed that a muscle was jumping in his jaw. This was, apparently, a very big deal.
“Okay,” Jake said at last. “I need something of yours. It doesn’t have to be much.” Owen pulled a pen from the pocket of his lab coat and tossed it at Jake, who caught it easily with one hand. “Great. That should do it. Okay.” He took a deep breath, then held the pen out in front of himself in the palm of his left hand. He held his right palm over the pen. Then he took a deep breath and began speaking the nonsense words I’d read earlier.
I might have been immune to magic, but I was sure I sensed a buildup of energy, like when it’s winter and there’s so much static electricity that you get a jolt every time you touch something metal. I felt like if I touched anything, there would be a spark. The air seemed heavy, like it does just before a bad thunderstorm, the kind that brings tornadoes. When the air felt like this back home, my parents turned on the weather radio, just to be sure.
Jake then turned his right palm face out, toward Owen, and said some more nonsense words. All the crackle, pressure, and tension in the air caved in on itself and disappeared, all at once. I glanced at Owen to see if he was okay. It couldn’t possibly be healthy to be hit with something like that. He seemed fine, more or less, although he was still deathly pale and there was a blank look in his eyes.
Jake nibbled on his lower lip, looking like he was lost in thought. After a moment he made a subtle gesture with his right hand. Owen then went to the whiteboard and picked up a marker. He moved perfectly naturally. He certainly didn’t look like a mind-controlled zombie. No one who didn’t know Owen would think anything at all was wrong. Even someone who knew Owen well wouldn’t notice a difference unless they got a good look in his eyes. JAKE DESERVES A RAISE, he wrote in large capital letters. I didn’t know his handwriting well enough to recognize it, but this writing looked very different from the textbook-perfect script that filled the rest of the board. After he finished, he capped the marker and stepped away from the board.
A smaller dose of the crackle and pressure in the air returned as Jake clasped the pen in his right hand, then it was all over. Owen swayed, and as I was closest to him, I ran to steady him. He must have been in a pretty bad way, for he was shaking and he didn’t even try to pretend he was okay and didn’t need help. “Owen?” I asked him.
“I need to sit down,” he whispered. Now I got to return the favor he’d done for me yesterday. I draped his left arm over my shoulders, put my right arm around his waist and walked him to the nearest chair. Once he was seated, he bent over, his elbows braced on his knees and his head between his legs, like they tell you to do when you feel faint.
Merlin and Jake joined us. “Boss?” Jake asked, his voice shaking even worse than it had when he’d done the spell. “You okay?”
“Just give me a minute.” Owen’s voice was muffled, coming from down around his knees. Jake shot a worried look at Merlin, who took one of Owen’s wrists to check his pulse.
“Maybe I should go get some tea,” I said. “Strong, sweet tea is just the thing in this kind of situation.” But before I could start to look for the nearest coffee room, Jake had a steaming mug of tea in his hand. Oh yeah, I kept forgetting about that.
Merlin rubbed Owen’s back. “Deep breaths, that’s a boy,” he soothed. He looked so worried that I had to fight back panic. I wondered if this was a typical reaction to a spell, or if this was just a particularly nasty one. Either way, I was very glad I was immune. Any remaining disappointment in my absolute lack of magic dissipated.
After a few minutes Owen pulled himself into an upright position, with a visible effort. Even though he’d spent a while with his head upside down, his face was still ashen. “Wow,” he said. “That was unpleasant. I don’t think he’s tested that.” In spite of his apparent attempt to sound flippant, his voice quavered.
“Something tells me he doesn’t really care,” I said.
Jake handed Owen the tea, but Owen’s hands shook so badly he couldn’t get the mug to his mouth. I reached to help him steady the mug. He took a few sips, then took a few more deep breaths. The next time he spoke, he sounded more like himself. “What did you make me do? I feel like I’ve just run a marathon.”
“You don’t remember at all?” Jake asked.
Owen shook his head. “Nothing. I remember you starting the spell, and then the next thing I knew, I felt like I was about to faint.”
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 hard 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 to 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.
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.
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