Trix joined me less than a minute later. "What's up?" she asked. "This date seems to be going better than your last one."
"The frog guy hasn't shown up, but the night is still young. And let me guess, you and Ranger Bob are my designated bodyguards for the evening."
She giggled, which sounded rather like jingle bells. "Ranger Pippin, actually."
"Are you two masked tonight—I mean, would most people see you as human?"
"Of course. It's second nature away from work."
"Well, then, I may have just found another immune. My date saw you. He thinks he's going crazy because he's seeing people with wings."
She gasped. "Oh, boy."
"So, what do I do? How do I handle this? He's that intellectual property attorney I mentioned. Do I just tell him right out that magic is real, or do I talk him into coming to the office for a consultation, and then let Mr. Mervyn and the others give him the orientation?"
She shook her head. "Don't tell him anything until we're sure what he is. We'll need to put him through a few tests, and then we can approach him." I remembered the weirdness that morning on the subway when they'd tested me, and had a sinking feeling that I was about to have the kind of evening where Naked Frog Guy showing up with his guitar would serve as a nice dose of comic relief.
She took a cell phone out of her purse, dialed, then said, "It's Trix. Katie needs to talk to you."
She handed the phone to me and a voice said in my ear, "Katie? It's Rod. What's up?"
"You know that attorney I was talking to tonight?" I hoped the office grapevine had done its usual tricks. "Well, I think he's an immune. He saw Trix's wings."
"Stay there. Try to keep him relaxed and talking. We'll be there in a moment." I found it more than a little unnerving that he didn't have to ask where we were.
I handed the phone back to Trix. "Looks like we're about to run some tests."
She grinned and giggled again. "Oh, good. That's always fun!"
Our meals had just arrived when I got back to the table. Ethan still looked twitchy, darting little glances toward Pippin, like he was trying to figure out what he was seeing. He smiled with great relief when he saw me. We ate and made small talk for a while, and I tried not to show any nervousness about what this testing would entail.
If someone used a love spell on my date—even if he wasn't really a date—I'd be rather annoyed.
To keep the conversation flowing and to get back to business, I said, "Back to what we were talking about earlier, I'm curious about something. What about people coming up with something brilliant at one company, then taking it with them and starting their own company?"
"That's also something we see a lot of in software. People come up with something great, and instead of letting their employer get rich on the idea, they try to get rich for themselves. In those cases, a lot depends on whether the idea grew directly out of a work-related assignment or if it just happened to be something the employee came up with on his own while working for the company."
I frowned. This didn't look good. "What if it was something the employee came up with as part of a work assignment, but his employer wasn't happy with the direction he took it and declined to market it?"
"That's the kind of situation that pays my salary. It takes digging into documentation, doing interviews, that sort of thing, to determine what's going on. Generally, though, if the development work was done on company time using company resources, the company wins— especially if they have better lawyers."
"Is that the side you're usually on?"
"Yeah, I'm a tool of the evil corporation." He laughed. 'And now you're just being polite. There is no way you're that interested in my work. Or are you planning on stealing something from your boss?"
"Only Post-it notes and pens," I said, mustering a laugh of my own. It did sound like we needed a lawyer to deal with this situation. The trick would be finding a way to hire one without him thinking we were insane. If he turned out to be immune and they brought him in on the secret, that might help. "But I really am interested. I haven't heard of this before. I once thought about law school, but I didn't know about this field of law." I crossed my fingers under the table to counteract the lie.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a couple of men dressed like they'd just come from the gym enter the restaurant and take seats at the bar. That normally wouldn't have caught my attention—there were already several other similar men sitting at the bar, eating and watching a basketball game on the television suspended from the ceiling—but the two men were Rod and Owen. I wanted to bang my head on the table. It was bad enough faking a date with someone for business purposes without having the man I had a minor crush on be present. Now I felt doubly fake. Even worse, without Owen in the picture, I might manage to be interested in Ethan, and he was a lot closer to being somewhere in the general vicinity of my league. In fact, it looked like we might have more in common than I thought.
I forced my attention back to Ethan and gamely tried to continue the conversation, even as I dreaded what the magical dynamic duo might come up with as a test.
"What happens if a company thinks their employee has stolen something and is using it to compete against them?"
"First step is we write a nice, official cease and desist letter. In a lot of cases, that scares them into stopping. Most people don't realize what they're doing or that it's wrong. They then just have to modify their product enough to make it be something that's truly their own. It gets more complicated if there's a lot of money involved, if the original employer really suffers damages, or if the ex-employee gets defiant."
I wondered if a letter would do the trick here. I wasn't sure how we'd get a case involving stolen magic into the court system. Would that even be a credible threat?
At that moment, Ethan's nearly untouched beer disappeared, to be replaced by a bottle of Coke. I suspected most people would still see and even taste the beer.
Ethan blinked, went a little pale, picked up the bottle and studied it for a second, then laughed. "I forgot I'd ordered that. But I did say I was only going to have one beer tonight."
I wasn't sure whether to contradict him. He hadn't ordered it. The waitress had been nowhere near. He was in deep denial, but he'd definitely noticed the change.
I tried to glance as casually as possible toward the bar area. Rod raised an eyebrow at Owen in an "Okay, you try something" look. Owen bit his lip and frowned in thought, and my stomach knotted in dread. From my experience with his magical creativity, I suspected we were in for something interesting.
In the blink of an eye our nearly empty dinner dishes and glasses disappeared, to be replaced by a white linen tablecloth covering the previously bare Formica table. On top of the tablecloth were china dishes holding a sinfully rich chocolate dessert. We each had steaming mugs of cappuccino, and a crystal vase in the center of the table held a single red rosebud. I could certainly go for that kind of testing. I had to fight not to shoot a grateful glance in Owen's direction. He didn't know much more about me than I knew about him, but it looked like he'd been paying attention. During the first job interview, I'd ordered the cappuccino like it was a rare delicacy, and he knew I carried chocolate in my purse.
But I couldn't let myself go hug another man when I was on a date, not even a date generated on dubious pretenses. And speaking of that date, I studied him to see how he reacted. He stared at the table and gulped, then shook his head, took a deep breath, and said, "We must be the millionth customer, or something like that."
The waitress chose that moment to stop by and say, "Are you interested in dessert tonight?"
Ethan looked at her, then at the molten chocolate cake on our table, then back at her.
"Uh, we're good. Thanks. This dessert should do it."
The waitress stared at him for a long moment, frowning, then shrugged, said,
"Whatever," and left.
I turned my head with the pretense of watching the waitress leave so I could see Owen's
and Rod's reactions. Both of them looked surprised, then Rod rolled his eyes and shook his head. Owen's eyes narrowed in a challenge. I braced myself.
Ethan reached for his cappuccino, but the cup scooted away from him. He tried again, and it darted sideways. I watched, wondering how he'd rationalize this one.
"Boy, it's slippery," he said after a while. "I'm glad I stuck to one beer."
I put a bite of chocolate cake into my mouth—no sense wasting it, and it kept me from having to say anything—and glanced at the guys. Now Owen was grinning smugly while Rod looked frustrated. I got the feeling this was no longer about verifying Ethan's response to magic. Magical men appeared to be just as competitive as anyone else with a Y chromosome.
It then started snowing gently over our table. White flakes danced and spun in the air, then settled on us and on the table before vanishing without making us cold or damp. It was a truly spectacular sight, and no one else in the restaurant gave it a second look.
Ethan closed his eyes for nearly a full minute, then opened them again to see that it was in fact still snowing indoors. He then looked at me with a desperate plea in his eyes. "Tell me I'm not going crazy."
"Why would you think you're going crazy?"
"Either I'm having vivid hallucinations or some very strange things are happening here."
"Like what?"
"Well, first there were the people with wings. And by the way, they still have wings.
It wasn't a trick of the light. And then my beer turned into a Coke. And then we got dessert worthy of the Ritz, but the waitress doesn't even notice and asks us if we want dessert. I can't catch my cup, and now it's snowing inside a restaurant. Water I could understand from a leaky ceiling, but snow?" He shook his head. "And now you're going to tell me that none of that happened, and you're mad at me for telling the waitress we didn't want dessert."
I glanced toward Owen and Rod. Owen, who looked just a wee bit smug, gave me a solemn "go ahead" nod. I turned my attention to Ethan and asked, "Do you see things like that often?"
He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up on end. "Would it sound totally crazy if I said I did?"
"Try me."
"Okay, then. Yes, I do see things like that every so often, more often lately."
"How long have you lived in New York?"
"Just since law school."
"And where did you live before that?"
"A small town upstate."
"Did you see weird things before you moved to New York?"
He shrugged. "I probably wouldn't have noticed if I had. I never took my nose out of a book. I'm crazy, right? This is turning out to be a great date."
I leaned toward him across the table. "Have you ever considered the possibility that you really are seeing people with wings? Or that you've really seen elves and gnomes around town, or that gargoyles come and go from churches and buildings? Or that some people seem to be able to flick their wrists and get whatever they need?"
He stared at me like I'd grown wings myself. "How did you know?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.
"Because I see them, too, and I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy. In fact, I know that fairy at the other table. Her name's Trixie, but she prefers to be called Trix. I work with her."
His mouth hung open. "Huh?"
"Do you believe in magic?"
"Magic? You mean like pulling rabbits out of a hat and card tricks?"
"No, more like making things appear out of thin air—for real"
"I've read all the Harry Potter books, all the Lord of the Rings books, and the entire Narnia series, among others, but otherwise I haven't given it much thought."
It appeared that I'd found a real fantasy nerd. I wasn't sure if that would make this easier or more difficult. "Well, magic is real. It's different from the books, and to be honest, I don't know a lot about it, but a lot of those fantasy creatures you read about are real. There are people who really can do magic."
"Can you do magic?"
I shook my head. "Nope. I'm as nonmagical as you can get, to the point that magic doesn't work on me. And you're the same way. That's why you see the things you do. Most people have just enough magic in them to be influenced by it. They don't see weird things because the magical people have ways of masking them so they look normal. But we don't see the illusions. We see the truth. So we see the wings and the ears and the results of spells."
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes again. "Wow." He shook his head, then pinched his own arm, winced, and blinked. "Wow. Either I'm really and truly nuts or this explains a lot."
"Believe me, I know how you feel. I didn't get clued into all of this until very recently."
"I don't know what to think. I don't know whether to believe you or whether I should just start drinking heavily. There's no such thing as magic."
"You'd be surprised. Want me to introduce you to Trix?"
He shook his head violently. "I'm not sure I could deal with that right now."
"I do know some people who'd be better at helping you figure this out than I am. I work for a magical company. They need people like us to help them see through all the illusions. You could be an incredible asset to us. There was already the possibility we might retain you for some legal matters, if we thought you could deal with the truth, but you being an immune, well, that changes things. We're always looking for people like you."
"I just... I don't know."
"What will it hurt to talk? At worst, you'll get a better sense of whether or not you're crazy."
"Just talk?"
"And maybe a little legal advice. We really do need some help in an intellectual property matter." I decided I might as well come clean, through and through. "To be honest, that's mostly why I wanted to go out with you. I remembered our conversation, and it was particularly applicable to the situation we found ourselves in. You can understand how in our line of work, we can't just call the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe and hire a lawyer."
"Yes, I can see where that wouldn't necessarily work so well."
"Not that I don't find you interesting," I hurried to add. "I just did have an ulterior motive. What's going on ... well, it's big. And important."
He frowned in thought for a moment. "A new client is always good," he said after a while. "I have some time free at ten Monday. Would that work?"
I was pretty sure we'd make it work. Besides, Merlin would probably know already, in that weird way he had. "Ten would be fine."
I didn't have my own business cards, but I found the one Rod had given me in my purse. "Here's the address, and there's a map on the back. Let me write in my direct line for you." On the back of the card where the map was, I wrote my name and my office phone number. "Just ask for me at the front desk."
He took the card and studied it. "MSI, Inc., huh? What's that stand for?"
"Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc."
"Okay, then, I'll see you Monday. Do you mind if we call it a night? I'm not sure I'm up to dealing with anything else tonight."
"Not at all." I grabbed the check before he could. "I insist. After all, I lured you here under false pretexts for business purposes." He didn't put up a fight. He looked too drained to argue.
"At least let me make sure you get home okay. You said you live near Union Square?"
"Yeah, off Fourteenth. But I'll be fine." In the state he was in, I doubted he'd be much of a bodyguard."
"No, I can't leave a lady to get home by herself."
"Believe me, I'm well looked after. But you can walk me to the subway. I live very close to a stop, so I'll be fine." We left the restaurant, with Rod and Owen still sitting at the bar, and walked down the sidewalk toward the subway station. I saw Sam still on his perch from earlier in the evening and waved to him. "Hi, Sam!"
"Hey, sweetheart!" He left his perch and glided down to join us on the sidewalk.
I thought poor Ethan would have a stroke. "Okay, that's a gargoyle, and it's talking to us," he said.
"Ethan, I'd like you to meet Sam. Sam, this is Ethan. Ethan will be coming by the office Monday for a talk with the boss."
"Yeah, I can see why. Good call, doll face."
"Okay, I am definitely coming to your office," Ethan said, his face ashen. "If this isn't real, I need serious professional help."
I heard a voice singing my name, winced, and said, "Unless you don't think you've maxed out your weirdness quotient for the day, you should probably go now." He looked like he was about to ask a question, then changed his mind and took off.
seventeen
Ethan got away just in time, for as soon as he disappeared around one comer, Jeff arrived around another corner, loudly serenading me with his version of "Mandy." I didn't want to know how he knew how to find me. There were way too many people following me these days—Idris's henchmen, my MSI bodyguards, and my lovelorn suitor. On the bright side, the more people who followed me around, the harder it would be for Idris and his people to pull anything funny. "Hi, Jeff," I said with a resigned sigh. "Want to make yourself useful?"
"Of course, my lady fair."
"Walk me home." He looked like I'd handed him the world on a platter, and extended his elbow to me. I hesitated a second, then took it. He extolled my beauty the entire way home, and by the time we got there, I'd come to the conclusion that I could get used to that. It would have been even better if he hadn't been under an enchantment that made him say those things, but I consoled myself with the idea that Owen was at least a little bit behind it all. Somehow, I didn't see him being quite so corny—
or so eloquent—but it would be nice if he shared the same basic ideas about me.
I was hoping to sneak home and be in bed before the others got home so I wouldn't have to answer the ritual postdate interrogation, but my recent luck held, and Gemma and Marcia, with Philip on Gemma's arm, were just starting to unlock the front door as we approached. I hurried to disengage myself from Jeff's arm, which took elbowing him in the ribs, so I wouldn't have to explain why I'd gone out with one guy and come home arm in arm with another. I was about to send him away, but then I took another look at the trio at the door.
Philip and Gemma had that glow of new love. Marcia looked glum. I had a good idea what must have happened. Gemma had set Marcia up with someone so they could double date, and it had gone horribly wrong. I imagined another evening of arguing, as had happened when she'd been set up with Ethan. Then I took a look at Jeff. He was the opposite type from anyone Gemma ever set her up with, but that might be what she needed. He was good-looking, well built, and didn't seem like he'd give her much of a challenge. She'd like that, at least for a while.
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