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"Well, anyway, morale down there sucks. Nobody except Kim seems to care enough to try, and I'd keep an eye on Kim. She's ambitious, but I'm not sure her priority is the good of the company. All of those people are bored. If you want to keep them or get anything productive out of them, you're going to have to do better." Then I had a burst of inspiration based on my earlier conversation with Merlin. "Hey, I know, maybe you could assign the verifiers to offices in various departments. That way, they'd be around to spot people trying to play invisible while they wait for assignments. They wouldn't feel quite so useless or bored, and they'd get more of a chance to interact with the company. That might make them feel like part of the big picture, so they'd care more about what they do."
"That's a great idea. I'll talk to Gregor. Meanwhile, I understand you have a project of your own to
work on."
This place had the fastest office grapevine I'd ever seen, including the one in my family-owned store where most of the employees were related and lived under the same roof. "Yeah. Seems like it. I guess that takes me out of the pool for a while."
"It doesn't sound like you mind all that much," he said with a wry grin.
"Not in the least. Those people are weird, and around here, that's really saying something." I started to get up, then had an idea and sat back down. "Maybe you can help me with this."
"Of course. What do you need?"
"I don't know enough about the magical world to know how to market to it. How do you all get your news?"
"Most of us have cable."
I shook my head. "What about magical news? You don't have something like the cable magic channel or anything like that, do you? How do you find out about news in the magical world?"
"Well, there are a few good Web sites out there, but most of us get the major bulletins from the crystal network." He waved toward that thingy that sat on his desk.
"Yeah, I've noticed those things. They seem to be a combination office phone and e-mail system."
"More or less. Like e-mail, you can communicate directly to a particular individual, or you can receive a message sent to many people. If there's anything major that everyone in the magical community needs to know, that's how it's sent."
"And how do you decide what's major enough for everyone to get it?"
"There's a group of people who manage mass communications for the network. If you have an announcement, you send it through them. If they think it's worthy, they pass it on. An individual can't do a mass message."
I sighed. "That makes things difficult for me, if you can't get advertising out there.
This would be so much easier if we could buy air time on TV, or the magical equivalent, and do a really good image ad."
"Sorry I couldn't be more helpful."
"You were very helpful. I'm just going to have to be more creative. And I have to get back to my own office." I forced myself out of the chair before I got too comfortable and drifted off. Maybe that concussion was worse than I thought. Rod stood and came around his desk to open his office door for me.
"Let me know if you have any other questions," he said.
"Don't worry, I will. You may get tired of me."
He laughed. "I don't think there's much danger of that. And thank you for your suggestion. I'll think about it."
After the exciting afternoon I'd had, I hated going back to the dreary verification pool. As soon as I saw my coworkers, I couldn't help but wonder if my great idea about relocating the verifiers was so smart after all. The rest of the group seemed to enjoy their leisure on company time. How would they react to being asked to work harder? Would they really feel more like a part of the company? Thinking about it made my head hurt.
Speaking of my head, I made a stop at the bathroom before going to my desk and took a look at myself in the mirror. There was a knot forming on my temple where I'd hit the wall. It was currently red, but it was the kind of red that turns black and blue by morning. I wasn't sure how I'd explain a goose egg like that to my roommates. I tried pulling my hair across my face, but that made it look worse by drawing attention to it. I needed to come up with an excuse.
Fortunately, I wasn't dating anyone, so they couldn't jump to the conclusion that any lame excuse I gave them was a cover-up for an abusive boyfriend. They might think I had an abusive boss, but since I'd survived a year with Mimi, they had to know it couldn't get much worse. I supposed I'd just have to tell them I'd bumped into a wall, which was the truth, more or less.
It wasn't fair. Marcia came home with stories about big deals she'd had a part in, and Gemma was always telling us about the famous designers and models she ran into in the course of her job. Until now I'd never had anything more exciting than tales of Mimi's latest outburst. They'd listened politely and had done a pretty good job of faking interest, but I couldn't help but wish I had a job where I could do something important or interesting. Now I finally had something worth talking about, and I couldn't tell anyone about it.
The closing-time stampede struck just as I returned to my desk. Still deep in thought, I gathered my things and left the building. "That was some catch, sweetheart," Sam said as I stepped onto the sidewalk.
"Yeah, not bad for a day's work, huh?"
"Are you kidding? That was spectacular. I'd try to get you transferred to Security if I thought I could get away with it."
"All it took was a good eye and a strong set of lungs. Owen did all the work."
