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“I guess it’s old instincts kicking in. I always tried to look after Owen when we were kids, and I’m still doing it even though he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself. To be honest, he was when he was a kid, too. Bigger kids only messed with him once.”
“I think these days we all need to look after each other.”
“You’re probably right about that. You’ll let me know if you hear anything?”
I couldn’t promise that without breaking my word to Merlin. “I’ll keep you posted,” I said instead, hoping that was vague enough for my conscience. I hated having to keep secrets from people, but I was getting better and better at it. If you can keep the secret about magic from the rest of the world, hiding a few things from your coworkers isn’t that hard.
Merlin came out of his office. “Oh, good, Mr. Gwaltney, you’re here. Please come in.” Rod gathered his stack of papers, gave me a wink, then headed into Merlin’s office. As I watched the door shut behind him, I considered the preposterous idea of Merlin as a suspect. He might have said he wasn’t above suspicion, but the idea of him teaming up with Idris was beyond my comprehension. I wouldn’t worry about him unless there was evidence.
On the other hand, his response to the situation was to assign a novice to investigate, and he probably had more access to the headquarters than anyone. He also lived in an apartment in the office building, so he was there all the time, even over the weekend when Owen’s desk had been broken into. I shook my head. No, there was no way Merlin could be in on this. Idris had little respect for him, and quite frankly, I doubted Idris was a good enough actor to fake that. If I couldn’t trust Merlin, I might as well quit my job and practice saying, “Do you want fries with that?”
Merlin’s office door opened, and he and Rod emerged, Rod still carrying that stack of papers. “I’ll get these distributed immediately, sir,” Rod said.
Merlin nodded, then blinked and looked at me. A light sparked in his eyes, then he turned to Rod and said, “I believe I’ll have Miss Chandler take care of the distribution. The message will have more authority coming directly from my office.”
“Distribute what?” I asked.
“It’s a document for the various department and division heads,” Rod explained, “outlining company policy on intellectual property and the like—so we can avoid future Idris-like incidents. We enchanted it so that signing it is binding, which means it has to be distributed in person.”
Right away, I knew what Merlin was up to. He was giving me an excuse to snoop around the company. “I’d be glad to help,” I said, giving them both my perkiest smile. “Do I need to get someone to cover the desk here?”
“I don’t anticipate your brief absence causing any problems,” Merlin said, looking satisfied with himself.
Rod handed the stack of documents over to me and said, “Thanks for the help, Katie. I owe you one.” And I owed Merlin one for setting that up so neatly. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d apparently been quite good with the scheming back in his day.
I hadn’t had to hand-deliver a memo since the dark days when I worked for Mimi, my evil boss at my old, nonmagical job. I hadn’t minded it much then, for it gave me a chance to escape from my desk for a while. This particular mission was something else entirely. I felt almost dirty and dishonest, going around the company under false pretenses with the intent of scoping everything out. I had to remind myself that catching the spy was important and that honest people had nothing to hide.
I decided to start at the lowest level and work my way to the top. The design department was in the basement, but it was empty at the moment, not that I expected the company’s designer to leave his video games long enough to spy on anyone. On the ground level, I dropped the memo off in the security office to the side of the foyer. Sam was probably outside in his guard position, but I couldn’t make myself consider him a suspect. He was too busy moonlighting as a security guard at various churches around town to have time for corporate espionage. He was also intensely protective of the company. There would have to be a literal smoking gun to make me suspect him.
Next, I headed up to my old department, Verification. Just approaching that doorway made my stomach knot up. I hadn’t been back since I’d been promoted to my current job, and I doubted anyone there would be happy to see me. I had good reason to look for suspects there, too, for a magical immune would be able to get past any wards. Gritting my teeth, I pushed the door open. “Gregor! I have a memo for you from the boss!” I said, heading straight for the department head’s desk.
Even though he was in charge of the verification department, where most of the company’s immunes worked, Gregor was magical. He was definitely on my list of suspects because he had a known grudge against Owen. He used to have Owen’s job until an accident turned him into an ogre. He still tended to turn green and grow horns when his anger got out of control. That proved he had motive and a history of tinkering with questionable magic.
He barely looked up as he took the memo from me. “Do you need a response right away?” he asked.
“No, just sign it and return it when you get a chance. You will note that it is binding.”
He groaned. “Of course it is.” He put the memo aside on his desk. “Is there anything else?”
“No, not really. I was just wondering how things are going.”
“Same as usual,” he grunted. There were fewer verifiers working in the department than there had been a couple of months ago. They’d been scattered throughout the company to better spot any magical irregularities. That also meant they weren’t too carefully supervised. Even so, I could probably eliminate most of them as suspects because spying was too much like real work for their tastes. They had a cushy gig and they knew it, so I doubted they’d do anything to upset that.
There was only one verifier I was suspicious about, and fortunately, she wasn’t in the office. When I worked in Verification, Kim had been overly ambitious, taking far too many notes about what was going on in the company and showing far too much interest in company happenings. Her goal had been to get the job as Merlin’s assistant, and she’d never gotten over me being appointed to that post. I’d been dreading running into her ever since I got the job she’d been scheming for.
As luck would have it, she came into the office just as I was leaving. “Kim!” I greeted her. If I acted friendly, maybe she wouldn’t claw my eyes out, I hoped.
She gave me a look so frosty it made me wish I’d brought a coat on my errand. “What brings you back here?”
I waved my stack of memos. “Just delivering memos for the boss. At least I didn’t have to type them this time.” I hoped making the job sound like menial secretarial work would leave her a little less bitter. Her eyes narrowed and I waited for her to say something cutting, but she just headed over to Gregor’s desk. Relieved, I left the office before she changed her mind and started a catfight.
Next, I headed to R&D. If my steps were lighter and my spirits boosted, it had nothing at all to do with seeing Owen. He must have known I was coming, in that uncanny way he had, for the usually locked door opened easily for me. I didn’t know the head of the R&D department or even where his office was, but Owen was head of the theoretical magic section of R&D, so he was sure to be able to point me in the right direction.
Both Owen and his assistant, Jake, were at work in the theoretical magic lab. They had a giant book open on the table and a much-erased series of words on a nearby whiteboard. Owen said a few words that sounded like nonsense to me, there was a tingle of power in the air, then Jake yelped and dropped his clipboard.
Owen winced. “Sorry about that. And it looks like that one didn’t work.” He erased some of the words on the whiteboard, then bent over to look at the book again. “Hmm, maybe they spelled it wrong, and this is what they meant.” He wrote a different series of foreign words on the whiteboard while Jake, still shaking his right hand, bent to retrieve his clipboard.
Jake was probably the one person other than Owen who stood a chance of getting into Owen’s office without looking suspicious. He’d struck me as fairly loyal to his boss, but that could have been an act. On the other hand, he’d been the one to find the first commercial spell Idris had produced and had brought it to Owen for testing. Would he have helped like that if he’d been working for Idris? But that also meant he tended to frequent places where dark spells were sold. I left him in the “possible” column. His proximity to Owen made it too dangerous to write him off so soon.
