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“So if that part changed, that means this Eye of the Moon is in a different place now,” I concluded. “That first description sounds like it could have been on an airplane when you translated it.”
He looked up at me, and I could see from the pallor of his face how serious this was. “That would be bad,” he understated.
“Well, where is it now?”
He turned back to the document, frowning as he studied it. “Let’s see, there’s something about glittering stars, cubical robins’ eggs, a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and jewels, guarded like a fortress, a place to break one’s fast.”
“Sounds like Tiffany’s,” I quipped.
“What?”
“The jewelry store. They have gold, silver, and jewels, and their boxes are kind of a robin’s egg blue. I’m sure it’s guarded pretty heavily. And then there’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s—you know, Audrey Hepburn staring longingly into the jewelry store windows as she eats her Danish on her way home from a night out?” His blank look told me he was sadly culturally deprived. “But of course, that’s impossible, because how would some Dark Ages wizard know about Tiffany’s?”
“What the Dark Ages wizard did was embed a spell that relays the current location of the Eye using certain possible descriptors. The Eye’s been lost because the description of the original hiding place no longer matched what was there—the place had changed even though the Eye hadn’t moved, and since it hadn’t moved, the text remained the same. If it’s been moved, then the text might use more updated references.”
“So it really could have ended up at Tiffany’s?” I put my hand on his shoulder as an idea struck me. “We should go! We could find out.”
“I don’t think so … I mean, it’s been lost for centuries, and it shows up in Tiffany’s? That’s unlikely. It’s probably just a bad translation on my part. I was doing that off the top of my head.”
“Then translate!” I said, waving my hand at the table with a “get to work” gesture. “I can wait.”
“This could take awhile. You should go to your office. I’ll call you when I have something.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay, then.” I leaned over to give him a kiss. “I’ll leave the coffee and rolls outside in case you need another break.” I then reluctantly headed up to my office, where I could do something exciting like alphabetize my pencil cup. Again.
On my way into the sales department, I smiled and spoke to everyone as I passed their offices. They were willing to chat, but they didn’t need anything from me. In a way, that was good because it meant business was going well. Unfortunately, it also meant that I felt totally useless. I’m not sure that being busy would have helped much, though. While I’d hated my old marketing job before I learned about the magical world, I’d thought that was mostly because my boss was evil. It turned out that I just hated marketing.
I’d thought doing marketing was fun when I was working for my family’s store back home. It was a nice break from keeping the books or working the cash register. As a day-to-day job, though, it wasn’t my ideal. But what else could I do? I was twenty-seven years old, and I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My opportunities at a magical company were limited, since I didn’t have magical powers or training. Most people like me worked in the verification department, seeing past any illusions meant to trick magical people, but that wasn’t a very interesting job, either. I didn’t want to leave MSI, but I didn’t know where else I fit in there.
My assistant wasn’t in yet, much to my relief. She was as bored as I was, and she dealt with it by talking to me. She’d taken to coming in later and later, and there wasn’t any point in reprimanding her about it. I went to my desk and surfed Internet news sites. I didn’t see anything that hinted at unauthorized magical activity going on anywhere in the world. Yay? It was bad that I actually hoped to find signs of trouble.
Then there was no point procrastinating further, so I did the one major task on my to-do list for the day, writing a new ad for the magical training program my friend Rod Gwaltney was putting together. I came up with three different concepts, annotated them, and e-mailed them to him. I checked my watch and found that I’d accomplished my entire to-do list before ten in the morning.
The ring of the telephone was the only thing that kept my forehead from hitting my desk. “I’ve translated that passage and then cross-referenced it in every related book I’ve got to make sure I was getting it right,” Owen said.
“I’ll be right down,” I said, already rising from my chair.
“Don’t bother. I was right the first time, more or less. The wording is slightly different, but the important parts are the same.”
“So it really is at Tiffany’s?”
“That’s one possible interpretation of the translation of the text. There are a lot of other things it could mean.”
“Like what?”
“It could be in a dragon’s hoard.”
“Would you want to have breakfast there?”
“The dragon would.”
“We should go to Tiffany’s, just in case.”
“What would it be doing in a jewelry store?”
