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As I expected, Merlin was still there. “Ah, Miss Chandler, shouldn’t you have gone home by now? Or did you have something to report from your meeting?”
I filled him in on what had happened, including Sylvia’s warning about Kim not being hired. He made a call to the security crew to arrange Sylvia’s escape, then faced me. “Are you considering the offer, then?”
“I still don’t know. It may be our only chance, but it sounds like a slim chance. I don’t know that it would be worth the risk.”
“I agree. Let’s wait and see, shall we? Perhaps you should help tomorrow, since you are a familiar face and you can spot any hidden magical people in the vicinity.”
“Now, that sounds like my kind of assignment.”
*
The next afternoon, I bundled up, since there was a chance I’d be spending a lot of time outdoors. I walked the length of Fulton Street, looking for any hidden magical people. “I don’t see anything but our team,” I said to Sam via the earpiece I wore.
“I doubt they’re usin’ anything but humans, doll,” he said. “Let’s watch the street and see if anyone suspicious sticks around. Then you describe ’em to me, and we’ll see if they’re veiled.”
I made another pass up and down the street, but there was no sign of anyone who looked remotely suspicious—well, no more so than your average Manhattanite. I checked my watch. It was time. Sylvia ought to be coming by at any moment now.
But she didn’t. We waited half an hour longer, but she wasn’t there. Had she found her own way out, changed her mind, or was this yet another disappearance?
Four
Sam and I regrouped back at the office. “My people didn’t spot any sign of her, comin’ or goin’,” Sam said.
“Maybe she changed her mind,” I said. “She wasn’t all that excited about having to leave. She put us off once before.”
“Or maybe she was right about them being after her, and they got to her before we did.”
“Let’s hope not.” It wasn’t that I was so worried about Sylvia’s fate. I just thought it was a very bad sign if something had happened to her. It would suggest that she was right about the threat we faced—a threat we were no closer to being up to defending against than we had been when she first approached us. All we knew was some people not to trust.
“Well, we tried, right?” Sam said with a shrug. “That’s all we could do. We held up our end of the bargain. She’s the one who didn’t come through.”
“Let me try getting in touch with her one more time.”
“How do you plan to do that, doll? I thought the whole deal was that she got in touch with us.”
“I can make it easy for her to contact us. I’ll try going to the places where she’s reached me in the past. If something came up and she aborted, that may be where she expects me to go so she can set up something else.”
“I guess it’s worth a shot,” he said with another shrug. “But that’s goin’ above and beyond, if you ask me.”
I headed to the bar where Sylvia had left the message for me. If she needed to contact me for another plan, that seemed like the best place to start. I ordered my usual glass of wine, even though what I really wanted was a cup of cocoa. I wondered how long I’d have to sit there before I could check my coat pockets.
Someone slid onto the stool next to mine, and I turned to see the woman who’d made the job offer. “We never heard from you,” she said.
“I’m not interested.”
“Just checking. But are you sure?”
“Why would you even want me?”
She laughed. “Come now, Katie, you know how rare people like you are. It’s even more rare to find someone like you who’s retained any sanity and common sense. You come very highly recommended. Our firm could really use someone like you who has a talent for getting things done.”
I started to ask why she thought I’d turn on MSI, and then I realized that she’d never actually said she was with the Collegium. The business card she’d given me had been for a banking firm. This kind of recruiting happened all the time in the Wall Street area, I was sure. Someone from a rival company might approach another company’s rising star and try to poach the talent. It didn’t mean the rival had mob ties.
Of course, I wasn’t so naive as to really believe that this was a perfectly innocent job offer. But I thought it best to play it that way. After all, why would I, a relative newcomer to the magical world, know anything about a super-secret cabal? “What kind of position are you talking about?”
“It would be the kind of verification work you’re familiar with, only involving high-level financial transactions rather than making sure the right spells are stocked at magic shops. I understand you have a business background from the real world. We find that intriguing.”
