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“It’s too bad you don’t have magically immune gargoyles, though I guess that would be impossible.”
The train slowed as it neared Union Station. “I’ll get off here, since it’s more crowded and confusing,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”
“You, too,” I whispered, but he was already gone, melting into the mob shoving their way off the train. As he passed me, he gently patted the small of my back, and I tried to etch the sensation into my memory to get me through the coming days.
*
The apartment came furnished with high-end linens and cookware, so there wasn’t much I needed to move other than books, clothes, and personal items, but I still brought my pillow with me, along with a suitcase full of clothes and other necessities, when I went to work the next morning. I figured it would be easier to move by limo than by subway or cab. I could stash stuff in my changing room and then have the car take me to the new place after work.
The apartment must have meant that I’d made it to whatever the next step was because when I was called to Roger’s office for a meeting, Trish
was there, but there was no sign of Bex. Roger, as genial as ever, gave us a warm smile and said, “Congratulations, you’ve both demonstrated the kind of ability and drive that I’m looking for, so you’ll be continuing in consideration for the position as my personal assistant. The assignments in the coming days may be more challenging, but you’ll also have more autonomy and more privileges.”
I resisted the urge to glance at Trish and see how she was taking this. Since it wasn’t safe to talk about such things, I wasn’t sure how much she knew about this place now. Had she watched someone be turned into a frog? Was she on board with that sort of thing and eagerly seeking the job? We weren’t close, but we had become work friends. I hoped things didn’t get more cutthroat from this point on.
I was also worried about Bex. Since she was a magical immune, I doubted that she was down in the frog pond, but what had happened to her? Had she seen the frog thing and decided she was out, or had she not made the cut? Did they let people quit? We never learned anyone’s last name, which made it difficult, if not impossible, to have someone look her up for me and make sure she was okay.
As Trish and I left Roger’s office, I chanced a sidelong glance at her and caught her doing the same to me. Both of us turned our attention ahead. What did you say in this sort of circumstance? “Well, may the best woman win!” I said, perhaps a bit too cheerfully, when we reached my office.
“Yeah,” she said, but not with much enthusiasm. There was a slight crease between her eyes and a tension in the way she held her shoulders, but I couldn’t tell if she wasn’t keen on wishing me well or if she was ambivalent about moving ahead in the company. I was barely to my desk when she returned to my office. “Look, I know this place is weird, but I think it would be a good idea if we could find each other away from work. If I disappear, look me up, and if you do, I’ll do the same. My last name is Douglas, and I live on Eleventh. I’m in the book.”
Could I trust her? My gut told me I could. “My last name’s Chandler, but the phone at my place—well, my old place—is in Gemma Stewart’s name.”
She raised an eyebrow. “They’re giving you an apartment? I guess you got the job.”
“I have roommates who have some ties to MSI. I think they wanted me out of that situation.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” But she didn’t look too convinced.
*
I soon saw that making it up a step was going to mean a real change. Roger asked me to stay late one night, and after everyone else had left for the evening, he asked me to go to the archives to find a particular ledger that had been lost. “I think it might have been hidden under a spell,” he said. “You should be able to see it, if that’s the case.” I got the impression that he didn’t want anyone else to see what he had me looking for, and thus the nighttime work.
He sent me off on my own, with directions and an access card. It was my first time to go anywhere other than between the changing room and the office or the office and the cafeteria without an escort. I was beginning to suspect that this building didn’t entirely exist in any one place but maybe was a mix of buildings in far-flung locations connected by portals. There were a lot of tall buildings in Manhattan, but none this tall and this big devoted solely to one company. That’s the kind of thing people would notice. They might or might not notice gargoyles that weren’t always where they were supposed to be or people with fairy wings, but they’d notice a giant building.
I found myself living that moment in the Beauty and the Beast film when the Beast gives Belle the giant library when I stepped into the archives. It was yet another space that shouldn’t have fit into any building I knew of in the city. The rows of shelves went up nearly as high as the atrium, with winding ramps connecting the levels.
Unfortunately, these weren’t fun books. They were records. I could probably have found evidence for all the Collegium’s bad deeds in this room, but I reminded myself that I wasn’t trying to find evidence to take them to court. I was trying to find out what they planned next. That meant I had to figure out what Roger wanted, why, and what he planned to do with the information.
He’d given me a general area where I was likely to find what he needed, which was good because otherwise I’d never be able to leave the archive. I was on the lowest level, where I thought I saw a couple of stone tablets carved with runes. As I climbed the ramp, I saw a shelf of cubbyholes, each filled with a scroll. On the next level I passed were giant leather-bound books. I climbed higher and higher, pausing every so often so I didn’t get dizzy, and at each level the books looked newer.
I was looking for the turn of the century—that is, the nineteenth century to twentieth century. These books were mass-produced ledgers and ordinary-looking cloth-bound books. Roger had narrowed it down to a single floor, but there were still a lot of books to look at.
I glanced at the note he’d given me. The book was supposed to be marked with a series of letters and numbers. I scanned the spines and saw that the books were in order. If the book was missing, it likely wasn’t where it should have been, but I thought it wise to check there first. A magically veiled book could be in the right place and still be missing.
I stood with my hands on my hips and surveyed the shelves around me. It might have helped if I had any idea of who had hidden the book, and why. Was it merely misplaced, or was it actually veiled? If it was veiled, then that was meant to hide it from most people, but surely if it was still in the archives, they’d have wanted someone to find it eventually. Otherwise, wouldn’t it have been destroyed?
I thought about how I would hide something like that and tried reversing the numbers on the label. I didn’t find anything in that location. I stared at the call numbers awhile longer, then had an idea. If I correlated each letter to a number, and each number to a letter, then reversed the letter and number sections to make it look like the other call numbers, then…
Wishing I’d brought a pencil with me, I did the decoding in my head, trying to keep it straight, and went to the right spot on the shelf. And there it was!
Since I was all alone, I let myself punch the air and whoop in triumph. The code was blindingly simple, when you thought about it, but combined with magical veiling that would keep any wizard from being able to read the proper label, it must have served its purpose.
I reached for the book, and sparks flew, making me jump backward with a squeak of shock. The sparks hadn’t hurt me, but there must have been a protection spell that would have kept anyone susceptible to magic from being able to touch it. I tried again, forcing myself to ignore the sparks. “Just what about you is so secret?” I mused, using the kind of tone I might employ to calm a distressed animal. Then I realized I was actually petting the book.
Whether the spell had dissipated once I took the book off the shelf or whether the soothing really had worked, the book stopped spewing sparks. I knew I should probably take the book straight to Roger, but he hadn’t said not to look at it, so I opened the front cover. It gave off one last spark, then settled down with something that was almost a sigh.
I couldn’t tell that there was anything special about it. It just looked like an accounting ledger to me, with columns of names and numbers. Why would anyone go to great lengths to hide this? I supposed perhaps that this could have been someone’s second set of books, or maybe this was a list of people the Collegium was leaning on for kickbacks. Make that had leaned on, since this had all happened about a hundred years ago.
