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“But if he starts to have any doubts about you, he might not care so much.” He took the pages I’d given him, folded them, and slid them into the front of his jacket. “And now I’d better get out of here.”
“So soon?”
“It’s risky enough just coming here. I’m not going to put you in more danger.” He picked up the pizza bag and headed for the door.
I hurried a
fter him to give him one last pizza-tasting kiss. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.”
“I wish I didn’t have to come up with anything.” After one more quick kiss, he dissolved the silence spell and was gone.
I returned to the sofa and took another slice of pizza. I supposed that if Minerva was using words like “apocalypse” to describe Roger’s potential future, it would all be worth it when we stopped his evil scheme, but for now, it was pretty tough.
*
Monday morning, Roger had me call Minerva to set up a session. I had to make it look innocent on both ends of the conversation, since he was hiding his actions from the Collegium and he thought she was secretly moonlighting on MSI. It was my first contact with the outside world from within the Collegium, and I heard enough clicks on the line to know that the call was definitely being monitored. We set the appointment for that evening at the Plaza hotel.
“Do you mind working late tonight?” Roger asked me when I let him know the appointment was set. “I’d like you to be there. I’ll need an objective opinion of what happens, and you can take notes so I have a good record of what she tells me.”
“I don’t have any plans this evening.”
“Good. You can have dinner here. Get whatever you like. There’s a salon and spa on the lower level, if you’d like to get a massage or something while you’re killing time.”
“Ooh, that sounds nice,” I said, but I wasn’t really thinking about the massage. I was thinking about an excuse to go to the lower level, where the frog pond was.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do there, since even if I found the Philip frog and kissed him, I wouldn’t have a way to get him out of the building, but I liked the idea of being able to get there. Maybe seeing me would make him feel less alone, assuming he was aware of anything like that. He’d never said much about what it was like to be a frog.
I found the spa number in the company directory and called to make an appointment for a massage right after work. When I’d finished that day’s transcription for Roger—mostly a lot of rambling about how the Collegium should be run—I headed downstairs. The spa opened from the atrium where the frog pond was. If I hadn’t seen Roger delivering his victim to the pond, I’d have thought it was just part of the spa ambience, a bit of nature brought indoors. It became a little less tranquil when you knew it was basically a prison.
I took a moment to stand on the edge of the pond, scanning the surface for frogs. One did hop in my general direction, moving from rock to lily pad to log, but it was hard to tell if it was merely hopping around, or if it was trying to get to me. “I’ll help you as soon as I can, Philip,” I whispered.
“Katie?” a voice behind me said, and I turned to see a sturdy woman in a lab coat.
“Oh, yes, sorry,” I said. “I was pretending it was spring.”
“It’s easy to do that here, isn’t it? Come on inside, and I’ll show you the changing room.”
I undressed and put on the plush robe they provided. Then I had a moment of panic when I realized I’d have to take off my watch. The symbols from the spell I’d memorized that day were written on my wrist, and they were obviously in ballpoint ink, not a tattoo. Rather than take the risk, I scrubbed the marks off in the room’s sink. I figured I could always rewrite them. There was still some ink left on my wrist, but it didn’t look like I was smuggling company information out.
After the massage—the kind of perk I’d hate to lose when I went back to MSI—I went upstairs to find dinner waiting for me on my desk. Before I ate, I paused to quickly rewrite the symbols.
Finally, it was time to go. I wasn’t sure how this would work—did I dress in my outside world clothes before leaving, then go straight home from the hotel, or did I wear my work clothes, come back here after the meeting, change, and then go home? I wouldn’t be able to go straight home from the meeting, since my house keys were in my changing room.
Roger answered that question when he handed me a small black bag. “Here are some things for overnight. You’ll be staying at the hotel. The room where we’re meeting is booked in your name, and you need to stay there to make it look legitimate.”
“How are you going to explain your presence?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Don’t worry, your reputation will be safe. I’ll sneak in. No one will know I’ve been at the hotel. Minerva will be visiting you there, as a friend.”
It turned out that I was alone in the car on my way to the Plaza. As the doorman helped me out of the limo, I worried that I didn’t have my purse to be able to tip him, but I found a convenient roll of bills in the pocket of the coat that had been waiting for me in the car. Roger might have been kind of crazy, but he was a compulsive planner.
The suite waiting for me looked like the kind of place where a princess might feel at home. The furniture was ornate, the carpet plush, and there was a crystal chandelier overhead in the sitting room. I took my bag to the adjacent bedroom and opened it, finding a few toiletries, a hairbrush, a pair of black silk pajamas, a change of underwear, black slacks, and a black sweater. As I hung up the clothes, I thought about how when I was done with this operation, I was going to wear colors so bright you’d need sunglasses to look at me.
I was arranging the toiletries in the bathroom when I heard a knock on the door. I opened it to find Minerva. “Not bad,” she said, eyeing the room. “Your boss may possibly be Satan himself, but he does treat you well.”
“I had a massage earlier today in the company spa.”
“Really? That’s a perk I could get behind.” She abruptly turned and opened the door to reveal Roger standing there, his hand raised to knock. “And here you are,” she said, stepping back to allow him to enter. “Have a seat and make yourself comfortable while I get set up.”
