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.”

“I worked at a small-town farm supply store. That’s hardly high finance.”

“But it means you’ve actually worked with money in a real, tangible way, not just moving numbers around on a computer. You know what should be in contracts. You know how people should behave. I’ve heard a lot about how you apply common sense to your work, as well. You managed to work effectively as a verifier while your immunity wasn’t working, from what I hear.”

If Sylvia hadn’t warned us about the Collegium, if this woman had just approached me like this, I might have been tempted. Yes, I owed MSI a lot, and I liked working with Owen. But we were going to be married soon, so we’d be living together. Did we have to also work together? Most couples had separate jobs. It might even take some strain off our relationship if we didn’t have to be together so much.

But that wasn’t what was really going on here, I was sure. If they were recruiting me into a Collegium front, they’d test my loyalty before I got access to any good information, so I wouldn’t be able to do much as a spy, and I didn’t want to actually work for them.

“I’m sorry, but I’m still not interested in changing jobs,” I said. “I like where I am.”

“That’s not what I hear. You like the company. You hate your job.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I’m very well connected,” she said with a smile. She slid a business card across the bar to me. “Here, take another card. The offer stays open. Call me anytime.”

She slid gracefully off the barstool and disappeared—well, not literally, in a puff of magical smoke, but I lost sight of her in the crowded bar. I finished my wine and went to retrieve my coat from the coat check. There was nothing in the pockets but my gloves.

After making myself visible in other places Sylvia had approached me, like the park and the subway, I became fairly certain that she hadn’t vanished of her own accord. That meant she was right that they might get rid of her, and if she was right about that, then she was probably right about them making a move on MSI and targeting Merlin. We had to do something about it.

The problem was, I had no idea what we could do, short of firing everyone we suspected of being linked to the Collegium, and even then, I was sure there were others we didn’t know about. Plus, they’d probably consider that to be the first shot in open warfare.

There was that one other option, the one we’d rejected time after time as too dangerous and not very effective. But any information had to be better than no information at all. Even if I just went for an interview and saw who some of the players were and where they were located, we might be ahead of where we were now. I could always turn down the job.

But there was also the chance that I could get a lot more information than that. If I was so valuable to them that they were recruiting me—and Sylvia had said it wasn’t because they thought I had inside information—then I might have a shot at getting the scoop.

I went straight to Merlin’s office the next morning. “I don’t think we have any other choice but for me to take this job with them,” I said.

He gestured for me to take a seat. “I thought we agreed that it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Maybe it won’t, but it’s likely to do more good than doing nothing, and that’s where we are now. We’ve lost Sylvia, apparently, which means she was right, and can we afford not to take action? Besides, I have a plan that might fast-track me into their trust.”

“What would that be?”

“I’d have to make it look good, make it clear that I’m deserting you, that I might be mad enough at MSI to turn against you. When Rod first recruited me here, I ignored all his e-mails until I had a really bad day and a run-in with my old boss, Mimi. That was what spurred me to jump at any chance to get out of there. So I need something like that here—a chain of events that would make me abandon ship and run straight into their arms. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t try to arrange something like that, themselves. They have people on the inside who are apparently reporting on what’s happening, so they’ll know what I’m going through.”

“I’m sure we can find some ways to frustrate you,” he said, smiling slightly.

“And you’re going to have to do it, too. I’ve had clashes with people in the company, but you’ve always had my back. For them to believe this, you’ll have to give me a reason to be angry at you, personally.”

“I suppose it would have to be unfair rather than warranted, but I believe it would look suspicious if I suddenly started being mean to you, with no warning or reason.”

“We should probably do this gradually. Ramp up to it instead of changing abruptly.”

“And what of Mr. Palmer? Have you discussed this with him?”

I shifted in my seat, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Not yet. I mean, we’ve talked about it in general, but I wanted to bring this up with you before I talked about it with him. It’s not really under his jurisdiction, and I’ve been trying to keep him out of this whole thing.”

“I would think he has a personal stake in the matter. Wouldn’t it be odd for you to reject this company so strongly that you turn to an organization opposed to it while you continue planning a wedding to someone within the company?”

I bit my lip and tried not to groan. I’d thought about it, but then I’d tried not to think about it. That was the one hitch in the whole plan. I wasn’t sure how I could pull off an attitude of “I hate MSI so much I want to bring them down, please tell me all your evil plans for doing so, in detail” while I was engaged to MSI’s poster boy. “I may have to fake that, as well,” I said, reluctantly admitting out loud what I’d been avoiding considering. “And what would sell my desertion better than breaking off my engagement?”

Merlin studied me with a stern gaze. “If you’re going to take it that far, you absolutely must talk to Mr. Palmer about it before proceeding.”

“Of course! I wouldn’t just dump him and not let him know why.”

“I meant that he needs to agree to it. It may be your choice to go undercover, but he will be making sacrifices, as well.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’ll see my reasoning.” Either that, or we’d end up having a fight that would make my departure from MSI very convincing.

 

*

 

I put off talking to Owen for as long as I could. I went back to my office, answered e-mails, did some paperwork, and made a pro/con list about my plan, outlining bullet points to show why this was our best possible hope and coming up with arguments to counter any objections I anticipated.

When all hands in the sales department were called to the Wacky Winter Warm-up party, I decided that facing Owen was the lesser of two evils and headed up to his lab.

He and his assistant, Jake, were standing in front of a whiteboard, arguing about some fine point of something written on the board. It was in a language I didn’t recognize, and I’d learned to recognize a lot of languages from hanging around with Owen. Both of them held markers and were writing things above the words written on the board, going back and forth, each crossing out what the other had written and writing in something else. It was getting pretty heated.

Since Owen so seldom argued about much of anything, and him even raising his voice was a rare occurrence, I thought that this was the worst possible time to tell him I needed to pretend to break our engagement and quit the company in a huff of anger so I could go on a dangerous and potentially unproductive undercover mission. But before I could slip out of the lab, he noticed me.

“Katie! Is something wrong?” he asked.

“What? No! Why?” I wanted to kick myself because I couldn’t have sounded guiltier if I’d tried.

“You look, well, frazzled.”

“I barely escaped from a Sales party. It was pretty harrowing. What’s going on here?”

“We’re having a slight difference of opinion,” Jake said. “And I still think you’re reading that one rune the wrong way.”

“This isn’t an album cover, Jake.”

“I know you’ve got all those fancy degrees and read this kind of stuff for fun, but that also means you’ve got some preconceived notions that keep you from seeing what’s really there.”

“But the spell doesn’t make sense that way.”

“Unless the spell’s not meant to be about silence at all.”

I boosted myself up to sit on the end of the lab table so I could watch the debate. It was too bad I didn’t have any popcorn handy. “Silence?” I asked.

“Depending on how you interpret the runes, this could be a spell for dampening sound and creating silence,” Owen said.

“Or it could be a direction to chant the spell internally, not making a sound,” Jake said.

“Could it be both?” I asked. “It would make sense that you’d want to do a spell about silence quietly. If you need to dampen the sound you’re making, it wouldn’t do you much good if you had to chant a spell.”

They looked at each other, both of them raising their eyebrows, then turned to face the board. “Maybe that’s why we’re reading it both ways,” Owen said. “It’s meant to mean both things. Look, that mark here is what changes the meaning.”

“Yeah, that’s why I thought it was a direction,” Jake said. “So, a silent silence spell. Makes sense to me.”

They turned back to face me, both smiling now, all traces of their earlier conflict gone. “I’m glad you came by,” Owen said. “Sometimes it helps to get an outside perspective.”

“That’s me, having the common sense,” I said. In my head, the words of the mystery recruiter echoed. She’d said that about me, too. “I guess everyone has a superpower.”

“Did you need something other than a hiding place?” Owen asked.

Now that he was in a good mood again, I didn’t have an excuse not to talk to him. “I need to check in with you about that thing we’ve been working on.”

“I thought you were keeping me out of it.”

“I wanted to run something by you.”

“I’ll keep working on this,” Jake said, turning to write on the board.

I jumped off the table, and Owen escorted me to his office, then shut the door behind us and waved a hand to activate the privacy wards. “So, what is it?” he asked.

I’d spent enough time in the sales department to know you had to lay the groundwork for something like this. You couldn’t just jump into the hard part. “Did you hear about Sylvia?” I asked.

“What about her?”

“She approached me yesterday, ready for us to get her to safety. She also said they’re never going to hire Kim, so that plan’s a dead end. Apparently, Gregor knows her a bit too well.”

“So Sylvia’s safe now?”

“Well, not exactly.” I knew I needed to look him in the eye to sell this, but it was hard to do so. “She didn’t show up for the extraction. We haven’t heard from her since then. Either she changed her mind completely, or they got to her before she could get away. If it’s the latter, that suggests she was right about everything else.”

“I think all those other disappearances were another sign.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Now I really couldn’t look him in the eye. I uncrossed my legs, then recrossed them. “Did I also mention that they tried recruiting me? At least, I’m pretty sure it’s them. Obviously, they didn’t say they were the Collegium. It was some financial institution I’ve never heard of. I turned them down, of course. They said they were interested in my common sense, and they’d let me do real verification work. Actually, they seem to know a lot about me.”

“It might be some other company. You’re getting quite the reputation. Magical businesses all over the city would be glad to have you.”

“I think the timing is pretty suspicious, though.”

“Possibly. You’re not even interested in looking into it?”

I started to wonder if he already knew where I was going with this. He had an uncanny sense that helped him predict what I was likely to do. I wasn’t sure how much of that was magic and how much was that he really got me. “Well, that’s the thing. I am thinking of giving them a call. If it’s just another company, then no harm done, and hey, maybe I can even use it to negotiate a raise or a job I’d like better. And if it’s not, then it may be our best shot at getting someone on the inside of the Collegium so we can learn what they’re up to.”

His expression became a lot less friendly and supportive. “I thought we agreed that you going undercover would be a bad idea because they’d never truly trust you.”

“But that was before they started recruiting me. I think maybe I could trick them into trusting me if I made my departure look really good, if there was a good reason for me to be totally over MSI. I’ve been talking about it with the boss, and we figure that we could have things start to go downhill and then end with a bang.”

“What about us? You’d still be engaged to me.”

I really, really didn’t want to face him when talking about this next part, but I forced myself to look him square in the eye when I said, “We’d have to pretend on that, as well. A nasty breakup would make it incredibly convincing. But it would be fake, really. We might even be able to find ways to see each other. We’d have to be careful, of course, but secret meetings could be kind of sexy. I wouldn’t plan to stay there very long, just enough to learn something. Even if I learned some of their locations and people, that would help.”

“Are you telling me this is what you’re doing, or are you asking for my input?” His face was so stony that I couldn’t read him at all. He made Sam, who was literally made of stone, look like Jim Carrey.

“Merlin said I had to talk to you before we decided anything because you’d be making a big sacrifice, too. I won’t do it if you’re against it. But think about it; this may be our only hope. How many people could be saved if I can find out what’s going on? We don’t want them having control of this company. You’re the one always quoting that Casablanca line about the problems of two little people not mattering in the greater scheme of things.”

“You’d be careful?”

“Duh!”

“You’d get yourself out of there the moment it looks like there’s any danger?”

“Of course!”

“Katie, I know you. I can already hear it: ‘But I’m so close!’”

“I’ve seen what delays did to Sylvia.”

“I don’t like it, but I won’t stop you.”

“Trust me, I don’t like it, either. I just don’t see how I have any choice. This may be our only chance ever to get someone inside.”

“Or it really may be some international bank recruiting you.”

“If it is, let’s see what they offer. Maybe I can get a cool new job.”

He grinned, then suddenly looked alarmed. “You are joking, right? You wouldn’t really want to leave?”

“No, I wouldn’t leave. But now I need to go let the boss know we’re on so everyone can begin mistreating me and taking me for granted.”

 

*

 

Implementing the scheme to give me an excuse to quit was both difficult and alarmingly easy. While Merlin and I could stage a dispute, there weren’t many other people we were sure we could trust to be in on it, and that meant that whatever happened in my department had to be genuine. That was the hard part. The sad thing was, it happened anyway without any manipulation of events. All I had to do was actually express my feelings about the kind of stuff that happened all the time.

Take the meeting I had with Mr. Hartwell the next day. He was notorious about leaving people waiting, in spite of having a set appointment. Normally, I didn’t let it get to me. I brought work I could do or something to read while I waited or, if I had another meeting, I asked his assistant to reschedule me. This time, when the time of the meeting arrived and he wasn’t there, I got up and said, “Well, I guess the meeting wasn’t that important to him, so it won’t be a problem if it doesn’t happen,” then went back to my office. I had to move quickly to disguise the fact that my legs were shaking. I wasn’t used to being quite that rebellious with authority figures.

There was yet another department party that afternoon—the “Let’s Make a Splash Summer in January Luau”—and I didn’t even pretend I was going to attend. A salesman wearing a grass skirt over his clothes stuck his head into my office. “Knock, knock!” he said. “Aren’t you coming to the party? We have mai tais!”

“Unlike apparently everyone else around here, I have work to do,” I snapped. “You know, I think our sales would improve dramatically if you devoted the time you spend partying to, you know, selling.”

He blinked and flinched as though I’d struck him physically. “Well, if you’re going to be that way about it.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from grinning. So far, it seemed to be working. I felt my grin fading as I realized that creating a reason for me to want to quit and take another job offer didn’t involve changing anything about my working environment. All I had to do to make jumping ship believable was react naturally.

I had to get back into character the next morning when a nervous Perdita came into my office. “Um, Katie, well, uh, Mr. Hartwell wants to see you, right away.”

Without looking up from what I was doing—checking the weather forecast online—I said, “Okay.”

She remained standing in the doorway. “He sounded pretty intense about it.”

“When I’m done with this.” After I noted the temperatures for the five-day outlook and had mentally planned my wardrobe accordingly, I got up and headed to Mr. Hartwell’s office. My heart pounded so hard I felt like it was about to burst out of my chest like an alien, but I forced myself to play it cool.

This time, Mr. Hartwell was there, and he didn’t look happy—well, as much as he could look anything with a face that could have been molded out of plastic. “Please, shut the door behind you,” he said.

I tried not to gulp. I reminded myself that this was what I wanted, though having the door open would have been better so more people could have overheard. I shut the door and took a seat before he invited me to. “Did you need something?” I asked, maintaining an air of innocence.

“I understand you were busy yesterday.”

“I was. And I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.”

That really took him aback. He was apparently planning to chide me, and now he was on the defensive. “Sometimes things come up.”

“Then it would be considerate to communicate when things change instead of assuming that your time is more valuable than everyone else’s.”

“I’m sensing that this isn’t about just one missed meeting. Are you unhappy here?”

I gave him a piercing glare. “Yes, I guess I am. I feel like I’m wasting my time. In fact, I’m going to apply for another internal position.”

“Perhaps you should.” His voice sounded harsh, and I realized what a big risk I was taking. I was burning a lot of bridges here, and if I wasn’t able to get into the Collegium, I’d have to find a new job anyway. From this point, there was no turning back.