These were all the creatures who used to work for Phelan Idris, the first foe I’d faced when I entered the magical world. I’d had many a run-in with them along the way. They couldn’t harm me magically, but they could do physical damage, and they were just plain creepy. I wanted to back away and hide behind Roger, but I forced myself to stand my ground and stare at them defiantly.
“She works for me now,” Roger said.
“Does she?” the harpy said with the kind of grin that gave me the impression she’d just shoved a child into her oven to roast.
“Yes, and if you’d like to work for me, you’ll leave her alone.” He turned to me. “Can you see what they really are?”
I couldn’t help but make a face. “Unfortunately.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“Well, there are a bunch of harpies. I’m not sure what the skeleton creatures are supposed to be. They used to stalk me when they were working for someone else.”
Roger turned back toward the creatures. “Who, exactly, were you working for? Who hired you and paid you?”
The harpy, who seemed to be the spokeswoman for the group while the others just hung around and looked menacing, said, “That nerdy boy, what was his name?”
“No one else? No one older?”
“He was the only one we saw.”
Roger nodded in satisfaction at that. “I’m willing to hire you to work directly for me. You’ll be paid in cash, part up front, part when I’m sure you’re doing what I want.”
“And what would you be hiring us to do? We specialize in ominous lurking.”
“None of that yet. I want you on standby for specific tasks. I’ll give you targets and objectives.”
“Killing, maiming, or just threatening?” the harpy asked as she examined her claws.
“We’d start with threatening and possibly work our way up, depending on how the target reacts. So, are you in?”
They huddled, which was not a sight I really wanted to see. It created a tight ball of ugly evil. “What do you think? Were they good at threatening?” Roger asked me softly.
“Good enough, I suppose,” I said with a shrug. “I got used to them.”
“But you’re hardly ordinary. I suspect it would take a lot to scare you.”
“If you’re going after magical people, they’re probably even harder to scare. They’re more accustomed to this sort of thing.”
“I hope I can accomplish my objectives by merely unsettling them at first. That might make them more receptive when I offer to protect them from these threats.”
Really? He was planning to run a protection racket? This was the magical mafia, I thought, trying not to grin and shake my head. But I guessed if it worked in the nonmagical world, it would work with magic.
The creatures finished their discussion and turned to face Roger. The harpy spoke. “We’ll start at a hundred dollars an hour when we’re actually working. Each. Five grand a week retainer for the group.”
“Two grand a week retainer, and trust me, you’ll get plenty of hours in,” Roger countered.
The creatures huddled again, then the harpy said, “Done. But we want the first week’s retainer up front.”
“That’s not a problem,” Roger said. “I’ll have the cash to you by the end of the day.”
“Not now?” the harpy whined.
“I don’t carry that kind of cash. Shall we meet here again, or somewhere else?”
Her hideous face twisted into something I assumed was meant as a smile. “I could always drop by your office to pick it up.”
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find you. That’s what we do.” Her cackle echoed in the vast space, and there was a rustling as all the creatures disappeared into the darkness.
Roger took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his hands, even though he hadn’t touched any of the creatures. “Disgusting things,” he muttered. “But they are the best at what they do.” He refolded the handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. “Now, shall we go? We’ve got another stop to make.”
When we were inside the car, Roger snapped his fingers, and the windows became transparent. As the car left the warehouse, light poured into the interior, and I found myself sighing. It felt so good to feel sunlight and to know where I was. Judging by the angle of the skyline, I figured we were somewhere in Brooklyn. We drove across the bridge to Manhattan and stopped in front of the kind of restaurant where corporate bigwigs probably did deals over three-martini lunches.
“Hungry for lunch?” Roger asked.
“Um, I guess,” I said. I hoped this was strictly business and that he wasn’t putting the moves on me. Or was this kind of place his equivalent of grabbing a sandwich at the corner deli, no big deal?
A doorman helped me out of the car and an attendant inside took our coats. “There will be someone joining us,” he told the hostess, and I relaxed a little. If someone was joining us, then this was business.
Once we were seated, he declined the wine list and ordered a soda for himself and an iced tea for me. I might have been miffed that he hadn’t consulted me, but he was right about my order. After the waiter left, he said, “I’m looking at a potential team member today, and I’d appreciate your insight. Let me know if anything seems off, for one thing. And you might know something about them.”
Now, I figured, we’d be meeting with those people Rod was sending to us. Much to my surprise, Minerva Felps swooped toward our table, her colorful scarves flying out behind her. “You must be Roger—and no, I didn’t know that because I’m a seer. I know it because you set up the meeting. And hello, Katie! It’s good to see that you’ve landed on your feet. The way you were treated was atrocious.” I would have said she was laying it on a little thick, but that was the way she always was.
She let the waiter seat her, ordered a gimlet, and turned to face Roger again. “I’m a little confused because you’re not planning to offer me a regular job. You just want me to freelance for you on the side. But I can’t quite get a good read on what sort of work you’re doing, or even who you work for.”
I was surprised to see just how taken aback Roger was. It did take getting used to Minerva, but if he was recruiting a seer, surely he knew what he was getting. It would have been more alarming if she hadn’t already known what was going on.
“I’m glad to hear that my defenses are working,” he said. He paused while the waiter brought our drinks and distributed menus. “But I’m impressed that you got that much. You must be the real deal.”
“Do you think I’d be where I am now if I wasn’t? So, you want a little freelance scrying done for you?”
“I’m doing some long-range planning, and I want to get a sense of possible outcomes.”
“Personal or professional?”
“Both.”
“That I can do for you. Not here, of course. That takes solitude, quiet, and preparation. And you’d have to drop those defenses for me to get an accurate read.”
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t grin. It would be a big help to us if Minerva was able to read his future. I sincerely hoped that she really was on our side because I was toast if she wasn’t. A real seer who’d tell him the whole truth would surely tell him he had a traitor in his midst. Minerva hadn’t been on any list we’d put together of potential Collegium allies, and I doubted Roger would have wanted to talk to her if she had been.
“I’m sure that can be arranged. I’ll have Katie get in touch with you later to set up a meeting.”
She tilted her head to the side, studying him, for a moment. “I can tell you that things are in flux around you. There are a lot of variables at work that make your future very hazy.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“It could go either way.”
“Tell me what I’m thinking now.”
“You’re testing me to see how accurate I am, and you wonder if I could give you a read on Katie, here. Sorry, no can do. It won’t work on her. And I’m a seer, not a clairvoyant, so I can read your future. I can get a sense of your fate. I can find lost people. But I can’t read your mind.”
“I thought you just did.”
“Only because it was painfully transparent. Heck, I bet Katie here could have read that one off you, and she doesn’t have a drop of magic in her.”
The conversation ended when the waiter returned to take our orders, and then we made small talk over lunch. Under Minerva’s casual questioning, I learned far more about Roger than I had in the whole time I’d been working with him. For instance, his father had apparently been a big player in the company he worked for (I assumed he meant the Collegium) but had fallen afoul of someone in the hierarchy. His mother used to work for MSI, a long time ago. He’d been top of his class at Harvard and had an MBA, in addition to being a trained wizard. Basically, he was the preppie from hell. He played golf and tennis, summered at Martha’s Vineyard, where he kept his sailboat, and all those little things that sounded like something out of a movie. He was single, not even dating, because he was focused on his career and his last two relationships had ended badly (he didn’t mention the frog to Minerva).
I watched and listened in awe. I’d never have had the nerve to ask him those sorts of questions, but she got away with it by acting like she already knew the answers and was checking her facts. I couldn’t tell whether or not he realized just how much he was being manipulated. It was all rather brilliant, and I was getting a clearer picture of why he was doing what he was doing. He was trying to get back for what had happened to his father, and maybe avoid getting himself into a similar situation.
We ended the lunch with a promise to get in touch with Minerva, and as soon we were back in our car—the windows blacked out again—Roger asked me, “Do you think she’s worthwhile?”
“I’ve never known her to be wrong.”
“How loyal do you think she is to MSI?”
“From my understanding, she worked directly under the previous president. So her loyalty may be more to him than to the current boss.” I thought that he could read into that what he wanted. The statement of fact was true, but I’d presented the interpretation as merely a possibility.
He leaned back against his seat, a smugly satisfied smile on his face. “I don’t see how she should have a conflict of interest, unless she sees what I plan to do to that company and to her boss and she has to decide what to do with that knowledge. Not that I’d give her the chance to tell anyone.” He said it so casually that unless you’d seen what he did to people who crossed him, you might not have realized he was making a threat. It sounded like it was no different to him than talking about picking up milk on the way home. I forced myself not to shudder.
We had to stop this guy, preferably in a way that totally neutralized him. I almost felt sorry for the higher-ups in the Collegium, with him gunning for them. Somehow, I doubted he’d put them carefully in an indoor frog pond. He’d probably throw them right out into the street to be run over by a truck.
When we returned to headquarters, Roger took me straight to my new office. I no longer entered past Evelyn’s office or went through the reception area. I had a direct path from the gallery around the atrium to Roger’s immediate domain. He hadn’t been kidding about my new office being larger. It was bigger than my apartment, with a large L-shaped desk and a full-sized sofa. The window had the same London view as from Roger’s office next door, which made me wonder yet again if it was a faked view or a real one. Maybe there was some kind of portal in the hallway, and we really were in London.
“What do you think?” Roger asked, sounding strangely eager to please.
“It’s beautiful.”
“If you want some decorations, something to personalize it, talk to Evelyn. She can let you choose some paintings and plants.”
“Okay, great. And now I guess I’d better go back and get that book.”
He grinned. “Yes, that’s one thing we couldn’t bring for you. I’ll let you get to work.”
*
I didn’t hear from Owen again for days, which was probably smart on his part because it kept us from doing anything that looked suspicious, but I still missed him terribly. Friday night, I was copying out the spell I’d memorized that day and trying to decide if I should cook something or call my friends to go out when the front door buzzer sounded. “Pizza delivery,” a voice on the intercom said, and I grinned because I recognized that voice.
“Come on up,” I said, hitting the button to unlock the door, then I flew to my own door and flung it open.
When Owen reached my floor, I saw that he’d really immersed himself in the role. He wore a jacket with the logo of a neighborhood pizza restaurant and a ballcap with the same logo. He carried an insulated case. I started to speak, but he held a finger to his lips, and I nodded, stepping back to allow him inside. “That’ll be twenty-seventeen, with tax,” he said.
“Let me get my purse,” I said.
We both paused for a moment, after which he said, “Thanks, miss. You have a good evening.” He opened and shut my door, then he waved his hands, doing something complicated with his fingers. When it was done, he said, “I knew that silence spell would come in handy eventually.”
I let him put the pizza down on the coffee table before I threw myself into his arms. “I’ve missed you so much,” I said, showering him with kisses.
He laughed as he staggered backward under my assault. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me back.
After that had gone on for a while, I asked, still clinging to him, “What kind of pizza is it?”
“Canadian bacon and mushroom.”
“It would be a real pity if we let it get cold.”
“And we should probably talk. I don’t think I can get away with staying too long without someone wondering what’s going on. They’ll either notice the pizza delivery guy hanging out for a long time or the fact that you’ve been silent for ages.”
“I’m starting to wonder how much they really are watching me,” I said as I unzipped the pizza bag. The aroma of hot pizza filled the room, and I inhaled deeply. I took out the cardboard box and opened it, then removed a slice. “Roger acts like he trusts me completely. He may be just arrogant enough to think that he’d know if I had the potential to be disloyal.”
Owen took his own slice of pizza, and we both sat on the sofa. I handed him some of the paper napkins from the pizza bag. “You don’t know what his bosses might be doing,” he said. “They may have figured out that he has his own agenda and might be watching you to see what that is.”
“Then they’re going to think I’m the pizza delivery guy’s fantasy customer,” I said, running my toes up his calf.
He turned bright red and smiled. “I hope you didn’t give that spell you gave me to Roger.”
“I wasn’t sure if he saw that page, so I made a few alterations before giving him anything. I’ve left out the rest so far this week.”
“Good, because it’s kind of scary.”
“Worse than turning people into frogs?”
“How about turning them into portraits? If you see anything hanging on the walls in that building, you might want to give it a second look. It could be the people who were running the Collegium a century ago—and I don’t mean pictures of them.”
“Is it reversible?”
“It might be, but that’s not contained within the spell. Frankly, figuring that out is low on my priority list right now.”
“I have more spells for you.” I finished the slice of pizza I was eating, wiped my hands on a napkin, and picked up the page I’d been working on. “There’s this one,” I said, handing it to him. Then I rose slightly to dig under the sofa cushions. “And these. I hope they’re at all accurate. It’s hard doing this sort of thing from memory.”
“You’re doing great. The ones you’ve sent so far could be really useful. If we could find that building to get inside, we could get straight to the core of things with one of those spells.”
“I’m not sure it’s just one building. In fact, I think I’m working in London right now. It’s like the building is just a collection of portals to other buildings.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s interesting. I’ve heard of things like that, but haven’t seen it implemented. It would make travel a lot easier.”
“Yeah, too bad it seems the only way out is to come back to New York. I don’t know if there are exits everywhere.”
“I’d think there would have to be. Otherwise, why do such a thing? As it is, it would be the ideal way to escape to another jurisdiction if there’s ever a raid. That must be what the spell does, give you access to all those portals. If we could just get something into the building with you, we might be able to track it better.”
“Or plant one of those beacons to transport directly. But it wouldn’t go any farther than my changing room, or the alarms would go off. I’m not sure that knowing where the changing room is would do you much good.”
“What about when you leave the building with Roger during the day?”
“We don’t seem to go through the same security process when returning, but I haven’t tried to bring in anything from the outside, so I don’t know if I just haven’t noticed because I haven’t set off the alarms. I’m never out of his sight, though. Picking up anything would be tricky. You haven’t had any luck finding a way to get past the disguise spells on the car to follow it?”
“Nope, and we gave it another shot after that lunch you had with Minerva. She says your boss is terrifying, by the way.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that feeling. She picked up something?”
“She used words like ‘apocalypse.’”
“Yikes!”
“Which is why I don’t want to take any risk of putting you in danger.”
“Well, at least they can’t turn me into a portrait.”
“There are ways to remove your magical immunity. If you notice symptoms, don’t go back there, and let us know right away. We can hide you.”
“I don’t think he’d do that. He needs my immunity.”
“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 after 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.”
She hummed to herself as she took candles out of her bulky tote bag and lit them with a wave of her hand. Next, she removed a metal bowl and handed it to me. “Go fill this with water, please.”
I did so and brought it back to her. She placed it on the little round table and gestured for Roger to sit in one of the antique-looking chairs. She took the other chair, and I perched on the edge of the sofa, watching both of them.
“Okay, I need you to close your eyes, Roger,” she said, “and open your mind to me.”
He did so, and she waited a second or two before she leaned over the bowl. Then she immediately sat upright, saying, “Whoa!”