“Come on, I have an idea,” I said to Trish, then began making my way around the lobby. Even though I knew the magic wouldn’t affect me, I couldn’t help but flinch when a bolt of something flew toward me, and those harpies were also pretty nasty if they got your claws into you. After glancing back and forth between the battle and me, Trish hurried to catch up with me.
“What kind of idea?” she asked.
“One that should turn the power down here a lot and give us an advantage. I hope.”
“Does this mean getting out of the war zone?”
“It does.”
“Then I’m with you.”
We were almost to the stairs, where I was pretty sure they’d put up extra wards to keep the outsider wizards and creatures out of the main part of the building, when one of the harpies noticed us. She swooped in our direction, claws out and body flat. “Run!” I told Trish.
She put on a good sprint, and I was right behind her, but I was afraid we weren’t going to make it. Magic might not have been able to hurt us, but talons would, and I’d seen what those talons could do to a person.
“Sam!” I shouted, hoping the gargoyle could hear me over the ruckus. He was probably my best bet for intercepting the harpy before she could reach us. Sure enough, he wheeled around and zoomed toward her. I put on a burst of speed and quit looking behind me, trying to narrow the gap between me and safety. But I couldn’t resist a peek over my shoulder once or twice so I’d know whether I needed to hit the deck.
That was when I saw that Sam wasn’t going to make it in time. I threw myself flat on the ground, making myself a harder target to hit. The harpy was now so close that I felt gusts of wind coming from her wings, and I could smell the stench that surrounded her. I curled up in a ball to protect my vital organs. I was just about to bend my head to protect my face when the harpy suddenly flew backwards.
I didn’t think that was possible, but I wasn’t about to complain. I looked around and saw Owen, his arm still outstretched from whatever he’d thrown at the harpy. I sat up, blew him a kiss, and got back on my feet to run the rest of the way to the stairs. I didn’t know if Owen knew what I was up to, but I figured he was okay with any plan that put me on the other side of a magical barrier that kept the bad guys out.
Trish was still waiting on the landing in the middle of the grand staircase. I reached her and said, “Come on.” She joined me in running the rest of the way up the stairs. The tingle of the wards as we passed through them was a welcome relief. I stopped and caught my breath, bending over to brace my hands on my knees until I stopped shaking.
“This is nuts. You know that, right?” Trish said.
“You get used to it.”
“I take it the dark-haired hottie is your boyfriend, or something?”
“Actually, we’re engaged.”
“If there are any others like him here, are you hiring?”
“They’re always hiring people like us. We’ll talk after we survive all this.”
In my time at MSI, I’d had a few thorough tours of the building, and I’d frequently had to run all over the place to get my job done. I’d only seen the control room once because I didn’t have much business there. I thought I might be able to find it again, though it was easy to get lost in this place. It might not have had hallways that were portals to other buildings in other parts of the world (or did it?), but it was still a confusing maze.
I’d thought we’d left the danger behind once we crossed the barrier, but I’d forgotten that the Collegium had plants within MSI. Some of them appeared to be showing their loyalty by rushing to their allies’ aid. I didn’t think the barrier would let them through to join the fight, but we were still left to face them.
“Wait a second, is that Shrek?” Trish blurted, her face twisted with disgust.
“It’s Gregor. He’s not always an ogre, but he must be really agitated.”
Fortunately, I still had my purse with me, and that meant I should have a canister of pepper spray somewhere in there—a concession to my mom, who was worried about me living in New York. I fumbled in my bag, not taking my eyes off the people moving toward us. My fingers closed on the canister, and I pulled it out of my bag. The Collegium plants were almost upon us. There were only a few of them, not nearly as many as my research had suggested there would be. I guessed that not all of them were willing to out themselves. Showing up like this was a big risk and a firm commitment to their cause. I wondered what they’d do if they realized that their boss was now a frog—or were these Roger’s people who were personally loyal to him?
Trish dropped into a defensive position that suggested she’d had martial arts training, and I allowed myself to glance away from the approaching wizards just long enough to make sure I was pointing the pepper spray in the right direction. There weren’t a lot of them, but even with us immune to magic, we wouldn’t be able to fight them.
But then it occurred to me that these people probably didn’t want a fight with us. They were trying to join their comrades in the bigger fight, and would probably only attack us if we tried to stop them. I grabbed Trish’s arm. For a second, I thought she’d hit me, but her reflexes were good and she pulled back in the nick of time. “Let’s just get out of their way,” I suggested.
She glanced at the oncoming traitors, then back at me, then shrugged. “Worth a shot. And I’d rather have my back against a wall, anyway.”
We moved to the far side of the passageway, clearing the way for the oncoming group. I kept my finger on the pepper spray button, and Trish kept her defensive stance, but they walked right past us. I didn’t want to be there when they discovered they couldn’t join the fight or when they figured out that we might be a threat to their allies, so as soon as they were past us, I whispered to Trish, “Run!” We hurried out of that passage and around the corner so that they couldn’t see us.
“What is this place, anyway?” Trish asked when we’d stopped running. “It looks like some kind of castle mixed with a university, mixed with an old office building.”
“It’s Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Incorporated. Think of it as kind of like the Microsoft of magic. They create most of the spells magical people use. I guess you could say they’re rather traditional, but that probably comes with the territory when Merlin is the boss.”
“Wait, the old guy in charge is Merlin? The Merlin?”
“Yep. It’s a long story. Now, we need to go turn the magic off.”
“You can turn the magic off?”
“We can cut off the extra juice they run through this place. That should put our guys at an advantage. It has to do with how they process magical energy. Ask Owen for a lecture on it later. He’ll be more than happy to oblige. Now, I think it was down this way.”
This passageway seemed familiar. It was more utilitarian, less like it was trying to emulate a castle or an old European university. That was where I expected to find the utilities. In a normal business, that’s where the server room and switchboard might be. Actually, those were here, too, but there was an additional utility in a magical company.
We reached a room that said “Power” on the door, and I tried to open it. It didn’t budge, and I saw that it required an access card. I normally had a card that gave me universal access in the building, but I’d left it behind when I’d pretended to quit. I supposed I could always run up to my old office to get it back, but we didn’t have time for that.
Instead, I pounded on the door, shouting, “Open up! This is an emergency!” Surely a system so critical would be manned, especially when we were under attack.
A face appeared in the door’s narrow window. “We’re on lockdown,” the man said. I couldn’t tell if he had a long, skinny face or if the window distorted his shape.
“Yes, I know. There’s a battle in the lobby. That’s why I need you to shut down the enhanced power circuits.”
“Why would I shut it down during a battle?”
“Because the bad guys are using our extra juice, too.”
He whirled away from the door. I didn’t know for sure whether he was turning things down or calling security to report the crazy woman who was demanding that the power be turned off.
“How will we know if it’s working?” Trish asked.
“We won’t notice anything, and it will take a while before it affects anyone else. We’ll just have to go back and see how things are going.”
“We can stay on the safe side of the barrier, though, right?”
“I think that would be a very good idea. This is definitely a case where discretion is the better part of valor.”
“And it keeps them from having to worry about rescuing us.”
“Exactly!” Though I had to admit that I hated watching from the sidelines.
We hurried back to the lobby, not running, but not dawdling, either. We paused on the upper landing to watch. The battle was still raging, but it had scattered. Roger and the skeleton people were still more or less surrounded, though a few creatures had managed to break past the surrounding good guys. The harpies were all over the place, engaging in aerial combat with the gargoyles and a few fairies. I noticed Trix looking like some kind of warrior Tinkerbell, flitting around and blinding harpies with sprays of sparkling dust.
The traitors were grouped at the barrier, shouting in frustration as they stood by helplessly, like football fans watching a game on TV when their team was losing. A couple of gargoyles guarded them, so apparently they’d already been rounded up. I recognized Rocky and Rollo, who weren’t the brightest of Sam’s gargoyle corps, but I didn’t think they’d let their prisoners get away. I allowed myself the tiniest of thrills that Gregor was probably out for good after this.
I focused my attention on the lobby. All the combatants looked rather tired. They were using a lot of energy. I knew from experience that Owen would probably collapse after this, sleep a few hours, wake up and eat everything in sight, then collapse again and sleep for about twelve hours. But was the exhaustion here the regular stress of prolonged magical battle or the effects of a decreased power supply? I wasn’t even sure how big an impact the power would have. New York was on a nexus of power lines, which was why there was such a huge magical population here.
But it did seem like Owen and Merlin were starting to have a bit of an upper hand. Everyone else was more or less evenly matched. A few of the harpies and skeleton creatures had been taken out of the fight and seemed to be magically immobilized. Now they just needed to deal with Roger to shut it all down for good.
Owen finished off the skeleton he was fighting and turned to see Merlin closing in on Roger. He ran to join Merlin. Roger was still utterly calm. You’d never have guessed that he was in a crisis. Only the spark of anger in his eyes, so strong that it was clear from where we were, gave away the fact that he was fighting an all-out battle.
The two MSI wizards got him backed against a wall. Roger shouted for backup, but his creatures couldn’t get away from the MSI people or the former frogs they were dealing with. I noticed that the frogs fought with a rather intense ferocity, and I supposed I could hardly blame them after what they’d been through.
Philip and his brother made an especially good team, and Evelyn had joined them. It was starting to look like the fighting was winding down, that victory was in the cards. But then the creatures began moving whatever fight they were involved in toward Roger, so that soon Merlin and Owen were surrounded by lots of little battles, and every so often, the creatures were able to get in a blast of something at them.
“This looks like it could get real ugly,” Trish remarked, and I had to agree.
“They probably remembered that they won’t get paid if Roger goes down,” I said. “But I think I have an idea.”
“Does this idea involve going down there and running through all that?”
“It does. But you don’t have to come with me.”
“You think I’d let you leave me behind? Come on.”
We headed down the steps to where Rocky and Rollo were. “Hey, Rocky!” I said.
“Katie! How’s it goin’?”
“It’s been better. Can you do a favor for me?”
“Sure thing. What?”
“Can you make us invisible?”
“Why’d ya wanna do that?”
“So nobody will see us.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. Sure thing. Here you go!”
“I thought magic didn’t work on us,” Trish said.
“An illusion like invisibility works on other people. It makes them see what you want them to see.”
“I clearly have a lot to learn.”
“Are you ready to go?”
“Where are we going?”
“Do you remember that pebble thing Owen rolled across the floor earlier?”
“Yeah.”
“We need to get to it. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
We ran through the magical barrier and down the stairs. We had to dodge combatants that couldn’t see us, though when Trish bellowed a battle cry, that cleared a path as people paused momentarily to wonder where that noise was coming from. I saw the beacon ahead of us, but the bulk of the fighting was in our direct path. We had to skirt the worst of it because it was too intense to weave our way through it.
Just when we were almost at the beacon, someone kicked it—accidentally, it seemed, as it had merely been something in the way, but that still meant we had to change direction to go after it. I reached it and bent to scoop it up, but it got kicked again, which sent it sliding across the room. Trish moved around to block it from going any farther. It felt like we were playing the world’s tiniest soccer game.
I bent to pick it up when it bounced off her shoe. “Now what?” she asked.
“Outside,” I said. We ran for the front door. She threw it open, and I hurled the beacon outside, then shouted, “Owen!” He looked around, hearing my voice but not seeing me. I didn’t have time to run back to Rocky to get him to lift the spell, and I didn’t think he’d hear me from this distance, so I ran toward Owen, calling out, “The beacon’s outside.”
Shouting like that meant that everyone could hear me. A couple of the creatures, apparently realizing the implications, ran for the door, but Owen was faster than they were. He was already saying the words of the spell. There was a loud crack, and soon all the creatures were gone, transported outside. Without a beacon inside, they wouldn’t be able to get past our wards, and I had a feeling those wards would be adjusted before the end of the day.
Now it was down to all the MSI people and the former frogs against Roger. For the first time, he actually appeared to be scared. There was no way he could escape the inevitable outcome. Owen and Merlin exchanged a look, then stepped out of the way, leaving the path clear for the former victims. One big burst of magic later, and all that was left of Roger was a small frog on the floor.
Merlin bent to gently pick him up. “I’ll have to get a terrarium for my office,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s the most humane way to treat him and Mordred, but it is perhaps the safest. They’ll be well cared for and unable to cause trouble.”
“Just make sure you label that terrarium with a sign saying ‘Please don’t kiss the frogs.’” I said.
Everyone looked around, trying to see who’d said that, and I realized that Trish and I were still invisible. Owen waved a hand, and I assumed that must have broken Rocky’s spell. We moved toward each other, colliding in a huge hug.
“Thank goodness that’s over,” I said into his shoulder.
He kissed me on the forehead and rubbed his hand up and down my back. “No more undercover missions, okay?”
“That will depend on what my new boss has to say.”
“New boss?”
“I’m going to take Sam up on his offer to join the security team. That’s probably the best use of my talents. And I have a new recruit for him.” I raised my voice and shouted, “Hey, Sam!”
The gargoyle flew over from where he was supervising cleanup of the creatures incapacitated either by the battle or from being the first ones sent through the barrier. “Yeah, doll, what’s up?”
“Meet Trish,” I said. “Trish, this is Sam. He’s head of security here. You two should talk.”
“He’s a gargoyle,” she said warily.
“Yeah, I’m absolutely amazing at surveillance,” he said.
“I bet you are.”
“She’s immune, like me,” I said, “and she helped me deal with all this.”
“Does that mean you’re finally comin’ aboard with me?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I have to admit that I have the most fun doing stuff like this. I never liked doing marketing.”
“You know it’s not all big fights and undercover ops, right?”
“It’s also not sales meetings.”
“Are you sure about this?” Owen asked me, tightening his arms around me.
“Look, I keep getting into danger and trouble no matter what job I have, so I may as well be in a job where that’s the plan and I’m surrounded by people who know what they’re doing.”
“Whatever makes you happy.” He yawned and shook his head, as though he was trying to clear cobwebs. “I am beat. That fight really took a lot out of me.”
“You may still be suffering some from that sleeping spell. Oh, and we probably need to turn the magic back on.”
“The magic?”
“I had them shut down the extra circuits. I figured that would give you and Merlin an edge.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, you’re suited for security. I never would have thought of that.” He looked over to where Sam was perched on the guard’s station, talking to Trish. “Sam! Can you get them to turn the magic circuits back on?”
“Will do, kiddo.”
“I think I still could do with about twelve hours of sleep and one of your mother’s chocolate cakes,” Owen said to me.
“Do you want the cake before or after the sleep? Because I have her recipe.”
“After would be fine, but we have some things to wrap up here.”
Actually, things seemed to be going pretty well. The bad guys were all gone, and the magical healers were tending to any injuries among the combatants. Rod and his assistant, Isabel, were getting information from the former frogs to help them get situated. Some of them were only from Roger’s current campaign for world domination, so they were able to go back to their homes and businesses. Those who’d been out of the way for longer needed more help.
The accounting team was already gearing up to get into whatever they could find of the Collegium’s records and holdings to try to get property back to its rightful owners. Evelyn was helping clue them in on the physical locations the Collegium had used, since most of the portals linking the buildings had collapsed.
The security team rounded up the traitors for immediate dismissal and possible prosecution, depending on what they’d actually done. Magical Council enforcers had arrived somewhere along the way, and I got debriefed about Roger’s activities, including his meeting with a Council employee. It looked like this particular takedown was going to have far-reaching effects in the magical world, since the Collegium had its tentacles in just about everything.
We weren’t entirely sure what to do about all the employees who may have had Collegium ties, but who hadn’t done anything about the fight. It looked like there would be lots more interviews and discussions going forward, but since there wasn’t an actual Collegium anymore, what could Collegium plants really do?
Then again, that had been a huge organization. Something was bound to rise from the ashes. There were too many ambitious people involved, and at least one of them was likely to get ideas.
But that was something to worry about some other time. When I finished talking to the enforcers, I looked around and found Owen working with the team that was reinforcing the building’s wards. Now that the magic circuits were running again, he seemed to have more energy, but I suspected he needed a boost.
I went up to my office—soon to be former office—and found Perdita there, hard at work, and apparently entirely oblivious to the battle that had raged in the lobby just minutes ago. “Katie! You’re back! I thought you quit!” she said.
“Not really. It was part of a plan.”
“Oh. Okay. So you’re taking your job back?” She looked a little dismayed.
“No, I’ll be moving to a different department.”
“So maybe it can be permanent!”
“What can?”
“I took over in the interim, supposedly until they hired someone new, but they didn’t seem to be making much progress on that, so I was kind of hoping they’d consider me.”
“I’ll put in a good word for you.” I wasn’t entirely sure what good my word would do, since to most of the company, I was a traitor who’d quit and gone to work for the enemy, but I hoped my participation in the day’s battle might count for something in public opinion. Telling Perdita was a good start in making sure everyone in the company knew, even before Merlin sent out a memo about my role in the Collegium takedown.
“What were you doing, anyway?” she asked.
“Have you heard of the Collegium?”
“It really exists?”
“It did. Not anymore.”
Her slanted eyebrows rose. “Because of you?”
“I can’t take all the credit, but I was the one on the inside, undercover.”
“Wow! That must have been exciting.”
“Most of the time, it was actually kind of boring. Today, though, yeah, it was really exciting. Anyway, I came up here to ask you for a favor.”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“Do you still make fancy coffee drinks?”
“Yeah, what do you want?”
“I need a couple of mochas with extra whipped cream.”
A second later they were in my hands. “I’ve been thinking of selling my spells for that,” she said. “I’ve got them pretty much perfected.”
“You’d know how to market them. Thanks a bunch.”
Before I was even out of the office, she was already on the phone, spreading the news about what I’d really been doing when I quit MSI.
I found Owen still hard at work when I returned to the lobby. I approached him, handed him a cup, and said, “It’s not chocolate cake, but it’s sugar and caffeine, which you need, and you need to take a break.”
We sat together at the bottom of the grand staircase. He took a sip of his drink, then closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I did need this. Thanks.”
“I have a lot of catching up to do in looking after you.”
“Speaking of which, you never did tell me what happened to me while I was under that sleeping spell. How did I end up in Roger’s office?”
“Trust me, you really don’t want to know.”
He looked suspicious. “I was a frog, wasn’t I?”
“I’m not sure it counts, since you were unconscious the whole time.”
“But I was a frog. Please tell me you were the one to break the spell.”
“Of course I was. Though I should probably confess that I broke a lot of frog spells today. But they didn’t mean anything. Yours was the only kiss with emotion to it. And I kissed each one with the hope it would be you.”
He laughed. “I won’t hold it against you.” He glanced around the room. “I’m thinking we should have the altar there, on the landing, where the staircase splits. We’d stand here on the steps, in front of it. We’d set up the chairs for the guests out here in the lobby.”
It took me a second to realize he was talking about the wedding. Not that I’d forgotten about it. I just hadn’t really thought much about it lately. “You mean, have the wedding here?”
“Why not? It’s church-like, and we’d surely be able to book it. I was thinking we could have the official wedding here, with all the magical trappings, then have a small ceremony and reception in Texas for your family. That way we can deal with the paperwork where we live, but still have something your family can attend.”
I leaned against him. “Mm hmm, sounds nice. Tell me more about this wedding.”
“And I think I should start out as a frog so the first kiss will be more dramatic.”
I elbowed him in the ribs, and he caught me with his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against him. “Okay, we can skip that,” he said.
“I suspect the kiss will be just fine.” And then I made him put his mocha down so we could practice.
THE END