He had me fill out all the paperwork, then handed me a packet on the health plans.
"Just look that over later, fill out the forms, and get them to Isabel," he instructed.
Then he grinned, opened a desk drawer, and pulled something out. "And here's your MetroCard."
I took it from him and tucked it into my purse. Now I had transportation freedom without having to think about the balance on my card. It was almost as good as having my own car again. That had been one of the biggest adjustments for me in moving from Texas to New York.
Rod settled back into his chair and said, "Now, do you have any questions?"
"About what?"
"About anything."
"To be honest, I'm not even sure where to begin."
"Then let's take a tour. You can leave your things here."
I followed him to the outer office and out into the hallway. He talked as he walked.
"We do everything here from researching, developing, and testing new spells to distribution and monitoring of the spells."
I felt like I was struggling to keep up, even if the struggle was more mental than physical. "How do you distribute your spells?" I asked. "In other words, how do you make money?"
"We sell them in magic shops, of course, as well as at other retail outlets."
I came to a halt. "Magic shops? You mean those places that sell card tricks and top hats?"
He raised an eyebrow at me. "Have you ever gone into one?"
"No. I've never been all that interested in magic, to be honest."
"That makes sense. You see reality instead of illusion, so it's no fun for you. But you'd be surprised at what you'd notice in a magic shop. The props are for the general public, but if you know what you're looking for, you can also buy any spell you might need. You'd see the spells for sale, while most people just in there looking for a trick deck of cards wouldn't."
"Not that the spells would do me much good," I muttered.
"They also can't be used against you. Although, none of our spells can be used to cause harm. Minor inconvenience, at the most. We're very strict on quality control."
"So, people can just go into a store and buy a spell? How do they pay for something like that?"
"We set our prices based on what went into developing the spell, how useful it is, and how many people are likely to need it. A simple spell that's likely to be used just about every day to make life a little simpler may run about twenty dollars. A more complex spell for a specialized purpose might run into the hundreds. We do some custom work, but usually more for businesses than individuals."
"Dollars?"
"Of course. What did you expect, wizard's gold?"
Actually, I expected something along those lines. That must have shown on my face, for he laughed and said, "You've read too many books. We just have our own business, not our own economy. Now, here's the sales department."
We stepped into a suite of offices opening onto a central room. In those offices, the sales force sat talking on phones or into those crystal ball things. I noticed two who looked like ordinary humans—well, probably not entirely ordinary—two elves, and a gnome, who sat on top of his desk to talk into the crystal ball.
Rod waved his hand, which apparently sent a signal into the crystal balls, so that all the sales guys looked up at us. Those who were talking through whichever communications device wrapped up their conversations. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Katie Chandler. She's joining the verification department. After today, feel free to call on her when you have a contract or need to go on a call to check out a vendor." They all smiled and waved, then returned to their sales work. Rod turned to me and explained, "You'll spend most of your time dealing with Sales. You may go with them from time to time to check on their accounts and make sure the sellers are being honest, and you'll review all contracts before they're signed."
"I'm not a lawyer," I pointed out.
"You don't have to be. They know what should and shouldn't be in the contracts.
You just read them out loud, and they'll know if something was added and hidden, or removed and replaced with an illusion."
"Are magical people that devious?" I asked, almost afraid of his reaction to the question.
"People in general tend to be, don't you think? True, the majority of the population is honest, but there's always someone looking for a loophole. We just have more ways of creating loopholes."
He led me out of the sales department and up a flight of stairs.
We went into a large, dimly lit room. Various monitors, both the computer and the crystal variety, rimmed the room. "This is the monitoring department," Rod said before introducing me to this group of people. "They make sure all our spells are being used properly. Unauthorized use can result in spell privileges being revoked.
You may be asked to take a shift here occasionally. We generally have at least one verifier in here at all times. It's a specialized verification job, but we sometimes need someone from the pool to fill in."
We left that room and went up another flight of stairs. "What would be considered unauthorized?" I asked.
"The big one is using a spell to cause harm. Our spells are designed with fail-safes to prevent harm, but if you try hard enough, it is possible to work around them. There's also not supposed to be any sharing of spells. Only the purchaser is able to use them, but there are those who try to come up with ways to get around that."
"And if privileges are revoked?"
"You can't use that spell again without repurchasing it. If it's used for harm, you aren't allowed to repurchase it at all. You may even be banned from other uses of our products."
"Is that a big problem?" I didn't like the idea of hundreds of magic users held back only by what sounded like the fine print on the back of the box and a pretty small group of monitors.
"Not really. The wicked enchanter driven mad in his lust for power is yet another thing that you mostly just find in books and movies. It happens, but for the most part, if your life is already pretty good, there's not much reason to go around hurting others. People with real psychological disorders are screened out early in life, so they don't get their hands on spells to begin with, or else they're rehabilitated."
"That's good to know."
The next door didn't just open for Rod. He had to press his hand against a metal plate and say something under his breath in what sounded like Latin before the lock clicked and the door opened."This is R and D, Owen's domain," Rod said.
The area looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie, or something else involving mad scientists. A corridor ran between glass-walled labs, some full of bubbling bottles, others looking more like libraries. People wearing white lab coats walked around with clipboards, making notes. The occasional popping sound and flash of light came from labs as we passed.
"This is where the magic happens, literally," Rod said.
We reached a final, larger lab. This one could have existed in any major university without anyone thinking anything of it, aside from the rather odd things written on the whiteboards that rimmed the walls. Owen stood in front of one of the boards, holding an old book in one hand and writing on the board with his other hand. Rod waited until he finished what he was writing before he said, "Owen."
Owen blinked, then turned to see us and smiled. "So, you're getting the grand tour?"
he said to me, pink spreading up his face toward his hairline.
"Looks like it. It's fascinating."
"Owen heads our theoretical magic division," Rod said.
"We try to determine what is and isn't possible using magic," Owen explained. "A lot of it is going back to the ancient texts and seeing if there's a way to update the spells for the times, or finding out if the spells ever worked at all. Some of the ancient wizards elaborated a bit too much in what they recorded."
"We also have a practical magic division that takes what Owen discovers and fine-tunes the spells for mass distribution," Rod added.