Gemma and Marcia mobbed me as soon as I got home. Then I noticed that Connie was there, too. "That was a nice long dinner," Gemma said. "Things must have gone well."
I fought to hold back tears as I collapsed on the sofa.
"I don't think things went well," Connie said softly. She sat next to me and took my hand. "What happened?"
Gemma perched next to me on the sofa's arm. "Didn't you like him? I thought he was perfect." She sounded hurt.
"He was perfect. I liked him. I just don't think he liked me."
"Are you sure about that?"
"He left skid marks getting away from me."
"But that was a pretty long date if he didn't like you," Marcia said.
"I ran into a friend from work on my way home, and we talked awhile," I said.
All their faces fell. "You at least got dessert, right?" Connie asked.
"He said no thanks to the dessert tray before I had a chance to say anything."
"Then it sounds like you're better off without him," Connie declared. "Any man who would deny you dessert isn't worth having." Connie has a rather strong sweet tooth, so skipping dessert deserves the death penalty in her book. She's the one who taught me to carry chocolate in my purse.
"Was it the sister thing again?" Gemma asked.
I couldn't lie—she was likely to hear Keith's side of the story. "No. It was just some weirdness that happened, and I think it scared him away." I didn't want to delve into the weirdness, and I hoped Keith was gentleman enough not to give details.
They all laughed. "If he thinks you're too weird, then he's never going to find anyone," Marcia declared. "You've got to be the most ordinary person in the world."
"Maybe I'm so ordinary, I'm weird." That was certainly the truth. I wouldn't have been in this weird mess if I hadn't been so ordinary. Little did they know, but my ordinary days were well and truly over.
* * *
Monday moming, I stepped out the front door to find Owen standing on the sidewalk. Owen was physically incapable of looking casual, so I suspected he was waiting for me. "You look better than you did the last time I saw you," I remarked as he fell into step beside me.
"You're the one we've been worried about."
"Me? I'm fine. Not a scratch." And I was fine, more or less. Only one teensy nightmare about being grabbed in the darkness. I wouldn't be walking home alone from anything after dark for the foreseeable future, but other than that I was A-okay.
"But why didn't y'all tell me I might be in danger?"
"We didn't want to scare you." The sheepish look on his face showed that he knew just how stupid that sounded. "It didn't work so well."
"I'm alive to tell the tale, which is the most important thing."
I made a point of keeping my eyes peeled as we walked to the subway station, remembering what Rod had said about what I could do to help Owen.
"Other than being attacked, how was your weekend?"
"Not so bad. And yours?"
"I got some work done." That didn't tell me much, but now I knew from Rod that he liked opera in addition to baseball. He was unfolding like a flower.
The train arrived, and we shoved our way on board. It was particularly crowded this morning. Even standing room was hard to come by. Owen wasn't tall, but he was taller than I was, so he was able to grab an overhead handhold. Then he circled my waist with his arm and held me steady. I could think of worse ways to commute.
This morning we had to part ways at the doorway to R&D, then I went to the tower for my first day on the job as Merlin's assistant. "He wants to see you when you get a chance," Trix said as I topped the escalator.
"I'll be there in a sec." I checked my e-mail and sent a quick response to Rod's note asking how I was, then got a notepad and headed across the reception area to Merlin's office. Before I could knock on the door, he opened it.
"Katie, good morning, please come in." He ushered me in and shut the door behind me. "Have a seat," he said, gesturing toward the sofa. "I'm sorry to hear about your weekend adventure. You aren't suffering any lingering ill effects, I hope?"
I took a seat, and he joined me on the sofa. "Not really," I said. "I'm fine. Just mad."
"As are we all."
"I guess we could take it as a sign that this Idris guy is nervous, if he's desperate enough to try to take me out."
"He does seem to perceive our activities as a threat. I imagine he connected the timing of your arrival here with our increased efforts against him and wanted to find out what, exactly, your role was."
"He'd have been disappointed."
"I strongly doubt that. I understand you declined Mr. Gwaltney's offer of finding less hazardous employment."
"They just got me riled up. He'd better look out now."
He laughed. "That's the way I thought you'd respond. Now, I suppose I should let you know what I expect of you in your new position."
We spent the next half hour going over my duties, which seemed to be pretty much the same kinds of things I'd done in my last job, except with a far nicer boss. I was to read over every document he was given, only to look for hidden spells and illusions rather than for typos and grammatical errors. When necessary, I'd sit in on meetings along with Trix and compare notes with her to see if there was anything going on that shouldn't be. And I'd continue to head the marketing efforts. It sounded like
I should stay pretty busy, which was okay by me.
"And don't hesitate to speak up if you have any ideas," he added. "I'm an old man who's been out of the world for far too long, and we need your fresh perspective."
I couldn't begin to express how good it was to have a boss who treated me like a human being with half a brain. In that long year working for Mimi, I'd started to let myself think I didn't know enough to be of use. "I'll try," I said. "I hope I don't let you down."
"You won't." Once again he had that eerie certainty about him that gave me a chill.
One day, I thought, I'd get the nerve to ask him about it.
Late that afternoon, Trix tapped on my door. "There's an emergency meeting. He wants you in there."
I grabbed my pen and notepad, wondering what was going on. Would this be my first big meeting as Merlin's personal verifier?
When I saw who was gathered for the meeting, I doubted it. It was the same group as on Friday, minus Gregor and the accounting gnome. Owen looked grim and distracted, and he gave me only the slightest of nods as I entered. There was an aura of gloom and doom that hung over the room. I took my seat at the table silently.
Merlin kicked things off. "Owen, why don't you tell us what you've discovered today?"
"Idris has a new spell on the market, and it's quite dark. We're back to square one."
"What is the new spell?" Mr. Hartwell asked.
"It's basically the spell he was working on when we dismissed him. It seems he finally got it ready to sell."
"This could be a sign of panic on his part," I pointed out, "if the poor quality and whatever we were doing had an impact. He needed to get something on the market that he knew would work while he hurried to fix the other spell."
"That doesn't mean we don't have a problem," Owen said with a deep sigh. "This one works, and we don't have a way to counter it. It's good—no big energy drain, it's effective, it's everything he promises it to be. It's still all about influence, but not quite in the puppet-master way the other spell was—he was reaching too far with that one. This one just makes the victim incredibly open to suggestion. The victim still has some degree of free will, but he is strongly drawn to wanting to please the caster.
In the wrong hands, it could be devastating. The victim won't ever realize anything's wrong, unlike with that other spell."
"And if it works as advertised, it means none of our marketing messages are going to be very effective," I said. "We can no longer stand on the position that our spells work and have been thoroughly tested." I think I was more upset about this development than I had been about being attacked. It made weeks of work practically useless.