"That's okay. We understand. Come on up with me and you can meet my boss and some others who are better at explaining all this than I am."
His eyes roamed the ornate, cathedral-like lobby. "Interesting place you have here. I can't believe I never noticed it."
"It does sort of sneak up on you, doesn't it?"
The turret escalator took him aback, but I explained, "It's mechanical, not magical.
Not everything here is weird. Just most things."
He did a double take when he saw Trix at her desk. "She's the one—"
"Yes, she's the one you saw the other night. Trix, this is Ethan. Ethan, this is Trix."
"Nice to see you again," she said. "The boss is expecting you. Go on in."
The big wooden doors opened before we got to them, and Ethan's eyes grew large.
"Oh, boy," he breathed.
I patted him on the arm. "It's okay, really."
Rod and Owen were already in the office, sitting at Merlin's small conference table.
They both stood as Merlin approached us. "Ah, so this is our new recruit," he said.
"Mr. Mervyn, this is Ethan Wainwright. Ethan, I'd like you to meet Ambrose Mervyn, our CEO." I decided not to bring up the Merlin issue. It was enough to expect him to believe that magic was real without throwing in the fact that the company was run by a legendary enchanter.
Ethan shook hands with Merlin, then I introduced him to Rod and Owen. Rod wasn't quite as friendly to Ethan as he'd been to me when they were first recruiting me, but I imagined that he only really poured on the charm for women. In contrast, Owen wasn't nearly as shy as he'd been with me. He was in full-on professional mode, still soft-spoken and reserved, but able to be direct and articulate.
Fortunately, Ethan had been too busy being freaked out Friday night to notice them, and even if he had, I'm not sure he would have connected them to the odd events.
We all sat around the table, then Rod asked, "Would you like some coffee?"
Ethan cleared his throat. "Yes, please." A mug instantly appeared in front of him, and he jumped. "Oh, boy. Wow. Yikes. You didn't do that with mirrors, did you?"
"That is just the smallest of demonstrations," Merlin said. "I understand Katie has already told you the basics."
Still staring at the coffee mug, Ethan said, "Yes, magic exists, but it doesn't affect me, and you need a lawyer."
"Very well, then." Merlin then launched into the same briefing I'd heard during my first formal interview. It was funny how much of that information I now took entirely for granted. Ethan seemed to be absorbing it all. He asked good questions, even though his face remained pale and his eyes were wide. I had a feeling he was going to come through this okay.
When Merlin finished, Ethan shook his head. "You know, I find all of this incredibly hard to believe, but I'm not sure I can come up with a simpler explanation."
"Occam's razor," Owen said softly. "The simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Just imaginethe resources it would require to play a prank this elaborate, and what would we have to gain?"
"Meanwhile, doesn't this explain a lot?" Rod added. "Doesn't it make you feel better to know why you've been seeing things? You're not going crazy. You're not working too hard. You simply see a reality we don't let others in on."
"I can't believe it took me this long to notice," Ethan said with a nervous laugh.
"That says a lot for my powers of observation." He took a deep breath and grasped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. "Okay, I'll believe you until I have good reason not to. Magic is real, but it doesn't work on me, which is why I see things I'm not supposed to. It makes a strange kind of sense. Now, Katie says you have a possible intellectual property dispute?"
Owen leaned forward, clasping his hands together on top of the table. "Yes, we have a former employee who's gone into business for himself, competing with us. In most cases, we wouldn't have a tremendous problem with that, but this situation is dangerous. We're very careful to make sure our spells can't be used to harm others.
He's selling spells designed to cause harm. We're worried that if he's successful, it will unleash darker magic on the world, the kind of magic we've tried hard to suppress for generations."
"And he's basing what he's selling on work he did while he was employed here?"
Owen nodded. "He was on my staff in Theoretical Magic. Most of what we do is study the ancient texts, looking for spells that could be updated for use in the present. He found some spells that were darker in nature than we normally deal with.