"It was the least I could do, given the service you've rendered us."
Only then did it really hit me that I'd actually saved the day, in more ways than one.
I'd nabbed the intruder and I'd come up with the big idea. Not bad for a day's work.
While I was still feeling confident, I made a detour by Rod's office, thinking I might as well have that talk with him now. It would minimize the amount of time I had to spend in the verification hellhole.
Isabel greeted me like a whirlwind when I entered the outer office. "Oh, you poor dear! Are you all right?" she asked, enveloping me in a suffocating hug.
"I'm fine. Or I will be. Is Rod in? I need to talk to him."
Just then Rod's office door opened and he stuck his head out. His face brightened when he saw me. "Katie! I heard about what happened. Good show!"
"Yeah, thanks. Have you got a minute?"
"Of course, come in." He ushered me into his office, shut the door, and steered me toward the big overstuffed chair I'd sat in the last time. Was it only yesterday?
"What did you need to talk about?"
"Well, the verifiers and other immunes are pretty important to you people, especially now, right?"
"Of course!"
"Then why do you have them working in such a pit? Not to mention making them have the boss who tends to turn green and grow horns when he's angry. What genius thought of putting him with the one group of people who can actually see what he's like?"
"You mean Gregor still has that anger problem? He said he got that treated."
"Anger problem? So, that's what they call it. Well, he's got it in a big way.
Fortunately, nobody seems to care much, but it still doesn't make for a pleasant working environment. What is he anyway? Angie swore he was human, but I'm not sure I believe that."
"Oh, he's human. There was a bad lab accident. He used to run Theoretical Magic until he accidentally turned himself into an ogre. I'm not sure what he was trying to do that had that particular side effect. It wasn't entirely reversible, but they were able to cure him enough so he could lead a normal life. It must not have worked as well as they thought. Owen got his job when he was transferred."
"Well, anyway, morale down there sucks. Nobody except Kim seems to care enough to try, and I'd keep an eye on Kim. She's ambitious, but I'm not sure her priority is the good of the company. All of those people are bored. If you want to keep them or get anything productive out of them, you're going to have to do better." Then I had a burst of inspiration based on my earlier conversation with Merlin. "Hey, I know, maybe you could assign the verifiers to offices in various departments. That way, they'd be around to spot people trying to play invisible while they wait for assignments. They wouldn't feel quite so useless or bored, and they'd get more of a chance to interact with the company. That might make them feel like part of the big picture, so they'd care more about what they do."
"That's a great idea. I'll talk to Gregor. Meanwhile, I understand you have a project of your own to
work on."
This place had the fastest office grapevine I'd ever seen, including the one in my family-owned store where most of the employees were related and lived under the same roof. "Yeah. Seems like it. I guess that takes me out of the pool for a while."
"It doesn't sound like you mind all that much," he said with a wry grin.
"Not in the least. Those people are weird, and around here, that's really saying something." I started to get up, then had an idea and sat back down. "Maybe you can help me with this."
"Of course. What do you need?"
"I don't know enough about the magical world to know how to market to it. How do you all get your news?"
"Most of us have cable."
I shook my head. "What about magical news? You don't have something like the cable magic channel or anything like that, do you? How do you find out about news in the magical world?"
"Well, there are a few good Web sites out there, but most of us get the major bulletins from the crystal network." He waved toward that thingy that sat on his desk.
"Yeah, I've noticed those things. They seem to be a combination office phone and e-mail system."
"More or less. Like e-mail, you can communicate directly to a particular individual, or you can receive a message sent to many people. If there's anything major that everyone in the magical community needs to know, that's how it's sent."