He came around his desk and took my arm, so I didn’t have a choice but to go with him. All the offices we passed were empty, though, so there wasn’t much of anyone for me to meet. When we got to the other end of the hallway, he threw open a door, and a shout of “Surprise!” erupted from within.
Hartwell turned to me and said, “Welcome to the department, Katie.” The rest of the sales staff raised their glasses to me, and then they went right back to enjoying the party that was already in progress.
“Wow, this is, um, well, unexpected,” I said. “You didn’t have to do this, really.”
“Nonsense!” Hartwell said. “We love any excuse for a party.”
And it certainly looked like they knew how to party. The conference room had been turned into the setting for a Hawaiian luau. Floating ukeleles played island music, and I could have sworn I heard the sound of the ocean. On the other side of the room, a group of gnomes did the limbo. They had a rather unfair advantage at the game.
Selwyn Morningbloom, an elf salesman I’d met on my first day at MSI, strolled over to me, wearing a Hawaiian shirt that probably registered on a Geiger counter. “You haven’t been laid, have you?” he said.
“Excuse me?”
He snapped his fingers, and a fragrant floral garland appeared in his hands. He draped it around my neck. “Lei-ed, get it?” he asked with a wink. “But let me know if you need help with the other version.” Fortunately, he danced away from me before I could spit out the response that was on the tip of my tongue. I never thought I’d see an elf in a Hawaiian shirt doing the hula.
Perdita bounced over to me, carrying a drink in a coconut shell with a paper umbrella coming out of it. “Hey, boss! You look like you could use a drink!” she said. Then she stumbled and would have spilled the drink all over me if someone hadn’t pulled me aside at that exact moment. I didn’t need to look to see who it was. Only Owen had that kind of timing, and I recognized the feel of his arm around me.
“Oops!” Perdita said, waving her hand to make the mess on the floor vanish. Then she handed me the coconut shell. “Most of the drink is still in there, though.” She giggled and swayed, and I got the impression she had a head start on me. “Oh, hi, Owen,” she said, giggling again. “Want me to get you a drink?” She hiccupped and giggled. “They’re really good—nice and fruity. You can barely taste the rum.”
“No thanks, I’m good,” he said.
One of the sales guys grabbed her arm and pulled her into a dance. I took a tentative sip of the drink and went into a coughing fit. “How much rum would it take for her to taste it? Want a sip?” I held the shell toward Owen.
“No thanks, I’ll take your word for it.”
“Nice timing, by the way. What brings you down here?”
“I was looking for you. Since the day was nearly over I thought I’d see if you were ready to go, and no one answered the phone in your office, so I came down.”
“And you’re just in time for the party.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound too enthusiastic. I patted him on the arm and looked for a place to stash my coconut shell before the drink ate its way through and got on my skin.
He looked warily around the room. “Are you ready to go?”
“I’m the guest of honor. I probably shouldn’t go until I’m sure they don’t have something planned.”
I had to admit, though, that they probably wouldn’t have noticed if I left. The party was in full swing, nearing Saturday night at the fraternity house levels. I edged my way through the crowd toward Mr. Hartwell. Shouting to make myself heard over the gnome standing on the conference table and singing “Tiny Bubbles” into a karaoke microphone, I said, “This was really nice of y’all to do for me. Thank you.”
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Hartwell asked. Somewhere along the way, his suit had been replaced by Hawaiian garb, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was a few shades more tan. That made him look even more like the Malibu Ken I used to have.
“Do you need me for anything else? I don’t want to run out on my own party, but someone’s waiting for me.”
He glanced over my shoulder to where Owen hovered in the conference room’s doorway. “Palmer’s welcome to join us. It would do him good to mingle a bit, get to know the rest of the company instead of hiding in his lab like a mad scientist.”
I’d reached the point that I wanted to be out of there before someone conjured up a whole roast pig, and definitely before someone started a fire dance. “I do have some things to take care of,” I hedged.