He talked the whole time about the upcoming conference and some people in the department he thought might be helpful, and I wished he’d let me know before he scheduled a meeting so I could have been more prepared. Then he opened the conference room door, and there was a loud shout of “Surprise!”
A Mexican-style fiesta was in full swing in the conference room. The banner hanging from the ceiling wished me a happy birthday, and a mariachi band made up of self-playing instruments played the birthday song, to which the entire sales department staff, along with Merlin, Trix, Owen, Rod and his assistant Isabel, and a few other friends from the rest of the company, sang along, mostly off-key. When the song ended, confetti and streamers materialized in midair and descended on us.
Owen came up to me. “Sorry about this,” he whispered. “I wondered if I should have warned you.”
“It’s okay. In fact, it’s kind of nice.” I smiled at him and added, “I like surprises. Especially surprises involving flowers and chocolate. Thank you.” He blushed adorably.
Perdita walked over with exaggerated care and handed me a frozen margarita. “See, I didn’t spill a drop,” she said proudly, and then she accidentally tilted her paper plate, sending a pile of nachos to the floor. A quick-thinking Owen made them vanish into thin air before they hit the ground. “You’ll have to teach me that spell,” Perdita said, batting her eyelashes at him. “I could get a lot of use out of it.”
Although I had grown weary of the near-daily parties, I was impressed with the attention to detail. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to do all this. Even if it required only a snap of fingers to make it happen, there was still thought and planning. “Do you know who put this together?” I asked Owen.
“No idea. Perdita called and told me to be here and to invite anyone else you were friends with.”
“Oh. Can you excuse me a second?” I meandered over to Melisande Rogers, who, from what I could tell from my previous experiences with this department, involved herself in everything. “This is a great party,” I said to her. “Do you know who does all this?”
“Hartwell’s admin, Rina,” she said with a twitch of her head in the general direction of the woman in question. “She lives for this stuff.” She dropped her voice. “To be totally honest, it’s driving us all stark raving insane. We can barely get our work done with Hartwell wandering the halls the way he does. Throw in a daily party, and it’s a miracle we accomplish anything.”
“If she can do this, then what’s she doing working as an administrative assistant?” I asked. “Don’t you have caterers and party planners in the magical world?”
She shrugged. “Beats me. We smile, say thanks, and go along with it because it keeps her happy.”
That explained a lot. I noticed people gradually drifting away and realized I wasn’t the only one who’d been trying to escape the constant parties. Then, as I sipped my margarita, I got an idea that would probably benefit all of us. Rina was the perfect person to put in charge of a theme, decorations, and food for the conference, and that should keep her busy enough not to plague the rest of us with daily parties.
Unfortunately, most of my friends left the party before I had a chance to talk to them. That was a downer. They couldn’t even stick around to talk to me at my birthday party? “Where’d everyone go?” I asked Owen.
“They had places to be. We should probably get going, too.”
“Going where?”
“It is your birthday. Don’t you want to go out to dinner?”
“I didn’t know we had anything planned.”
He looked a little sheepish. “I was afraid to make plans. With us, making plans is like tempting fate. Just making a reservation is asking for disaster. Who knows what might happen?”
I grabbed his arms in mock panic. “Don’t even think it. If we get attacked by a roving gang of wild monkeys in the middle of a restaurant, it’ll be your fault for having said anything.”
We both laughed, but the scary thing was that in our dating history, the wild monkey scenario actually wasn’t that far-fetched. We’d already had dates involving a magical restaurant fire, a mysteriously appearing hole in an ice rink, dragons, and a celebrity fight in an upscale restaurant. Wild monkeys would be business as usual for us. “Then forget I said anything,” he said.
Once we’d left the office building and were in the subway station, Owen went on the alert, as though he was watching for an incident and ready to step in if necessary. “How many of these guys have you busted so far?” I asked him while we waited for a train.