She frowned and tilted her head, took a sip of coffee, then said, “I don’t think so. The boss was just supposed to deal with the rogue who’d come up. Taking over the company wasn’t discussed ahead of time, as far as I know. It did seem like a surprise when it happened. But it makes sense. The boss founded the company, so he should be running it.” She dropped her voice again as her eyes widened in alarm. “Do you think he’s after his old job and trying to get rid of the boss?”
I wondered how much I should tell her about my suspicions. True, we’d found this one area of agreement, but I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. If she thought there was any way to benefit from ratting me out, she’d take it without a second thought. I figured she’d be more helpful if I could convince her that helping me was to her advantage. “Maybe,” I hedged. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
Her eyes took on a steely gleam. “Well, he won’t get away with it, not while I’m around. That’s my job—I mean, it’s the boss’s job, and I won’t see him tricked into losing it.” A flicker of a smile crossed her lips. “We could sabotage him, make him look bad so that the boss won’t listen to him anymore. I know! I’ll tell the boss he’s hiding things magically.”
“Let’s hold off on that until we’re sure,” I said, worried that I might have unleashed a monster. “Just keep your eyes and ears open and let me know if you see or hear anything odd. We may be the only people in a position to do something who aren’t affected by him, but we’ll have to be careful because the rest of the company may be under the spell.”
She drained her coffee cup and picked up her purse. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him win.”
*
After another day of silence, I caved and sent Owen an e-mail, a chatty “how’s it going?” message, but I got no response. Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have been at all alarmed, since he had a habit of falling into his work, neglecting his in-box, and losing all track of time, but because he’d actually snapped at me the last time we’d spoken, I was starting to worry. A weekend without a word from Owen made me want to call police stations and hospitals. I decided it would be saner to call him, but I got no answer at his home or office.
I got to my office on Monday morning to find Perdita sneezing her head off. With each sneeze, strange things appeared in her office—soap bubbles, flower petals, white feathers. “Sorry about that, Katie,” she said, dabbing her nose with a lace handkerchief and waving the bubbles, petals, and feathers away with her other hand. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“Are you okay?”
“I may be coming down with something,” she said with a sniffle, which she followed with a cough.
“Do you always sneeze up bubbles and flowers?”
She sneezed some glittery confetti and groaned. “Yes. It’s so embarrassing. It’s like I totally lose control of my magic when I sneeze. I never know what will appear.”
“Why don’t you go home and get some rest?” I suggested. I liked having her there to veil me from the overly friendly sales staff, but she looked utterly miserable, and I was worried about what she might sneeze up next.
It was a sign of just how awful she felt that she didn’t argue with me. She just sneezed again, creating another cluster of bubbles, coughed, then said in a raspy voice, “I think maybe I will, if you don’t mind.”
I braced myself for a stream of constant interruptions, but was left in relative peace. In fact, every call I made went straight to voice mail. That afternoon, the subway was reasonably peaceful, compared to the chaos of the last few weeks. The crime wave seemed to have broken. A number of people were sneezing and sniffling, which made me wonder if a cold was going around or if there was some allergen affecting a lot of people.
I felt fine the next morning, but there was still a fair amount of wheezing and coughing on the subway. I got to the office to find a note saying that Perdita was out sick. I wasn’t surprised because she really had been in bad shape the day before.
Although I’d had many a moment when Perdita tried my patience and when I’d wondered if not having an assistant would be easier or safer, when she wasn’t in the office, I realized how much I needed her. For one thing, her absence meant I had to find another source for coffee. In any other business, there would have been a break room with a coffeepot, or even one of those vending machines that drops a paper cup before shooting out a stream of coffee that doesn’t quite hit the cup. There might even be a Starbucks in the lobby. But at MSI, where most of the employees could conjure whatever they wanted to drink with a flick of their wrists, there weren’t a lot of places where a nonmagical person could find caffeine. The only coffeepot I knew of in the entire building was in the verification department, and as I recalled from my brief stint there, that didn’t exactly qualify as coffee.
