No Quest For The Wicked

I’d thought doing marketing was fun when I was working for my family’s store back home. It was a nice break from keeping the books or working the cash register. As a day-to-day job, though, it wasn’t my ideal. But what else could I do? I was twenty-seven years old, and I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My opportunities at a magical company were limited, since I didn’t have magical powers or training. Most people like me worked in the verification department, seeing past any illusions meant to trick magical people, but that wasn’t a very interesting job, either. I didn’t want to leave MSI, but I didn’t know where else I fit in there.

My assistant wasn’t in yet, much to my relief. She was as bored as I was, and she dealt with it by talking to me. She’d taken to coming in later and later, and there wasn’t any point in reprimanding her about it. I went to my desk and surfed Internet news sites. I didn’t see anything that hinted at unauthorized magical activity going on anywhere in the world. Yay? It was bad that I actually hoped to find signs of trouble.

Then there was no point procrastinating further, so I did the one major task on my to-do list for the day, writing a new ad for the magical training program my friend Rod Gwaltney was putting together. I came up with three different concepts, annotated them, and e-mailed them to him. I checked my watch and found that I’d accomplished my entire to-do list before ten in the morning.

The ring of the telephone was the only thing that kept my forehead from hitting my desk. “I’ve translated that passage and then cross-referenced it in every related book I’ve got to make sure I was getting it right,” Owen said.

“I’ll be right down,” I said, already rising from my chair.

“Don’t bother. I was right the first time, more or less. The wording is slightly different, but the important parts are the same.”

“So it really is at Tiffany’s?”

“That’s one possible interpretation of the translation of the text. There are a lot of other things it could mean.”

“Like what?”

“It could be in a dragon’s hoard.”

“Would you want to have breakfast there?”

“The dragon would.”

“We should go to Tiffany’s, just in case.”

“What would it be doing in a jewelry store?”

“It’s a gem, isn’t it? If it is there, we’d better get it quickly. Imagine what could happen if some unsuspecting customer bought it.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew what was going through his mind. He’d recently learned—along with the rest of the magical world—that his birth parents had been the previous generation’s great threat to magical society. They’d been manipulated by the real villain, but the fact remained that his parents had tried to take over the world and they’d gone down in history as supervillains. Although Owen had never shown any signs of having inherited his parents’ evil ways, he had been incredibly powerful before losing his powers, and there were people in the magical community who regarded him with suspicion. If he went after some dangerous gizmo known to make people superpowerful, there would be plenty of people who’d see it as proof that he was taking after Mom and Dad.

“If you don’t want to go, I could go and check it out,” I suggested when he didn’t say anything.

“No,” he said with a sigh. “It could be dangerous. This thing, it wants to be used, and it will draw people to it. Even nonmagical people will want to possess it. Only magical immunes will be safe around it. We’ll both go.”

“I’ll be down in five minutes,” I said. I had my purse in my hand before I hung up the phone and possibly broke some land speed records on my way to Owen’s basement workroom. He was just locking the manuscript away in its safe when I burst through the doorway. “Ready to go?” I asked between gasps of breath.

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure this thing isn’t beckoning you?”

“Come on, what woman wouldn’t want the chance to go to Tiffany’s and count it as work?”

“Does this count as work for you? It’s not exactly a marketing activity.”

“It’s a very loose interpretation of my job description,” I admitted. “But it would be a public relations nightmare if somebody tried to use this thing to take over the world.” As we headed up to the building’s exit, I asked, “Do you think we should tell someone about this?”