Much Ado About Magic

Merlin began with a quick overview of Spellworks’s latest gambit to sell protection against their own dark spells. Then he turned to me and said, “Miss Chandler, it appears that marketing may remain our best immediate strategy to hold off their attempts to gain inroads. Do you have any ideas?”



I shook my head to clear the confusion. Being asked for a plan in a meeting I didn’t know about was the kind of thing I had nightmares about, though in those nightmares I was usually wearing my nightgown—or less.



Okay, marketing, I told myself. I could do this. That was my area of expertise. “I don’t have a good sense of the current situation, since I’ve been away awhile, but we may have passed the point of just saying we’ve been in business longer and, by the way, don’t do bad magic. I’d have to do some research to come up with a plan.” And, you know, find my desk and get some coffee, but I’d never say that to Merlin in front of everyone.



At that moment, a cup of coffee materialized on the table in front of me. I looked up to see Owen winking at me. Then a bright pink flush rose from his collar to his hairline, and he had to look back down at the table. I’d only dated him a short time, but I’d gotten to know him pretty well and I was fairly certain that he couldn’t read minds. He did, however, have an uncanny knack for knowing exactly where I’d be and what I’d need at any given point in time—a handy trait for a boyfriend.



Ramsay leaned back in his chair, making it creak alarmingly. “What we need here is a big idea,” he said, gesturing expansively. “We can’t beat these guys by being subtle. It’s time for an all-out effort to let the magical world know who we are, what we do, and why. We need to find a way to let everyone know this, all at once.”



“Do you have any specific ideas?” Merlin asked with an edge to his voice. I knew he wasn’t the type to say something like, “Well, duh!” but the concept was certainly implied in his tone.



If Ramsay took offense, he didn’t show it. “I’m curious to know what your people have in mind before I offer my input,” he said.



“Have you ever done a customer conference?” I asked.



“No, we haven’t,” said Mr. Hartwell, the company’s head of Sales. “What do you have in mind?”



“We’d invite all our major customers and anyone else who’s interested, show off our products, have a few educational seminars and some big rah-rah speeches from the executives. The idea is to let everyone see what’s going on with the company and maybe hammer in a few marketing messages cleverly disguised as education along the way.”



“Do we want to let everyone know what we’re doing?” protested the head of Verification, Gregor. He’d very briefly been my boss, and he was a real ogre. By that I mean he was really, truly, literally an ogre when he got angry—horns, fangs, and all. “We don’t want to show our hand to the competition.”



“But we do want to show our customers what we’re doing,” I pointed out. “That’s the general idea, to give them more confidence in us.”



The gnome who headed the accounting department conjured up an abacus and began clicking beads. “It would be expensive, and our revenue is significantly down. Do we want to throw money at something like this?”



“It’s worth considering,” Ramsay said. “If you don’t spend the money now, you may be even more behind later, and unless you’ve really been squandering cash since I’ve been away, you should still have hefty reserves.” I noticed that Gregor and several other people around the table relaxed at Ramsay’s endorsement.



“I think it’s an excellent idea, Miss Chandler,” Merlin said. “I’d like to see a plan for that, along with some budget figures and a proposed schedule. We should stage this event as soon as possible—at Midsummer, perhaps?”



I took a sip of coffee to stave off a coughing fit. It was early May, which meant Midsummer—if he was actually talking about the first day of summer the way it was referred to in the magical world—was less than two months away. We’d spent most of the year planning my old company’s customer conference and had a whole staff devoted to it. “Let me see what I can come up with,” I said when I was sure I could talk without gasping. On the upside, we did have magic to work with.



Merlin adjourned the meeting. People rose to leave, but Merlin motioned me to stay seated. Owen gave me a slight wave and a nod as he left, and Rod Gwaltney, director of Personnel and Owen’s best friend, shot me a grin along with a thumbs-up. Once everyone was gone, Merlin said, “Now, about your new position.”