Once Upon Stilettos

I looked up to see Ari. “Sure. Just a sec. I’d better check the boss’s calendar.”



“Ah, they’ve got you filling in for Trix, huh?”



“Yeah. Do you know what’s wrong with her or how she’s doing?”



“Broken heart,” she said, rolling her eyes. “She and that Pippin guy, the sprite park ranger, had a falling-out over the weekend. I imagine they’ll patch things up by next weekend, but for now she’s wallowing in her misery and said her eyes were too red and puffy for her to come to work.”



“Poor thing. I probably ought to check on her.”



“She’ll be fine. I’m not sure she wants to talk about it yet. When she comes back to work, she’ll want to discuss it in great detail, so you’d better save it for then.”



“It looks like he doesn’t have anything major scheduled for a while, so I can probably get away,” I said, getting up. “I’ll tell him I’m stepping out. Will I need my coat?”



“Nah, we’ve snagged a conference room and we can zap you something.”



I stuck my head in Merlin’s open door and said, “I’ll be at lunch for a while. Is that okay?”



He looked up from the book he was reading—Who Moved My Cheese?, and if anyone needed a guide on coping with major changes, it would be Merlin—and said, “I think that sounds like a very good idea. You’re lunching with other employees, I presume?”



“Yes, I am.” It dawned on me that with this assignment, I’d never be truly off-duty. I’d have to keep my eyes and ears open even while I had lunch with my friends.



We met up with another member of our group, Isabel, the Personnel secretary, in an empty conference room. Isabel greeted me with a huge hug, like she hadn’t seen me in months. The hug nearly cut off my breathing and circulation. Isabel was quite large—as in probably part giant. “What’ll you have for lunch, Katie?” she asked.



“The usual,” I said, taking a seat.



There was a zapping sound and a sandwich, a small bag of chips, and a cup full of what I knew would be Diet Dr Pepper appeared on the table in front of me. Two more zaps, and the others had created their own lunches.



There were a few perks to working for a magical company. Getting lunch to order was one of them. When someone at MSI said they were zapping some lunch, they weren’t talking about a microwave.



I steeled myself to be quizzed about my date with Ethan, but Ari surprised me by asking, “What was Owen’s deal this morning? He went tearing out of R and D like there was a crisis. I can only assume he was heading upstairs.”



And thus the rumor mill began turning. I knew his actions wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.



I gave what I hoped looked like a casual shrug. “Who knows? He just wanted to see the boss. You know Owen. He probably translated something exciting and had to share with the one other person in the company who would be as excited as he was.”



Ari shook her head. “No, it wasn’t his ‘Eureka’ look. He looked upset. But he did go talk to the boss?”



Damn. I’d confirmed that. As vague as I was, I hadn’t been vague enough. “Yeah, but he seemed okay when he left.”



“Interesting,” Ari said, then took a bite of her sandwich.



“You guys see all the good stuff,” Isabel said with a sigh. “Nothing interesting ever happens in Personnel.” That “nothing interesting” meant Isabel had plenty of time to talk to people during the day, and as the one who handled all the employment paperwork, she knew everyone in the entire company. Now that she knew about Owen’s attack of alarm that morning, I had no doubt that it would already be an old story by the end of the day.



I made a mental note to try talking to Owen about being a little more discreet, but the problem was that he so seldom made any kind of display about anything, the least little show of emotion was enough to set tongues wagging. If he’d been frowning slightly and walking a little faster than normal, his co-workers would have noticed it.



“And how was your big date?” Isabel asked.



“It was nice. We went to a wine dinner. Very classy.” I left out the part about foiling a magical scheme. That would raise the juice level a bit too much. An uneventful date was less likely to be the lead story on the office grapevine.



“Somebody likes you,” Ari singsonged. “Those things aren’t cheap. He shelled out mucho bucks for that date.”



I supposed that was true, but I tried not to rate dates based on how expensive they were. “It was very nice of him, then,” I said neutrally before taking a bite of my sandwich.