Once Upon Stilettos
Page 16

“Because I heard he came to talk to the boss about it, which means he’d have talked to you.”
I shrugged. “I don’t have anything to tell you. Maybe you should ask him.”
He laughed. “We are talking about the same Owen here, right? You can’t get anything out of him that he doesn’t want to give. He only clams up tighter. I’ve known him since he was four, and he’s always been like that. All I know is that he’s put some even stronger wards around his office. Nobody gets in there without being cleared. Next thing you know, he’ll be taking DNA samples from anyone who enters.”
“Seems like a reasonable precaution for these times.”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on Trix’s desk and giving me a puppy-dog-eye kind of look that I was sure was particularly effective when combined with his favorite attraction spell. “Come on, Katie, surely you know something. Owen sometimes even talks to you, which is more than anyone else gets from him.”
Fortunately for me and unfortunately for him, I was immune to both the spell and the puppy-dog eyes. “Sorry,” I said with a shrug.
He turned off the charm like it came with a switch. “Oh well, I thought it was worth a shot.”
“Why are you so worried about this?” I asked him.
“I guess it’s old instincts kicking in. I always tried to look after Owen when we were kids, and I’m still doing it even though he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself. To be honest, he was when he was a kid, too. Bigger kids only messed with him once.”
“I think these days we all need to look after each other.”
“You’re probably right about that. You’ll let me know if you hear anything?”
I couldn’t promise that without breaking my word to Merlin. “I’ll keep you posted,” I said instead, hoping that was vague enough for my conscience. I hated having to keep secrets from people, but I was getting better and better at it. If you can keep the secret about magic from the rest of the world, hiding a few things from your coworkers isn’t that hard.
Merlin came out of his office. “Oh, good, Mr. Gwaltney, you’re here. Please come in.” Rod gathered his stack of papers, gave me a wink, then headed into Merlin’s office. As I watched the door shut behind him, I considered the preposterous idea of Merlin as a suspect. He might have said he wasn’t above suspicion, but the idea of him teaming up with Idris was beyond my comprehension. I wouldn’t worry about him unless there was evidence.
On the other hand, his response to the situation was to assign a novice to investigate, and he probably had more access to the headquarters than anyone. He also lived in an apartment in the office building, so he was there all the time, even over the weekend when Owen’s desk had been broken into. I shook my head. No, there was no way Merlin could be in on this. Idris had little respect for him, and quite frankly, I doubted Idris was a good enough actor to fake that. If I couldn’t trust Merlin, I might as well quit my job and practice saying, “Do you want fries with that?”
Merlin’s office door opened, and he and Rod emerged, Rod still carrying that stack of papers. “I’ll get these distributed immediately, sir,” Rod said.
Merlin nodded, then blinked and looked at me. A light sparked in his eyes, then he turned to Rod and said, “I believe I’ll have Miss Chandler take care of the distribution. The message will have more authority coming directly from my office.”
“Distribute what?” I asked.
“It’s a document for the various department and division heads,” Rod explained, “outlining company policy on intellectual property and the like—so we can avoid future Idris-like incidents. We enchanted it so that signing it is binding, which means it has to be distributed in person.”
Right away, I knew what Merlin was up to. He was giving me an excuse to snoop around the company. “I’d be glad to help,” I said, giving them both my perkiest smile. “Do I need to get someone to cover the desk here?”
“I don’t anticipate your brief absence causing any problems,” Merlin said, looking satisfied with himself.
Rod handed the stack of documents over to me and said, “Thanks for the help, Katie. I owe you one.” And I owed Merlin one for setting that up so neatly. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d apparently been quite good with the scheming back in his day.
I hadn’t had to hand-deliver a memo since the dark days when I worked for Mimi, my evil boss at my old, nonmagical job. I hadn’t minded it much then, for it gave me a chance to escape from my desk for a while. This particular mission was something else entirely. I felt almost dirty and dishonest, going around the company under false pretenses with the intent of scoping everything out. I had to remind myself that catching the spy was important and that honest people had nothing to hide.