Once Upon Stilettos (Enchanted Inc #2) (11 page)

“It’s a date,” I said. “Should we leave from here, meet somewhere later, or what?”

“We can leave from here. I’m not planning anything fancy you’d need to change clothes for.”

“What are you planning?”

He gave me a wink. “That would be a surprise. See you Friday after work.” Then he got out of his chair, opened the office door, and left.

Within seconds, Trix was hovering in my doorway. “Hmm, looks like the date last weekend went well.”

“I guess so.”

“He did come to ask you out, right?”

“Yeah, looks like it. Did he have any other business here?”

She shook her head. “Nope. He’d just shown up when you came out in a caffeine frenzy. I think he was here specifically to see you.”

“Wow.” I wasn’t used to someone actually pursuing me—aside from the brief time when Jeff was stalking me, and that was part of an enchantment, anyway. I had to admit it was kind of nice.

“He’s not bad at all, for a human.”

“Yeah, I suppose I could do a lot worse. I have done a lot worse. And now I need to think of something to wear to work Friday that will carry over to a casual post-work date.”

“Did he tell you where you’ll be going?”

“He said it was a surprise.”

She rolled her eyes. “Men! Don’t they know we need to prepare ourselves?”

She had just fluttered away when Merlin appeared. “Have you made any progress on the investigation?” he asked.

“Just enough to know that all of our employees are entirely dysfunctional. Is there a company policy against magical duels during working hours on company property? I sure hope so.”

“Have none of the tips been helpful?”

“No, not really. Most of them have nothing to do with the immediate situation.” My phone rang and I ignored it, letting it add to the pileup of voice mail. “I’m starting to wonder if that might be the point to all this. Maybe it’s more about sabotage than about spying.”

“Sabotage?”

“Well, think about it. If everyone’s making calls to rat out their co-workers, they’re not doing their work. You can’t have effective teamwork if people don’t trust each other, and nobody trusts each other right now. We’re at a standstill.”

He stroked his beard in thought. “You may be right. How would you go about investigating that angle?”

Suddenly it struck me that this was something I knew all about. I was from a small town, so I was an expert in gossip. I might not know anything about investigating corporate espionage, but I knew all about how rumors spread. With increased confidence, I said, “Track the grapevine to its source. Find out who told whom what and when. You said it yourself yesterday—the only people who knew about the spying were you, Owen, me, and the spy. If we find out who was the first one so eager to let others know there might be a spy, it might lead us to our mole.”

“Excellent deduction. I look forward to seeing the results. Please keep me posted.”

Coming up with a reasonably valid-sounding theory made me bold enough to say, “Sir? There is one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What is it, Katie?”

“My parents are coming to town next week, for Thanksgiving. I know we already get Thursday and Friday off. I was wondering if I could maybe take a little more time off that week, just a few hours here and there. I know we’re busy, and I’ve got this investigation to work on, but if I’m spending time with them, then they can’t be asking to visit me at work.”

“I don’t see a problem with that. We can see how things are going later in the week and decide then when would be best for you to take off.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“In the meantime, continue your efforts. That was an excellent theory. Good work.”

There was one possibility with my theory that I hated to consider. If the object was more to stir things up than to actually spy, it took Owen off my “safe” list. What better way to stir things up than to report spying that hadn’t actually happened?

I wouldn’t be able to bear it if one of the few people I absolutely trusted was actually betraying me.

N
ow that I knew I was tracking a rumor, I knew exactly how to approach the situation. It was like that old game of telephone—the message changed as it moved farther from the source, and the tone of the message shift gave you a pretty good idea of who was part of the chain. The closer the rumor got to the actual truth (or the obviously manufactured lie), the closer you were to the original source. I hadn’t been a member of any particular clique in high school but had moved freely among all of them, and because of that I’d generally been tapped as the mediator in school rivalries. That made me an expert in figuring out who had said what to whom. I even had the “Miss Congeniality” picture in the yearbook to prove it.

This meant I’d have to leave the office. “I have to look into some things,” I told Trix as I headed out. “All the calls should go straight into voice mail.” Not listening to more gripes and whines was a price I’d have to pay for my diligence.

One thing I knew about gossip is that there’s always someone who sees all and knows all, even if she’s not involved in it. In this company, that was Isabel. If anyone in the company knew what the major feuds were, she’d be the one. She’d probably refereed most of them. The trick would be getting information out of her without giving her anything worth spreading. “Got a minute?” I asked when I got to her office.

“Rod’s out right now.”

“Actually, you were the one I wanted to talk to.”

Her face lit up and I braced myself for a smothering hug, but she stayed seated. “Come on in, then. Can I get you anything?”

I’d had enough caffeine for the week, so I shook my head. “No thanks. But maybe you can help me with something.”

“The spy investigation, huh?” she said with a knowing nod.

“It’s turned into a massive grudge fest, and I need to know who has reason to hate whom so I can sort out the tips from the tattletales.”

“You want a list of the grudges in this company? How much time do you have?”

“Not nearly enough. But anything you can do to help me narrow it down would get me that much further along.”

She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands across her middle. “Well, you know about Gregor and Owen, of course.”

“I know Owen got Gregor’s job after that accident. Is there more?”

“Well, when he was in charge of that division, Gregor and Idris were pretty tight, and neither of them got along with Owen. The rest of the division took sides. It was like there was the Gregor faction and the Owen faction. One of the first things Owen did when he got the promotion after Gregor’s accident and transfer was fire Idris.”

“What happened to the rest of the Gregor faction?”

“The usual things that happen after a regime change. One or two quit. The rest changed which ass they were kissing. You’d have thought they were pulling for Owen all along.”

I wanted to demand names, but this was already sounding too much like a police interview. “Was Gregor into the same dark magic stuff as Idris?” I asked.

“Owen thought so, but there wasn’t any real proof. That spell that turned him into an ogre was definitely a gray area—assuming he was really working on the spell he said he was. Owen always thought that was a huge cover-up.”

“Now I’m even more glad I got out of Verification. And it would explain the number of calls I got from within R and D. Any other big spats?”

“This is between us, right? You’re not going to be telling who told you what?” She looked intensely uncomfortable, an effect the usual company gossip didn’t tend to have on her.

“It’s between us. I can’t use gossip as evidence. Right now, I just need to be pointed in the right direction.”

She leaned forward across her desk and dropped her voice. “I’m not saying this to be mean, but Ari has dated almost every straight, single male in the company—and even some not so single, if you get my drift. To hear her talk, it was all their fault it didn’t work out. The ones she hasn’t dated probably rejected her. I love her to death, but anyone she reported, you can dismiss outright.”

“I don’t think she’s reported anyone.”

Isabel looked relieved. “She must be growing up.”

I was dying to ask where Owen fell on Ari’s list, but to a gossip like Isabel, that was like adding my name to the day’s hotsheet, proving I was interested in him.

“Corporate Sales and Outside Sales have a grudge match going on, but it’s mostly friendly competition. This situation is hurting both of them, so I don’t see either group getting caught up in it.”

“How did word get outside the company?”

She shrugged. “Wives talk to husbands, husbands talk to wives. People talk to friends and lovers. Word gets out. You can’t keep a lid on something like this.”

That was exactly the opening I’d been trying to get. I hadn’t lost my touch since the days when the drill team needed me to help find out which cheerleader had been spreading rumors about what they were up to and with whom under the bleachers after football games. “How did you hear about it in the first place? You and Ari were asking me about it while it was still supposedly a secret.”

“I heard it from Ari.”

“And where did she hear about it?”

She cocked her head to one side. “You’d have to ask her to be sure, but I assumed she was close enough to see firsthand how Owen reacted when he figured out that someone had been into his notes. Or I guess she might have heard it from someone else who was nearby. All those labs have windows into the hallway, so you can see what’s going on, and I doubt there’s a woman in the department who doesn’t have Owen on her scope.”

“How did people hear about the security tampering? That word got out really fast.”

“I heard it from Rod. I’m not sure where he heard about it. I think he knew Owen was getting Sam to look into things.”

That narrowed it down to someone in R&D, it would appear. I got out of the overstuffed chair that I would have loved to lounge in all afternoon. “Do you think you could call down to R and D and tell someone I’m coming so they’ll let me in?”

“Honey, I’m sure Owen knew you were coming before you decided to go there.”

From the way Owen had described his occasional bursts of precognition, I didn’t think he was quite that on the ball, and I was sure he had better things to do than keep an eye on my whereabouts.

It turned out that I didn’t have anything to worry about. Owen himself was at the front door to the department, working with Sam on the security panel. I paused to admire the sight before making my presence felt. While Owen was a vision dressed up for work in a nice suit, there was something about the way he looked with his sleeves rolled up, his dark hair mussed and falling across his forehead, and his tie loosened that I found particularly appealing. Maybe it made him look a little less perfect, a little more attainable.

“Hey, dollface,” Sam greeted me.

Owen jumped slightly, as if startled, then jumped again when he apparently hit something he shouldn’t have. He sucked his index finger, then shook his hand vigorously, all while turning several intriguing shades of red.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” I said.

“Sam startled me.”

“Can I help it if you’re so high-strung?” the gargoyle said.

“I’m high-strung because I’m working with both magic and electricity to try to fix the device that’s supposed to keep this department secured,” Owen snapped back. I’d never seen him this testy before. I’d seen him angry, but that was more of an icy-calm state that was scarier than any snarling. This was just normal human frustration. Then he sighed. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to snap.” He looked up at me. “Is there something you need, Katie?”

“I need to talk to you when you have a moment. And not here. Somewhere private.”

He glanced at Sam, who said, “I’d probably get more work done with you out of my way.”

Owen stood and absently brushed his hair off his face. “I’d feel better talking somewhere other than in this building, if you don’t mind. Let me get a coat out of my office, then we can go outside. I could use some fresh air. We can get lunch while we’re at it.”

I followed him back to his office, which was a cozy den full of old books. He gestured for me to enter first, then paused like he was watching to see what would happen as I crossed the threshold. Nothing did happen. He frowned and came through the doorway.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“I’m testing something. I still don’t have it right. I can block anyone magical, but an immune can get past the wards. It may take a physical barrier to deal with that.”

“You suspect an immune?”

“Right now, I suspect almost anyone.”

While he took his suit coat off the back of his chair, something up near the ceiling in a corner of the office caught my eye. “What is that?” I asked.

He followed my gaze, then shook his head. “What’s what?”

“Did you have a verifier go over your office while you were doing your security sweep?”

He turned red. “I didn’t think of it.”

I kicked off my shoes and climbed up onto the armchair in that corner of the office. “It looks like one of those webcam things.”