Once Upon Stilettos (Enchanted Inc #2) (10 page)

“Sure. It’ll be fun. I love your parents.” She grinned suddenly. “I don’t suppose your mom is planning to make Thanksgiving dinner, is she?”

“She’s already got it planned. She’ll die when she sees the kitchen, but she wants the big family gathering.”

“Don’t get me wrong, your Thanksgiving dinner last year was wonderful, but I still remember that year I came home with you from college for Thanksgiving. Your mom is an amazing cook.”

“And she’ll be delighted to feed you.”

Marcia then came through the door. The starry look in her eyes hinted that her lateness had little to do with a meeting and everything to do with her boyfriend, Jeff, who also had some frogginess in his past. Only he wasn’t ever really a frog. He just thought he was for a while.

“Guess who’s going to be here for Thanksgiving?” Gemma asked her before she even had her coat off.

“Who?”

“Katie’s parents.”

Marcia’s eyes lit up. “Is Mrs. Chandler cooking Thanksgiving dinner?”

“She plans to,” I said. It said something about my mom’s cooking that neither roommate had yet asked where my parents were planning to stay. For some of my mom’s pumpkin pie, I imagined either one of them might volunteer to sleep in the bathtub. Before they had to offer, I said, “I’ll need to make hotel reservations for them. Then I need to see if I can manage any time off. Maybe I can work half days.”

“It’s a holiday week. Nobody will get any real work done, anyway,” Marcia said. “Do you think she’ll make that sweet potato stuff with the little marshmallows?”

I was still so preoccupied by the impending parental visit that my heart almost forgot to flutter when I saw Owen waiting in front of my building the next morning. He greeted me with a warm smile, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve just been thinking.”

He kept his usual slight distance as he walked alongside me. “About what?”

“My parents told me last night that they’re planning to come here for Thanksgiving.”

“That’s great.” Then he hesitated and added, “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But I’m really busy right now, what with that investigation and all, and I don’t know that I can take any extra time off. According to company policy, I’m not even eligible for vacation time yet. But my folks really shouldn’t be left on their own in this city, trust me. I’m not sure who’d be in more danger, them or the rest of the city.”

“Your boss probably doesn’t even know we have a vacation policy,” he said with a wry grin. “I’m sure he can be flexible with you. But other than the work issue, you’re glad to see your family, aren’t you?” He sounded almost concerned.

“Yeah, I’m glad. I’m mostly worried about what they think of the city and my life. They were so worried before I moved here. Part of me is afraid this whole trip is their excuse to drag me back home. It would be a lot easier if I went to visit them.”

“Or they could see what you see in the city. They might be proud of you for surviving here, and seeing the reality instead of their fears may make them feel better about you living here.”

“You obviously haven’t met my parents.”

He laughed. “They can’t be that bad. All parents worry a little, and their worries are usually a lot worse than the reality could possibly be.”

I turned to stare at him. “You mean they’re worrying about worse things than me being caught up in a magical war between good and evil, in a company that has an enemy spy in it?” Then I thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, from what I know about my mom, she is worried about worse.”

“And it’s not like she’s going to learn about the magical issues while she’s here.”

Before I could counter that, I noticed something in the sky, something larger than a pigeon and growing larger as it came closer to us. I grabbed Owen’s arm and shoved him out of the way before an ugly half woman/half bird dove at us out of the sky. The last time I’d seen one of those things, it had been digging its claws into Owen’s shoulder. The harpy swooped back up to the sky and began another dive.

“What is it?” Owen asked, his voice tense.

“Harpy, I think.”

He frowned for a second, then nodded. “Got it.” At that moment, the harpy seemed to hit an invisible brick wall in the sky, then fell to the sidewalk with a
splat.
A business-suited commuter casually stepped around the body, then continued on his way, as if dead mythical creatures on the sidewalk were something he encountered every morning. I wondered what he saw instead of seeing a harpy—a pile of trash, maybe? That wouldn’t be out of place on a New York sidewalk, but as far as I knew, trash didn’t fall from the sky or appear out of thin air. The ability of New Yorkers to focus on their own business and tune out everything else never ceased to amaze me.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Okay, that’s why I don’t want my parents in New York. How do you explain something like that—the street people are breeding with the pigeons?”

“Your parents likely wouldn’t see anything extraordinary.”

“So, what would they see when something dropped out of the sky and started ripping them to shreds? There’s no way for anyone to make that look normal.”

He took my arm and steered me back into the flow of pedestrian traffic on the way to the subway station. “I doubt they’d come after your parents. This attack was probably aimed at me, and if I know Phelan Idris, he wants to shake me up more than he wants to hurt me. If I’m thinking about ways to protect the city against harpies, I’m not working on ways to counter his spells.”

“He nearly killed you with one of those things the last time,” I reminded him.

“It was only a flesh wound. But just in case, I’ll talk to Sam about getting a security detail for your parents.”

“I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it, but somehow the thought of a group of gargoyles following my parents around the city isn’t what I’d call reassuring.”

If the commute was unusual that morning, the office was even weirder. The moment we entered the building, I felt a changed atmosphere. Instead of friendly greetings from co-workers I passed on my way up to my office, there were cold stares. And it wasn’t just me. Nobody spoke to Owen, either, and I’d noticed previously that he was generally well respected. Nobody made eye contact with anyone else when they passed in the hall. It was like everyone saw everyone else as a possible traitor. I ducked out of the way when I passed Gregor in the hallway. He was bright green and yelling at someone who was yelling back at him about using the verifiers to his advantage.

Trix was already at her desk when I got to Merlin’s office suite. “Are you feeling better?” I asked.

“It’s amazing what a ton of chocolate and three back-to-back viewings of
Thelma and Louise
can do for your outlook on life,” she said grimly.

“That bad?”

“He filled up my voice mail with apologies.”

“Sounds like a positive sign.”

“Ari said to let him stew until Thursday, not go out with him this weekend, and then by Monday he’d be eating out of my hand.”

“Or you could patch things up now and be back in swing by this weekend,” I suggested. Ari’s way seemed a little harsh to me, unless he’d done something awful enough to deserve it.

She sighed. “That’s what I thought. Maybe I’ll do that and not tell Ari. I miss him too much already to drag it out another week.” She abruptly shifted gears. “I hear we had a little excitement yesterday.”

There had to be an e-mail list for company gossip, and apparently I wasn’t on it. “Yeah, a bit. R and D is in lockdown, with actual guards at the doors. The boss has turned my phone into a tip line, so you can guess what my day will be like. Speaking of which, I’m probably going to have to wade through about a thousand messages, so I’d better get to work.”

I wasn’t too far off the mark. Combining phone messages and e-mails, I had seven hundred seventy-five messages. How many employees were there? Somebody had to have left multiple messages.

I went through the voice mail first so I could clear out the mailbox for future calls. Most of the so-called tips were useless, just repeating information I already knew. I didn’t need a tipster to tell me to check out the people who worked inside R&D, for example.

“You should look into Melisande Rogers from Corporate Sales,” said a typical message. “She’s been taking a lot of business lunches that no one else in the department knows about.” The tip was anonymous, but it came from an extension registered to Outside Sales.

The next message said, “Dagmar Holloway in Outside Sales has been acting suspicious lately. I hear her sales numbers are dropping, too.” The tipster had called from a Corporate Sales extension. This was starting to sound like the girls’ bathroom at lunchtime in a junior high school.

The e-mails were even worse:

Hi, i’m writing this from my home account because i don’t want you to no who i am but your should chek on kim in verification she’s always taking notes and that makes me suspishus. She’s also a stuck-up bitch and you can tell her i said so. She’s also been staying late at teh office and i think she’s up to something.

And that was one of the more literate ones. I felt like I had to read each one all the way through in case there really was worthwhile information buried in all the venom. While some of the intrigue was fascinating, in many cases I’d read economics textbooks that were more gripping. I didn’t need a log of anyone’s daily activities, including bathroom visits.

And the work kept piling up. While I listened to a message, at least one more came in. I had to turn my computer’s sound off so the constant ding of incoming e-mail notifications didn’t drive me bonkers. As I finished charting the tip from an e-mail, my phone would ring. Finally, I got caught up, but I didn’t feel like I’d made any real progress on the investigation.

With a groan, I got up and staggered to the outer office. “Trix, coffee, please!” I begged. “This company may be too much for even Dr. Phil to help. We might want to go straight to beating each other over the head with chairs like on Jerry Springer.” Then I noticed the person standing at Trix’s desk. It was my date from Saturday night, the date I hadn’t heard from since then, come to think of it.

“Hi, Katie,” Ethan said. “Rough day?”

“You have no idea.” I turned to Trix. “Coffee?” I whimpered. A steaming cup soon appeared in my hand. I was glad I didn’t have to actually make pots of coffee. This way, I didn’t know how many cups I was drinking, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“I hear you’ve got some excitement going on around here,” Ethan said, leaning casually against Trix’s desk. “I tried to drop in on Owen, but Security wouldn’t let me past the door. Then I thought I’d come up here and say hi and see what was going on.”

I ignored the implication that visiting me was an afterthought to dropping in on his buddy. “We’ve apparently got a spy/saboteur/double agent, something like that. The boss put me in charge of collecting tips, and my phone is about to melt.” I turned to Trix. “Doesn’t anyone in this company like anyone else in this company? This is insane.”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. “It’s no worse than some law firms I’ve worked with. Someone would drop the slightest hint of innuendo and it was like throwing a hunk of raw meat into a shark tank. It was sometimes kind of funny.”

I faced him with a glare. “If you did this on purpose to see what would happen, now would be the time to confess. I might even let you live.”

“I agree with Katie,” Trix said. “I’ve been getting the overflow, and it’s brutal.”

“This seems to be the chance to settle all your old scores,” I said. “Maybe we should just throw everyone into the conference room with some of those foam bat things and let them all get it out of their systems.”

“You don’t think they’d stick to foam, do you?” Trix asked.

“You’re right. We’d be busy for months disenchanting the entire staff after they all turned each other into cockroaches and dung beetles.”

Ethan stood up straighter and said to me, “Do you have time to talk? I know you’re busy. This’ll only take a minute.”

He sounded serious, so I was instantly concerned. “Of course. Come on into my office.” As I left I said over my shoulder, “Thanks for the coffee, Trix.”

While I set my coffee down on my desk, Ethan closed my door behind him. I was on the verge of real worry when he stepped forward and pulled me to him in a big hug, then kissed me. He was grinning when he let me go. “Was that what you wanted to see me about?” I asked. The kiss had left me dizzy and breathless, most likely because it was so unexpected. In our extremely short relationship, we’d never come close to kissing.

He shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t think you really wanted that to happen out in the lobby.”

“Us dating is the worst-kept secret in the company. Even Merlin knows. But thanks for the attempt at discretion.”

He settled into my guest chair. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call yesterday. How have you been? It wasn’t too bad a hangover, was it?”

I sat down and took a sip of coffee. “I’m fine. I’ve had worse hangovers. Not many, granted. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a wine connoisseur, though. You’d have to be able to get through one of those dinners without getting blitzed.”

“It’s like any sport. You have to train and work up to it. But I promise, no getting you drunk next time. And speaking of next time, what are you doing Friday night?”

“If the rest of the week goes like this, very possibly I’ll be putting my head in the oven.”

“Dinner with me might be more fun than that.”

“I may be begging you to get me drunk by then.”

“Only if you insist. So it’s a date?”

I studied him for a long moment. True, he wasn’t Owen, but if the night before had taught me anything, it was that as cute as Owen was, whatever it took to bridge the gap from friends to lovers apparently wasn’t there for us—at least, not from his side of things. Even I was beginning to pick up on and maybe even welcome the brother vibe. It wasn’t like Ethan was sloppy seconds, either. It was entirely possible that if I put Owen out of my mind for more than a few minutes, something might happen with Ethan. The kiss had been a good start.