Frogs and Kisses (Enchanted, Inc. 8)

“What did he do to deserve that?”

“He went against his word. This merely holds him to the terms of our agreement, and I’m sure he’ll eventually see it our way.”

What could I say to that? Roger might be friendly and pleasant and great to work for, but I was starting to suspect that the man was a sociopath. The rest of the ride felt awkward to me, a sensation that wasn’t helped by the constant croaking coming from Roger’s pocket.

When we arrived at our building, instead of going straight to our office suite, Roger took me from the entrance lobby to the floor of that atrium our offices opened onto. A garden filled the floor, with plants, trees, and a small stream flowing into a pond. It looked like a frog’s dream habitat, and most of the lily pads had frogs sitting on them. Roger removed the frog from his pocket and gently placed it on one of the lily pads.

“It would be cruel to let them out into the wild at this time of year,” he said. I bit my tongue to keep myself from telling him that turning people into frogs was already pretty cruel. “They wouldn’t be able to hibernate properly, and it takes time for the frog instincts to take over, so they wouldn’t even know what to do. We’ll release some of them in springtime.”

I looked around at all the frogs in the atrium garden. Were these just the people turned into frogs since the first freeze, or whenever it was that frogs would have gone into hibernation? I counted at least twenty. This likely explained where the missing people had gone. Was one of them Sylvia?

Now I knew that what I was doing was worthwhile. I had to bring down the Collegium so I could save these people and keep anyone else from sharing their fate. Not that I’d been very successful so far. In fact, one of these people was here because I’d tried to help. If I hadn’t shared that list with MSI, maybe they wouldn’t have intervened, and then Mr. Bartles would have only lost his business without the indignity of being turned into a frog.

But it would only drive me crazy if I thought that way. Maybe MSI would have talked to him again, anyway, and now I had proof of what they were up to. I’d have to remind myself of that as I continued this operation.

I couldn’t be sure if it had anything to do with what I’d just witnessed, but that same afternoon, Evelyn sent me an e-mail with links to listings for available company apartments for me to look at. Had I won my way into the company by not running screaming from Roger, or was this his way of sucking me further into the company, now that I knew too much?

Much to my relief, they were real apartments with actual addresses, not units in this crazy office building, so I wasn’t being completely warehoused away from the rest of the world. All of them were well beyond what I’d normally be able to afford—the kind of dream apartments the young singles lived in on television sitcoms. There was a midtown high-rise flat, a SoHo loft, a cozy West Village studio, and an Upper West Side basement apartment in a brownstone. None of them were close to where I currently lived, so they’d separate me from my friends—which might have been the point.

The West Village apartment was smallest, but it was closer to my current stomping grounds, and I’d always liked that neighborhood. It had almost a small-town feel, with its twisty streets and more human-scaled buildings. I might not feel quite so alone in a smaller place. I replied to Evelyn that I would like to see that one, and she responded with an appointment that afternoon.

For this trip away from the office, I had to go through the usual leaving-work routine of changing clothes, since I’d be going straight home from the apartment. The drive there seemed to take about as long as any other drive home from work, but I couldn’t be sure if that meant anything. For all I knew, the office building could have been on Union Square, blocks from my apartment, and we just drove around in circles on the way there.

A woman in the requisite black Collegium uniform met me outside the apartment. I sent the driver on, saying I could make my own way home from there. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when he agreed without protest. At least they weren’t trying to control absolutely every aspect of my life. The apartment was as cute as it had looked on the listing, and it was furnished in a way that was almost exactly my taste. I wasn’t sure if they had somehow done that just for me, based on what they’d learned about me, or if it merely went with the apartment, and the apartment was my kind of place.

It was small, with one main room serving as living room, bedroom, and dining room. The sofa folded out into a bed, and the coffee table was at a height that made it work as a low dining table, with ottomans that could be pulled up around it. The bathroom had been updated, so it had modern fixtures, and the kitchen was almost as large as the one in my current apartment. There were French doors and a small balcony overlooking the narrow, tree-lined brick street.

“I’ll take it,” I said without hesitation. In fact, I was rather worried that I wouldn’t want to go back to my old place when this operation was over. Then again, I’d be marrying Owen very soon, and his place was far bigger and much nicer than this. I wasn’t sure why I kept forgetting about that—maybe it was just too painful to dwell on it when I was separated from him.

The woman handed me a set of keys. “Here you are, then,” she said.

I blinked, startled. “You mean, it’s mine, now?”

“Whenever you like. You can take your time moving in, but we’d really like you to be living here full-time starting next week.”

When she was gone, I sat on the sofa, trying to get a feel for the place, but then I was too antsy to just sit there. I searched for bugs in the obvious places where they always were on TV—lamps, picture frames, vases of flowers—and looked for anything that might be a camera. Then I realized that if there was surveillance equipment, my search wouldn’t look good. But what did they expect me to think, given their paranoid security? Surely anyone in my situation would have checked, whether or not they were undercover operatives.

I walked a few blocks to catch an L train across town to my old place. On my way into the station, I noticed a man walking beside me. We had to part at the turnstiles, but then he matched me almost stride-for-stride on the stairs. I glanced over and did a double take, nearly stumbling, when I recognized Owen. He caught my elbow to steady me and hissed, “Don’t act like you know me.”

I assumed that meant he was in some kind of magical disguise. Even without a disguise, he was bundled up in a coat with an upturned collar and hat pulled low so I could barely see his face. “Thanks,” I said, the way I might have to any stranger who’d helped.

“Don’t mention it. Are you okay?” He hadn’t yet released my arm, like he was reluctant to let go. Only when we were at the bottom of the stairs did he move slightly aside, but then when the train arrived, he got on the same car. The evening rush crowd pouring into the car gave us an excuse to stand close together, our shoulders touching.

In fact, we were close enough that I could lean slightly and whisper in his ear. “They got Mr. Bartles,” I said. “You may have persuaded him to stay, but they went and turned him into a frog and magically forged his signature. They’ve got an atrium full of frogs.”

He looked at me, the alarm evident in his eyes. “You need to get out of there,” he whispered.

“I can’t, not when I’m finally getting something. They gave me my apartment today, so I must be in. I may start learning more.”

“That’s what you were doing in the Village? Sam gave me the heads-up that he’d spotted you.”

“Oh, so I’m being watched?”

“As much as we can. We’ve been trying to follow that car on your way to work, but we lose you every time.”

“Even the gargoyles can’t keep up?”

He shook his head slightly. “No. I think there’s some kind of obscuring spell.”