I faced him directly and said, "I've only been here three days, and I've seen enough already to know that this has to be the worst-managed department in the entire company. You're treating extremely rare and valuable people like cattle, and it's a miracle you haven't lost your entire staff by now. There, now I've complained to you. And now I'm going to talk to Personnel again."
Actually, I was going to bitch to Rod about the way he must have broken the news to Gregor to piss him off like that, but Gregor didn't have to know that. He could stew about what I was going to report. I imagined he'd gotten in some trouble for lying about having his anger-management problem under control.
I gathered my belongings and stalked out of the office in a beautifully dramatic exit, if I do say so myself. I just wished the big-picture stakes weren't too high for me to threaten to quit, but I couldn't get the image of a faint and shaken Owen out of my mind.
For once, I felt like I had a real mission that I had to help carry out, no matter what the inconvenience to me might be. And if I could do something about that inconvenience, well, so much the better.
I hoped Rod was ready for Hurricane Katie.
twelve
I still had a good head of steam going when I reached the personnel office. "Is Rod in?" I asked before Isabel had a chance to greet me. "He's in a meeting—an employee review up in P and L—but he should be back any minute if you want to have a seat."
She didn't have to ask me twice. I sank wearily into the overstuffed chair in front of her desk.
"Can I get you some coffee?" she asked. "How about a margarita?" She grimaced.
"Ouch. Let me guess, Gregor?" I nodded. "How do people work under him?"
"Don't ask me, sweetie. I just know there was a resounding sigh of relief when he was reassigned after his 'accident.'" She made air quote marks with her fingers and smirked. Then she perked up. "I can't give you a margarita on company time, but a group of us are getting together for a girls' night out tomorrow. You should come.
You'd
get to know some of the other women who work here. Let's face it, there are times when this place is positively medieval when it comes to women in the workplace. It helps for us to all pull together."
"It sounds like fun," I said. The more people I knew inside the company, the better I could do my job. There was a nagging thought in my head that there was something I was supposed to remember about that night, but I flipped through my day planner and found nothing written in. "Sure, I'll come along. The others won't mind me being there, will they?"
"They'd love to have you along." She winked at me. "You can tell us if any guys we spot are really cute or just using a cute illusion."
As if on cue, Rod walked through the door. I hoped he hadn't heard Isabel's last comment. Then I wondered if Isabel even knew about his illusion. I tried to imagine how other people saw him. "Katie!" he greeted me, sounding surprised.
"Can I have a word with you?"
"Of course. Come in." I gathered my jacket, briefcase, and purse and followed him into his office. "How's your head?" he asked as I settled into a chair.
I touched my temple, just then remembering what had happened the day before. Had it only been one day? It was hard to believe. So much had happened to me in such a short span of time. "It's fine. I'd even forgotten about it. It's not all black and blue, is it?"
"It looks pretty nasty. Want me to mask it for you?"
"I thought magic didn't work on me."
"An illusion doesn't have to work on the person who wears it. It's a spell that follows you around and works on other people."
"My roommates have already seen it, so it would raise questions if I came home with no lump on my head at all, but thanks for the offer."
"Oh. Good point." He sounded truly disappointed. He probably wanted to show off for me, and here I'd gone and dashed his hopes. "I could just make it look not so bad, so they won't worry too much."
I couldn't see much harm in that, so I shrugged and said, "Sure, why not?"
He grinned, a truly delighted smile breaking out across his face in such a way that he looked truly attractive, even with his flaws and lack of grooming. Now I was glad I'd agreed. He rubbed his hands together, then placed one hand just above the knot on my forehead, closed his eyes, and muttered something under his breath. I felt the same charge and sense of pressure in the air that I'd noticed in Owen's lab, but on a much smaller scale. A second later he opened his eyes and backed away, a satisfied smile on his face. "There you go," he said. "I set it so it would wear off as the bruise fades away."
"Thank you," I said, even though I felt like a character in the fable of the emperor's new clothes. I wouldn't be able to tell whether he'd really done anything, so I just had to go along with it and act like he'd done me a favor.
He went around his desk, opened a drawer, and brought out a small hand mirror.
"Here, take a look."
"Remember, immune. I can't see it."