“I’m using Loony to demonstrate proof of concept. She’s a lot smaller and a lot less messy than a dragon. You see, that spell I used to tame the dragons could be used in a modified form for pet obedience training. You could end indoor accidents and keep Fido from chewing your favorite shoes.”
“I could see where that might be popular.”
“Allow me to demonstrate. You know how notoriously untrainable cats are—there’s a reason we refer to wrangling a bunch of people who all want to do their own thing as herding cats. But with the right touch of magic, that all changes.” He handed Loony—who looked utterly bored by these proceedings—over to Jake. Jake took her to the opposite side of the room and put her down. She immediately yawned and stretched, then began grooming herself. Owen said some magic words and did a few complicated hand gestures, then called, “Loony, come here!”
The cat interrupted her grooming to shoot across the floor and hurl herself at Owen’s legs, where she purred and gazed adoringly up at him.
“Ta da!” Jake said with a flourish.
Owen knelt to scratch behind Loony’s ears. “Making a cat obey is actually quite impressive on a conceptual level, even harder than dragons, really. However, cats aren’t big enough to demonstrate to a large crowd. But we can demonstrate it with the dragons, which looks a lot more impressive than making a dog sit, fetch, and roll over. You can do that even without magic.”
“But you’ve been training your cat like a dog her whole life. She obeys without magic,” I said. To demonstrate, I knelt and said, “Hey, Loony! Come here, sweetie!” She came straight to me and rubbed her face against my ankles.
“She likes you,” Owen said. “That doesn’t mean the magic doesn’t work. You saw what happened with those dragons—one minute they were trying to roast us, and after I did the spell they wanted to play. Now they even do tricks. I did that spell in a panic, with probably a bit too much power behind it. Since then, I’ve analyzed what I did and figured out a way to control it better. If the spell works on dragons, it should work on household pets that don’t breathe fire. Is that what you wanted?”
“It should get their attention,” I said.
“We have a few other things to announce, but I’m working on ways to make them look more spectacular.”
“Keep this up, and you’ll turn into P. T. Barnum in no time. I take it that’s why you’ve been so scarce lately.”
“No, not really. This was just taking a break. There wasn’t much work to do on this spell. But coming up with protective charms that work against the influence spells is killing me. The whole department’s on it, and we can’t make anything work consistently, not even when we reverse engineer the Spellworks charms.” He called Loony back, scooped her up into his arms, and stood up. “And now I’d better get back to work.” I waited for him to say something else, like maybe making plans to see each other. My birthday was the next day, and I’d have thought he’d make time for me then, no matter how busy he was. Surely he’d know. After all, he had ESP and his best friend ran the personnel office. I reminded myself that the current crisis trumped my birthday and forced myself to give him a big smile. “Thank you for coming up with something splashy for me.”
He was already back at work before I left the lab.
I got to work the next morning to find that Rod must have put out a memo on me. Perdita had decorated my office with birthday balloons. She’d gone a bit overboard, as there was barely room for me to squeeze in, and I had the strongest feeling I would suffocate. Once I got rid of a few of the balloons, I found a vase full of long-stem red roses on my desk, alongside a giant box of Godiva truffles. The card with the flowers and candy said “Happy Birthday” with a P.S. saying, “Don’t even think about sharing the chocolate. It’s all yours.” It wasn’t signed, but I recognized Owen’s handwriting, since he was the only person I knew in my generation whose writing looked like something out of a Victorian penmanship primer. My eyes grew suspiciously watery as I realized he hadn’t forgotten, after all. I chose a favorite truffle, then put the box in my bottom desk drawer, under a layer of empty file folders.
Late that afternoon, there was a light rap on the frame of my office door. I looked up to see Mr. Hartwell. “Can I borrow you for a second?” he asked.
I didn’t think that he needed to borrow me if I reported to him, but what I said was, “Sure.” I got up and followed him down the hallway.