Austentatious

personal interest in perusing their selection.

Rather than poke around browsing, I went straight to the counter, a woman on a mission, and found myself face-to-face with two tall, scruffy, very interesting-looking guys.

“Hi. Do you guys know if you happen to carry any CDs by Loch’d In? They’re a Scottish band performing at South by Southwest this year?”

“Definitely,” said the scruffier-looking dude, coming around the counter to help me in my search. His immediate, positive answer whipped my vital signs into a frenzy, and it barely registered that he was still talking.

“They’re actually scattered a couple of places around the store,” he informed me as I trailed along behind him. “Easiest to find is right here.” His tattooed arm gestured toward a display of CDs. He then flipped through a half dozen jewel cases before he turned and extended his hand, holding out the object of my search.

“Great,” I answered, my voice almost unrecognizable as I reached for the CD. My eyes were riveted on the cover, mesmerized by the long, slippery neck of a sea monster surfacing behind the band as they stood on the shore of a loch—and by Sean’s face staring back at me.

Two minutes later, I was back in the car, clawing at the shrink-wrap with my short, blunt fingernails, trying to catch an edge in the plastic and rip it off. I could feel an unfamiliar urgency coursing through me ... and then— finally—it was free. Clumsily I pushed the disc into the changer, sparing one final glance for what I could only assume was the Loch Ness Monster. I was 99 percent certain that the photo had been digitally enhanced.

Desperate once again to be doing rather than thinking, I shifted the car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot just as the haunting music from last night’s Web search filled the car.

Somehow I managed to find my way home with the deep, dark edge of Sean’s voice coursing over me, through me, into me. I could picture him, singing these words, and it wasn’t so hard to imagine him singing them to me. It wasn’t until the CD changer clicked over to the next disc in the queue that I realized I’d been sitting in my driveway, oblivious to the world, for at least a half hour. Evidently the stand I’d intended to take against Fairy Jane had been cut off at the knees, and my willpower was fading fast.

It didn’t help that when I walked inside, threw my keys on the counter, and ripped away Saturday’s page in the quote-a-day calendar, Sunday’s read, “ ‘Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.’ Emma.” Apparently I needed to get a little cheeky, and everything would work itself out. That didn’t exactly sound like a strategy to live by.

9 In which Nic is vexed. And very possibly hexed.

By Monday I was back to normal, or at least relatively so. I mean, how normal was it possible to be with a magical journal stashed amid your literary classics? Right now I was boycotting the interfering little book, endeavoring not even to glance in its direction. And after my Sunday afternoon marathon whipping up the day’s second batch of cupcakes (lemon with Texas “Big Hair” Meringue) with my new CD cued up to repeat, I’d declared a moratorium on Loch’d In. The CD was now stashed with the journal, and I was immune to bad influence.

True to ritual, I had checked the quote of the day and been vaguely surprised at how particularly apt it was on this, the day of my performance review: “ ‘There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.’ Emma.” But the coincidence was quickly forgotten amid the stress of the morning. I was desperate to hear the final decision on the open management position I’d applied for last month. It would be worth all the crazy uncertainty of the past couple of days, all the magical mumbo jumbo, if just this one little thing went according to The Plan. And then it was back to the antiques store for a chat with the Shop Nazi and a search for a magical key. Talk about living a double life.

Fidgety and unable to concentrate for more than ten minutes at a time, I was up and down all morning, walking off tension, weaving through the maze of cubicles, gravitating toward Brett’s cube like an awkward bee to honey. The whole situation was a prickly catch-22: I had no idea what to say to him—how to explain—about the wedding, the sexy stranger, or my unexpected disappearance, and yet I felt like I needed to see him, if nothing else, to recalibrate my thought processes.

But he was MIA. His lights were on and there were curly edged design schematics splayed over his desk, but Brett was disturbingly absent.

Even Gabe wasn’t available as a distraction.

I was just back from another go-round when my boss rapped on the door frame of my open-air cubicle and smiled. “Ready, Nic?”

I followed him back to his walled office, fantasizing over the possibility of getting a door and ceiling of my very own. The conversation started out great, with him congratulating me on an impressive slew of accomplishments (his words) and efforts above and beyond. I smiled in a self-deprecating manner and accepted the accolades. It was all very “Hallmark Special.”

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” he finally said, beaming as he slid a sheet of paper across the desk toward me. “You deserve it, Nic.”

This was it! I took a deep, shaky breath and bit my lip, holding it in as I reached for that crisp white sheet of paper that had the potential to change everything. Raising it, I glanced once more at my boss, now lounging back in his chair, a satisfied smile suffusing his face. My anticipation having now risen to a frenzied pitch, my gaze flitted over the page as my heartbeat thrummed in my chest.

A quick scan showed me I’d moved up a pay grade—always nice—and scored a promotion. Woo-hoo! A little more clout was never a bad thing. But there was no hint as to whether it was to be managerial clout or just plain-jane engineering clout, and I needed to know. I lowered the page, my smile settled firmly in place, and looked my boss directly in the eye.

“Any news on the open management position?”

His smile fell away, and his gaze scuttled away from mine as he shifted in his chair, and suddenly my heart’s thrumming turned to thudding, my climactic moment having taken a disappointing detour.

“The management team felt that right now you’re a much greater asset to us as a ‘hands-on’ engineer.”

No doubt. Who else was willing to pick up any and all slack in a blind quest for management? The ultimate irony. He kept talking, but all I heard was a droning buzz, which I suspected was the pressure in my head as I resisted the urge to let fly with a string of curses. When his lips finally stopped moving, I smiled my pissed-but- polite smile, somehow managed to grit out my thanks, and swung through the door.

“Oh hey, Nic,” he called, pulling me back. “Probably shouldn’t have, but I ate two of those cupcakes you brought in.” He smiled, patted his belly, and gave me a jaunty thumbs-up.

Fan-freakin’-tastic. I smiled with teeth, and feeling like a human time bomb seconds from detonation, I focused on moving myself as far as possible from the greatest population density. I was in the hall when I finally went off, a mini mushroom cloud.

Once it was over, I indulged in a poor-baby and spent yet another moment likening myself to Cinderella, the drudge, the girl desperate to go to the ball. Funny thing was, I already had a fairy godmother, and I’d been to the ball, albeit another sort of ball entirely. And that had been more than I could handle. I definitely didn’t want Fairy Jane messing around with this part of my life—I was having enough trouble reining her in as it was.

Still, I would love to do ... something. I couldn’t quit—that would be completely erratic and irresponsible—but something ...

“Ready for a change yet?”

The suggestion, out loud and “out there,” ignited a miniature spark in me, and I almost imagined it was coming from the little devil who sat, perpetually ignored, on my shoulder.

I quickly realized I was no longer alone in the hallway. Mark Frasier, division manager for the failure analysis lab, was standing two feet away, his approach having gone unnoticed amid the pity party.

The second I realized his comment had been intended as a legitimate offer, the spark exploded into a wild