"Shanna Swendson - Enchanted, Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swendson Shanna)

roughness, as though he'd recently gone a long time without talking. I thought I
detected a trace of an accent, but I couldn't identify it. When it came to accents, I
was only good at figuring out which part of Texas someone came from.

"Do you believe in magic?" he asked. That's not on the list of likely job interview
questions, so I didn't have an answer for him. It seemed to be a rhetorical question
anyway, which was good, because I couldn't get my chin off the table so I could
answer. "What about elves or fairies? Are these real to you, or are they stories?"

I finally got my brain in gear. "Well, up until a few minutes ago, I would have said
they weren't real. But something tells me I would have been wrong. I'm not sure yet
about magic."

The boss looked toward Rod with a smile. "You did say she had common sense."
He turned back to me. "Magic is real. Unfortunately, the very qualities that make you
valuable to us make it difficult for us to prove it to you. You see, you are one of the
rare human beings without the slightest hint of magic in you."

That didn't sound like such a good thing to me. After all, doesn't everyone wish for a
little magic from time to time? That's the reason Harry Potter books fly off the
shelves, little girls try to wiggle their noses after watching Bewitched on TV Land,
and audiences clap their hands to cure Tinker Bell, no matter how silly that makes
them feel. Being told that magic does exist but that I had no part of it was a huge
disappointment, whether or not I was ready to believe they were telling me the truth
about magic.

My distress must have shown on my face, for Owen, who was seated at the boss's
right hand, leaned toward me across the table. "That's actually valuable to us," he
said softly, as though he and I were the only two people in the room. His words had
the confident ring of his business persona, but his manner was shy. "Most people
have only enough magic in them to make magic work on them. They can be
influenced by spells or fooled by illusions. Meanwhile, those of us who are magical,
who have
the power to do magic for ourselves, also can be influenced by magic." I wasn't sure
what to make of the fact that he'd used the words "we" and "us." Did that mean
Owen was a wizard?

"You, however," he continued, "are of the rare breed who can neither do magic nor
be influenced by magic. You see the world as it is. You see through the illusions we
use to shield the magic from the rest of the world. Surely you've noticed things you
can't explain?"

Oh, boy, had I. I supposed I should have been freaking out about all these
revelations, but they came as something of a relief to me. This meant I wasn't going
crazy after all. That, or I'd suffered a total psychotic break. "I'd just always heard
New York was kind of weird," I said at last. "I guess we don't have magic back in
Texas."

There was laughter around the table. "No, you don't," a man about ninety degrees
around the table said. "Just a few isolated pockets. For the most part, settlement in