Damsel Under Stress (18 page)

“I’m fascinated by these billboards,” Merlin said cheerfully. “Don’t you think they’re more entertaining than television?”

The cop gave us a funny look, and I took Merlin’s arm. “Grandpa doesn’t get away from the nursing home often,” I said. “When he gets out for a holiday, we let him do some of his favorite things.”

The cop nodded. “Ah, I see. Well, have a merry Christmas.” Then he moved on, and Owen and I immediately broke down in laughter.

Merlin looked mildly amused. “I never thought I’d have to play the dotard in order to do my job,” he said.

As I turned to reply to him, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. “Is that—? No, rats, it’s not,” I said.

“Not what?” another voice asked. We all turned to see Rod. His hair still looked good, his skin was smoother, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he’d had his teeth whitened. “I just got the message and thought I’d join you. Any action?”

“You mean other than convincing a cop that Grandpa’s senile and likes to look at the pretty lights when we let him out of the nursing home?” I asked.

“So, no fight scenes yet, then.” He looked up and around at all the billboards. “These are truly, spectacularly awful.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but then I saw something, and this time I was sure it was Idris. He was lurking just inside the doorway to a nearby restaurant, and he had a few of his usual gang surrounding him. “There!” I said.

“Where?” Owen asked, then he said, “Oh, hell,” and waved his hand. Nothing much changed for me. I still saw the same menagerie of magical creatures—both the good guys and the bad guys. But judging from the screams, I got the feeling that now everyone else could see Mr. Bones and the circling gargoyles. “That’s not what I meant to do,” Owen groaned. “Katie, you and Rod see if you can catch up with Idris.” He and Merlin were already muttering magic spells, presumably to reveil all the magical folk who’d been revealed to the world.

Rod waved to the gargoyles, who zoomed in on Idris like they were on a bombing run. “I got ’em!” Rocky shouted, latching onto Idris’s shoulder with his feet. A second later, he lost his grip. “Hey! Ow! That hurt! No fair!”

Rod and I nearly reached Idris, but just before we got to him, a clump of tourists moving in an eerie zombie lockstep got in our way. I wormed my way through them, but when I got to the other side, Idris was gone. I made a full circle turn to see if I could spot him, but all I saw was Rod fending off a couple of women. It seemed Idris knew just how to target him. It must have been the first time in a very long while that Rod had actually fought to get away from women. Even the ugly magical creatures were gone. On the bright side, the worst of the panic had been quelled, as Owen and Merlin had apparently reveiled all the magical stuff.

“He got away,” I reported when I got back to them and Rod had escaped from his female admirers with a couple of phone numbers. “He must have used that influence spell of his to get the crowd to block us. Is everything okay here?”

“I think so,” Owen said wearily. “Next time, I won’t be so impatient and I’ll try targeting the unveiling a little better. It shouldn’t have hit the whole square like that, though. I thought it would only cover a short distance.”

“There aren’t many with the power to forcibly remove veiling spells from that many beings at once,” Merlin said. “It was an impressive display, and there seems to have been little harm done. We put things right soon enough that most of these people will likely assume they just imagined it all. Not that you shouldn’t be more prudent in the future, with that kind of power at your disposal.” I remembered then what I’d overheard from James and Gloria. Merlin had a similar tone to his voice, a mixture of pride and concern.

“I guess that spell needs more work,” Owen said with a shrug. His face was flushed, and he didn’t look Merlin in the eye.

“I doubt Mr. Idris will make another appearance tonight,” Merlin said. “Now, I’ve taken away enough of your holiday. Please enjoy the rest of the evening, but I would like to meet in the morning. Say ten at my office?”

Owen and I exchanged a look, then he said, “We’ll be there.”

“Rocky and Rollo will get you the rest of the way home,” Sam told us. He then addressed the two goofy gargoyles, emphasizing each word. “In. One. Piece.”

They saluted him. “Yes, sir, Sam, sir.”

“Oh, off with you,” Sam grumbled.

The drive from Times Square to my apartment near Union Square managed to be even more bizarre than the drive from the Eatons’ house into Manhattan. Owen gave Rocky directions for each turn, and then Rocky told Rollo when to drive or brake, so the entire drive was a flurry of, “Turn left at the next intersection. Ease up on the gas. BRAAAAAKE. Okay, now you can go. Then make another left. Stop, stop, stop! Go!” and so forth.

When we finally stopped in front of my building—one tire up on the curb and the fender inches from a tree—Owen said, “I’m close enough to home. I can walk from here, and you guys can take the rest of the night off.” He looked about as pale and shaky as I felt. Once we were safely on the sidewalk with our bags, I vowed never again to complain about New York taxi drivers. After the Town Car peeled out into traffic, to much honking of horns, and took the next corner on two wheels, Owen turned to me and said, “Do you want some help getting your bag upstairs?”

I was sorely tempted to say yes so I could then invite him in and try to salvage a little of what remained of Christmas, but my roommates would be getting home at any time now, and I knew he’d want to get home and study our latest problem. “No thanks,” I said reluctantly, “I’ve got it. I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Yeah. I’ll come by around nine-twenty.”

“Okay.” I unlocked the front door, then turned back to face him. “Merry Christmas. And thanks for inviting me to go with you. Aside from the last hour or so, I really enjoyed it.”

“And I enjoyed having you there. It made things a lot easier.”

I would have hoped for a kiss, but I could tell he was distracted again, brooding over whatever had happened with that unveiling spell. After seeing James and Gloria, I understood better why physical affection wasn’t exactly second nature to him. I waved good-bye as he walked away, then picked up my bag and trudged up the stairs. The more time I spent around Owen and now his family, the dingier this stairwell seemed to me. I felt like I was entering a different world, or maybe going down to steerage on the
Titanic
after having been up on the first-class deck—and we know the steerage folks didn’t come out of that situation too well.

It was hard to believe I’d only been gone a little more than a day, the apartment felt so foreign to me. It was stiflingly hot, which meant my downstairs neighbor must have spent the day complaining to the super about being cold, and he didn’t want to be called again on a holiday. I opened every window in the apartment and traded Gemma’s cashmere for a T-shirt before I unpacked. As much as I’d joked about enjoying the time alone and changing the lock before they got back, the apartment felt empty without my roommates.

That reminded me, they weren’t expecting me to be home. I was supposed to have come back the next day. I needed an explanation for why I was already home and why I had to go to work the following day. And I needed it fast, considering I heard a key turning in the lock.

Gemma yelped when she opened the door and saw me. Marcia, coming in behind her, dropped the bags she was carrying and assumed a defensive posture at Gemma’s yell.

“Gee, I didn’t know I was that scary,” I said.

“We weren’t expecting anyone to be here,” Gemma said. “Why are you here? Weren’t you supposed to be with the hottie’s folks until tomorrow? Nothing went wrong, did it?”

I followed them as they carried their bags back to the closet to unpack. “No, nothing went wrong. The visit was fine. I was apparently a big hit with the folks.”

“Of course you were,” Marcia said. “You’re a mother’s dream girlfriend for her son, unless she’s one of those controlling mamas who can’t handle the thought of turning her baby boy over to another woman.”

“There was just a work crisis,” I continued my story, “and he had to come back to the city. I even have to go in for a while tomorrow because the executive I work for is part of it.”

“What kind of business crisis comes up on Christmas?” Marcia asked.

“It’s the perfect time for a business crisis. Don’t they often plan sneak attacks during wartime on Christmas, because they know your guard will be down?”

Even Marcia didn’t have a good response to that. After they dumped their bags in the bedroom, Gemma ordered Chinese food, then we settled down to chat about our respective holidays while watching the last of the Christmas specials on TV until a commercial came on that almost made me spit rice across the room.

Eleven

P
helan Idris’s face filled the TV screen, which in and of itself wasn’t a pleasant sight, but the implications were disturbing beyond that. He’d definitely launched a serious ad campaign. The ad urged magic users to try new and different spells to help them break out of their humdrum lives. Or something like that. The music used as background for the ads gave me a headache and was very distracting. The real surprise was the announcement of a Spellworks store, opening the next day on Fifth Avenue.

I managed to cover up my shock at seeing the ad by going into a coughing fit and sputtering, “Oops, that went down the wrong way,” but I watched my roommates for their reactions at the same time. I doubted they’d seen what I saw, or surely they’d have commented on someone opening a magic store and claiming to sell actual spells. It would have been nice if they’d done me the favor of saying anything that would have hinted at the cover ad nonmagical people saw—something like, “Hey, sale at Victoria’s Secret!” or “Yeah, like a body spray really has that effect.” Unfortunately, whatever they used to mask the ad for normal people, it didn’t seem to be an ad worth noticing or snarking about. Once they were sure I wasn’t going to choke to death, my roommates went back to eating and chatting.

The ad was the first thing I told Owen about when I met him on the sidewalk in front of my building the next morning. “I wish I could tell you what the rest of the world sees,” I finished, “but I couldn’t think of a way to ask my roommates what ad they saw on television without sounding like I’d lost my mind.”

“This is not good,” he said, shaking his head. He looked tired. If I knew him, he’d been up most of the night thinking and researching.

“No, it’s not good,” I agreed, “but hey, at least we know what he’s up to now.” He didn’t rally to my attempt at good cheer. If anything, his frown got deeper. “Okay, is there something I should know that you’re not telling me?” I asked, trying to interpret his mood.

It took him a while to answer, and I’d just started to think he hadn’t heard me when he said, “No, not that I know of.” And that, apparently, was that. He didn’t say another word on the entire walk to the subway station, and I decided against pressing the point. Owen wasn’t the kind of person you could make talk.

Most people had a holiday, so the crowds were a little lighter than normal and we actually got seats. That meant I had a rare chance to notice the advertising that ran overhead. I blinked, then elbowed Owen. Spellworks had blanketed the entire car. He closed his eyes and groaned.

As we walked from the subway station to the office, he finally spoke to me. “I’m sorry everything’s been so messed up,” he said. “Every date we’ve tried to have, the holiday. I guess we haven’t made that great a start.” He gave a bitter little laugh. “In fact, I couldn’t blame you at all if you decided to cut your losses because this isn’t working.”

“Why would I do that?” I asked. “Whatever we’ve run into, it’s had as much to do with me as it has with you. If I dumped you and tried getting together with someone normal, things would probably be even worse.” My heart suddenly felt like it had been caught in a vise. “You don’t want to end this, do you?”

“No. But you know it’s not going to be easy, the two of us. I don’t think it will ever be easy for me because of who I am, or what I am.”

“Maybe it’ll be easier if we take it on together.” I tried to make my voice lighter. “Besides, if you knew my dating history, you’d know nothing’s been easy for me. If we go out one more time, we’ll be closing in on my record for the past year or so, whether or not we run into another disaster.”

Some of the weight seemed to leave his shoulders. “Okay, then, if you insist.”

“I do.”

It looked like Merlin had come to the realization that this was too big for our little team to deal with, for when we got to his office for the meeting, there was a room full of people (and other beings). I recognized Sam and the heads of Sales and Accounting, as well as the chief seer from Prophets and Lost, the forecasting unit. Even Owen’s direct boss was there, and he almost never left his own office.

I was especially surprised to see our corporate counsel, Ethan Wainwright, there. He was a magical immune, like I was, and we’d dated very, very briefly about a month ago. It was the first time since he’d dumped me that I’d had to deal with him on a business basis. You’d think that dating Owen would have made me feel better about that, but it still stung a little. Facing an ex in a situation like that can be challenging. Do you act like nothing ever happened, or do you acknowledge the past? I went with sitting on the other side of the room and trying to avoid him unless I had a specific reason to address him.

I glanced at Owen, who sat next to me, to see if he’d reacted to Ethan being there, and then I realized that this same dilemma could apply to Owen someday. What if it didn’t work out, if he was right about what he’d said earlier, if all the disasters piled up and made one of us give up? Would we one day face each other across a conference table and try to decide if we should just pretend nothing happened? It was almost as sobering a thought as the implications of what Idris had unveiled the day before.

Merlin called the meeting to order by summarizing what we’d seen on Christmas. “As Miss Chandler pointed out to me, the real concern appears to be that Mr. Idris has the funding to operate like a legitimate, high-level business.”