Damsel Under Stress (36 page)

“Meeting them in the right place could help,” Owen said. “There are some abandoned railway tunnels under Grand Central that should be ideal. It’s possible that they have some base of operations near there, so they’ll think it’s their territory, but we have other advantages.”

Again, I was sure I knew where he was going. Being able to read him wasn’t always reassuring, I was learning. “Oh no,” I moaned. “Not that. Are you sure that’s a good idea? It might not still be safe.”

“It’s safe.” He didn’t quite look me in the eye when he said it.

“You’ve gone back to check on them, haven’t you?”

He turned red. “I felt bad about leaving them tame and then abandoning them.”

“Owen, they’ll find a way to follow you home someday, and your neighbors won’t be happy about that.”

“Would you mind filling the rest of us in?” Ethan asked.

“Dragons,” I said. “We found a nest in those tunnels, and the dragon whisperer here seems to have made pets out of them.”

“He’s always been that way,” Rod said. “You should have seen the things that followed him home when he was a kid.”

“I don’t exactly have them tamed,” Owen said, still blushing, “but I think they will do what I ask, and I can make sure nobody gets away from there without my say-so. It gives us some benefit having an extra force on our side.”

“Okay,” Ethan said with a nod. “Now, how do we want to do the exchanges, in what order? Choreographing this thing should be interesting.”

“We do them both at the same time,” Owen said. “But they don’t have to know they’re all there. Rod, you’re our master of illusion. You can keep them from seeing each other until we’re all ready.”

They went on strategizing, but my ever-increasing headache made it hard for me to concentrate. It sounded like my main role in all this was to stay out of the way with Ari in my brain until they absolutely needed me to prove we had her. I picked at the food on my plate, but it had gone cold. Then I remembered that I could temporarily do magic, so I concentrated on reheating my dinner. When I put a forkful of food in my mouth, it scorched my tongue. It seemed that there was a lot to learn in order to have the precise control Owen and the others had.

Finally, the others settled on the complex choreography of who would do what and when. All that was left was to set it up and see if the bad guys were willing to play along. “Mr. Wainwright,” Merlin said to Ethan, “you will contact Miss Meredith in the morning to arrange that exchange. Make it sound like your client is planning to give in to her demands, but say nothing that sounds like it might be a pledge. Meanwhile, I will go to the Spellworks store and give them the message for Mr. Idris. Someone at the store has to know how to contact him, and under the circumstances, I’m sure they’ll do so.”

I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall for Merlin’s visit to the store. Imagine being a magic store clerk and having the real Merlin walk into your store. It would be like Elvis walking into a neighborhood record store.

“What about Gemma?” I asked as the thought occurred to me. “If they figure out they have the wrong person, she could be in danger.”

“We already have her guarded,” Merlin said.

“She’ll be worried sick, though. She’s probably called the police by now.”

“Why shouldn’t she call the police?” Rod asked, his voice and face hard and grim. “Marcia is in danger.”

“I have one more question,” I said, raising my hand. “When do we deal with Ari?”

“After everything is secured, we will get you to a safe place where we know we can retain custody of her, and then we will summon your fairy godmother to do the spell,” Merlin said. I tried not to groan at imagining any more time spent with Ari in my head.

Once everyone had synchronized their watches and verified their parts in the plan, the others went home. I helped Owen clear away the remains of the mostly uneaten Chinese food. “Do you think we have a prayer of making this work?” I asked.

“We’ll find out tomorrow. I’m sorry your friends have been caught up in this.” His voice had warmed a little toward me since our earlier conversation, but I still felt a bit of a chill.

“It’s Ari’s fault, really,” I said, forcing a light tone into my voice in an attempt to ease the awkwardness. “She was the one who broke the spell on Philip in the first place, which left him wandering the park for Gemma to find when she decided jogging in the park on Saturday mornings was a good way to meet men.”

“I assure you, I will do everything in my power to make sure your friend is returned safely.” He said it like he meant it as a solemn vow, and I knew his power was considerable enough that he wasn’t swearing anything lightly.

“Thank you,” I whispered. He just nodded in response. I could have really used a hug, but he didn’t look like he was in the mood, and I could practically feel the barrier between us.

Before we headed to bed, he gave me the immunity potion and the fairy sedative. I’d have to go through magical detox when all this was over, given the number of magical drugs I was taking.

I wasn’t sure if it was the potions or my overall weariness, but I slept hard and woke feeling heavy and lethargic. When I’d showered and dressed, I found Owen in the kitchen, making breakfast. As soon as he noticed my presence, he gestured to the two glasses that sat on the table. “Ah, yes, the morning doses,” I said.

“Drink those, and then you can have some coffee.” He looked even more tired than I felt. I wouldn’t have bet on him having slept at all. He certainly hadn’t shaved, and he still wore his glasses.

I drank the fairy sedative first, then chased it with the tea-flavored potion. As I put the second glass down, Owen put a mug of coffee in my hand. “Bless you,” I said before taking a good, long swallow.

He dished up scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast, and we ate in near silence. I didn’t feel much like talking, and he wasn’t one to talk just to fill silence, whether or not he was mad at me. Normally, I would have insisted on helping him wash dishes after breakfast, but this time I sat there and let him clear the table. “You know,” I mused out loud while I watched him wash dishes, “when this is over, I think I want a vacation. I want to go somewhere quiet and lie in a hammock or sit on a front porch and read a big, juicy book—and have no magic anywhere around me. No fairies, gargoyles, elves, gnomes, none of it.” I looked up to see him gazing at me. His eyes looked hurt. “Magical people would be okay,” I assured him. “As long as you don’t actually do magic. And it’s not that I have anything against all the other species. It’s just that they remind me of things that I’d prefer to forget while I’m on this hypothetical vacation.”

“Maybe you ought to take it.” I noticed he said “you” and not “we,” even after I’d clarified myself to show he might be welcome.

“I don’t have any vacation time accrued yet.”

“I’m sure we could make an exception. Call it hazard pay or comp time.”

I decided to start taking my comp time immediately. I knew I couldn’t concentrate on work. Owen had his head buried in a stack of magical tomes, probably working out some wonder spell he could use in the big showdown. I discovered that he had an impressive collection of paperback spy thrillers, so I settled on the sofa and read while he worked.

Late that afternoon, he brought me another dose of the immunity potion. “I’m going to stop giving you the fairy sedative now,” he said. “We’ll need Ari awake and functioning in case you have to prove you have her. It’ll be a few hours more before it all wears off, but we’ll need to start being careful.”

“Apologies in advance if I do or say anything particularly bitchy,” I said after drinking the potion. “I’m not in the best of moods, myself, and with her influence I could be awful.”

He gave me a crooked smile that was almost enough to warm my heart, since smiles of any kind had been rare lately. “I’m sure I can cope with it,” he said.

By the time we were ready to leave for the big multihostage exchange, my headache was worse than ever. It felt like someone was kicking at my skull from the inside, and come to think of it, someone probably was.

We got to the tunnel first, so that Owen could get his dragons settled down. They were overjoyed to see him, and he had to play a game of fetch before they’d stand still. Merlin, Rod, Sam, Rocky, and Rollo soon showed up. Sam saluted Owen with one wing and said, “I’ve had my people watching all the comings and goings at the store. Anyone we’re fairly sure is part of their outfit has a tail on them. That doesn’t mean we’ve got everyone, but we’ve got a lot of ground covered.”

Owen nodded. “Good. I don’t know what else he might try to pull tonight, so I wanted to be prepared.”

Ethan and Philip arrived next. Ethan was in full lawyer mode, suit, briefcase, and all. Owen directed them to the other side of the cavern. “Okay, Rod, do your thing,” he said.

Rod rubbed his palms together. “I’ll use a selective illusion. All of us should see everything, while they should only see their own side of the room until you give me the signal to drop or change it, and I can drop it in one direction either way.”

“And none of it will work on me, so I can make sure everyone’s being honest,” Ethan said. Normally, that was my job, but I couldn’t do it with my immunity to magic stripped away so we could get Ari out of my head. Whenever it happened, it wouldn’t be soon enough. She’d thoroughly awakened from the sedative, and she was really pissed off. I had to bite my lip to keep my mouth shut so I wouldn’t say all the things that came into my head.

Owen directed his dragons off to the sides of the room, then waved a hand, and they disappeared. “We’re all set now,” he said.

Merlin pulled out a pocket watch and checked it. “Mr. Idris should be here at any moment.”

“He’s here now,” a voice said from the darkness. Phelan Idris stepped forward out of the shadows, along with a few of his henchmen, the ones who’d been with him in the big magical battle we’d fought a couple of months ago. They still looked more like they were on their way to a science fiction convention to meet up with a bunch of other people who’d seen
The Matrix
a few too many times than like anyone you’d expect to be on the cutting edge of magic.

Then again, our side didn’t look all that intimidating unless you knew what they were capable of. Merlin looked like a little old man in a dapper suit, while Owen looked like an astonishingly good-looking version of the boy next door. Sam and his people could have starred in their own Disney cartoon.

“Let’s make this happen,” Idris said. “What is it you want? That is, if you really do have Ari.”

“Oh, we’ve got her, all right,” I said, rubbing my temple.

“We understand that one of your colleagues has taken custody of Miss Chandler’s friend,” Merlin said. “We would like you to secure her return.”

Idris’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. “What?” he squeaked, his voice going up about an octave. “Whoa, I had nothing to do with that! I may have mentioned that the dude trying to take back his company was dating one of Katie’s friends, but it was just a conversation, you know? I didn’t think she’d do anything about it.”

“Nevertheless,” Merlin replied, “we would like her safe return, and we do have someone who must have some meaning to your organization, or else she would not have been freed earlier. Your superiors will not be happy that she is in our custody.”

“And you think I can do anything about that?”

“You will if you want Ari back,” Owen said. “Unless you want to tell your bosses that you lost her.”

Idris looked even more panicked. “I’ll see what I—I’ll try—this could take time, you know.”

“Relax,” I told him. “It’s not like we’re going to cut off one of her fingers every fifteen minutes or torture her.” If there was any torture, it was the other way around. My head felt like she was throwing a hissy fit in there.

“And what if I don’t care whether or not I get her back?” Idris switched tactics, which played beautifully into our plan. We were supposed to stall him until Sylvia and her crew showed up with Marcia.

“Then we keep her. She might not think so favorably of you at that point,” Merlin said.

“Well, where is she?”

“Right in here,” I said, tapping my head. “It’s a long story involving a fairy godmother.”

He laughed, long, loud, and hard. “You expect me to believe that?”

Reluctantly, I eased my tight control on my tongue and let the foreign thoughts that had been welling up in my brain spill out. “You moron! I bet you didn’t even notice I was gone until they told you, did you? You were so busy with your precious business. I hate this! This wasn’t what I signed up for!” It was weird to hear someone else’s words coming out in my voice.

Idris wasn’t convinced. “Anyone who’s spent five minutes around Ari knows she’d say something like that.”

Before I knew what was happening, I’d put my hands on my hips. “Oh yeah? Well, how about this: I know you’ve got a mole shaped like Mickey Mouse on your—”

“Okay, I believe you!” he shouted at exactly the same time I bit down hard on my tongue. I didn’t want any more details like that about him. “What do you want me to do? I can’t do anything to get your friend back. I don’t have that kind of pull with these people.”