Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) (16 page)

As luck would have it, the park was fairly full and the only spot where we could sit was at the other end of the picnic table where Mac and his buddy were playing. Owen greeted them, then asked, “Do you mind?” as he gestured at the empty end of the table.

Mac nodded and said, “Go ahead.”

Owen and I sat and started eating our lunch. We made self-conscious small talk, trying to sound normal and innocent. That’s more difficult than I would have thought. You usually don’t even think about the things you say when you’re having lunch with someone, and you don’t care what random semi-strangers might overhear. We chatted for a while about how good the sandwiches were and how we were glad the food in the café had improved. There was some discussion of the changes being made in the store and how they were working. All the while, Owen kept tabs on his target out of the corner of his eye.

He abruptly steered the topic back to food. “The smoked gouda in this sandwich is an interesting choice,” he said. “It goes well with the ham.”

“It’s the bread that gets me,” I said, following his lead. “I’m so glad we found that bakery. I’d swear it’s right out of the oven.” Then I noticed Mac’s buddy glancing at our sandwiches as we ate and I thought I knew what Owen was up to. We went on praising the sandwich ingredients, and I then extolled the virtues of the cookies that had been delivered that morning. “It smells like we baked them ourselves,” I said. “You know there’s chocolate in the house. It’s
divine
.”

Now the buddy looked like he was about to start drooling. Mac was focused on the game, but he seemed to be stuck, unable to decide what move to make next. Owen glanced over at the board and said helpfully, “That knight has room to move.”

Mac blinked, seemed to see what Owen had seen, moved a piece, and not long afterward won his game. His buddy leaned back, stretched, and said, “I think I’m going to take a lunch break. Want to join me?”

“Nah, I brought a lunch.”

When the buddy was gone, Owen said, “Would you like a new opponent?”

“Why not?”

Owen threw away the trash from his lunch and took the seat across from Mac. I knew nothing about chess, so what they were doing made no sense to me. Their first few moves went rapidly, with Owen moving a piece and Mac responding immediately, and then Owen moving again, seemingly without even having to think about what to do. Then Mac paused and leaned back, frowning at the board. “I’m having the weirdest sense of déjà vu,” he said. “I could swear I’ve played this exact same game before.”

“That’s interesting,” Owen said mildly. I wondered if he was doing this on purpose, playing a game he’d played before with Mac. “Did you win that one?”

Mac’s brow creased, and he said vaguely, “I don’t remember.”

“Then I guess we should keep playing.” Owen indicated the board, and Mac leaned forward to make his move.

The moves went rapidly back and forth again for a while, and then they slowed down as each of them thought about his moves—though I got the feeling Owen was only pretending to think and knew exactly what he was going to do. During one pause, Mac asked, “Who taught you to play chess?”

“My father—foster father, actually, but he was the only father I ever knew. He started teaching me when I was just a kid. That was what we did in the evenings for fun.”

I watched Mac carefully to see how he reacted. He rubbed his temples, then he shook his head, like he needed to clear it. “Some fun for a kid,” he said, making his move.

“I was a strange kid,” Owen said with a shrug. “I thought it was fun. What I really liked when I got a little older was when my parents’ friends came over and I got to play against them. I’m not sure they liked it so much, though, being beaten by a scrawny little kid with thick glasses. I had to sit on a phone book to reach the board. I think my father thought that was the fun part, watching his friends react to the way I played.” He moved a piece, then said, “Check.”

Mac looked like his attention was barely on the game, and he didn’t even react to Owen’s move. I didn’t know anything about chess, but I knew that Owen’s “check” was bad for Mac. He stared at the board for a long time, and I got the impression that he was really seeing a different board from a different game.

Owen went on like he hadn’t noticed. “The first time I asked to learn to play, I must have been about five. I’d started kindergarten, but they quickly moved me up because I was bored. I was so little, and those kids were so much bigger than I was, and I kept beating them in everything, so they hated me. I had an older friend who tried to defend me, but my parents were worried we’d get in trouble for fighting, so they got me a dog.” He paused as Mac finally made his move, made his own move in response, then continued.

“They figured that the dog would scare off anyone who tried to hurt me on my way to and from school. It was a small town, so no one minded that this dog would walk me to school and then run home, and he always knew when to head back to the school to get me. He must have heard the bell and knew it was time. Anyway, that dog was very protective of me, and one day I was playing in the front yard after school when one of my parents’ friends came over. The dog didn’t know he was a friend, and I had to call him away. It was probably the first time I’d seen an adult look scared.”

Mac froze, his eyes distant, and Owen glanced at me before going on. “Later, the friend and my father were playing chess, and I watched the whole time. I think that made the friend almost too nervous to play because that meant the dog was there, also watching him. After that, I asked my father to teach me to play.”

Mac blinked, then whispered, “Owen Palmer?”

“It worked,” I murmured under my breath. I’d been kind of hoping it wouldn’t, in spite of what big-picture implications that might have had.

“Don’t react,” Owen said softly to Mac. “We’re being watched.”

“Watched? By whom? What are you up to, Owen?”

“I’m not up to anything,” Owen protested, visibly fighting to keep the appearance of cool. “I’m as much a victim here as you are.” He quickly described the situation as we understood it, then asked, “What’s the last thing you remember from the real world?”

“You and Katie went into that warehouse, and we followed you. I didn’t think it was anything, but McClusky’s a hard-liner and didn’t want to risk letting anything slide. There was a portal open in there, and then some elves came into the room and grabbed you two. We moved to intervene, and I guess they got us because after that, the next thing I can recall is being here.” He paused, looked at Owen, then at me, and said, “Wait a second, altering consciousness …”

Before Mac got around to connecting the dots on his own, Owen plunged ahead. “Yes, it works on us. Something happened when we destroyed the brooch, and now neither of us is magically immune. In Katie, it’s very likely temporary. She’s already losing her powers, and that’s why the spell seems to have been weaker for her. She fought it, and that allowed her to snap both of us out of it. I’m still not totally certain what it means for me, but I haven’t used magic outside the office since then.”

“You hid it well,” Mac said dryly. “So the elves have us captive, huh? I guess we saw something we weren’t supposed to.”

“That’s what we think. I was hoping you saw more than we did.”

“Just a portal. Who else is here?”

“We’ve seen a few people we know from MSI who’d gone missing,” I put in. “There had been a lot of reports of missing elves, so I imagine they’re here, too.”

“And you say memories break the spell?” Mac asked.

“Bringing up a vivid memory from the real world seems to work,” Owen said. “For us, it was an accident that we simultaneously came up with something that reminded us of each other.” He turned pink and left out exactly what that something was. “My story from when I was a kid worked for you, so I hope that’s all it takes for us to wake up everyone else. You’ll have to bring your partner out of it, since you know him best.”

“But be careful,” I added. “There are people we think might be monitoring us. If they notice we’ve remembered, they might do something.”

“If you’re worried about that, then you’d better act natural now,” Mac said. “There’s a guy across the park who’s watching us.”

I was facing away from our possible watcher, and my back itched between my shoulder blades at the thought of being observed. It took all my willpower not to turn around to see who it was. I was afraid that even using the compact mirror trick to see behind me would be too obvious. “Is he an elf wearing gray?” I asked.

“Yeah. You’ve seen him?”

“Even before the spell broke last night, I did something that I shouldn’t have been able to do if the spell was working—probably because I’m losing whatever magic I had. They’ve been following me since then. I’m trying to convince them that one part of the spell may have broken, but the big spell is still okay.”

“What do you think they’d do if they knew you’d broken the spell?” Mac asked.

“Probably put us back under it,” Owen said with a shrug as he moved a piece on the board. I didn’t know enough about chess to know if it was a real move or if he was maintaining the pretense.

Mac frowned. “I’m worried that they’re keeping such close tabs on you. We should probably have a contingency plan. I wonder if it would help to write down a memory and then keep it in a place where you’re bound to see it, even if you forget who you are again.” He moved a piece on the chessboard.

“That’s a good idea,” Owen said, countering his move. “We should all do that as soon as we can.”

Mac nodded acknowledgment and continued authoritatively. “The first step is getting information. We need to find this end of the portal that brought us here. We need to find the boundaries of our prison. It would help if we knew what they’re hiding. And then maybe we can find a way to get out or send a warning. If we can revive the people we trust, we can get more done.”

“We’ll revive the ones we know, and I think they’ll know which of the other elves should be on our side,” Owen said. I was a little surprised that he didn’t resist Mac taking over, but then he’d known Mac since he was a little kid, so it probably seemed natural to Owen to defer to him. “We’ll take every opportunity we can to see what else we can learn.”

“Okay, then.” Mac nodded toward the board. “Finish the game. I’ll try not to be a sore loser. I’ll deal with McClusky. You want me to tell him all that I know?”

“If we’re going to work as a team to get out of here, I think he’ll figure it out, so you may as well be up front about it,” Owen said wearily.

Mac looked even more somber as he said, “And you know I’ll have to report this when we get back.”

Owen went a little pale, but he nodded. “Of course. I guess I’ll deal with that when we get back.” He made a move, then said, “Checkmate.”

“And just in time, too,” Mac said out loud as McClusky arrived, sipping from a paper coffee cup and nibbling on a giant cookie.

“Did the kid beat you?” McClusky asked.

“It was a good game,” Owen said diplomatically.

“You were right about these cookies,” McClusky said around a mouthful.

“Come over any time,” I said. “You have to try the brownies, too.”

“See you around,” Mac said with a wave as Owen and I headed toward the store.

When Owen still hadn’t commented even after we reached his office and closed the door behind us, I said, “That went well.”

“As well as can be expected,” he said with a solemn nod.

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“You don’t seem happy.”

“We’re prisoners with no obvious means of escape and I’ve just let the magical authorities know that my powers have been back for a while without me telling them. The best-case scenario isn’t exactly rosy.”

To distract him from his bad mood, I said, “Since it worked to break the spell, I’m going to assume what you said to Mac was true. But did you really have to have a dog to protect you on the way to and from school?”

“The dog wasn’t to protect me.”

“He wasn’t?”

He blushed slightly, a hint that my tactic was working. “The first time the bigger kids got to me, I panicked and lashed out with my powers. I had very little control over them then and didn’t even do it consciously. There was no serious harm done—at least, nothing that didn’t wear off after a while—but the bullies were in danger until I learned to use my powers. James and Gloria figured that if I had a big dog at my side I wouldn’t be frightened, and everyone would be safe.”

“Did it work?”

“After a few dog bites. The bullies were kind of slow to learn.”

I hated to bring up business again after relaxing him, but we needed a plan. “What next?”

He frowned, thinking, for a moment, then said, “Act as normal as possible. And we should probably avoid talking to anyone else we know is a prisoner for the rest of the day.”

“Do you know how hard it is to
act
normal? Just the fact that you’re acting keeps it from being normal, by definition.
Nothing
about this situation is normal.”

He took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Of course it isn’t. Maybe a better way to phrase it is ‘unchanged.’ What would be normal in this scenario?”

“Well, we’ve just fallen in love and found each other, and we’re in romantic comedy world.” I tried to remember every sappy movie I’d ever watched with Nita. “I think we’re due for a montage where we walk around the city, generally acting like we’re in a perfume commercial—stuff like holding hands, acting like you’re oblivious to the rest of the world, or else seeing the world in a new way now that you’re in love. Doing spontaneous things like buying flowers or getting a street musician to play our song.” I felt my face growing warmer as I listed all the things that I’d imagined in those moments that had probably led to me getting stuck in this scenario to begin with. “Talking, laughing, splashing each other in fountains, pausing to kiss in picturesque places.”

“That would be the perfect cover for exploring the dimensions of our prison. Good idea, Katie. You may have to cue me, though.”

“Oh, come on, you can’t be that hopeless,” I teased. He sure knew how to burst a girl’s romantic bubble.