Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) (22 page)

“Us?” Owen asked.

“We
are
outnumbered. I want to have as many wizards there as they have elves.”

*

We went out to dinner, maintaining our usual pattern, though Owen didn’t even try to pretend like he was on a date in a new relationship. As a matter of fact, this was starting to feel normal for me—us in the midst of a crisis and him distracted by it. I totally understood the distraction, but I did find myself looking back with nostalgia at those enchanted days when we hadn’t known what was going on.

“What’s up?” I asked when he was unusually silent and distant for a while.

He smiled wryly. “How much time do you have? I’m just trying to think of a way to deal with this that doesn’t put me in the middle of an elves versus wizards dispute. I’m not even sure where I stand with the elves. They may be more suspicious of me than the wizards are.”

“You might be surprised,” I said. “I put Perdita on the case months ago. There were some initial rumors, but she’s been countering all of them, and when she spreads something, it goes far and wide. She’s got a better reach than CNN.”

“So they probably won’t elect me their new leader—which is good—but they’re not expecting me to try to take over the world.” He sighed then. “But since apparently McClusky does think I’m pulling some grand scheme, the fact that they don’t hate me on sight will look very suspicious.”

“Sorry for butting in earlier, by the way.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t think it makes much difference, one way or another. I could get myself killed while pushing his grandmother out of the way of a speeding car, and he’d find it very suspicious that I bruised her.”

If he was making dark jokes, then I figured his funk wasn’t too deep. To prevent him from sinking back, I said, “Do you have any ideas for a meeting location?”

“I’m trying to decide if we should go for a building near the store, where several of us have regular reason to be, or maybe near where one of us lives. Or should we stay entirely away from anything associated with us?”

“We’ll also need to be careful to avoid any space on top of an occupied apartment.”

“I was thinking of finding an empty basement, if there is such a thing.”

“Oh, good thinking. Then there’d be a floor.”

“Are you up for a scouting mission?” he asked with a mischievous smile.

“What do you think?”

We dropped back by the store after dinner so he could check on some things, then we headed toward my place. On the block before we reached my building, Owen glanced around for followers, then led me up the front steps and magicked the front door open. Once we were inside, we found a narrow staircase behind the main stairs, leading down into a basement utility area. Or, where one might have been in a real building. It seemed as though the utilities here were all magical, so there was no need for boiler or furnace. That meant the utility room was one of those blank spaces, and it led into a much larger blank space that filled the basement. “Bingo!” I said.

“This should do the trick,” he agreed. “The windows are even mostly blocked, so light shouldn’t be visible outside. Now we just need to find multiple entry points.”

We determined that the space could be entered directly through the basement apartment entrance under the front steps and from the apartment in the adjacent building, as well as the way we’d come in. Entering from farther down the block required a more complicated route that involved going upstairs and over an occupied apartment before coming down the main stairs where we’d entered. We saved that entrance and another entrance in the middle of the block for ourselves because they were more complicated to explain. Owen made note of the addresses and directions for the other entries so he could give the location to Mac and Earl in the morning.

*

Perdita wasn’t quite her usual chipper self when I stopped by for my morning coffee the next day. “Do you have any idea when we’re getting out of here?” she asked.

“We’re working on some plans,” I told her.

“Good, because I’m ready to go home. I like being your assistant more than I like being a waitress. I bet you like your job better than working in a bookstore, too, huh? Or do you even see the bookstore? What is this like for you, since magic doesn’t work on you? Or does it? I don’t get it. How could they have enchanted you?”

I was surprised it had taken her so long to get around to thinking of that. “I actually got a dose of magic awhile ago. It was an accident. I don’t have much, and it’s fading already, but I’ve been trying to learn to use what I’ve got.”

“Oh,
that’s
where you were going with all those ‘meetings.’” She made sarcastic air quotes with her fingers. “I just thought you were getting it on with Owen somewhere, since you came back all flushed and excited.”

I restrained a groan. I’d suspected that was what she was thinking. “I was just excited about practicing magic.” I was surprised by how wistful I sounded. Having magic had a lot to do with me being in this mess, though I didn’t know what might have happened if they hadn’t been able to imprison me this way. They might have locked me in an ordinary cell.

“And Owen? I thought magic wasn’t supposed to work on him, either.”

“The same accident that gave me magic restored his powers.”

“I thought he wasn’t evil.”

“He’s not evil. He’s just not harmless. There’s a difference. You haven’t noticed him doing anything bad in the last few weeks, have you?”

“No.” She dragged the word out like she wasn’t sure, and I tried not to sigh in frustration. If her reaction was any indication, Owen would practically have to sacrifice himself saving us all to prove he wasn’t as evil as his parents.

*

Even though my job mostly consisted of pouring coffee and putting baked goods in paper sacks, it was difficult to concentrate when I was thinking of that night’s meeting.  Before I left work, I gathered the day-old bakery products that we would have thrown away. I hoped that maybe having some sweets would keep the meeting from getting too rancorous. At least I’d have something to bite on so I’d be less likely to say something I’d regret.

Owen was working late at the store, so I went home by myself and then had to kill hours before it was time for the meeting. I dressed like I was heading over to visit a friend who’d made a late-night breakup distress call and headed out with my bag of cookies and scones soon after ten. That gave me time to be cautious and still get there before everyone else did.

The gray guys had stopped staking out my apartment, and I didn’t notice anyone else following me as I headed down the street. When I reached the right address, I went up the front steps and mimed hitting an apartment buzzer before I magically unlocked the door. That took me a couple of tries. It used to be such a simple spell, but now it left me so drained that I had to pause in the vestibule and eat a cookie before I could make it up the stairs to the empty apartment shell.

Picking my way across the floor was a challenge with next to no light, so I was glad I’d allowed myself plenty of time. After the unlocking spell took so much effort, I didn’t dare try to generate magical light, and a flashlight might have been dangerously obvious. I was incredibly glad to reach the doorway to the stairwell that led to the basement, where I didn’t have to worry about how I walked.

As early as I was, Owen had beaten me. He was waiting in the basement meeting area, a small globe of magical light glowing at his feet. “I wanted to make sure it was still a safe meeting place,” he explained. “I might have been able to call it off if it had been compromised.”

“I just wanted to make sure I could get through the door on my own,” I said.

He immediately looked concerned. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Relax. I was fine. I can still do that much magic. Cookie?” I held the bag out to him.

“You brought refreshments?”

“I’m from the south. We don’t have gatherings without food. I probably should have baked. These are just leftovers from the store.”

At about five minutes before eleven, there was a rustling noise near the basement apartment entrance. Owen doused his magical light, and we both froze, holding our breath. A rectangle of grayish light showed as the door opened, and two figures were silhouetted in the opening. I was pretty sure it was Mac and McClusky, but we stayed quiet until they identified themselves.

The door closed, plunging the room back into darkness, and then a magical glow appeared near the floor, where it wouldn’t be as visible through the windows, which were up near the ceiling. “We’re here,” Mac said.

Owen’s glow relit, and he said, “Good, you found it.”

Mac looked around the empty space. “So, this is what it’s like inside all these buildings?”

“From what we can tell,” Owen said.

“It would be pointless to build an entire city, inside and out, just for show,” I added. “I wonder how much of all this is illusion.”

“But there’s still enough to physically interact with, which tells me that the Elf Lord’s scheme is big enough to make it worthwhile,” Mac said. “Speaking of which, any sign of our elf friends?”

“Not yet, but they’ve still got a few minutes,” Owen said.

McClusky scowled, but before he could say anything about elves, I held out my bakery bag. “Cookie? There are also some scones in there.” He looked at me like I was insane, but Mac reached over and took a square of shortbread from the bag.

We waited a while longer, and then McClusky gestured for the bag and took one of the giant cookies. Mac checked his watch, then shook his head and said, “This is just like them. It’s a power game, you know. They’re showing they have the power position by keeping us waiting.”

I was surprised to see Owen smile ever so slightly as he said, “Okay, you’ve made your point. I’d like to get this over with.”

At that, the shadows shifted and five elves appeared right next to us, as though they’d been standing barely a foot away that whole time. I couldn’t stifle a yelp of surprise, and I wasn’t the only one. McClusky started coughing, having choked on his cookie.

I hadn’t heard or seen the elves come in. Had they been there all along? Earl was there, but I didn’t know the others, and when I got a look at their apparent leader, I forgot about the others. He was in human guise, so he didn’t look like an elf, but he did look otherworldly. All elves seemed to look eternally young, but while Earl looked like he really might be a college student, this guy had the look of a thirty-year-old actor who could still believably play teenagers. That is, sexy, mature-for-their-age teenagers, the types who have steamy affairs with their young, pretty teachers on teen nighttime soaps. He also was perfect casting for the role of dashing young rebel leader, with his intense eyes and catlike grace.

It was a good thing it was so dark and the lights were so far away from me, I thought as I brushed a few beads of sweat off my forehead. I wondered if maybe he was using a charisma spell to maintain the upper hand in the meeting because I normally didn’t react to other men this way, especially not when I was standing right beside Owen.

The elf leader smiled at all of us—though it felt like the smile was mostly directed at me—and said, “Hi, I’m Brad.”

That broke the spell. I bit my tongue before I blurted, “Brad?
Seriously?
Brad the elf?” He’d have looked right at home in a jaunty beret with a couple of bandoliers over his shoulders. He should have been “Jacques” or maybe “Pierre.” Brad was the star player on the football team, not a resistance movement leader. The rest of us introduced ourselves, using first names only. I wished I’d thought to give myself a cool code name because “Katie” wasn’t any more of a good resistance name than “Brad.”

“Now that you’ve graced us with your presence, I guess we can get started,” Mac said, sarcasm dripping from his words.

Judging by the elves’ body language, I had the feeling Mac was going to face some resistance, and not the kind he was trying to organize. I didn’t know yet if it was the idea of working with wizards or Mac assuming leadership they weren’t on board with, but I recognized a certain degree of wariness in the way they viewed the situation. They weren’t crossing their arms over their chests, or anything else that obvious, but there was something defiant about the way they stood.

“Who are you to decide that you’re in charge?” Brad asked mildly. His tone wasn’t challenging at all, but his eyes might as well have had lasers in them.

“I represent the Council.”

“The Council only governs wizards. We have our own leadership.”

“Your leadership is why we’re here. We all seem to have been caught up in your people’s power struggle.”

“So you admit it
is
our business.”

Owen took a slight step backward, giving off clear “I’m not with him” signals.

“Would you just listen to my ideas before we start arguing over who’s in charge?” Mac bellowed.

“I am very much interested in hearing your ideas,” Brad said.

“Okay, then,” Mac continued, “I think our priority has to be getting out of here, and the way to do that may be to take them by surprise. History’s full of uprisings where the prisoners attacked their captors.”

“And how many of them were successful?” I couldn’t help but mutter. I could tell from Owen’s face that he was thinking it, but he didn’t dare challenge the Council representative. When Brad gave me an appreciative look, I felt like a kindergartener who’d received a gold star for my drawing.

“It sounds like a good way to get ourselves put back under the spell or to get put in a real prison that’s not as comfortable,” one of the other elves, a pixie-haired woman named Doris, said.

“You want to stay here forever?” Mac asked. “That’s a lot longer for your people than it is for mine. How else do you think you’re going to get out? We have to force them to let us go, and that means forcing them to listen to us. Now, I figure that anyone here that we don’t know is either an illusion or is working for them. The illusions seem to be like the extras in movies. They’re just part of the scenery. They don’t talk, they don’t interact. They just go about their business. Everyone else is probably in on it, working to maintain the illusion. Those are the people we can grab. I’m sure you’ve all got someone in your day-to-day lives who’s like that. If each of us gets one or two, then we’ll have taken out most of their people, and then we can fight back.”