I pointed to the naked man. Words failed me.
“It’s a frog,” Ari said.
Isabel arrived, breathing heavily. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Katie found a frog,” Trix explained.
“No, I didn’t. I found a naked guy who seems to think he’s a frog. With that other guy, I saw a frog before Ari kissed him. This is different.”
“Ribbit!” Naked Frog Guy said, with great enthusiasm.
I knew there were a lot of less than mentally stable people who lived in the streets and parks of New York, and a guy who thought he was a frog wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but the fact that everyone else also thought he was a frog made me suspect that something else was going on here. It must have been the results of an illusion spell rather than an exhibitionist crazy homeless guy or a real enchanted frog prince.
“It’s probably a practical joke or a fraternity prank,” Ari said. “If you see him as human, that must mean someone cast an illusion on him to make him and everyone else think he’s a frog. You don’t see the frog because of your magical immunity.”
“What do we do about it?” I asked. “We can’t leave him out here like this. He’ll die of hypothermia. It’s cold at night, not to mention the fact that he’s naked and around water.”
“Ribbit?” he said in a pleading tone of voice.
I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “You’re. Not. A. Frog,” I told him firmly.
“You’ll have to kiss him to make him snap out of it,” Isabel said.
“Kiss him?”
Ari rolled her eyes. “How else do you break a frog enchantment?” She left off the “duh” at the end of the sentence, but her tone implied it.
“But why me? Why do I have to be the one to kiss him?”
Trix ticked off reasons on her fingers. “A: You found him. B: At least you’d be kissing a human. If one of us kissed him, we’d be kissing a frog. Kissing any human is better than kissing any frog.”
Naked Frog Guy said, “Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!” He was practically hopping with excitement.
“Whoa, chill, okay?” I told him. I wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea of kissing naked men, but it depended heavily on the circumstances. For starters, I strongly preferred to actually know the guy and to have established a relationship. I didn’t think it was asking too much for me to really like the guy, even to believe that I loved him (though I knew that being with a naked man tended to cloud your judgment in that area). Call me a prude, but I also preferred an indoor location or, at the very least, some privacy.
In short, kissing a naked man who had said nothing more than “ribbit” to me, while surrounded by friends in Central Park, was not high on my list of turn-ons.
But what I’d said earlier was true. He probably would die if we left him out there, and if I kissed him, it might get me off the hook for any other frog kissing that night. “Well, here goes nothing,” I muttered as I knelt next to him. This would be easier if I was drunker. Maybe we could go to a bar, then come back and finish this. But I was already here, so I might as well get it over with. It wasn’t like I had to tongue-kiss him. That was fortunate. What if he’d been eating flies? Ewww.
I screwed my eyes shut, then leaned in and gave him a quick peck on the lips that landed slightly off center. Before I could back away, he grabbed my head and pulled me back for a rather more thorough kiss. After thinking about flies, I very determinedly kept my lips sealed together.
Finally, he let me go, and I couldn’t stop myself from wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Almost immediately he grabbed my hand and lavished kisses on the back of it. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said, which was an improvement over “ribbit,” even if he hadn’t added much variety to his vocabulary. “I owe you big-time.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said, freeing my hand and wiping it on my skirt as I backed away from him and stood up.
He made as if to stand up, too, then glanced down at himself and noticed he was naked. “Um, well, I’m going to have to stand up now, but I’d like you all to take into consideration the fact that it’s pretty cold before anyone makes any snap judgments,” he said.
Isabel took off her cardigan and tossed it to him. He wrapped it around his waist, then adjusted it carefully as he stood up. It covered him completely from waist to knees. When he stepped out of the bushes and into a better lit area, I saw that he wasn’t bad-looking. He was about my age, which made him a little old for a fraternity prank, and his body was nicely defined. He had shaggy blondish hair and a tattoo on one well-sculpted bicep. He looked more like a California surfer dude than like someone you’d meet in New York. Ari gave a low whistle, then elbowed Isabel. “Why’d you have to give him the sweater?” she hissed.
“Now that you’re all disenchanted, you should go home and warm up,” I said brusquely. I didn’t want him to think I’d kissed him for any reason other than to release him from the spell. If I’d run into him anywhere else, I might have been interested in a little flirtation, but meeting him when he thought he was a frog was just too weird for me. I vowed never again to use that old saying about kissing frogs, not now that I knew I wouldn’t want anyone who used to be a frog, even if he was a prince.
“Is there a problem, ladies?” a voice asked. I whirled in shock. We hadn’t been caught red-handed while molesting frogs, but standing around in the dark in the park with a seminaked man wasn’t the most innocent activity. The speaker turned out to be a park ranger—a park ranger who had wings on his back and slightly pointed ears. This must be a sprite.
“This gentleman has just been disenchanted,” Trix said. She and the sprite had locked eyes in a way that was entirely familiar to me, a look of intense, instant attraction. Not that I’d experienced it personally, but I’d watched it happen to friends.
“We’d better get him inside and taken care of, then,” the sprite ranger said.
“I’ll come with you,” Trix said, fluttering her fingers at us as she took Naked Frog Guy by the arm and joined the ranger.
“It’s a rebound. It’ll never last,” Ari opined as they disappeared into the darkness.
“You’re letting him go like that?” Isabel asked me.
“Uh, yeah, looks like I am,” I said.
“Why? You actually found a prince. It turns out you were right about kissing frogs.”
I shuddered. “No, no, I wasn’t. This is a worse way to meet men than singles’ bars.”
Isabel brightened. “We could go to a singles’ bar.”
“Not tonight,” I said with a sigh. “I hate to be a wet blanket, but I’d rather just go home now.”
“You’re not having fun?” Isabel asked, looking and sounding worried.
“I had lots of fun, really. But it’s been a long week, and it all caught up with me at once. I’m glad I came, though. Thanks for inviting me.”
I must have sounded convincing, for she looked more like her usual cheerful self. “I’m glad you had fun. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
“Next time, we can skip the frogs.”
She and Ari laughed. “It was your idea,” Isabel said. I didn’t try to argue that when I brought it up, I hadn’t expected them to take me literally. I gave them a halfhearted wave and hurried up to Fifth Avenue to see if I could catch the M1 bus. One of Marcia’s city safety rules was that the bus was better than the subway when you were alone at night because you could sit near the driver and you were less likely to be stuck underground with crazy people. I glanced at my watch and was surprised at how early it was. I felt like I was crawling home in the wee hours after a night of debauchery, but I’d probably beat my roommates home.
A bus showed up before long, and I climbed on board. For the first time in my life I felt like the oddball surrounded by normal people, instead of the other way around. No matter what anyone else on the bus had done that evening, it couldn’t possibly be any weirder than what I’d just done.
In the space
of about a week’s time, I’d gone from being perhaps the most ordinary person on this island to being one of the weirdos. I wasn’t sure yet if that was an improvement.
I was rudely awakened the next morning by all the lights coming on in my bedroom and the window shade going up to let in the feeble sunlight that ventured into the air shaft. “Wake up, sleepyhead!” Gemma called out.
I pulled the covers over my head, but she pulled them back. “You don’t want to sleep all day, do you?” she asked. “I’ve already been for a run.”
I pried my eyes open to see that she was dressed in a high-fashion velour jogging suit, very similar to one Madonna had been wearing in a photo in last week’s People. “Since when do you run?” She had the kind of body that stayed fabulous without exercise. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d have to hate her.
“Since I heard that Saturday morning in the park is a great place to meet buff guys.” She perched on the edge of my bed. “Not that I actually bothered running. The trick is to always look like you’re about to run, or like you’ve just finished running. It’s hard to hook up with someone while you’re in the process of running.”
“Did it work?”
She grinned. “Yep. I met a really hot guy, very nice, too. He had old-fashioned manners like I haven’t seen since I left Texas. I don’t think he was there for running, but hey, it’s the results that count, not the process.”
“Did you get his number?”
“Not exactly. But I did tell him where my friends and I always hang out on Saturday nights, and I invited him to drop by and join us.”
I frowned. “Where do we always hang out on Saturday nights?”
“I found this cute little bar. You’ll come with me tonight, won’t you, Katie? Maybe he’ll bring a friend.”
I groaned. “I’m not sure I’m up to it.”
“Oh, come on, you were already in bed when we got home. You’re not hungover, are you? How much did you have to drink last night?”
“Not that much,” I said, mentally calculating. Oh God, I’d been persuaded to go kissing frogs in Central Park on only three cosmos. I was such a lightweight. But my hangover was more emotional than physical. I was still freaked out by the whole frog-kissing incident.
“Did you have a good time? What did you do?”
“Oh, the usual girls’ night out stuff, looking for guys. Like they say, you have to kiss a few frogs—”
“Before you find a prince,” she completed the saying for me. “Did you find any?”
“A prince is in the eye of the beholder.” Let her interpret that any way she wanted to.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to cope with the bar scene again, but I let Gemma drag me out that night anyway. Marcia begged off, saying she had work to do. That almost made me change my mind. If Gemma hooked up with her guy, that would leave me the odd one out. I supposed I could always beat a strategic exit if it came to that.
The bar she’d found was a comfortable neighborhood place, the kind where we might hang out regularly, if we were so inclined. By the time we’d been there about five minutes, she’d managed to turn herself into a regular who knew the names of every waiter and bartender in the place. I still couldn’t figure out how she did it.
I ordered a glass of wine because cosmos made me think of frogs. Gemma tried to make casual conversation about how my week had gone while her eyes scanned the room, looking for her guy. Fortunately, her attention was too focused on looking for the guy for her to notice much of what I said. My week didn’t really bear deep examination.
Finally, she lit up. “There he is!” she said. I turned to see a tall man with dark, Byronic hair enter the room. He wore dark gray slacks and a flowing white shirt with suspenders. He looked vaguely uncomfortable and out of place. He also looked familiar. “Philip!” Gemma called to him, standing and waving a hand in the air. He smiled and some of the unease left his posture when he saw her.
She pulled out a chair for him at our table. “Philip, this is my friend Katie. Katie, Philip.” He took my hand and bowed over it when we were introduced. I hoped he didn’t kiss it. That would only remind me of Naked Frog Guy. Then he placed his hands on the back of the chair she’d pulled out and waited expectantly. When she plopped into the chair she’d been sitting in instead of the one he was holding for her, he frowned and looked confused, then rushed to help seat her and scoot her up to the table before taking his own seat.
That was when I realized who he was. He was the frog prince from the night before, the one Ari had disenchanted with a kiss. He didn’t seem to have recognized me, but considering he’d been surrounded by a giantess and two fairies, he probably hadn’t noticed the plain vanilla girl. I wondered if he was magical himself or if he’d just been the victim of a cruel spell.
Either way, I wasn’t sure I wanted my roommate dating him. But what could I say? It wasn’t like I could suggest to Gemma that it was time for a trip to the restroom, then warn her that her new guy used to be a frog. So far he’d been very polite and had given me no excuse to take such a strong dislike to him that I’d use a roommate veto. Those had to be saved for very special circumstances, such as when you recognized your roommate’s date from the artist’s rendering of a serial killer on the news and she refused to acknowledge that fact. I wasn’t sure the former frog status was quite that bad.
They seemed to be nicely at ease with each other. In any other circumstances this would have been time for me to come up with someplace I needed to be so I could leave them alone. But I couldn’t leave Gemma alone with a former frog. A fly buzzed through the bar, and I watched with a sick feeling in my stomach as Philip’s eyes tracked it hungrily. When he licked his lips while watching it, I’d had enough.
I waited until Gemma turned to talk to the waiter, then leaned over to Philip. “Look, I know what you used to be, and I hear that’s not something that happens to nice guys. So I want to make it very, very clear to you that if you give my friend anything to complain about, I know people who can turn you right back into a frog. Are we clear?”
His eyes grew wide as he nodded. I doubted I could really get one of the guys at MSI to turn him into a frog, considering that the girls had said frogging spells had been outlawed, but he didn’t have to know that.
Just as Gemma returned her attention to us, a waiter came over and put a glass of champagne in front of me. “Compliments of that gentleman over there,” he said.
I turned, my heart in my throat. I didn’t know what to hope for. I’d never had that sort of thing happen to me, so I steeled myself for disappointment. It was something Rod might do if he ran into me in public.
But it wasn’t Rod who smiled at me from across the room. It was Naked Frog Guy, now fully dressed. “Wow, Katie, an admirer!” Gemma said. “Go talk to him.” In other words, leave her alone with her frog—er, guy.
Oh, I definitely wanted to talk to him, but not for flirtation purposes. I stood—Philip rose slightly from his chair as I did so, proving that he was from more than a decade or so ago, since few modern men did that sort of thing—picked up my drink, and made my way over to Naked Frog Guy’s table. He stood to greet me. “My dearest Katie, I can’t begin to thank you for what you did for me,” he said, sounding like a surfer dude attempting to perform Shakespeare. It didn’t quite work.
“How do you know who I am? How did you find me?”
“Your fairy friend told me who you are. Finding you wasn’t difficult. I’m Jeff, by the way.”
I wanted to pluck off Trix’s wings and feed them to her. “Thank you for the drink. But it was no big deal, really.” I leaned closer to him. “I’m not sure you realize this, but you weren’t really a frog. It was just an illusion. I didn’t do anything.”
“You freed me. You saved my life. And you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
I got the impression that it might not have taken a spell to get him to sit naked in the park and ribbit at people. His mama must have dropped him on his head o
ne too many times when he was a baby. “We’re even now. You bought me a drink, so all’s square. Now, have a nice life, and stay away from strange lily pads. What happened to you, anyway? Did you lose a bet?”
He looked sheepish. “Something like that. But now I feel like the winner, for it brought you to me.” He twitched his wrist, and a red rose appeared in his hand. He then presented the rose to me with much ceremony. Great. Now I had a crazy stalker who had magical powers. “Please take this as a token of my devotion.”
“Wow. Thanks. But really, this is too much. We’re completely even now, okay? You don’t have to do anything else. Now, I have to go. ’Bye.” I dashed out of the bar before he could do anything else. After this weekend, going to work Monday morning was going to feel practically humdrum, even at Magic, Inc.
Owen was already on the platform, leaning against a pillar, when I got to the subway station Monday morning. He looked much better than he had the last time I’d seen him. The dark shadows were gone from beneath his blue eyes, and his skin had a healthy color to it. Baseball must have agreed with him.
“How was the game?” I asked. “I hear the Yankees won.”
He studied the toes of his shoes and turned pink. “What makes you think I had anything to do with that?”
“Sounds like someone has a guilty conscience. I didn’t say anything about how the Yankees seem to have won. But you know, it does explain a lot.”
“I take it you don’t approve.”
I shrugged. “I’m a Texas Rangers fan, and they used to be the Senators—you know, from Damn Yankees—so you get the picture.”
“Sorry about that. And it wasn’t like we did anything major. We just improved the umpire’s eyesight a little bit.”
“Yeah, sure.” He grinned at my teasing tone, and as the train pulled into the station I realized it was the first time we’d talked about something other than work. He was still breathing, he wasn’t any pinker than normal, and he hadn’t passed out during a whole conversation that had nothing to do with business. He was even looking me in the eye. That pretty much proved that his interest in me didn’t extend beyond friendship. Pity.
Enchanted, Inc. Page 20
