Damsel Under Stress (Enchanted Inc #3)

by Shanna Swendson

  The scene was right out of a slapstick comedy. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Keystone Kops had shown up to stop the riot. And the Baptists used to accuse the Methodists back home of being wild, I thought with a grin. At least we’d never had a food fight in the fellowship hall. Well, not when it was anyone other than the kids involved. I decided that James had the right idea, so I moved to the far side of the room, well away from the fracas and near enough to the door that I could escape if I needed to.

  Then while I was still fighting back giggles, the sense of magic intensified and someone grabbed me from behind.

  Nine

  A t first I thought it was Owen, having made it safely out from under the table and ready to make his escape with me. I went willingly as he pulled me through the door to the parking lot outside. But then he didn’t release me, and I realized that something was wrong. I kicked my captor in the shin and pulled away.

  It was my old friend Mr. Bones, one of Idris’s cronies, and now I was absolutely certain that it was the same skeleton guy I’d seen in that office. He had a bunch of his goons lined up, surrounding me.

  He didn’t have to tell me that screaming would do no good. The noise from the riot inside spilled into the parking lot. One more female scream wouldn’t stand out in all that. Instead, I did what I did best. I bent down and scooped up a handful of slushy snow, packed it into a ball, and threw it. I needed to come up with a new trick for when I got into a tough spot, but I had a good arm and good aim, so I figured I might as well stick with what I knew for the time being. Maybe I’d sign up for a karate class when things settled down some at work.

  The snowball hit Mr. Bones square in the face and some of the slush trickled into his eye socket, which couldn’t have felt good. While he was still reacting, I made another snowball and threw it in the general direction of the other goons. I’d been in all of two snowball fights in my life, on the very rare occasions when we’d had enough snow to make snowballs back home in Texas, so I didn’t have a lot of practice with this. The goons were closing in, and it was harder and harder to keep them at bay with snowballs.

  Something came out of the sky, and I instinctively ducked. It had been my experience that some truly scary things could come at you from out of the sky. This time, though, it looked like the air force was friendly. Two unfamiliar gargoyles swooped around, keeping themselves between the goons and me. “You’d better make a run for it, miss,” one of them shouted as it flew past me. “We don’t got a lot in the way of attack magic.”

  “Yeah, just staying animated takes a lot out of us,” the other said.

  “Bein’ a gargoyle ain’t easy,” the first one said.

  “Watch it, you idiot!” the other called out when they almost collided in midair. After the near miss, both of them laughed so hard they almost fell out of the sky.

  These gargoyles were keeping the goons from getting to me, but I was still surrounded. I wasn’t sure how long the gargoyles could hold them off. I made another snowball and took aim at the goon that was between me and the door to the church hall. If I could just create a gap in that circle and make a break for it, I was sure I’d be safe inside, surrounded by Owen, Gloria, James, and a whole bunch of presumably friendly magical people. I could even kill two birds with one snowball by creating a distraction to break up the fight inside and rescue Owen from the horde of matchmaking mamas.

  Then the church hall doors flew open and a lone figure tore outside like the hounds of hell were on his heels. It was Owen, and just as I recognized him, so did Mr. Bones and his goons. I shouted a warning, but not before the goons had forgotten about me and turned their attention to Owen. I wondered if that had been the plan all along, to use me as bait to capture him.

  I was worried because although he was pretty powerful with magic, it could also be used on him. The air zinged with magic as they threw spells at him and he deflected them. I tried to pitch in by throwing a few more snowballs, and the two gargoyles kept trying to create a distraction, but it was still many against essentially one.

  Not for long, though. Owen wasn’t going to get away from the mob that easily, and soon the mothers and their man-hungry daughters spilled out of the hall, in search of their quarry. I wasn’t sure what they thought was going on in the parking lot, but they reacted as though yet another party was trying to steal Owen from them, and they turned their efforts against the bad guys. Mr. Bones found himself beaten soundly by high-end designer handbags. A few of the women were still fighting each other, but there was enough confusion for Owen to get away from the attackers and catch my arm as we ran for James and Gloria’s car.

  I was surprised to find James and Gloria already there, wearing their coats. Gloria had our coats over her arm, and she handed them to us when we reached them. “Honestly, Owen,” she scolded gently while she helped him with his coat. “That’s not the way I taught you to behave in public.”

  James helped me with my coat, saying, “I hardly think we can blame the boy for all that nonsense.”

  “It was magic,” I said. “It must have been that influence spell Idris likes to use, making them act that way. It created the perfect distraction for his goons to drag me outside.”

  “But it backfired on him,” Owen put in. “Those crazy women saved our lives. If they hadn’t been chasing me, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  “I’m sure you could have handled the situation,” Gloria said. “Now, get in the car and let’s get home. I said we didn’t want to stay long, and now you see why. These socials never go well.”

  Dinner was a lot less awkward and uncomfortable than lunch had been. The events at the church social gave us plenty of conversational fodder. Owen looked like he would have been happy discussing anything other than what a good marriage prospect the women in town thought he’d make, but I was relieved to see that Gloria apparently thought none of those women were good enough for her boy. I couldn’t tell how much she approved of me, but at least she didn’t have a prospective bride already picked out from among her neighbors’ daughters.

  When we’d finished eating, I helped clear the table and offered once more to help with the dishes, but Gloria shook her head sternly. “They’ll wait until morning,” she said. “James and I are ready to turn in, but you two young people are welcome to stay up as late as you like.”

  “Just don’t stay up late enough to catch Santa Claus in the act,” James added with a wink. “He doesn’t like that.”

  Owen and I went back to the parlor and sat by the fire, side by side on the formal velvet sofa. It was as good as a chaperone, since it was the kind of sofa that forces you to sit up straight and behave properly. I couldn’t imagine snuggling on that sofa. Arawn lay contentedly at Owen’s feet and promptly went to sleep. “Well, that was an experience,” I said.

  “I hope I don’t have to tell you that church socials here aren’t always like that.” He sighed. “And now I’ll be the focus of gossip for months. Gloria and James will have to visit me in the city because it won’t be safe for me here.”

  “And the city is that much safer? You know, with our enemies out to get us, and all? Now I’m definitely sure that skeleton guy is the same one I saw in the office the other day.”

  “So, Idris is teamed up with the descendant of someone who stole Philip’s family business a hundred years ago?”

  “Maybe. Mr. Bones could be freelancing. These people could be Idris’s customers. They probably wouldn’t have issues with shady magic. I just find it odd. It’s something to think about.”

  “Yeah. Just what we need, another puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit. Instead of making the picture clearer, it only confuses the issue.”

  We sat by the fire a little longer, stewing over this new information, then he said, “We should probably get to bed. They’re very early risers.”

  “And like James said, we wouldn’t want to disturb Santa Claus.”

  As we left the parlor, he paused in the doorway. “Hey, mistlet
oe,” he said.

  Before I could look up to verify that there was, in fact, mistletoe hanging there, he’d bent to give me a firm kiss. I returned it, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Merry Christmas,” he whispered.

  “And merry Christmas, yourself,” I whispered back. “But I don’t remember any mistletoe there.”

  “Look.”

  I glanced over our heads and saw a sprig of mistletoe with a red ribbon around it hanging suspended in the air over our heads. “Isn’t that cheating?” I asked.

  “Are you complaining?”

  “No, I’ll let this one slide.”

  We kissed again, then he pulled away. “I have to walk the dog one more time before bed, so you go on up.”

  “Do you need any company?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. It’ll only take a few minutes. Arawn doesn’t like being outside in the cold any more than I do. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He got his coat and went outside, the dog following happily at his heels. I went upstairs, trying to be as quiet as possible. When I reached the top of the stairs, I heard voices coming from the first room that opened from the left of the stairs. I knew eavesdropping was a bad idea, but I was curious. Gloria’s voice carried clearly, saying, “I don’t see why we have to continue that way. Things have certainly changed since the rules were established.”

  James was more soft-spoken, so all I could hear was the fact that he was speaking. I couldn’t make any words out. Then Gloria spoke again, apparently responding. “What harm does it do? It’s not as though they can take him away from us at this point. He’s not even under our control any longer. It’s entirely up to him and to us whether we want to remain in contact.”

  James spoke again, and I caught the word “responsibility,” but not its context.

  “Well, yes, of course,” Gloria responded. “But surely it’s too late to have much of an impact, one way or another. He’s turned out the way he’s going to turn out, for better or worse.”

  I knew I should move on. This was none of my business. But I couldn’t resist lingering at the top of the stairs. I was too curious.

  James said something else, far too softly for me to hear anything more than the rumble of his voice. When she responded, Gloria’s voice had a strained quality to it. “I simply think that in these times what he needs is to know that he’s not alone. You saw what happened tonight. They really are after him. The girl may be able to help, but she could also be a distraction.”

  That made me even more curious. Was I the girl she mentioned? And what was I supposed to help with, other than spotting disguised magical beasties so Owen could deal with them? The idea of me being a distraction was more unsettling. The voices grew too muffled for me to make out more words, and I didn’t think I wanted Owen to catch me eavesdropping, so I went on to my room, puzzled about what I’d heard.

  Although it was more than an hour before I usually went to bed, the travel and stress of the past thirty-six or so hours, not to mention the rapidly fading adrenaline from the excitement earlier in the evening, added up to me falling asleep pretty quickly. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep when I was awakened by a strange clattering sound and a glowing light coming through the windows.

  I didn’t recall a Times Square–rivaling light display at the house across the street, and my room had been perfectly dark when I went to bed, so the light was something new. My pulse immediately quickened. Although I’d known the truth about Santa Claus for nearly twenty years, thanks to my older brothers, there was still a childlike part of me deep down inside that wanted to hold on to the belief. I couldn’t help but listen for the sound of sleighbells or hoofbeats on the roof on Christmas Eve night, and I always had the sense that if I was awake at the right time, I might see something magical. Now that I knew magic was real, it didn’t seem like such a farfetched idea anymore. If there really was something like a Santa Claus who managed to sneak in and out without being detected, I of all people should be able to see it.

  As the old poem went, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, and all that. But when I opened the curtains (there weren’t any shutters), what I saw wasn’t a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer or a little old elf. I saw a hovering fairy godmother dressed like Mrs. Claus in threadbare red velvet with sooty white fur trim along the collar and cuffs.

  I wanted to pull the curtains closed again and ignore her, but I was worried that the racket she was making—which turned out to be caused by her shooting silver sparks at my window from her wand—would disturb Gloria and James. Reluctantly, I put on my bathrobe, then opened the window, shivering as the freezing outside air gushed into the room. “What do you want?” I asked, not even trying to sound welcoming.

  She shook her head and tsk-tsked. “It’s not about what I want. It’s about what you want.”

  “I don’t want anything, other than sleep. In fact, things are going better than I expected, aside from a minor magical attack, and I don’t think you can take credit for that. I’m getting along with his folks, and Owen and I seem to be doing just fine. You can go off and take a nice Christmas holiday.”

  “Ah, but I would have thought this visit raised a few questions for you. Such as what it means to him to have the power he has and how that will affect his future.”

  I had to admit to some curiosity about those matters, especially given what I’d recently overheard. “I’m not thinking about that now, though,” I said. “I’m thinking about sleep and not being caught with a fairy godmother. That’s not a way to win over the parents.”

  “They wouldn’t see me,” she said with a haughty sniff. “Give me that much credit.”

  “Can we talk about this later, when we’re back in the city and it’s not the middle of the night?”

  “If you insist. I’ll be in touch.” As she winked out of existence I realized I could have asked her about the ice rink incident, but that could wait for later. It sounded like I was going to have to talk with her, like it or not, if I ever wanted to get rid of her.

  I closed the window and the curtains, then turned to head back to bed and nearly bit my tongue in two as I tried to keep from screaming out loud. A small creature with a feather duster in its hand stood on top of the chest of drawers. I managed not to scream, but I did jump and squeak a little. I must have startled the creature, for it, too, jumped and squeaked, and then it froze, as though it hoped I might not notice it.

  Keeping my eyes on it, I edged my way back to the bed. “What are you doing in here?” I asked in a whisper.

  The creature blinked in surprise. “You can see me?” it asked. I would have expected something that small to have a high, squeaky voice, but its voice was rough and husky, as though it had smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day for a couple of hundred years.

  “I’m a magical immune,” I explained. “Your veiling spell doesn’t work on me. But you haven’t answered my question. Who are you and what are you doing in my room?” In my dealings with the magical world, I’d yet to run into anything like this. There was something elfin about its features, but it was to the elves who worked at MSI what a raisin is to a grape—shrunken, shriveled, and brown. It had long, wispy white hair and wore a shapeless brown garment with an apron tied around its waist. I might have guessed it was a female, but these days it’s dangerous to make assumptions like that based on hairstyle and stereotypical gender roles.

  “I keep house for the family,” it (she?) said. “But no one’s supposed to know. Mistress Gloria would be most upset if her secret were out.” She rolled her Rs and had the slightest trace of a Scottish accent. “You won’t go tellin’, will ye?”

  There was something vaguely familiar about this situation, an old story I’d once heard. I had a mental image of sitting in a circle of girls while wearing a brown beanie. “Hey, you’re a brownie!” I said. One of the first things we’d done at my very first Brownie scout meeting was listen to the story about the helpful l
ittle creatures who worked in the night.

  The brownie rolled her eyes. “Of course I am. What would you think, that I was a fairy godmother like your friend there?” Then she looked concerned again. “You won’t be tellin’, will ye?”

  “No, of course not. Though I think it would actually make her son feel better if he knew she had help. He’s worried about her.”

  She frowned in thought—at least, I thought she was frowning; as wrinkled as her face was, it was difficult to tell—then said, “Fine. He can know once you’re gone, but he mustn’t let on he knows. The mistress couldn’t bear that.”

  “Have you worked here long?”

  She went back to her dusting, talking as she worked, “Oh, I lose count of the years. The boy was just a wee thing when I came to this house. I’d known the mistress before, though, and she gave me a home when my own was torn down. This is my way of makin’ it up to her for her kindness.” She gave the mirror a final swipe. “Well, now, I have dishes to do, and you’ll be needin’ your sleep.” She disappeared before I could tell her good night or wish her a merry Christmas. As I settled back onto the pillow, I wondered what was next. At this rate, Saint Nick would have needed Rudolph and the Grinch with him to be the oddest sight of my night.

  Fortunately, I was able to sleep the rest of the night without any magical interruptions. I woke early the next morning, my subconscious too afraid of annoying Gloria to let me sleep late. I dressed in Gemma’s red sweater and a pair of black slacks, put on a touch of makeup, then opened my bedroom door and stuck my head out into the hallway to try to get a sense of the situation. Owen’s bedroom door was still closed, which made me hesitate to go downstairs. I didn’t want to be alone with James and Gloria, and the faint sound of voices downstairs told me they were up. They’d been nice enough so far, but I wasn’t sure I was yet ready for a lot of alone time with them. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be the last one downstairs.