Damsel Under Stress (Enchanted Inc #3)

by Shanna Swendson

  “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.”

  “Y
ou need do nothing more than you already have,” Merlin said. “Your presence is enough.”

  “So you’re going to give Ari back, just because I’m here?”

  “Not exactly,” Owen said, his voice soft but still ringing through the cavern.

  I glanced over to Ethan and Philip and saw that Sylvia and Mr. Bones were there, with Marcia. Marcia was blindfolded, much to my relief. I didn’t want her seeing any of this. I couldn’t begin to imagine the cover story I’d have to concoct.

  “You see,” Owen continued, “we just needed you as our prisoner. You’re what we plan to exchange for Marcia.” He signaled Rod, who made a waving motion with one hand. I assumed that meant Idris could then see the other side of the chamber.

  “What if I don’t want to stay and be your prisoner?”

  “I wouldn’t suggest you try running.”

  “What are you going to do, stop me?”

  “No. They are.” Owen snapped his fingers, and dragons appeared, blocking every exit. One of the dragons obliged us by shooting a mighty burst of flame at Idris.

  Idris tried to act unimpressed, but there was fear in his eyes that he couldn’t quite mask and he jumped as the flame got too close for comfort. “Illusion, right?” he said with a snort.

  “If you’d like to test it, be my guest. Your friends are free to leave, however.”

  They didn’t need much encouraging. Owen raised a hand, holding the dragons back, while the geek brigade took off, leaving Idris alone. He went pale, and his hands trembled, but he seemed to be trying to look brave, for which I had to give him the tiniest bit of respect. “So, you’re trading me, huh?” he said. “I guess after I go over there, you’ll let Ari go?”

  “Whatever gave you that impression?” Merlin asked, his voice like ice. “You have no choice in the matter. You are our prisoner, and Ariel was our prisoner before she was illegally freed. We will merely be returning her to custody once we’ve removed her from Miss Chandler’s head. Now, shall we make the exchange?”

  He nodded at Rod, who did something complicated with his fingers. “Miss Meredith, I presume?” Merlin said.

  She whirled to face him. “You!” she shouted, as if she’d just met her old nemesis.

  “Yes, I am here, and I request that you release the young lady there. She has no part in this.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I have two of your people in my custody, and I’m sure they could be persuaded to give us some interesting information on your operation.”

  Rod did something else with his fingers, and then Sylvia went white. “How did you get yourself involved in this?” she hissed at Idris. “You were told to refrain from contact.”

  For a split second he looked like a schoolboy being scolded, but then his posture relaxed and he said, “Don’t worry, though, I’ve got it under control.” He turned his head toward Owen. “You’re not the only one who has a threat to make. I happen to have people placed all over the city. One word from me, and the illusions I have covering all of my ads are gone. The whole city will learn the truth about magic all at once. How do you like that?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. The rest of them turned to look at me. “You have got to be kidding. Those ads won’t convince anyone of anything. People will think it’s a prank or publicity stunt, if they even see the ads. They once put a seventy-foot robot in Times Square to promote a movie, and not only did no one notice the robot, nobody saw the movie.” I wasn’t sure if the words were mine or Ari’s. The tone was meaner than I’d like to think I ever sounded, but I agreed with the content.

  I thought I saw a hint of worry cross his face, but then he put his usual sneer back on and said, “And my people are ready to demonstrate the magic to anyone who’s there to see it. They’ll act if they don’t hear from me.”

  “You idiot!” Sylvia screeched. “You’ll ruin everything if you reveal it all right now. We’re not ready.”

  That deflated Idris. His shoulders slumping, he said, “Oh. Well. Never mind.”

  Owen and Merlin exchanged a worried look, then Sam nodded at them and took off, flying past the dragon in one of the doorways. The dragon made as though to try to play with Sam, but Owen called it back to attention.

  “Very well, then,” Sylvia said. “You can have the girl. But this isn’t over.” She addressed Philip. “You can’t imagine I’ll give up easily.”

  “I’ve waited a hundred years. I can be patient, but I will have what’s mine,” he said.

  Sylvia nodded at Mr. Bones, who shoved Marcia forward. Rod moved to steady her. “What’s going on?” she asked in a voice more frantic than anything I’d ever heard from her.

  “It’s okay, you’re safe,” Rod said. He removed her blindfold and started moving her toward the exit, Rocky and Rollo flanking them. I hoped for Marcia’s sake that he was using illusion to hide the rest of the madness from her.

  But before they were clear of the room, Sylvia launched a magical attack at Philip. All the good guys rushed in to help. Owen managed to deflect most of whatever she’d sent toward Philip, but Philip still froze, then slumped to the floor. Ethan put himself between her and Philip’s motionless form. “He’s alive, but out cold,” he reported.

  A scream rang out, echoing painfully in the chamber. I spun to see Marcia looking horrified. Rod must have dropped his illusions when he went to help Philip. “Marcia, it’s okay, I’ll explain later,” I said, then I told Rod, “Get her away from here.”

  “I’m not leaving until I get some answers. Katie, what the hell is going on here?”

  I knew her well enough to know that she’d dig in her heels and refuse to go until she was satisfied. “Okay, short version: Magic is real, the guys are all wizards. I’m not, but I work for a magical company. Those are the bad guys. We’ll do the Q and A later. Now, Rod, get her out of here.”

  While I was talking to Marcia, Sylvia and Mr. Bones made a run for it, only to find themselves facing a roaring dragon. Owen brought it into view just before it got to roast Sylvia. Marcia screamed again.

  “Oh yeah, there are dragons, too,” I told her. “But these are good guys. They love Owen.” I had to give her credit for not fainting. Marcia was made of pretty stern stuff.

  “I demand you let me leave,” Sylvia said to Merlin. “I gave you what you wanted.”

  “And with you here, I’ve gained even more of what I wanted. With you in our custody, we might even be able to find out who’s directing you,” Merlin said. His voice and bearing made him seem like he’d look a lot more appropriate in old-fashioned wizard’s robes and a pointy hat than he did in his modern business suit. This was definitely the guy who’d put King Arthur on the throne.

  “You may not allow me to leave, but I dare you to put your hands on me.”

  “Yeah, or me,” Idris said, broadening his stance defiantly.

  A magical battle of wills ensued. Enough power flew around to practically make my hair stand on end. Ari added to the uproar by throwing a few zaps of her own inside my head. I’d need a bottle of Advil when this was over. Apparently, though, Sylvia was right. We were at a standoff. I knew Owen could take out Idris, but Sylvia seemed to know her stuff. With Sam gone, Philip out, and Rod looking after Marcia, the two sides were evenly matched. I supposed we could leave them with the dragons until they begged for mercy, but that wasn’t an ideal solution.

  Then I remembered that I temporarily had Ari’s power. I had to fight her to use it, but the next time Idris sent a burst of magic in Owen’s direction, I focused as hard as I could on deflecting it, raising my hands as I’d seen wizards do. I was surprised to see sparks shooting from my fingertips and turning back Idris’s magic. That gave Owen an opening, and he caught Idris in a spell that immobilized him. “Nice work,” Owen said to me.

  “I thought you said you weren’t magical,” Marcia said.

  “It’s temporary,” I said before returning my attention to the standoff. The odds had moved in our favor. Keeping Idris was the g
oal, and Sylvia was a bonus.

  A loud pop echoed in the chamber, and Ethelinda appeared in a burst of silver sparkles. She wore a Viking maiden’s costume out of a low-budget production of a Wagner opera, complete with brass breastplate and horned helmet. The outfit looked funny with bits of ruffles, lace, tulle, taffeta, and velvet peeking out from under the brass. “My senses tell me you’re ready for me,” she said. “I’m here to relieve you of your burden.”

  Twenty-One

  B efore any of us could stop her, Ethelinda pulled back her wand and pointed it at me while saying some nonsensical-sounding words. If I’d thought I had a headache before, that was nothing compared to what I felt next. I couldn’t stop myself from screaming, and I would have hit the ground if Owen hadn’t caught me. Through the blinding red haze of pain I thought I saw a tiny spark floating in front of me. That spark grew until it was a human-sized fairy.

  “There you go,” Ethelinda said with satisfaction.

  “Get her!” I shouted. Owen was closest, so he left my side and got a grip on Ari’s arm before she could reach Idris. I moaned, and not just because of the headache. Ethelinda, bless her well-intentioned but incompetent heart, had really complicated matters. Ari had been our one sure bet in this whole situation, and now she was loose.

  I had just got back to my feet when something grabbed me. “Hey, what is this?” I shouted. I couldn’t see anything. An invisible force held me in place. With my immunity gone so I could be rid of Ari, and without access to Ari’s magical powers, I was in real danger.

  Idris leered at Owen. “Okay, then,” he said, his tone full of smug superiority. “You’ve got my girlfriend hostage. I’ve got your girlfriend hostage. And I’d be willing to bet that you like yours better than I like mine, so I think I have the advantage.”

  “Hey!” Ari yelled. “Maybe I want to stay with them. I’ll tell them everything. So, there.”