“Yep, that would be the ad I saw the other night.”
“And there’s no indication that there’s anything unusual about the ad you’re seeing?”
“No. It’s not even a new ad, just that same annoying mattress ad that’s always on. It makes you wonder if he actually bought the airtime, or if he’s hijacking it and the station thinks they’re showing the same old ads.”
“He still had to produce the ad and somehow get it on the air, since we know that there really is an ad there. It isn’t an illusion.” The ad ended and he picked up the remote to turn the TV off. “I guess that’s mission accomplished for the night,” he said. “Now, where were we?” He bent to kiss my temple, then my cheek, and then my neck.
I leaned back against him with a sigh of contentment. “I still feel like there’s something we’re missing. There’s a connection we haven’t seen yet between the funding and the person who seems to be running things. Like maybe why they’re doing this when it doesn’t look too profitable. And where did all this come from, anyway?”
“All what?”
I turned to face him. “You. For the last couple of weeks, you’ve barely touched me, even though we were supposedly dating, and now, well, wow. We’re not under enchantment again, are we?”
He tapped the locket where it rested in the hollow of my throat. “What does this tell you?”
“That there’s nothing magical going on nearby right now.”
“So?”
“So, excuse me if my head is spinning.”
“You said it yourself, there was Ari’s escape, the fire that wasn’t a fire, the ice, my family, the crisis of the day, the dragons, the messed-up dinner plans. This is the first time in a long time it’s been just us with nothing crazy going on, and I was determined to make the most of it instead of panicking, getting nervous, or chickening out.”
“You were channeling your inner Bogie,” I said, resting my hand against his cheek. “I get it now. I like it.”
He wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him in a warm embrace. “Sometimes I wish we could forget about magic and saving the world and all of that and just be us for a while.”
“But without the weirdness, would it still be us?”
“Good point. I guess we’re stuck with it.”
“I don’t mind all that much.” I rested my head on his chest and could hear his heart beating. “Now we know that all we have to do to have a successful relationship is never go out again.”
“That sounds like one of your better plans.”
But we did have to go out again, since the rest of the world was still spinning and we had things to do. After another hour or so of quality snuggling mixed with a kind of twenty questions quiz as we swapped lists of our favorite things, he walked me home and arranged to meet me the next morning to head over to Times Square. This time, I got my good-night kiss on the front steps. Things were definitely looking up.
I got home in time to catch my roommates in the middle of planning their costumes for the party. “Ooh, someone’s all aglow,” Gemma said when I walked into the bedroom. “We could turn out the lights in here and still find our way around, thanks to Miss Radiance USA.”
“I take it you had a good date,” Marcia said, raising one eyebrow.
“Yeah. Good date.”
“What did you do?” Gemma asked, flipping through a carton of masks.
“We ate dinner on his living room floor and talked.”
“Talked, huh?” She held up a black mask shaped like cat’s-eye glasses frames. “What do you think of this one?”
“Very sexy,” I said. “And, well, there might have been a little more than talking going on.”
“Then you’re home awfully early,” Gemma remarked.
“It wasn’t that much more than talking,” I said.
Marcia came over and patted me on the head. “Our Katie is an old-fashioned girl. And a smart one. Better to be sure of the situation before you get in too deep.”
Gemma rolled her eyes.” Just don’t be so smart you miss the fun. Now, any costume plans for you?”
I shrugged. “I was thinking of using those red shoes, maybe doing a Dorothy outfit, assuming I can find a blue gingham pinafore.”
Gemma and Marcia looked at each other. “Tell me she didn’t just mention dressing as Dorothy,” Gemma said. She then turned to me. “This is not a Halloween carnival. It’s a New Year’s Eve masked ball. You will not do anything cute or sweet. You’re going to have one of the hottest guys there. You must do sexy. But good idea to use the red shoes. Let’s see what else we can do with them. Oh, I have an idea.”
She disappeared to the back of the closet. There were times when I wondered if our closet had a spell on it to expand it from within. It shouldn’t have been able to hold Gemma’s extensive wardrobe, let alone Marcia’s and my clothes. Gemma returned with a red satin dress and one of my red shoes. “The reds aren’t a perfect match, but it’s not too bad.” When she held the dress up against herself, I saw that it had a pointy tail coming off the back of it. “The horns that go with this should be in the accessories box over there.”
“But if that’s your dress, it won’t fit me,” I said. Gemma was taller than I was, and although she was slimmer, she also had more curves. It really wasn’t fair.
“Try it on,” she ordered.
It turned out to be good that I was several inches shorter than she was, for the dress came to mid-thigh on me. On Gemma it must have been indecently short. It was rather formfitting on me, except in the chest area, where there was extra fabric. “That’s okay,” Gemma said. “That’s why they make Wonderbras.” She stuck a horned headband on me and turned me to face the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the bedroom door. “And voilà, a she-devil. I can’t decide if you should wear fishnets or seamed stockings. Maybe seamed fishnets. We’ll have to see what we can find. You’re gonna knock your guy’s socks off.”
As I twirled my tail and looked at myself in the mirror, I was almost looking forward to the party even though I was starting to have a nagging suspicion that it was a recipe for disaster.
Instead of heading to the office the next morning, Owen and I went straight uptown to Times Square. “How will I know that my immunity is still gone?” I asked him while we waited for an uptown train.
“Do you see anything odd?” he asked as my necklace hummed.
“No.”
“Your immunity is gone.”
He was remarkably chipper, which I chalked up to our first truly successful date. “I figured out my costume for the party,” I told him, taking his hand and leaning against him. “Now we have to find something for you.”
“Oh really, what is it?”
“It’s a surprise.” A train pulled into the station, and he ushered me on board.
We got off the train at the Times Square station, then made our way aboveground. The impact of all the giant signs and lights was somewhat diminished during the daytime, but it was still pretty splashy. My necklace had intensified its hum, but I couldn’t be sure exactly what was causing it, as I’d noticed magical people in Times Square before. It was one of those parts of town where things were so crazy, magical people could do whatever they wanted and nobody would notice anything weird, so long as nobody dropped all the magical veils in the area at once on a relatively quiet night. The locals had on blinders and the tourists would think it was just another one of those odd New York things. Besides, some of the nonmagical things going on there were weirder than anything the magical world had to offer. No magical person would be crazy enough to stand outside playing guitar in just his underwear in the dead of winter, for example.
“What do you see?” Owen prodded when we reached the traffic island where we’d studied the Spellworks ads on Christmas night.
“It looks like Times Square, the way it usually is. Some soft drink ads, some computer ads. No magic ads.”
“So it’s like the other veilings he’s done, hiding the m
agic behind the last ads that were there. That does make you wonder if he really is paying for the space.”
“The billboards alone wouldn’t be cheap, so he still needs money. But we might not be at multinational corporation levels of financing. Just one good backer—say, Sylvia—might be enough. Maybe things aren’t as bad as we thought. Knowing Idris, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he gets bored with this in a week or two and moves on to something else.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“You know, that may be the way to deal with this,” I said as a thought crossed my mind.
“How?”
“Well, I’d imagine that whoever is making Sylvia bankroll him is doing so for a reason and isn’t likely to lose interest. If Idris gets sidetracked and moves on to something else, his boss isn’t going to be pleased. That’s bound to disrupt their operation. What we need to do is come up with something sure to distract Idris.”
Owen nodded and chewed on his lower lip, deep in thought. After he’d processed the thought, he broke out in a huge grin and grabbed me in an enthusiastic hug. “You’re brilliant!” he said before bending me back in a dip and kissing me thoroughly. A flashbulb went off, and I turned to see a tourist taking our picture. That was when I realized we’d more or less mimicked the pose from that famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II. The deep blush on Owen’s face told me he’d just become aware of the same thing. He carefully pulled me back up to a proper standing position while I fought off a bad case of the giggles that I knew would only embarrass him worse.
“Let’s check out the store now,” he said, making a valiant attempt at looking calm. “I doubt we can get in, but we can see what’s going on outside.”
“Yeah, they probably have our pictures up behind the cash register, like they do with people known for writing bad checks.”
We passed one of those kitschy Broadway souvenir shops, and I tugged on Owen’s arm. “Let’s go in here a second.”
“Why?”
My main reason was to escape the tourists who were still giving us odd looks and to give him time to compose himself, but what I said was, “I need to get some postcards. Are you that desperate to get this over with and get back to the office? It’s practically New Year’s Eve. It’s even a short day.”
“Whatever makes you happy.” He didn’t say it in the resigned way that people usually said that sort of thing. He sounded more like he actually meant it.
I flipped through the posters and T-shirts for shows I hadn’t seen, and then I spotted something hanging on the wall. “I have an idea for a costume for you,” I told Owen, pointing to the white Phantom of the Opera mask. “You have a tux. All you do is wear that and the mask, and you’ve got a costume. You’d essentially be wearing evening clothes and a mask, but it would still count as a real costume. Rod would have nothing to complain about.”
“I don’t know,” he hedged, looking at the mask.
“It doesn’t involve wearing tights or makeup.”
“Very good point.” He bought the mask, and then we got coffee from a street vendor before wandering over to Fifth Avenue to stand across the street from the Spellworks store. I now saw nothing more than a vacant, boarded-up storefront. We stood there for a while, under a bus stop sign as though we were waiting for a bus, and watched the foot traffic around the store. I saw a few people stop to look in the window, and Owen said he saw them enter the store when they disappeared from my view, but the majority of pedestrians passed it by.
“Well, this is exciting,” I said after a while. “For this, I gave up my immunity. I think our work here is done, if you want to head back to the office.”
He turned as if to go, then did a double take. “Wait a second, isn’t that Ari over there? That woman looks exactly like the illusion she was wearing the other day.”
“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see her illusion then, and I can’t see any distinguishing Ari features now.”
“Come on, let’s see where she goes this time.” He grabbed my hand as he took off, and I had no choice but to follow him.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I said as I hurried to keep up with him. “Remember what happened last time? And I can’t look out for her if she decides to swap illusions or do something else to throw us off.”
“But that’s only if she notices we’re following her.” By the time we got across the street, though, it became apparent that she wasn’t actually going anywhere. She looked like she was spying on the store, like we were.
Idris soon came running out of the store. “What are you doing here?” he shouted. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous for you to be out? You’re supposed to be hiding.”
She rolled her eyes. In the human disguise I saw, she looked like a club kid who wasn’t used to being out in daylight. “Do you know how boring it is down there? I’m going crazy.”
“You’ll be even more bored if they get you. Then you won’t have any visitors.”
“Like they’ll catch me. I’m in disguise.”
“They have immunes, remember?”
“I thought you were taking care of that.”
“It’s not as easy as you think, and as I recall, you weren’t even that successful at it. Now, go. I have work to do.”
“You’re no fun anymore. It’s that Sylvia bitch, isn’t it?”
He sighed in exasperation. “I’m not getting into this with you again.” Then I had to blink because the woman I’d been watching talk to Idris had vanished. “Not a smart move!” Idris shouted. The pedestrians on the sidewalk just kept pushing around him.
Owen edged me away from the store. When we were a block away, I said, “Looks like there’s trouble in paradise.”
“I’m surprised at how businesslike he was,” Owen said. “He’s got to be exhausted at the end of the day from the effort of maintaining that.”
“I bet it only lasts a few minutes at a time and we caught him during one of his spells of businesslike activity. In a few minutes, he’ll be off playing video games or trying to think of ways to make his employees dance the can-can.”
We headed back downtown, and as we crossed City Hall Plaza on our way to the office building, he asked, “Do you want to get together again tonight?” Before I could answer, he shook his head and added, “And I just realized how that sounded. I know I shouldn’t assume you never have any other plans. I should think to ask you a few days in advance. But I didn’t really mean it as a date. You don’t have your immunity and I’d feel better if I could keep an eye on you.”
“As I recall, you warded my place,” I said. “And I’d eventually have to go home, like I did last night. I’ll be okay.”
He looked away for a second, and when he looked back at me there were bright pink spots on both of his cheeks. “Okay, then. It’s not just for your safety. I’d like to see you. Last night may have been the first entirely uneventful time we’ve ever spent together, and I’d like more of it.”
“That does sound tempting, but I do already have plans with my roommates. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug, but his ears had turned pink. I hoped he didn’t take it as a rejection, but I did have plans, and I didn’t want to be the kind of girl who ditched my friends as soon as a man came into my life.
We dropped coats and his mask off in his office, and I took off the necklace before it drove me insane inside the magically charged office building, then we went upstairs to find Merlin. Unfortunately, we found Kim first, sitting at Trix’s desk. She must have been filling in while Trix took the day off, but even so, she’d already made that area her own, much as she’d taken over my office. She’d moved her pictures and plants and had even put a nameplate with her name on it on the desk.
“Did you have an appointment?” she asked curtly as we approached the desk.
“No, but I imagine Mr. Mervyn is expecting us,” Owen said with the calm he usually displayed in situations like that. He may have struggled
with his inner Humphrey Bogart in his personal life, but at work he often managed to be just that cool.
“I’d better check with him, anyway,” she said, attempting a flirtatious look at Owen, who remained utterly oblivious. In fact, he ignored her entirely, walking toward Merlin’s office doors.
She was opening her mouth to protest when the doors opened and Merlin greeted us with a smile. “Ah, you must have a report for me,” he said, ushering us inside. I resisted the impulse to throw a gloating look over my shoulder at Kim as we went inside. Merlin gestured us to take seats on his sofa before he went to the counter on the far side of the office. “I’ve just made a pot of tea, so your timing is excellent,” he said as he poured. He solved the problem of having three cups and two hands by letting one hover alongside as he carried the other two over to us. The third cup settled itself on the small table next to the wing chair he took. “Now, what have you seen with your immunity gone?”
I described what I’d noticed about the subway ads, television commercials, and Times Square billboards, as well as the appearance of the store. “It’s possible they haven’t necessarily spent as much money on advertising as we thought because the media companies may not even have noticed that there are ads. Still, it would have been an impressive logistical operation just to get those ads up physically, and that would have taken money.”
“So they’re possibly not quite on the verge of taking over the world,” Merlin surmised with a wry twinkle in his eyes.
“Katie also had an idea for a way to deal with Idris,” Owen said.
I swallowed and hoped this sounded as good now as it had when I’d first brought it up. “We’ve noticed that Idris is a bit distractible. That seems to have been the main thing holding him back. Before he can bring any of his evil schemes to fruition, he’s become bored and moved on to something else. For instance, he never really took advantage of all the turmoil he caused when we thought we had a mole in the company. I think he became so fascinated by watching us run around in a tizzy that he forgot to actually do anything with that opportunity.”
Damsel Under Stress Page 22
