“Come on, baby, how can you resist me?” he purred, making sad eyes at me.
I didn’t know about magic, but that was enough to break any spell. “Seriously?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re resorting to puppy dog eyes? That, right there, is why we’re not right for each other. You want a girl you can win stuffed animals for at the fair, and I am so not that girl. We don’t even have the same idea of what’s romantic.” For instance, his whole romantic proposal scenario left me cold. I didn’t want to be surrounded by strangers for what was supposed to be a private moment. If I knew Owen at all, if he ever did propose, it would just be the two of us there. He wouldn’t make a big production out of it.
“So, it’s really over, then,” he said. “You won’t give me another chance?”
Had I ever been this whiny and needy about a breakup? Maybe in high school—at least, I hoped that was the only time. “Yes, it’s over. Thank you for the good times, but I think it’s best if both of us move on, really. I’ve got a new job at the store, and I’m really enjoying it here now. I don’t need you to take care of me.”
Ever so slightly, Josh glanced at the gray guy, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that the gray guy nodded. “Okay, then,” Josh said, backing away, but still holding onto my hand. “If that’s the way you want it.”
It occurred to me that if I’d stuck with Josh while retaining my memories, I might have had a chance to learn something. But I wasn’t that good an actress. He’d have probably figured me out before I learned anything useful. “It is the way I want it,” I said firmly.
He gave my hand one last squeeze, and I blinked as another wave of magic hit me. I had a moment of haziness, and then my head cleared. “Well, then, have a nice life,” he said.
“You, too,” I added, smiling fondly. He glanced over his shoulder, like he was looking for someone, but no one was there, and then he left.
As soon as he was gone, Florence exhaled loudly and said, “Good riddance to bad rubbish. If you hadn’t sent him away, I would have.”
“I guess I should have said something more before I ran off last night,” I said sheepishly. “When a guy asks a question like that, you owe him a real answer.”
“I can picture him kneeling in that restaurant with you already out the door.”
I winced. “How humiliating!”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Now, let’s get this place ready for the afternoon coffee break rush.”
The rest of the afternoon, I had the nagging sense that there was something I was forgetting, something I was supposed to do. I must have been pretty obvious about it, since Florence asked me at one point, “Did you leave the iron on, or something?”
“What? Why do you ask that?”
“Because you’ve got that look.”
“Oh. I guess there is something I’ve forgotten, but I can’t remember what it is. I suspect there’s some errand I was supposed to run today, but in all the excitement, I’ve totally forgotten. When my electricity or telephone gets cut off, I suppose I’ll know, huh?”
“Ah, new love. It makes fools of us all,” she said with a melodramatic sigh, but in spite of her teasing tone, she looked serious.
“Yeah, when you go straight from having one guy propose to realizing you’re in love with another guy, it really messes with your mind.”
“But in a good way.”
I kept that strange feeling the rest of the afternoon. At the end of my shift, Florence told me, “Now, you go down and see that adorable new guy of yours. Do you two have plans for tonight?”
Plans, there had been something about plans, hadn’t there? “Just going out to dinner,” I said with a shrug. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d forgotten something important.
“Well, have a good time, and in case you were wondering, you did the right thing. You made the right choice.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I hope you are.”
“Yeah, I guess I’m sure.”
“‘Guess’ and ‘sure’ don’t usually go in the same sentence. But I bet when you see him, you’ll know, and there won’t be any ‘guess’ about it.”
I hovered in the doorway of Owen’s office when I got downstairs, watching him work. His dark hair fell across his forehead as he bent to study the document on his desk, and my fingers itched to go over to him and push it back. He looked so at home in the office cluttered with books and papers. He belonged there, and I belonged with him. Florence was right. Now I was sure.
I rapped lightly on the door frame. “Ready for dinner?” I asked.
“Just a second. I have some things to finish. I do still have a store to run, or at least look like I’m running,” he added with a crooked smile. “Come in, and shut the door behind you so we can talk.”
“Of course you’re running a store,” I said as I shut the door. “Why would you need to look like that’s what you’re doing?”
He glanced up at me then, frowning. “Katie? Is something wrong?”
“Josh showed up, demanding an explanation. That was about as pleasant as you might imagine.”
“Josh showed up?” he asked warily.
“Oh, you don’t have anything to worry about. I broke up with him definitively. He didn’t take it too well. He tried to talk me out of it, but I know he’s not right for me.”
“Is anything else wrong?”
“Other than that, things are fine, and I think I shouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“Do you think he knows anything?”
“Well, obviously he knows about us—he’d already figured that out. I didn’t think there was any point in hiding it.”
Owen got up from his desk and came around to stand next to me. “There’s nothing else you think he knows?”
“What is there for him to know? It’s not like it’s any of his business.”
He placed his hand against my cheek and leaned down to kiss me, then straightened and looked at me like he was waiting for something. “Mmm, that was nice,” I said. “I hope there’s more of that to look forward to this evening.”
“Katie …” he said, his voice sounding strained.
“Yeah? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you remember the other plans we had for this evening?”
“We talked about dinner. Any other plans remain unspoken or implied, but if you want to spell them out, I’m game.”
I didn’t understand the alarm in his eyes. I’d never had a guy look that disturbed after a kiss before. Was my breath bad?
“Katie, check your pocket,” Owen said, his voice rough with emotion.
“Why?” He was starting to worry me.
“Just, please, do it. Check your pocket.”
He sounded so upset that I figured it wasn’t worth arguing about. With a shrug, I reached into my pocket and found a folded piece of paper. “Oh, that’s probably what I’ve forgotten,” I said as I pulled out the paper. “It must be my to-do list.”
When I unfolded the paper, I saw that it was covered with my handwriting, but it wasn’t a to-do list, and it wasn’t anything I remembered writing. “My brother Dean figured out he was a wizard, and he used his powers to break into all the stores on the Cobb town square,” it said. That was not was I was expecting to see, but even so, something clicked in my head, then everything went hazy and cleared again. As soon as my head felt clear, I started shaking violently in the aftershock. I looked at Owen and whispered, “Whew, that was a close call.”
“You’re okay now?” he asked. “You remember?”
“That we’re being held in some wacky elf prison? Yeah, I remember.” I sank into the nearest chair before my legs could go out from under me. “It’s a good thing you made me write that down. But why didn’t the kiss work? Isn’t that supposed to be what works in fairy tales? It worked before.”
“It may be that our relationship is now the same in both worlds, so it’s not enough to do the trick anymore. A memory from your fam
ily involving magic was a great idea. It has nothing in common with this reality.”
I studied the life-saving piece of paper in my hand. “Do you think I’ll need a new one?”
“I hope we don’t need it again.” Even so, I refolded it and put it back in my pocket. I looked up to see that he was still frowning at me. “I take it Josh really was here?” he asked.
I rubbed at my temples. Snapping out of the spell had given me a headache. “Yes, and it went just like I told you, only he must have hit me with the whammy when I didn’t fall under his sway. He seemed convinced I’d give up and go back to him. And maybe I should have.”
“What?” It was an outraged yelp.
I hurried to reassure him. “Not for real, but if I pretended to be with him and to ignore you, then he’d never suspect that the spell had broken, and if he’s in on it, maybe I could have learned something.”
He shook his head. “No, it would have been too hard to stay convincing.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, that’s how I rationalized it, too. I’m not sure my stomach is strong enough to pretend to be into that guy. There is one thing I noticed, though. One of those gray guys was watching him, and Josh seemed to consult with him a couple of times. Now I’m sure we’re not supposed to be able to see them. When I went back under the spell, I didn’t see him there anymore, and I don’t think he just vanished. So if you run into one, don’t look at him directly. I wonder if the gray suit is a uniform, like the enforcers in black.”
“It’ll make our lives easier if it is. Do you think Josh will be a problem?”
“Probably not. I still liked you when I was under the spell. I still sent him away after he put me back under the spell. Nothing changed other than knowing who I really am. Maybe they’re satisfied that the spell is holding now that he’s reinforced it. But I wonder why no one’s working on you that way. You’re usually the real danger, and they have to know by now that you’ve got magic back, since this place worked on you.”
He frowned. “Maybe it’s because you’re the one who’s resisting and going against their plans, so they know they have to work harder to keep the spell going. If you hadn’t resisted their plans for you, I don’t think I’d have ever snapped out of it.”
“So losing my powers is actually a good thing. That’s nice to know.” I said it sincerely, but it came out sounding sarcastic. I supposed I had mixed feelings about it.
“Do you feel up to our perfume-commercial recon mission?”
“Should we do it, or should we lie low after that close call?”
“If we do it right, it should look like we’re lying low. They’ll expect us to go on some kind of date. But you may have to prompt me for what I should do.”
We made one last pass through the store and made sure the evening shift was up and going, and then we hurried out the front doors. He surprised me by picking me up with his hands at my waist and spinning me around. I laughed, and then when he set me down, I leaned my head against his shoulder. “I guess you have seen a perfume commercial,” I whispered.
“Nope, but I have seen a few movie trailers.”
“Good move. Very convincing.” Then as I looked over his shoulder, I saw that we weren’t alone, and this time it wasn’t just an elf in a gray suit. It was McClusky, who was harder to spot without his usual black enforcer uniform. “And it looks like we have an audience,” I whispered.
“Another gray guy?”
“No, McClusky. I guess Mac broke the spell on him.”
He groaned. “What do they think I’m going to do, try to take over this world with my evil magic?”
“I don’t see Mac, so maybe it’s just McClusky’s paranoia. You don’t have anything to hide from him. We’re doing what we said we would do.”
He let out a deep breath in a long sigh, and I felt his muscles relax ever so slightly before he released his hold on me. He took my hand, and we ambled down the sidewalk. “So, flowers next?” he murmured. At the next corner store, he paused to buy a bouquet, then presented it with a flourish. I didn’t have to fake my delight. As cheesy as it was, it was also really nice. I buried my face in the flowers and had to fight off a sneeze when I accidentally inhaled some pollen. The near-sneeze made both of us laugh. I wasn’t sure if we were acting out a romantic comedy movie trailer or the opening credits to a television situation comedy.
It sort of killed the mood when Owen then went back into spy mode, whispering in my ear, “Since this neighborhood seems to correspond with the Upper West Side, we shouldn’t be able to walk too far across town without reaching the river. By my calculations, we’ve only got a couple of blocks in this direction before we hit Riverside Park.”
“You know just what to say to a girl,” I whispered back. I was beginning to fear that we weren’t fated to have a time when there weren’t life-or-death circumstances. I was already cherishing the romantic moments we had before the spell broke.
My heart began beating faster as we neared the next intersection. There was the park across the street, and on the other side of it should have been the river. There wasn’t an easy way across the river from this point, so I suspected the river worked as the wall to our prison. The trick would be testing that wall without going for a really nasty swim.
When the light changed, we crossed the street and hurried through the park, attempting a romantic frolic. I tried for a lighthearted giggle, but it came out as more of a mad cackle, so I decided to be romantic in silence. We reached a point where we should have been able to look out over the river, but we kept going through more and more park. “I don’t get up to the Upper West Side that much, but is Riverside Park this wide?” I asked.
“Not here, I don’t think,” Owen said, “but there’s something about this that looks familiar.”
“I think it’s supposed to be Central Park, but it’s whatever green space plays Central Park in movies and TV shows that aren’t actually filmed in New York.”
“Yeah, while I haven’t explored every inch of it, this is one of the parts of the park where I’ve been a lot, and none of this is quite right,” he agreed.
We kept walking through the not-Central Park, then suddenly we came out of the park and into the city, as though we were leaving Central Park and heading into the Upper West Side. We stood on the sidewalk with traffic whizzing past us as we tried to get our bearings.
“Okay, that’s weird,” Owen said. “It’s like we’re in a loop instead of having clear boundaries. Which makes sense—if we bumped into a barrier, we’d notice it, even if we were under a spell, but while under the spell we might not notice that we keep coming back to the same neighborhood, no matter how long we walk.”
“Which means we can’t get out of here,” I said with a sinking feeling.
Chapter Twelve
“We haven’t tried going up or downtown,” Owen said, sounding like he was trying to reassure me as much as himself. “Maybe that’s where the entrances are.”
We crossed the street and kept going, back into the Upper West Side. When we hit the Broadway-like street, we turned and headed up it. As we walked, we paused every so often to look at the menus posted outside restaurants and acted like we were having trouble deciding where to eat. We made it past the street where my apartment was and kept going uptown, but then somewhere around Ninetieth Street we found ourselves back around Lincoln Center—or a vaguely Lincoln Center-ish complex with a fountain in front of it.
Owen proved he’d listened to my description of romantic things to do by giving me a playful splash from the fountain. I played along by squealing and running, but he caught me and pulled me close to him.
“So we’ve got a prison that’s around twenty blocks by maybe four blocks,” I said into his ear. “How depressing.”
“But it means we have less ground to cover to find that portal.” He tensed momentarily, then said loudly, “So, in all that walking, did you find a place you wanted to eat?” I saw an elf in gray lurking nearby and forced mysel
f not to look directly at him. McClusky was also there, but I wasn’t worried about him since we weren’t up to anything evil.
Leaning against Owen and snuggling under the shelter of his arm, I sighed and said, “Don’t hate me for insisting on all that walking to look at every restaurant in the neighborhood, but that first Italian place we saw looks good. It’s a nice night. Maybe we can get a seat on the sidewalk.”
“Okay, Italian it is.”
“But I do have a list of other places I want to try later.” I attempted a flirtatious eyelash flutter. “There were a couple of interesting-looking spots for breakfast.” His blush made me smile in spite of the tense circumstances.
We got a sidewalk seat at the restaurant, and at first I wished we’d sat inside because Mr. Gray stood on the sidewalk right next to our table—pedestrians moving past him without apparently seeing him—but then I realized that had been Owen’s strategy. Sitting outside made it look like we didn’t think we had anything to hide, but it meant we were onstage the entire time, playing out the scene of a first real date.
The acting was kind of fun, though, and before long, I was able to make myself forget my role. It was a rare chance for us to have a semi-normal date. Since the elves were probably controlling just about everything and maintaining the illusion that this was a world without magic, the odds were slim that there would be any magical chaos. As long as we could forget Mr. Gray and McClusky, who’d taken an adjacent table, we could enjoy a rare romantic meal with no worries. We leaned on the table and stared into each other’s eyes, sipped red wine, fed each other tidbits from our plates, held hands under the table, talked, and laughed.
Conversation was the hard part. We couldn’t talk about anything that might give away the fact that we knew who we were, so we couldn’t talk about work the way we normally did when we went out. There was the store, of course, but since we’d supposedly met there and spent all day working there together, that was only a starting point for the conversation. Instead, we had to talk about ourselves in a way that Owen and I never really had before, as close as we were—no mention of work, of magic, or of the strange things we’d been going through.
Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) Page 14
