Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.)

by Swendson, Shanna

  “So how do we get out of this building?”

  “I don’t think they’ll notice a little illusion, since most of the people here aren’t real. We should be able to get away with that much magic.”

  We went back to the last stairwell door. Before he opened it, Owen took my hand, and I felt the magic surrounding me. Safely disguised, we stepped into the stairwell and went down the stairs. There was a mirror at one landing, and I paused and did a double take when I saw an elderly couple looking back at me. “That’s us?” I asked.

  “A little preview of our future, perhaps,” he said with a slight smile. “Now, remember what Rod told you about carrying off an illusion. Try to move like the woman you saw in the mirror.”

  We paused just inside the front door to get into character. Both of us bent over slightly, and I took his arm at the crook of the elbow. As we left the building, we moved slowly and carefully, then went down the front steps with painstaking care.

  Knowing we were fugitives made me want to hurry from one safe place to another. I resisted the impulse and stayed in character. They were looking for young people, not a couple of old-timers. Unless they detected Owen’s magic, they shouldn’t notice us at all.

  We crossed the street and went up a block, then paused at a corner grocery to act like we were shopping. I didn’t see anyone giving us suspicious looks, but when we stepped out of the store, one of the gray guys was on the sidewalk outside. I fought not to hold my breath or do anything else that would make me look more nervous than someone in my position should be. Maybe he was there watching someone else, not staking out the place for us. Why would they even think to stake out that place? It wasn’t as though the grocery store was an obvious destination for fugitives.

  We moved past him in our elderly shuffle, but since I didn’t dare turn to look at him, I couldn’t tell if he even noticed us. It was sheer agony to keep moving slowly instead of hurrying away. “Easy, easy,” Owen breathed, apparently picking up on my tension.

  But then I saw another gray guy ahead of us, not quite at the end of the block. “Owen,” I moaned under my breath.

  “I see him. Don’t change the way you’re walking. Act normal—the old version. We’ll go up that next set of stairs.”

  “Is it an empty building?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t case this street.”

  The gray guy was moving toward us, but I couldn’t tell if he was heading for us or just walking down the street. I had to fight not to allow my eyes to focus on him. It seemed like the longest twenty feet I’d ever walked before we reached the next set of steps. To maintain our illusion, we had to go up them slowly, one step at a time. All the while, I felt the guard drawing nearer.

  I stood so that passers-by couldn’t see that Owen was unlocking the front door without a key, and just as he opened the door, the gray guy reached the steps. He started to walk past as we entered the building, but as the door closed behind us, I heard his footsteps stop.

  The inside of this stairwell was blank, just a structural shell, so apparently no prisoners lived here. That must have given us away. We didn’t have time to worry about that, though. Forgetting about looking old, we ran through the featureless space as quickly as possible while still hitting the floor beams. The gray guy hadn’t come inside yet, but I feared it was only a matter of time. I estimated we’d run to the next building when we reached a doorway. Owen flung it open and we ran out into a finished stairwell.

  “Out?” I panted.

  “Up,” he replied.

  Owen tried the door on the next landing, but it was locked—probably the home of a prisoner. We ran up to the next level, where the door opened and we were able to enter another empty space. We put at least two more buildings behind us before we slowed down and took refuge against an exterior wall, between two windows.

  “He didn’t follow us, did he?” I asked when I caught my breath.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did he see past our illusion?”

  “It’s hard to tell. Maybe he detected the difference between wizard magic and elf magic. Or maybe he knows the illusions that are supposed to be in that area and we didn’t fit.”

  “If he can see us, how do we get out of here?”

  “Let’s wait a while. Maybe he’ll go away.”

  We waited half an hour before we dared peek out the window. There were two of the gray guys on the street below. They seemed to be looking for something, and it was easy—and probably safest—to assume it was us.

  We kept going until we reached the end of the block, where we could see out of two sides of the building. The corner building wasn’t a brownstone. It was a regular apartment building with shops on the ground level. “I think we might be over Perdita’s café,” I said when I had my bearings from the view. “All we need to do is find a way out of here without getting caught.”

  There was a door that opened onto an interior hallway. The nearest “exit” sign indicated a stairwell that went all the way down. The bottom level was empty, and Owen had to use magic to light our way. We found a door that came out into the basement supply room of a restaurant. “Is this the right place?” Owen whispered.

  “How am I supposed to know?” I replied. “I eat here. I don’t lurk in the basement.” I was about to say something else, but then I thought I heard a sound from the other side of the room. I gestured to Owen, and both of us ducked behind shelves as Owen doused his magical light.

  There was definitely someone else in the basement, but he seemed to be trying to stay as hidden as we were. A restaurant employee would have called out to ask who was there. Instead, it was as though the other person was holding his breath and staying as still as possible.

  I glanced back at the door where we’d entered and was just about to tug Owen toward it when a voice from the darkness on the other side of the basement said, “Katie, Owen, is that you?”

  “Earl?” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” came the response. “So it is you?”

  We met in the middle of the room. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “We were worried when you didn’t show up.” I didn’t ask the obvious question. If he was under the spell, he wouldn’t be hiding in a basement.

  “I was pretty sure I had a tail, and I didn’t want to lead them anywhere near you. I decided it would be safer to lose them and hide out for a while, and I was close enough for Perdita to help me.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “They didn’t come anywhere near her.”

  I turned to Owen. “That’s weird. If they managed to get to us through the spy, surely they’d have eventually tracked back to Perdita.”

  “Maybe their precautions weren’t about what we’ve done here, but about what we do back home,” Owen suggested. “The Council guys are essentially magical cops, we foiled Sylvester’s last scheme, and Earl is a known rebel. Perdita may have been under their radar.”

  “What happened to you two?” Earl asked.

  “When you didn’t come back, we figured Perdita would be a contact point,” I said. “How did things go for you?”

  “They got to Brad, and I was able to snap him out of it,” Earl said. “We’re on for tonight. We figured sundown in what passes for Central Park, at the spot just before it loops back to Riverside—it’s a lot like Cherry Hill, but not quite. There has to be a lot of magic in that area to form that kind of boundary loop, so maybe our portal won’t be quite so obvious.”

  Owen checked his watch. “We’ve got a few more hours to kill, and if the vultures aren’t circling us, we may as well wait here until then.”

  We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the floor behind some shelves, where we weren’t visible from the stairs. I wasn’t aware of drifting off to sleep, but the next thing I was conscious of was feeling a little stiff from sleeping on Owen’s shoulder. I kept my eyes shut, hoping desperately that this whole thing about living in an alternate reality straight out of a bad romantic comedy was nothi
ng more than a dream.

  Even Owen nudging me gently didn’t have to ruin things. That could happen if I’d fallen asleep during a movie. “Katie, wake up,” he whispered. “We need to go.”

  Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and had to accept that my predicament was very real. Nearby noises told me that Earl was also stirring. In the very faint light, I saw Owen crawl to the hatch that led to the sidewalk. He peered out, then said, “I don’t see any gray guys.”

  “We should probably split up, so if they catch one group of us, they won’t catch all of us,” I suggested. “Earl, you go with Perdita. We’ll meet you there.”

  We climbed the steps and emerged on the sidewalk. It was the evening rush hour, so the sidewalk was busy and crowded, and we didn’t stand out too badly. We melted into the crowd and made our way toward the park.

  We’d gone a few blocks when I noticed one of the gray guys on the opposite side of the street. I nudged Owen, but he didn’t seem to respond at all—until we reached the next intersection and he casually turned us down the side street heading toward the park, as though that was where we’d been going all along. I couldn’t tell if the gray guy had seen us, and looking back over my shoulder to see if he’d followed us would be a dead giveaway.

  “What do we do?” I whispered to Owen.

  “Just keep going.” In the middle of the block, he stopped and knelt to tie his shoe, then stood and reported, “He didn’t follow us.”

  “Then let’s go before another one shows up,” I urged.

  We didn’t encounter any more of the gray guys. I felt a lot better once we were inside the park even though I knew that we weren’t necessarily safer there. I just felt a lot less exposed surrounded by trees. The others soon joined us at the designated meeting place.

  When we were all gathered, Owen said, “This should work better on natural ground, say, over there under those trees.” We trooped over to the place he’d pointed out, then he closed his eyes for a moment. Nodding with satisfaction, he said, “Yeah, this place should work.”

  He found a stick and knelt to scratch something in the dirt. As he did so, he directed, “I need you guys to find me some small stones, preferably smooth and round.” The elves and I scrounged around on the ground, picking up rocks. Owen arranged the rocks in a circle around the symbols he’d been drawing in the dirt. “I should probably set up wards to keep this magic from being detected,” he said as he worked, “but I’m afraid we can’t spare the power. We’ll just have to make it quick, get our message out, then dash—and hope it works so they’ll send help in case we get caught.” He gestured for the others to join him and said, “In the absence of wards, Katie, you stand guard. I’d rather not draw on your power unless we have to. Yell if you see anyone coming.”

  I wanted to see what they were doing, but I had to admit that keeping watch was more important than observing magic I’d never be able to do. Before I turned away, I saw Owen writing a note. Soon afterward, he started an incantation in a language I didn’t know. It might have been elvish, since the elves soon joined in.

  I forced myself to focus on the surrounding park, looking for any sign that we were being watched. I was only one pair of eyes, though. Anyone could sneak up on us from behind wherever I was at the time. I settled for walking in rapid circles around the spellcasters, hoping that anyone who did approach us wouldn’t move quickly enough to reach us in the time it took me to get around the circle.

  A slight glow was just starting to form in the circle when someone stepped out of the shadows right next to me, making me jump and yelp.

  It was Florence, my colleague from the coffee shop. “Owen!” I called out. “We’ve got company!”

  But she made no move to stop us, to hit us with the whammy, or to call the authorities. She just put her hands on her hips and snapped, “What do you fools think you’re doing?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Behind me, the incantation stopped, and the park grew dimmer as whatever they’d generated faded away. “Um, nothing, really,” I said, trying to play innocent, in spite of the evidence around me.

  “You weren’t trying to open a portal, were you?” Florence asked. “Did you really think you could escape that way? Do you know the kind of power it would take to punch a hole like that between realms?”

  “Yes, which is why it was going to be a very small portal,” Owen said, sounding surprisingly calm as he came over to stand at my side.

  “And did you think you could use that much power without anyone noticing?” Florence scolded.

  “No. I just hoped we’d get our message through before we got caught.”

  She shook her head and made motherly “tsk, tsk” noises. “It would never have worked. Now, come on, I need you to get away from here before anyone else shows up.”

  The others all looked at me, and I said, “She’s one of the guards, but she’s always had my back, and tried to clue me in about what was going on, even before the spell broke. We may as well trust her.”

  “It’s not like we have a lot of other options,” Earl grumbled, but they all followed as Florence bustled us away from that part of the park.

  When we were in an area sheltered by hedges, she gestured for us to sit down, and then her appearance shimmered for a second before solidifying into something that was very different, if still recognizable as Florence. Her face was thin and angular, her body was willowy, her eyebrows slanted, and her ears pointed. She turned to Earl and Brad and said, “You’re with the underground, aren’t you?” Then she did something with her hands that looked like a graceful and elegant gang sign. Earl and Brad returned the sign.

  “She’s okay,” Earl said. “She’s one of us.”

  “She’s a double agent,” I said.

  She sank to sit among us. “You figured me out? Yeah, I got in really deep with Sylvester’s organization and next thing I know, I’ve been shipped off to the Homelands and put to work as a cast member in the world’s creepiest theme park.”

  “You knew what Sylvester was doing all along, and yet you did nothing? You told no one?” Earl accused.

  “Don’t you think I’ve been trying to find a way to send messages back? That’s how I know you can’t make your own portal. Once you’re here, you’re here, even if you’re staff. There’s one portal, and it’s warded so heavily that no one can get through, not even those of us who are in on the scheme. I guess they figure there’s a chance some of us could be double agents, so they’re not letting us communicate with anyone back home. All I could do was sabotage their efforts.”

  She turned to me. “You were right that I was trying to nudge you toward breaking the spell without breaking my cover. And man, but you were dense. I thought you’d never get it. To be honest, I’m not sure how you did eventually break through.”

  “It wasn’t that I had a brilliant breakthrough,” I admitted. “It’s just that normally I’m immune to magic. My current magic supply is extremely limited, and as it wore away, it seems that the spell lost its grip on me.” Then I had a sudden burst of inspiration. “You said the portal is warded. Could a magical immune get through?”

  She frowned in thought, but before she could answer, Owen protested, “Katie!”

  “Actually, she may be on to something,” Florence said, nodding slowly. “Can you normally get through wards?”

  “All the time,” I said.

  “How hard would it be for you to get back to your immune state? You said your power was wearing off.”

  Owen didn’t give me a chance to answer. He grabbed my hand and said, “This isn’t a good idea.”

  I squeezed his hand as I turned to face him. “You said I was running low on magic and would eventually run out. Why don’t I just burn myself out and then make a break for it?”

  “You’d give up your magic?”

  “It’s not like I have a choice. It’s eventually going to be gone anyway.”

  “But draining your power should be a last resort.”

  “Th
is is a last resort,” I snapped. More gently, I added, “I’m okay with it, really. I like being immune. I think I’m more useful that way.” I curled my fingers around his. “I know you hated being without magic, but that’s who you are. Being immune is what I am, and going back to that would mean being myself again.”

  “I’m not sure what this place would be like to someone who can’t be affected by the illusions. You probably wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that you’re not affected for long. It could even be dangerous.”

  “Have you got any better ideas?” Florence asked. “Because I’m all ears if you do. But I’m thinking that having an immune is our ace in the hole, and this is time to use it.”

  “This is even better than sending a note,” I argued. “I can tell Merlin directly what’s going on.”

  “You’d be coming through the portal into their headquarters,” Owen pointed out.

  “Yeah, and they’ll use magic to fight me. Which won’t work because of the immunity thing.” I was feeling more and more confident about this plan.

  “If you’re going to burn off magic, I suggest you do it here,” Florence said. “It won’t be as noticeable in the park, but then that means you’ll have to get across town without magic, and I honestly don’t know what that would be like for you. Magical immunity is incompatible with this construct.”

  “I can only burn off so much power on my own,” I said. “I can get down to normal human levels of magic—enough to be affected by it—here, and then one of you can draw on me to drain me the rest of the way once we get to the portal. Something tells me I won’t be able to just walk up to it and waltz through it.”

  “We’ll have to fight our way to it,” Florence confirmed.

  “Then a little extra juice might come in handy for one of you,” I said. “We probably also need a better plan than just me walking through the portal.” I checked my watch. “It would be best if we could time it for right after the shift change—the fewer guards, the better. And maybe we should create a diversion elsewhere in the neighborhood to draw more guards away.”