Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) (15 page)

“Elves are notoriously frugal,” Owen said with a grin.

When we reached my charming brownstone apartment, we paused at the foot of the front steps, like any couple saying good night at the end of a first date. “This is one thing I wish I could have in the real world,” I said, gazing up at the building. “I’d never be able to afford this. I wonder what it really looks like.” And then I realized something that made me gasp. “You mentioned that because of my current condition, I have enough magic for the spell to work on me. Does that mean that if I’d been immune, they wouldn’t have been able to bring me here?”

“They might have been able to bring you here, but the spell to mask your identity wouldn’t have worked. You would have known who you were the entire time, and you’d have seen this place the way it really is.”

I nodded slowly. “So, when we wake these people up and they realize what happened, they’ll know I’m not magically immune anymore. And that means …”

I didn’t have to complete the sentence. All the color drained from his face as he said, “My secret will be out.”

Chapter Ten

Owen shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I’m so used to being magical that I totally forgot that the wizards think I’m immune right now. That does put a wrinkle in things.”

I clutched his arm urgently. “So maybe we should learn more about the situation before we start waking people up—if we even have to wake them up. Maybe we could get them home somehow, and that will break the spell, and then they won’t have to know about you.”

“I don’t think that’ll work. Too many of them have interacted with me, so they’ll know I was affected, and I think it looks worse if I don’t do something about it as soon as possible. I’ll just have to be up front about it and take whatever consequences come.” He took a deep breath, then set his jaw and said firmly, “In fact, I think we should revive Mac and his partner first.”

“Owen, that’s insane! It’s like telling them, ‘Oh, by the way, I got my powers back awhile ago.’”

“That’s going to be a problem,” he agreed. “And maybe I should have been honest all along instead of hiding it. But I think it’s a show of good faith if I revive them first and bring them in on this. They may know more about the elven realms than I do, and they may know more about what happened to us, since presumably they were taken because they saw it happen. Mac’s a good guy, and he’s known me most of my life. I believe I can trust him to be fair.” He gave a hopeful smile that would have been more convincing if it had gone all the way to his eyes. “And maybe saving the day here will help change my image. Either way, it means I can quit hiding, even if they still don’t trust me.”

“Do you have a memory you can use to revive Mac?”

“I’ve got a few things he might recall from when he visited my parents when I was a kid. He’ll have to wake his partner because I don’t know him well enough, and I’ll leave that decision to Mac. I’ll just have to try to find a way to get Mac alone to talk to him.”

“Well, if you’re sure …”

He took a deep breath and appeared to force his shoulders to relax. “I’m not saying I’m sure this is a great idea, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice.”

I realized we’d been talking for quite a while and wondered what our watcher thought. A long chat at the front door after a date shouldn’t be too strange, I hoped. I impulsively leaned in to give Owen a kiss on the cheek, like I was saying good night. We both paused for a moment, then kissed on the lips, lingering ever so slightly. “I don’t think you should come inside,” I said, quite reluctantly because I didn’t want to be alone or let him out of my sight. I wasn’t even sure where he lived in this world. “Like I said earlier, I was being proposed to by someone else just a couple of hours ago, and we don’t want them to think we’re privately plotting.”

“I’m curious as to whether this guy stays here with you or follows me,” he murmured as he nuzzled my neck and made me wish I hadn’t just announced that he shouldn’t come up. “Turn back like you’re watching me go and see what happens. Then once you’re inside, try veiling yourself and look out the window.”

After one last kiss, he turned to leave and I headed up the front steps. I paused at the front door to turn back and didn’t have to fake a besotted grin as I watched him go. I had to fight to keep that grin when I saw that the gray guy stayed on the sidewalk in front of my building. It made sense that I was the one being watched when I was the one who’d resisted the magic, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable about it.

When Owen was out of sight, I unlocked the front door and went up the indoor stairs to my apartment. Once inside, I changed into sweats before attempting Granny’s veiling spell and peeking out the window. The gray guy was still out there, but he didn’t seem to be watching my place with an intense focus.

Sleep seemed impossible, but I turned out the light so my watcher would think I was going to bed and therefore not likely to do anything suspicious for the rest of the night. I settled onto my bed in the darkness and leaned back against the pillows. The fact that I could do so and feel it made me sure that this apartment wasn’t an illusion, even if it was a fantasy. Building an entire replica of pseudo New York seemed like overkill, so I was sure some of it had to be illusion. But how much? For my apartment to be tangible, the building had to be real, but how many of the residents were real people, either prisoners or guards? Were the extras in this movie real people or just illusion, and were there enough people here to fill out every building? Would they bother to finish out the insides of buildings even if no real person lived there?

There was one way to find out. I tiptoed to my door and then up the stairs. I didn’t recall ever seeing a neighbor coming downstairs or hearing any noise above me. When I reached the upper landing, I paused and listened for any signs of life coming from that apartment. There was no stereo or TV on, but it was late enough that most people would be in bed.

Feeling like I was violating all kinds of social mores, I put my hand on the doorknob, then I squeezed my eyes closed in dread as I turned the knob. It did turn, and the door eased open, so either nobody lived there or my neighbor didn’t lock his door and I was about to be really embarrassed.

When nobody shouted at me, I opened my eyes and was surprised by what I saw. It was an empty shell of a room, not as finished as an “unfinished” apartment, since it didn’t even have rough features like interior walls. It was just a space that happened to be enclosed. It did still have windows, and I imagined there were illusions on those windows to make it look like a normal apartment from outside, but just in case, I dropped to the floor and crawled so my watcher wouldn’t be able to see me.

I couldn’t see much in the dim city light coming in through the windows, but I didn’t think there was much to see, just a lot of nothing. The exterior walls looked like the back side of a movie set, and I had to be careful as I crawled because the floor joists were bare, the plaster of my ceiling showing in the open spaces between them. Although crawling was slower than walking, I soon felt like I’d gone beyond where the wall of my apartment should have been. I glanced at the windows and saw that they were a slightly different size and in a slightly different position. The open space must have extended into the next building. I suspected it might go on until there was some reason it had to stop, like the end of the block or an inhabited apartment.

I wanted to keep exploring, but the risk of getting stuck somewhere and not being able to get back to my place without being caught by my watcher was too great. As I crawled back toward the door, I wondered how much of this prison was just an empty shell, a Hollywood-style backlot to create street scenes. But even if most of it was empty, building something like this seemed like a huge undertaking requiring a lot of resources, either physical or magical. That had to mean that what they were keeping secret by bringing us all here was equally huge.

*

I could hardly wait to tell Owen what I’d discovered. We ran into each other again on our way to work, right in front of the store. I wouldn’t have thought it would take much effort to play the newly-in-love couple, but I was so conscious of being watched by the gray guy who’d followed me from my apartment that I couldn’t relax into the role, even if it was entirely genuine.

We kissed awkwardly, then I blurted, “You’ll never guess what I found last night!”

His lips twitched in a not-quite-suppressed smile. “Most of these buildings are empty shells?”

“Oh, you too, huh?”

“Great minds think alike. We should probably explore more when we get a chance. It could be useful to have a way to move between buildings. Though we’ll have to be careful while we have a shadow.”

“Ooh, that sounds so secretive, like we’re in an underground movement. I feel like I should get a jaunty beret, like the French Resistance.”

“You don’t want to tip our hand, do you?” Although his tone was teasing, I noticed that he kept glancing toward the park across from the store, where Mac and his sidekick were in their usual spot, playing chess.

“Should we talk to Mac now?” I asked, following his gaze.

Owen studied them for a long moment, then said, “Let’s wait a little while, enough to appear normal. If you seem to come out of Josh’s spell and then we’re immediately having intense conversations with people we usually just exchange pleasantries with, it would look suspicious.”

“You’re not getting cold feet about your plan to bravely face the consequences, are you?”

“No, but we should be methodical about this.” He frowned in thought for a moment, then said, “Let’s take lunch to the park, and I’ll challenge him to a game.”

“Okay. It’s a date, but you can always back out if you change your mind.”

“I won’t,” he said firmly, but he didn’t look happy about it.

*

When I went up to the coffee shop, I wasn’t sure how to approach Florence. She’d conspired with Josh, and yet she’d steered me toward Owen. I figured if she was playing the sassy best friend role in this romantic comedy, she’d want to squeal over me finally taking her advice and getting together with Mr. Right. I tried to psych myself up into a good morning-after glow as I reached the top of the stairs and headed for the counter.

“Well, look at you!” she said with obviously faked enthusiasm. “Someone’s all aglow this morning. Last night must have been spectacular. Let me see the ring.”

“There is no ring.”

She looked truly stunned. “He didn’t propose? Then what’s the glow about?”

I had to fight not to smile. “I turned him down.”

“You did
what
?” It came out in an outraged-sounding yelp, but her eyes lit up and she was unable to restrain a grin.

I tried to remember how the movie had gone so I could sound convincing, since I figured I’d need a better reason than “the spell broke” to explain why the whammy Josh had apparently put on me hadn’t worked. I tied on my apron and straightened the knot to buy myself time to think, then said, “Well, I thought that a lot of my reservations had to do with how unromantic he was the first time he brought up marriage, like it was some chore he was doing to help me. But then when he did the all-out proposal, complete with ring, sparklers, and kneeling, and I
still
felt the same way about him, I knew it was wrong.”

She gave up fighting the grin and beamed ear-to-ear. “Even with the sparklers?”

“Yeah, even with the sparklers.”

“What did you do next?”

“I left. I can’t believe I did it, but he was kneeling on the floor and everyone was watching, and I just said, ‘I can’t,’ and left the restaurant, and I headed straight to the store to catch Owen before he left. You were right. He was the one, and he has been since we met. Everything just clicked with him. It was right.”

She leaned forward like she was in the audience at the exciting part of a movie. “And what happened?”

I didn’t have to fake a blush. “Well, I told him what I felt, and we kissed, and it turns out he felt the same way, too, and then we went out for a drink and he walked me home.”

She used her apron to wipe imaginary tears from her eyes. “Oh, I just love a happy ending.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” I warned.

“I’m not!” Then she gave me a saucy grin. “Did the earth move for you? Did it change the way you saw everything?”

I had to think quickly. Was it just the way she sounded, a friend looking for juicy details, or was she testing me to see if the spell had broken? If the latter, was that so she could help us or so she could report us to her superiors? She seemed truly happy for me, and I doubted that my getting together with Owen was part of the elves’ plan, but she could have been playing her role to the hilt. It was too risky to trust her, so I merely smiled and said, “It was nice.”

“Nice? That’s all you’ve got to say? Don’t let him hear you say that. He’ll take it as an insult.”

“That’s between us. ‘Nice’ is all you need to know—and don’t you
dare
ask him.”

“Oh, I’ll get it out of you sooner or later,” she teased. “But I really am happy for you.”

*

In spite of his brave talk about facing Mac head-on, Owen was pale when I met him with sandwiches from our café to take to the park. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted, “but I am sure it’s the right thing to do. Let’s just hope this works and that he’s fair about it. I’m sure he will be.” I didn’t think he sounded too convinced, but he strode across the street like he was on a mission, and it was clear he wasn’t going to talk himself out of it or let me do so. I followed him, feeling a lot less confident than he was acting.

Mac and his Council enforcer partner were at their usual table, playing their usual game of chess. I had to wonder what fantasy they were being allowed to live out that they wouldn’t want to escape. Sitting in a park and playing chess all day didn’t sound like my idea of an ideal life. Then again, living out a bad romantic comedy film hadn’t been high on my list, either. It had just been what was on my mind when they’d taken me. Maybe we’d interrupted a good game of chess by going out to dinner that fateful night.