Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) (27 page)

“I should be able to. With any luck, the memories we’ve all got hidden will have already done the trick, but I’ll go round people up.”

“Be careful,” I warned. “You’re a known fugitive.”

“I’ll get one person and then that should have a ripple effect.”

“We could try working it some from our end,” I said.

Earl shook his head. “No, you’re the one who’s public enemy number one, the one person the whammy didn’t affect. They’ll be out to get you. It’s probably safest if you stay put for a while.” He checked his watch and said, “I’ll meet you back here in two hours.”

When Earl was gone, Owen put his arm around my shoulders and said, “I did thank you for rescuing me, didn’t I?”

“It might have come up,” I replied, unable to hide my smile.

“Well, you were incredible. Thank you.” He bent and kissed me, and I sighed with relief to have my Owen back.

When we ended the kiss, I leaned against him and asked, “Do you think you can really do it?”

“I’ve got to.”

“You do know that needing to do it doesn’t necessarily mean you can, right?”

“I’ve read some books about it, and I’ve even done some study of elven magic. The trick will be getting enough power. It’ll take as many elves as Earl can round up, and possibly you, too.” He paused before adding, “It’ll probably drain you entirely.”

Forcing bravery I wasn’t sure I felt into my voice, I said, “We knew it was going to happen eventually, anyway. It might as well be for a good cause, and I’d rather get back to the real world than be able to make glowy balls of light. Even if that is kind of cool,” I added wistfully.

He turned and kissed me lightly on the temple. “I’m sorry.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m cut out to be magical. I think I’m a pretty great immune, but let’s face it, I was a mediocre wizard.”

“That’s not true at all. You caught on very quickly. You only started having problems when your power ran below a certain level. If you had full power like a real wizard, you’d be formidable. Your technique was excellent—even if it was a mix of traditional magic and whatever it was your grandmother was teaching you.”

With a soft sigh, I settled my head against his shoulder. “I never thought I’d ever say this, but I wish she was here now.”

He chuckled and said, “Yeah, it would be interesting to see what she’d do in this situation.”

“She’d probably take one of the gray guys hostage and work her way up the chain of command.” I hesitated, then said, “You know …”

“If the portal idea doesn’t work, we may consider that.”

As confident as he sounded about being able to open a small, perfectly aimed portal, I started thinking about every movie or TV show I’d ever seen involving a kidnapping so I could get ideas for the best way to take one of the guards hostage. We’d have to find a way to neutralize their powers, or else our hostage could put the whammy on us even as we took him prisoner—maybe even while he was a prisoner. I supposed I could always burn through my remaining magic supply so at least one of us wouldn’t be affected, but it would be hard to convince Owen of that. His stance made sense in that, to him, being immune to magic had been like a punishment, and getting his powers back had come as a great relief. He couldn’t imagine that I might prefer to go back to what was normal for me.

*

I tried not to look at my watch too often, since that made time pass more slowly, but we were getting awfully close to that two-hour mark, and there was no sign of Earl. I didn’t say anything about it until it was five minutes past the time he was supposed to have returned. “Earl’s late,” I remarked, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

“He may have run into something.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“It may not be something bad. He may just be taking extra precautions.”

“You’re probably right. Two hours wasn’t long enough. I’d rather him be late and stay safe. Let’s wait longer.”

Owen conjured lunch for us, and that passed some time. When another hour had passed, I said, “Okay, I’m officially worried. What should we do?”

“You’re the one in charge.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “We don’t have to maintain that pretense now. The Council guys are still enchanted and the elves aren’t here, so you don’t have to act like the good little soldier.”

“I’m not acting. You’re legitimately in charge. They agreed, and you’ve done a good job. What do
you
think we should do?”

I clenched and unclenched my hands, thinking. This was more responsibility than I was used to having. Sure, I theoretically ran a department, but Perdita was the only person who reported to me. I was generally more of an assistant type who was surrounded by experts.

Thinking of Perdita gave me an idea, though. “It’s probably safest to assume that something happened to Earl,” I said. “Fortunately, we didn’t put all our eggs in one basket. We’ll carry out the plan ourselves. If they got to Perdita, she should be easy to revive, since we didn’t even have to try the first time. She’s got a good network and should be able to round up enough people to make your portal. If Earl is okay and was just delayed, he’ll know we had to act, and he knows to check in with Perdita.”

“So, to Perdita it is,” he said, standing and offering me a hand to help me up. “Maybe we can find a path through the building that will take us out far from where we entered.”

“And let’s hope that they’ve given up on finding us around here,” I added.

There was a door on the other side of the empty room, so we started there. The door led to an interior stairway. The door at the top of the stairs opened without a key into another nearly featureless space. We made our way down the block, treading carefully on the incomplete floors. When we reached the end, Owen looked out the windows on the side of the building. “I don’t see any of the gray guys, but that doesn’t mean some of the other people out there aren’t guards who might be looking for us.”

“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 nothing 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.”