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 myself 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.
“What did you want to be when you grew up, when you were a kid and before you had to think about practical things?” I asked him.
“I wanted to be a professor, like my dad. I thought that meant reading books all day and talking about them. I was the weird kid who liked doing research in school. What about you?”
“I wanted to work in a business. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I wanted to do something where I would wear a nice suit and carry a briefcase to work in an office with a view in the city. I wasn’t sure what people like that did all day, other than talk on the phone and sound important, but that was what I wanted.”
“Wasn’t there anything you liked doing, though?”
“I don’t know.” This was getting as uncomfortable as it would be on a real date, but if I couldn’t talk about it with Owen, I might never work out my career issues. “I never thought about it that way. I was so busy, I didn’t have time for things other than school, chores, and helping my parents with the store. I was in the band in school, but I never wanted to be a musician. I liked reading books and seeing movies, but I couldn’t think of any jobs doing that. I mostly just liked helping a business run well. This may be why finding the right job for me has been so challenging.” That was true in both this reality and in the real world. My real-world struggles may even have provided the fake world’s situation. Romantic comedy heroines were seldom on top of the world, doing exactly what they’d always wanted to do.
“But you did have some music in your background. What do you like to listen to?”
I groaned. “This is so embarrassing. Yeah, I played the flute, but I don’t really listen to music. I’ll have the radio on in the car, but since I don’t drive here, I don’t listen to music all that much. I’m guessing, based on what you play in the store, that you like jazz.”
“Yeah, when I listen to music. I usually prefer silence, but jazz can be restful and complicated at the same time. I don’t play music at home very often, but I sometimes like going out to listen to jazz.”
“Then we should go do that sometime.” That was, if we ever got back home. Or did this world have jazz clubs?
“We should. It’s a date.” His smile made my heart flutter. I was so used to him that it was easy to forget how cute he was. He was just Owen. Him smiling at me that way reminded me all over again of the first time I’d noticed him, when I’d mentally called him “Mr. Right.” This conversation was also showing me how little we knew each other. I knew who he was as a person, having seen him through all kinds of dire situations, but I didn’t know any of these basic things about him that usually came out in early dates. We’d already fought a magical battle together before our first date, which made small talk seem beside the point. Now, Mr. Gray’s lurking presence was forcing us to go through the “getting to know you” phase.
I took a sip of wine and asked, “What’s the best vacation you’ve ever taken?”
“My parents were very big on educational travel. We went to historical sites and museums in the area and around the world.”
“That sounds like your idea of fun.”
“It was. But the best one was when my dad was doing research at a museum in England when I was about ten, and he took me with him as his assistant. He treated me like a peer, and though we didn’t see much outside the workroom in the bowels of the museum on that trip, it was probably the most fun I’ve had on a vacation.” He grinned. “I bet your vacations were a lot more normal than that.”
“We didn’t take a lot of vacations when I was a kid. When your family has a business, there isn’t much time off, and the summer break was our busy season. We went to San Antonio during Christmas break a few times, and my friends and I did it again during college.” There hadn’t been many details, and of course no magic, but otherwise my romantic comedy character’s background had been a lot like my real one, so I hoped nothing we said raised any red flags for the gray guy.
Owen didn’t say anything about taking a vacation together, since supposedly he and I had only just met and that would be rather premature for a first dinner date, but he looked into my eyes and gave me a slight smile, and I knew he was thinking about the way he’d been promising that we’d go on vacation when everything settled down, only it never seemed to.
He drank some wine, then seemed to pull together his courage and asked, “Have you ever been in love before?”
That was a biggie. Being with him had eclipsed everything else I’d experienced, making me reevaluate my past. “Once, when I was in college,” I finally answered after taking a big swig of wine. “At least, I thought it was for real. Now, I don’t know. But it was really serious at the time. We were talking about getting married when we graduated. And then he met someone else during Christmas break our senior year and changed his mind. He told me when we got back to school for the spring semester, right when I was expecting him to propose.”
“Ouch,” he said with a wince.
“Yeah. I went through that semester in a fog. Fortunately, I already had almost all the credits I needed to graduate and just had a few classes I needed to focus on. That’s the main reason I didn’t come to the city when my friends did after graduation. I think a part of me was still hoping he’d come to his senses and want to get back together again, and I wanted to be nearby when he did. Then one day it was like someone flipped a switch, and I suddenly didn’t care anymore. It was all gone.”
“That was when you came to New York?”
“I was looking for a fresh start, I guess, and I felt like I’d held myself back for too long, so I needed to work overtime to make up for it.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know his answer, but I felt it was only fair that I should ask, “And you?”
He studied his plate, pushing the tines of his fork through the sauce. “I don’t think so, not really. I did date some in college, but I don’t get close to others easily. I might have had feelings, but it was difficult for me to show them, and by the time I got the courage to show or tell someone how I felt, she’d have given up on me and drifted off. That’s why it’s good we met at work. That way, I had a chance to get comfortable with you before you’d expect me to say or do anything.”
“I never imagined someone like you would be into someone like me.”
He seemed genuinely surprised. “Really? Why not?”
Embarrassed now, I focused on the piece of bread I was shredding into crumbs. With a shrug, I said, “Because guys generally don’t notice me that way, so I don’t expect them to, especially not guys who look like you and who are successful. You could have anyone you wanted, so I don’t expect you to want me.”
The look he gave me nearly stopped my heart with its intensity. “You should see what I see.”
It was a good thing I was sitting down or I might have swooned and hit the ground from the way he said that. I was dying to ask what he saw, but that would have been fishing for compliments. I settled for blinking back tears.
Fortunately, he said without prompting, “You’re intelligent and perceptive, and you’re really lovely in a way that goes straight to your soul. I don’t have to worry about you losing your looks because no matter what changes on the outside—the color of your hair, your skin, your size—it won’t change your essential loveliness.”
Impulsively, I leaned over and kissed him. “And that’s why I love you,” I whispered. “One of many reasons. But, wow.”
He turned bright red and abruptly changed the subject. “Do you want to get dessert?”
“Not now. Maybe we’ll stumble across a place that looks good on our way home, and then I’ll be hungrier for it.” Plus, at the moment my stomach was too busy doing cartwheels of joy for me to imagine eating anything.
We left the restaurant snuggled together, his arm around my shoulders. “I think this has been the best first date I’ve ever been on,” I said. Well, aside from having a creepy audience the whole time, but at least the restaurant didn’t burn down and a fight didn’t break out. Even better, McClusky seemed to have given up on catching Owen doing something evil and had left after he finished his dinner.
“It was good, wasn’t it? We’ll have to do it again. Not the first date part. We can’t do that again. But another date, yes.” He sounded as flustered as I felt.
We walked in the general direction of my apartment, and then at one corner he stopped, turned to face me, and kissed me. Just when I was getting into it, he whispered in my ear, “We must have done a pretty good job of convincing him we’re not a danger because our friend is heading in a different direction.”
“Time to turn the tables?”
“You’re reading my mind.”
We lingered a few moments more, then turned and headed down the crosstown street Mr. Gray had taken, keeping far enough behind him that he wouldn’t spot us. The streets weren’t terribly crowded, but there were enough people out to allow us to blend in, though I wondered if they were real or illusion. Surely there weren’t that many people imprisoned here. If they were illusions, would he know the difference between the illusions and us? We might have been more conspicuous than we thought.
But he didn’t seem to notice us as he turned to go uptown. We were getting close to the prison’s boundaries, where we’d looped back to Lincoln Center, but he didn’t slow down. At the last crosstown street, he turned again and headed into a tiny park on the corner, one of those Manhattan pocket parks filling the gap where a building once had been. There was a tall fence around the park and a gate that closed and locked behind him.
“Maybe this is the way out,” I said, grasping Owen’s arm.
We hurried to the gate. Owen made short work of the lock, and then we slipped into the park. The gateway to the park was approximately at the prison’s boundary, but we didn’t find ourselves back in Lincoln Center. We were in a park that should have been barely the size of a single brownstone, but instead it was a vast, lush garden. It was as dark in there as it had been in the city, the trees casting mysterious shadows.
“This must be where their entry point is,” Owen breathed. “We’re in the elven realms now, their more natural state.”
“You mean, this is the prison gate? The way out?”
“The way out into the elven realms,” he specified.
“But wouldn’t that be where the portal is?”
“Presumably, but I don’t think they’ll let us just wander around until we find it.” As if to prove him right, we came out of a stand of trees and nearly ran into a bunch of the gray guys, who seemed to be having a meeting. I felt a slight tingle of magic as Owen must have veiled us just in time before any of them turned our way. We scuttled behind some bushes, then crept our way to the park entrance, staying hidden as more gray guys joined the meeting.
Only when we were safely on the other side of the gate and well away from that block did either of us breathe normally again. “Okay, that was a close call,” I said with deep feeling.
“Yes, but worth it. We seem to have found the way out of the prison and into the elven lands, and maybe that was a guard shift change meeting.”
“Does that do us much good?”
He shrugged. “It’s information, and the more we have, the better. We know a spot we should probably watch, and if that was a shift change, then that’s a possible weak spot in their schedule that we might be able to exploit. I’ll have to report this to Mac in the morning.”
He took my arm and we started heading for my apartment. “Are you okay with reporting to him?” I asked.
“Why shouldn’t I be? He works at the Council level, so he outranks me, and he’s more experienced at this kind of thing—not that anyone’s really experienced at being held prisoner in another realm, but I’m mostly a laboratory guy. And I think everyone else will be more comfortable with someone other than me in charge. I’ll probably come out of this better if I’m a good little soldier instead of trying to be a general. It’s a chance for me to maybe earn some trust.”
I squeezed his arm. “It’ll be okay, I’m sure. Anyone who really knows you has to know you’re not even remotely evil.”
He didn’t say anything else until he kissed me good night at my front steps, and I got the feeling he’d be up late thinking and planning—or worrying. As tired as I was, I didn’t go to bed until I’d written out a few more memories and stashed them in places I was sure to run across them but where no one else was likely to see them, just in case they searched my place when I wasn’t there.
*
The next morning, Owen and I had agreed to meet for breakfast at Perdita’s diner so we could talk before we went to the store, where we seemed to be under tighter surveillance. The gray guy wasn’t outside my apartment, so we must have convinced him—or bored him to death—on our date the night before. I arrived first. “Your usual?” the still-enchanted Perdita greeted me.
“No, Perry, I need breakfast this morning.”
“Then have a seat.” She gestured toward a nearby table.
Owen joined me a few minutes later. When I looked across the table at him, a memory struck me. “It was you that first morning, saving me from one of Perdita’s spills, wasn’t it? I should have known then. You’d think that would have snapped me out of it immediately.”
“Yeah, it was me, and I should have known, too. There was just something about you. It reminded me of when I first saw you for real.” We both kept our voices low as we talked, since we had no idea who among us might be the guards assigned to keep an eye on us instead of other prisoners or part of the scenery.
“That’s what it was like for you?”
“Yeah, it was.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “Because time sort of seemed to come to a halt for me, like there was nothing else in the universe.”
“Yep, that was it.”
I got a lump in my throat. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. That’s why I could barely talk to you when Rod and I met you for that interview. I felt like I was finally meeting my celebrity crush, and I was terrified of making a fool of myself.”
I gazed at him with an adoring smile, warm from the sensation of falling in love all over again. I could thank the elves for that much.
Perdita came over to pour us coffee and take our orders. She glanced at Owen, then at me, then back at Owen, then she grinned and said, “So, you did listen to Florence.”
“Yeah, I did,” I said.
“Good. I’m glad. Now, I’ll have these out in a moment for you.”
When she was gone, I whispered to Owen, “I thought she was on the verge of something there.”
“It’s probably best not to snap her out of it in public. We don’t know who might be watching.”
“Are we sure we want to snap her out of it at all? She’s not very good at being stealthy. She makes a great diversion, but she can’t hide what she’s thinking.”
“But she knows everyone. She’d probably have access to half the prisoners here.”
“Then we should save her for when we want numbers. Right now, we need information.”
He nodded. “That’s a good point. If we break the spell on her too soon, everyone will know about it.”
Perdita returned a moment later to refill our coffee. “Your breakfast should be ready in a sec.” With a smile, she added, “I’m so glad you listened to Florence. You two just seem right together, you know?” She started pouring coffee into my mug, and then she frowned and blinked. Coffee spilled over the rim of my mug as she gaped at me.
And then she snapped out of whatever wonderland she’d zoned off to and jumped out of the way, the coffee carafe slipping out of her hand and shattering on the floor. “Oh, sorry Miss–I mean Katie. Let me clean that up for you.” But instead of reaching for the towel tucked into her apron, she waved her hand and made the coffee disappear from the table. That seemed to finally sink in, and she gasped and blurted, “Katie, Owen, what’s going on here?”
So much for breaking the spell only in private or for not bringing Perdita in until we knew more. This was a rather spectacular display of spell-breaking. I was sure that everyone had turned to look when the carafe broke. I just hoped they hadn’t seen her magic away the spilled coffee.
Owen reacted while I was still thinking. He leapt out of his seat and caught Perdita like he was afraid she’d faint, then moved her to his seat. “Take deep breaths,” he told her loudly enough for those around us to hear.
Another waitress rushed over to see what happened and called out for a busboy to come clean up the broken carafe and the remains of the coffee. “Are you okay?” she asked Perdita.
I jumped in before Perdita could answer. “She probably needs some fresh air. I’ll take her outside.” I got up and went over to her, took her by the hand, and said firmly, “Come on, Perry, let’s go outside for a second.”
She looked up at me, opened her mouth to speak, then saw the expression on my face and let me lead her out of the diner. As soon as we were outside, she gasped, “What is this place? What’s happening?”
“Hush!” I urged, glancing around to see if anyone was watching or listening before I briefed her. “Seeing Owen and me together must have broken the spell for you,” I concluded.
“Oh my God! What do we do? How do we get home? My mom will be so worried. That is, if she isn’t here, too. What if they took my family because I showed you that flyer?” She sounded so hysterical I worried that I’d have to slap her out of it.
Instead, I grabbed her shoulders firmly and said, “Calm down! If they know the spell’s broken, they may try to hit us again with it, and then we may not be able to break it. What’s the last thing you remember before you ended up here?”
“I was on my way home from work. I got into the vestibule of my building, and then nothing. I was suddenly working in a diner, only I thought that was where I’d always been.”
“Don’t worry, if you don’t recall running into your family here, they probably aren’t here,” I said, as gently as I could in this urgent situation. “This seems to be a pretty small world. You have to go on playing your role, pretending that nothing has changed. Can you do that?”
“But I’m a terrible waitress. I’m so clumsy.”
I couldn’t fight back a wry smile. “That actually hasn’t changed here.”
She stopped hyperventilating. “Oh. Yeah, you’re right. I have been a terrible waitress. Why did they make me a waitress?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why they did half of what they did. Have you ever thought about being a waitress?”
“I’ve sometimes thought that would be where I ended up if I screwed up another job, and then I’d be even worse at being a waitress than I was at anything else. And I was worried that if the elves and the wizards stopped dealing with each other, I’d lose my job.”
“Well, that’s apparently where your subconscious placed you in this world. The elves are up to something, but here, all the prisoners are on the same team, wizard or elf. For now, though, you have to go on like nothing is different. Assume everyone around you is in on it until we know more and can come up with a plan. Can you do that?”
“There are so many people here that I know!”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured, and we’ll take care of them when we know more. But just go on for now, okay?”
She took a few deep breaths, then nodded. “Okay. I can do this.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “I know you can. Now, are you ready to go back inside?”
“I guess. Your breakfast is probably ready.”
Back in the diner, the floor had been cleaned and the other waitress had put our meals on the table. “You okay?” she asked Perdita.
“Yeah. I don’t know what came over me.” She grinned and added, “Maybe all the grease I’ve inhaled in here just came out of my pores and made that coffeepot slip out of my hand. Sorry about that, Katie, Owen.”
“No problem,” Owen said with a thin smile.
When the diner staff had left us to our meals, he whispered, “How did it go?”
“She’s freaked out, but I gave her the scoop. Now I just guess we’ll have to see if she can pull it off.”
“Maybe I should enchant her,” he mused.
“Let’s see what she does. She does know a lot of people and could be helpful for passing messages here. I don’t see any of the gray guys.” I groaned. “And I forgot to warn her about them.”
“If you warned her, she’d pay more attention to them.”
“Good point. And now we know just how tenuous that spell can be. All it took for her was seeing us together.”
Perdita seemed to be pulling off the deception as we finished breakfast. She didn’t do any obviously amateur stuff like winking at us. Her persona here was close enough to her real self that there weren’t any obvious differences. If she could just remember not to use magic, I thought she’d be okay.
And if not, she’d blow the whole thing wide open.