chapter Seventeen
My only plan was to not get caught. That wasn’t a great plan, but I figured I had nothing to lose. The results were likely to be the same, either way, but if I ran, I had a slightly better chance of not being caught and reset. If I didn’t run, it was inevitable.
“What’s going on? Why are we running?” Owen asked, but to his credit, he didn’t stop running. My urgency must have been contagious.
“I’ll explain later,” I said, panting.
With his much longer legs, Earl loped easily ahead of us, clearing a path down the sidewalk. We needed enough distance from our pursuers for us to duck inside a building and hide before they noticed where we’d gone.
A glance over my shoulder told me that I didn’t have nearly enough room to maneuver. They were closing fast, and I was sure others would arrive soon. I needed to act now.
We reached a greengrocer’s, and I got an idea. This was a foot chase in a world out of a movie. So, like in the movies, I should tip things over in my pursuer’s path. The way ahead of me seemed to have been designed for such a move.
I kicked the front legs out from under a bin of oranges, sending them crashing to the sidewalk, then knocked over the adjacent bin of apples. For a moment, I felt bad about messing up the shop like that, but then I remembered that this place wasn’t real. The fruit was probably an illusion. I just hoped it was real enough to slow down the gray guys.
I didn’t take the time to look, though. After knocking over a rack to block the sidewalk entirely, I dragged Owen toward a nearby sidewalk café and turned a table onto its side so that its umbrella not only blocked the sidewalk but also obscured the view of what happened beyond it. Then we darted around the next corner.
The gray guys came around the corner, and now they weren’t just chasing us. They sent magic at us. I felt its approach but wasn’t sure what the spell was supposed to do. I instinctively used the protection spell Rod and Owen had taught me to block it.
When their spell didn’t work, our pursuers kept up the chase. “Earl!” I warned, but he didn’t seem too worried. He merely turned back, waved his free hand, and there was a huge burst of light. He then shouted, “This way!” and pulled us into a narrow passage between buildings. We ran down a set of stairs leading to a basement door and huddled at the foot of the stairwell.
“What’s going on here?” Owen asked, looking truly alarmed.
“I’ll explain in a moment, when we’re safe,” I said.
He reached for the handle of the basement door. “Wouldn’t it be better to hide inside?”
Earl slapped his hand away. “Not now.”
I hardly dared breathe while we waited for discovery. I thought I heard footsteps. Had they followed us into the passage? Finally, Earl cautiously raised himself enough to peer out of the stairwell. When he was satisfied that the gray guys were gone, he opened the basement door and gestured for us to enter.
Earl had formed a magical light after the door closed behind us. Owen jumped back from the light, startled, then asked, “What is that? And why didn’t we open the door earlier?”
“I didn’t know how long my blast would obscure their vision. They wouldn’t see us in the stairwell from the street, but they might have noticed the door opening.”
“There was no one there,” Owen protested. Then he looked around the empty shell of the basement. “What is this place? And what’s going on?” He sounded less alarmed than most people might under the circumstances, but more alarmed than I was used to hearing from Owen.
It would have been pleasant if I could have snapped him out of it with a kiss, but that hadn’t worked on me the last time, and I doubted either of us were really in a kissing mood at the moment. I also wasn’t in the mood for trying to explain anything. “Check your pockets,” I said. I suspected that under the circumstances, he’d be more willing to believe himself than me.
“What do my pockets have to do with this?”
“Just check. Please.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded square of paper. I held my breath while he unfolded it and read it. If it didn’t work, I wasn’t sure what to do. I had a lot of memories of him, but picking the one that was a surefire hit would be a challenge. As he read, he blinked, and I couldn’t tell what had happened.
Because I couldn’t bear to wait for the outcome and I couldn’t risk not restoring him, I said shakily, “On our first real date, the restaurant caught fire. Then there was the time I fell through the ice in the Central Park rink. Oh, and you had pet dragons.” That had to either jolt him back to himself or convince him I was insane.
He gave me a funny look, then his eyes focused and I could tell he was my Owen again. He swayed, and I rushed forward to catch him.
He fell into my arms, but more out of relief than because he was fainting from shock. “Oh, thank you,” he breathed in my ear as he held me.
“You’re you again?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Yeah, wizard and all. What happened?”
“Something must have gone wrong with last night’s operation,” Earl said. “Maybe they sensed the illusion our spy used. It seems like they’ve gone around resetting all the prisoners.”
“We’re now fugitives. We’ve entered the lurking in basements and attics phase of the resistance movement,” I added. “I was afraid they might do something more drastic than just resetting me again if they caught me, since they thought they’d already got me once.”
“How did you avoid it?” Owen asked.
“I think it was a mix of my magic being weak and me shielding it slightly.”
“Good work! So, now what, boss?”
My legs were shaking from our desperate escape, so I sank to sit on the floor, and the two guys joined me. “I guess we’ll have to start all over again, waking people up, and we’ll need a new plan,” I said. “That will be more complicated while we’re fugitives.”
“I’m not sure we should wake everyone,” Owen said.
“I take it you’re not going to revive Mac right away?”
“I’m not going to revive anyone right away. We need to lie low.”
“I just wish we could find a way to get word back home. We don’t seem to be able to get to their portal. It’s too bad we can’t make one of our own.”
“Maybe we could,” Owen said.
“Between worlds?” Earl asked, his eyebrows rising.
“Not big enough to send us, but a message, maybe. If I can aim it properly, we could send it where we’re sure our people would find it. It’ll take a lot of power, so we’ll need to revive enough people.”
“You know how to do that?” Earl asked.
“I’ve never tried it, but I know the theory.” Owen didn’t sound confident enough to reassure me.
“If the illusion was enough to get their attention, wouldn’t that kind of power be noticeable?” I asked.
“It depends,” Earl said. “There’s a lot of magic going on here all the time, just keeping this place running. What they noticed was magic they didn’t expect to be there. If we can hide among their magic, we might get away with it.”
The two of them looked at me, and I realized they were waiting for a decision from their leader. “Do you have any other ideas?” I asked.
“I don’t think Mac’s prison riot would help much,” Owen said.
“And it doesn’t look like we can get through a portal, ourselves. Sending out a message may be our only hope, and we don’t have a lot of time to waste.” I took a deep breath, then said as forcefully as I could manage, “Let’s do it. How many people do you think you’ll need?”
“At least five. More if we can swing it.”
I turned to Earl. “Do you think you can get that many without being noticed?”
“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.”
“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?”