chapter Twenty-One
“He’s getting away!” I shouted, then realized that didn’t do any good because no one could hear me. I dialed Sam on my phone. “Stop Sylvester! He’s headed to the roof!” I said when he answered.
“Got it, doll,” he replied, and I saw him already flying toward the balcony.
“When did you get that?” Owen asked.
“A lot has happened since the last time you saw me,” I said mysteriously as I slid the phone back into my pocket.
We moved through the crowd toward the stairs. “It has? How much time has gone by?” Owen asked as we ran.
He looked so alarmed that I didn’t have the heart to keep teasing him. “Only a couple of hours. Merlin gave me the phone. I guess when we went missing they decided it would be a good thing for people to be able to reach me, and I’ll admit it’s come in handy tonight.”
Sam could only hamper Sylvester’s escape, since Sylvester fought back with magic. I got out my phone again and called Merlin. “Are you here yet?” I asked.
“Almost.”
“The roof!” I shouted, forgetting the fact that I was giving orders to my boss. I didn’t think he’d mind my tone under the circumstances.
Owen and I reached the balcony and rushed for the stairwell door where Sylvester had just disappeared. Earl and Brad were right behind us, and when they saw us running, Mac and McClusky joined the chase. Rod came after them. All those people running up the stairs sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants as our footsteps echoed around the stairwell.
We made it out onto the roof just as Merlin stepped nimbly off a flying carpet hovering a couple of feet off the ground. He then turned to help Granny down. When Sylvester saw Merlin, he stopped so abruptly that he skidded a few inches. The rest of us fanned out to surround him.
“Why, Sylvester, imagine seeing you here,” Merlin said, sounding like he was paying a social call. “I was just at your office, looking for you.”
Sylvester started to run for the stairs, but Owen and I blocked the way. The Elf Lord did a double take when he saw us. “You? But how did …” His voice trailed off as his expression clouded.
“How did we get caught in your trap and taken prisoner in your freaky other world?” I finished his sentence for him. “Well, there was an unintended consequence to your last little scheme, so when we stumbled upon your portal, we got zapped.”
“If that’s the case, then out of my way!” he shouted, raising his arms to do a spell.
I stepped in front of Owen and felt the magic hit me, but it had no effect. “Sorry, I’m back to normal,” I said with a shrug.
“And so am I,” Owen said coolly. He raised his hands, as though preparing to do a spell, but then he froze. I followed his gaze to see that he was looking across the circle at the two Council men, who were staring at him. McClusky looked smug, like he’d been vindicated, and Mac’s forehead was creased with concern. Owen lowered his hands.
Sylvester didn’t get the opportunity to take advantage of that, though, because Merlin and Granny were on him. They worked surprisingly well as a team—disturbingly well, really. Sylvester whirled to face them, and it appeared that Granny was blocking his spells while Merlin focused on attack.
Merlin was able to hold Sylvester. The Elf Lord was still doing enough magic to keep the rest of us at bay, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Brad moved in as close as he dared and said, “You thought you could silence us, but now your treachery will be even more widely known.” He smiled and added, “But perhaps there’s a nice place you could start over, a whole city where you can rule to your heart’s content.”
“You wouldn’t!” Sylvester snarled.
“Why not? You did,” Earl said.
“Quick, pick your favorite fantasy, and maybe they can give it to you,” I said. “But I don’t recommend the romantic comedy one.”
“There is a bookstore that needs someone to run it,” Owen put in. “Do you like books?”
“Oh, no, he’s not getting away that easily,” Mac said. “He has to answer for multiple counts of kidnapping.”
“This isn’t Council jurisdiction,” Merlin said mildly. “This is an elf matter. We wizards are merely lending our support.”
“The leaders of the elven lands should decide his fate,” Brad said. “More elves were taken from their realm than wizards were taken from this world.”
“I will accept the authority of the Council,” Sylvester shouted. I wasn’t so sure he was making the right choice, but I figured it was his funeral. Just so long as he couldn’t interfere in my life again, I’d be happy.
Mac and his partner looked awfully pleased with themselves as they stepped forward to take Sylvester into custody. When they reached him, he suddenly grabbed their wrists, and their faces went strangely blank, as though they’d forgotten who they were. Then they went blanker than that, like they were losing consciousness. He wasn’t just giving them the same identity-erasing whammy he’d given us. He was killing them, and they were too dazed to do anything about it. Owen shouted a warning. When they didn’t respond, he jumped forward to break Sylvester’s grasp on them. But when he touched Sylvester, the Elf Lord’s touch had the same effect on him as it had on them, and he fell to his knees. Mac and McClusky staggered, still too stunned to help, so I ran over and brought the point of my elbow down hard on Sylvester’s wrist, forcing him to release Owen.
As the others teamed up to stop the Elf Lord, I leaned over Owen. He was conscious and breathing, but he seemed a little unsteady. “Do I need to remind you who you are?” I asked him without taking my eyes off the Elf Lord.
“I’m good,” he said, pushing himself back to his feet.
Mac and McClusky, now recovered, came over to Owen. “Thanks, man,” McClusky said, extending his hand to Owen. Owen looked at it skeptically for a moment before shaking it. Mac clapped him on the shoulder and gave him an approving nod.
“So, you’ll be giving a good report to the Council, right?” I prompted. “After all, he may have just saved your lives, at risk to himself.”
“I think we can put in a good word,” Mac said. He glanced at McClusky, who gave a reluctant nod.
By this time, more elves had come up the stairs and joined us on the roof. Brad went over to one of them, and they had a brief conversation, then Brad returned to Merlin. “They’ll take him through the portal and lock him in the containment area,” Brad reported. “That should keep him from being a problem here. A few of the elves want to stay, at least for a while, but the rest will return home, and they’ll find and return any remaining prisoners there.”
“That does appear to be the best solution,” Merlin said. “Thank you for your assistance.”
Brad shot me a smile. “Actually, it was Katie who saved us all. She was our resistance leader.”
Merlin turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “You neglected to mention that in your report.”
“I skipped the trivial details,” I said with a shrug.
“Now that her immunity’s back, maybe she should talk to Sam,” Owen suggested. “He could probably use her in Security. She has a knack for covert operations.”
“Is that something that interests you, Miss Chandler?” Merlin asked.
“Yeah, I think it does,” I said. “Just as long as I don’t have to make coffee anymore.” Merlin looked completely blank, since that was another of the trivial details I’d omitted, but Owen and I laughed.
We returned downstairs, where the elves who wanted to return to their realm were already going through the portal. Two of them took Sylvester through between them, using something that looked like the elvish version of the wizards’ silver chains as restraints. Every so often, a few people came through from the other side, blinking and looking a little confused.
When I went back to the stereo to retrieve Jake’s iPod, I was surprised to find my purse and Owen’s coat in a pile under the stereo table. It looked like they’d just tossed their captives’ personal effects aside. That meant I still had my apartment keys, ID, and credit cards and he had his wallet and phone. We’d gone through all that and hadn’t lost anything but a week.
But I wasn’t quite ready to return to normal reality yet. I’d spent the entire time I was a prisoner wanting to get home, and now I found myself thinking a little longingly of the world I’d left. Well, mostly my apartment. I’d gotten used to having that lovely brownstone apartment all to myself. Going back to sharing a two-bedroom in an old tenement building with three other people was going to be a real adjustment.
While the others were still wrapping things up, I went back up the stairs to the roof for perhaps the last bit of peace and quiet I’d probably have for a long time. But when I reached the roof door, I found that it had started raining.
“What was that about dancing on a rooftop in the rain?” Owen’s voice said from behind me.
“It’s a romantic movie cliché,” I replied.
“Still, don’t you think we should give it a try? We hit all the other clichés. Why not that one? They’re even playing our song.”
“I didn’t know we had a song. And where did they get the music? They aren’t using the enchanted iPod, are they?”
“I think they’re singing.”
I listened for a moment before I realized that what I was hearing was a hundred elves singing a Bee Gees song. “Okay, in that case, we have to try dancing,” I said, turning to face him. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
He took my hand and led me onto the roof. It was only a light rain, just enough to make my skin tingle where it touched, which felt a lot like magic surrounding me. Owen took me into his arms, making my skin tingle in a totally different way, and we moved to the unearthly sound of the elven chorus singing “How Deep Is Your Love.”
“Well, that was interesting,” I said after a while.
“Dancing on the rooftop in the rain?”
“No, though I am starting to see the appeal. But I meant everything that’s just happened to us.”
“Then ‘interesting’ is the understatement of the century.”
“I don’t even know what to make of it. It’s almost like a dream. Now that we’re back in the real New York, it doesn’t seem like it was real, and yet it’s more real to me right now than my real life.”
“Do you know what I find most amazing about that whole experience?”
“What?”
“That even when they made us forget not only each other but who we really were, we still somehow found each other and knew we belonged together. It happened all over again when we weren’t even ourselves, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t their plan.”
“Florence did help nudge things along.”
“But did she really make that much difference? She mostly planted doubts about the other guy.”
“So I suppose that means we really do belong together,” I said, feeling my heart fluttering a little as I rested my head on his shoulder.
“It does seem rather inevitable, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t mind,” I said with a smile.
“I was hoping you felt that way.” He loosened his hold on me, then with a casual wave of his hand, he started a small shower of sparks, like the ones we’d created in the bookstore. As useful as magic could be, that little trick was the one I thought I’d miss the most.
And then my heart leapt into my throat when he went down onto one knee. With another wave of his hand, a glowing circle of light appeared in his palm. “Since it seems like we’ll end up together no matter where or who we are, that we love each other in any realm we visit, will you marry me and make it official?”
It wasn’t the way I’d ever imagined being proposed to, but it was exactly what fit for Owen. It was private, magical, and meaningful. I couldn’t seem to find the words to respond, so I nodded and held my hand out so he could slide the glowing circle onto my finger.
“This is just a placeholder,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “We’ll go shopping for a real ring.”
I pulled him to his feet, then kissed him as showers of sparks continued to fall around us. It seemed that the romantic comedy the elves had forced us into had reached its happy ending.
The strains of “Too Much Heaven” floated up the stairwell as the elves began a new song. “I guess that’s the closing credits,” Owen whispered.
“Thank goodness I ended up with Mr. Right,” I responded. “And we’ll live happily ever after.”