chapter Nine
I felt dizzy and groggy, like I’d been suddenly awakened from a deep sleep and hadn’t quite caught my bearings while the dream world I’d just left still had a grip on my brain and the real world hadn’t yet come into focus. What was going on here?
Owen looked similarly confused. He clasped my hands in his and whispered urgently, “I think we need to talk.”
I blinked, then remembered that we were standing in the middle of a bookstore. A small crowd of shoppers hovered nearby, pretending not to notice us while still watching avidly. But, a bookstore? What were we doing in a bookstore?
Owen released one of my hands and led me to the maps section under the stairs, where no one was browsing. “What’s the last thing you remember—really remember, when you know it was us?”
I closed my eyes to think, then said, “We went into that warehouse that Earl sent us a picture of. There was something in there, but I didn’t get a good look at it before everything went black. And then I was here in the store just now, except I also remember having been here all along. I think I know when it started being really me instead of fake memories, but I’m not entirely sure.” I knew I was babbling, but I’d just discovered that I’d apparently been living someone else’s life without knowing who I really was, so I figured that being freaked-out was perfectly understandable.
He nodded. “Same with me—everything went black, then I was here. What I think we saw was a portal.”
“So we’re wherever that portal went? Which is apparently the universe of bad romantic comedies. Why couldn’t I get Narnia?”
“Romantic comedies?”
“That’s what I seem to have been living, which would explain why I kept thinking I heard a musical soundtrack in the background and why my life seemed to go by in a series of montages. It even fit the plot. I had the safe, seemingly nice guy who didn’t fulfill me, and then you came along and I was torn. I had the snarky best friend giving me romantic advice—she was pushing me toward you, by the way. I even did the mad dash across town when I realized you were the one for me. It was right out of that movie Nita and I watched the other night. Or however long ago that was. We’ve been here at least a month, it seems, but with all those montages, it’s hard to tell.” I was babbling again, but it was better than screaming, which was what I wanted to do.
Someone entered the map section and browsed for a few minutes, forcing us into silence. I tried taking a few deep, cleansing breaths since I was afraid I was on the verge of hyperventilating. I’d been kidnapped and my mind had been messed with. I didn’t know where I was or how long I’d been there. It was a lot to take in.
The shopper was still pondering two different tourist maps of the city, and I got the feeling he was memorizing the information so he wouldn’t have to buy one. Owen must have had the same thought, for he rolled his eyes and gestured with his head. We slipped out of the alcove below the stairs and headed for his office. By this time, the small crowd that had watched our romantic moment had dispersed.
As soon as we were safely inside with the door closed, I flopped down into a chair and kicked off my high heels. “Now, where are we, really?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure we’re not in the real New York.”
Owen leaned against the edge of his desk. “No, we’re not. I know every bookstore in the city, and this isn’t one of them.” His voice grew wistful for a moment. “Though I kind of wish it was. We must be in the elven lands.”
“And where’s that?”
“It’s, well, you weren’t too far off when you said Narnia. It’s another magical world that exists on a different plane.”
“You mean there’s a whole fantasy world in some other magical dimension—and it looks a lot like our New York, but without the magic?”
“I don’t think this is the way the whole world looks. It was probably created just for the people they took out of New York. The elves have ways of pulling your fantasies out of your head and giving them to you. And of making time do funny things.”
“You wanted to live in a bad romantic comedy?” I asked in surprise.
“I sometimes wish I could run a bookstore and not have to worry about saving the world or being suspected of being the next great evil. I might have been thinking along those lines that night. That’s what they seem to have given me. But is this what you want?” He sounded surprised and skeptical.
“I wouldn’t say that I normally want this kind of thing,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable about having my psyche exposed like this. “I was just thinking about it, so I guess it was at the top of my mind when they hit us with the whammy. Like I said, Nita and I had just watched a movie like this, and maybe for a moment I thought life might be easier if it went that way. But why do this to us? Is this their idea of torture?”
“Lots of people have been disappearing, so maybe they’ve been getting inconvenient people out of the way.”
“Or people who’ve seen something they shouldn’t.” I thought back on my time in this place, then said, “Perdita’s here—she’s the waitress at the café I pass on the way to work.”
“Earl runs the science fiction department, and I think my Council watchdogs have been playing chess across the street.”
“I wonder what fantasies they’re living out, and what they know that got them sent here.”
“You have to admit, this is a brilliant concept for a prison. If you think you’re where you belong and if you’re living out your dreams, will you try to escape? Your brain might even resist the truth because it’s not something you want to know. You’ll try to escape from a miserable prison, but not your dream life.”
“Then why did we remember?”
He smiled and gave me a look that made me melt. “Maybe our real life is our dream, when it comes down to it. This world tried to keep us apart, and we resisted that.”
“And the kiss sealed the deal. How very fairy-tale.”
He nodded. “It was the ultimate contrast between the fantasy and reality, and it brought it all back.” I had to smile. Leave it to him to take the magic out of magic. In my mind, though, the kiss broke the evil spell, no matter what he said. “I suspect your waning magic had something to do with it,” he continued. “They wouldn’t have been able to insert you into this reality if you hadn’t been susceptible to magic, but then using the magic on you used up some of your magic, which made the spell on you weaker.”
“Our magical games last night probably didn’t help that. Or did help, I suppose. That may be what allowed me to resist.” That thought sparked a realization. “I don’t think everyone here is a prisoner, though. Some of the people we’ve been interacting with must be the guards, so to speak. I overheard Josh and Florence talking about something to do with a scenario—they must have been talking about the romantic comedy thing. It sounded like they were part of a setup and were conspiring against me. I was trying to get away from them when Josh caught me. He must have hit me with a stronger spell.”
“That was why you turned against me.”
I cringed. “Sorry about that, but I suddenly remembered you as the boss who was coming on to me and my feelings for him got a lot more intense.”
“He must have been trying to keep us apart. Us finding each other again probably wasn’t part of their plan.”
“Florence seemed to be in on it, too, from the way she talked to Josh, but she kept trying to push me away from Josh and toward you. She told him it was because I was supposed to resist her, but I think she was giving me clues all along. In fact, when we had a movie night, she picked that same movie Nita and I watched and pointed out the pattern.” I groaned. “I should have seen it then.”
“You were under a spell. I’m not sure you were capable of seeing it.”
“I’m so glad all that wasn’t real, though. I can’t imagine a universe where I’d have dated someone like Josh.” I couldn’t fight back a shudder. “When they gave me fake memories of dating him, they left out the pertinent details, like why.”
“I think the spell was supposed to keep you happy enough not to ask pesky questions like that.”
“The next question is, how do we get out of here and get back home? Do you know how to get out of the eleven lands?”
He ran his hands through his hair, rumpling it rather adorably. “I don’t know a lot about this. It’s not the sort of thing they talk about with outsiders. I’ve just read a few mentions, and it comes up often in folklore. We may be in a constrained area within their realm. There’s a lot we’ll have to figure out to have any idea how to get out or if we even can.”
“What about all the other people who are stuck here? Should we try to break the spell on them?” I grimaced. “I hope I don’t have to kiss them. I’ve already kissed my share of frogs.”
He gave me a wry smile. “I don’t think that would do any good—and I’m not just speaking out of jealousy. What we’ll need to do is come up with some way to generate enough cognitive dissonance to jolt them out of the spell. Reminding them of something from the real world should work because it will create too much contrast between what they’re experiencing and what they know to be real. From there, it should snowball. We can wake up the people we know enough about, and then they can find and work on the people they know.”
“And then prison break?”
“Then I hope some of them remember more than we do about what was in that warehouse. I suspect that will be key to knowing why we’re here and maybe even how to get out.”
“So I guess the first order of business is to wake up as many people as possible and see what they know about what the elves are up to,” I said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to be careful. We don’t want to clue the bad guys in on the fact that we know, or they might hit us with another whammy.”
“Right, we’ll have to try to act like nothing has changed.”
I made a sour face. “That doesn’t mean I have to go back to Josh, does it?”
“No, you made that decision while still under the spell. Maybe they’ll relax if they think we can get together without it breaking the spell. We’ll just have to act like we’re the bookstore owner and the employee who’ve fallen in love and who have no idea that they’re wizards trapped in a magical construct.”
“I’m not sure how we should act, then—or if they’ll know. The movies usually end soon after that kiss, after I’ve dashed across town to find you and tell you I love you. If anything happens beyond this point, it flashes forward to the wedding, and I don’t think that’s a logical next step. I mean, I just had another guy proposing to me an hour ago.”
“That would be rushing things,” he deadpanned. “But maybe we should quit worrying too much about being movie characters and just act like normal people. We should be okay as long as we don’t do anything that doesn’t fit this reality.”
“Do you think the elves are spying on us remotely, even when we’re in private, or only when we’re in public?”
“If they can spy remotely, we can expect to be put in more secure custody at any moment because they’ll know we broke the spell. I think they’d have already done something about us discovering magic if they’d been watching us all this time.”
“Good point.”
He checked his watch. “It’s almost closing time. If I’m being normal, I’ll make a pass through the store and close out all the registers. Then we should probably do something appropriately date-like. Want to go out for a drink?”
“I could really use a drink.”
“Drink it is, then, after we close. You’re welcome to hide out in here until then.”
I shook my head, stood, and stepped back into my shoes. “Nope. I’m not letting you out of my sight. I’m too afraid that the next time I see you, you’ll be a mild-mannered bookstore owner again.”
I was nervous about leaving the store after we closed because I wasn’t sure what we’d find outside, now that the spell was broken. Was whatever magic that made this place look like New York tied to the magic that gave us our false identities? It looked the same when we stepped outside, but then as I scanned the area while waiting for Owen to lock up, I noticed something very different. There were elves all around us—elves who actually looked like elves, pointy ears and all. They all wore gray outfits that looked like something in a science fiction movie from the era when they apparently thought bland jumpsuits were the clothing of the future. Some of the elves in gray stood near us on the sidewalk. Others were across the street. Nobody who passed by them seemed to notice them. And they were definitely watching us.
I put my arm around Owen’s waist and leaned my head against his shoulder while he was still facing the store and whispered, “We’re being watched, and I don’t think we’re supposed to be able to see them. Josh must have alerted the powers that be that I was resisting the spell.”
He put his keys in his pocket, put his arm around me and murmured, “All we have to do is look like we’ve just discovered we’re in love with each other.”
“And have no idea that we’re in some kind of fantasy elven concentration camp. That’ll be the hard part. I think we can handle the other.”
“If we’re convincing enough with the other, we shouldn’t have to worry about convincing them we don’t know.” He tilted my chin up and kissed me like he hadn’t kissed me in ages. “Just getting into character,” he whispered.
“Well, it worked. You’ve made me woozy.”
We headed down the sidewalk with our arms around each other, gazing at each other as if we were the only two people on the planet. We stopped for quick kisses at each intersection, then laughed and ran across the streets holding hands when impatient motorists honked. The whole time, I saw the gray guys out of the corner of my eye. It didn’t seem like all of them had followed us, but there were enough of them.
The bar we found was a relatively quiet, elegant place rather than a raucous neighborhood pub, but it was still too loud for intimate conversation. Between the music on the sound system—the kind of music that would have been called “soft” if the volume hadn’t been turned to maximum—and the sound of dozens of conversations in a small space, there was a dull roar of background noise that made it necessary to shout from inches away in order to be heard. The gray guys followed us inside, but they didn’t find a table or order drinks. They just stood nearby.
Owen got wine for the two of us, and then we leaned against the small open spot near the end of the bar. He did a slight double take as he looked at me, and for a moment I wondered if he’d been re-enchanted while ordering drinks. Instead, he grinned and said, “That’s a really nice dress, by the way.”
I looked down at it, remembering the important date I’d dressed for in another lifetime, and said, “Thanks. I have no idea where I got it.”
With the self-consciousness from being watched and from needing to shout, I didn’t have to conjure up the feeling of being on a first date. It was just as awkward as any “he’s a great guy, but he just needs a little confidence” blind date I’d ever been on. As we drank wine and shouted superficial inanities at each other, I noticed that the gray guys were drifting away, apparently convinced by our act. When we were down to one observer, we left the bar.
We walked arm in arm toward my nearby apartment. The gray guy was still with us, but far enough away that we could whisper without being overheard, unless he had magically enhanced hearing. “You know, none of this is quite perfectly New York,” I said as we walked through streets that looked right but that were all wrong. “It’s all slightly similar, but not the same.”
Then I knew what it reminded me of. “It’s like those movies or TV shows that are set in New York but filmed in Toronto or on a backlot in Hollywood. You get the establishing shot of New York, and then the street scenes look New York-ish, but a New Yorker would know that those locations aren’t anywhere in the city. This neighborhood could play the Upper West Side in a movie, but I’d bet you’d never find any of these places in the actual Upper West Side.” I groaned and added, “So not only did they stick me in a bad romantic comedy movie, but it’s also a low-budget one!”
“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.”