Katie Chandler - Damsel under Stress Part 16

"I told my roommates, and they're excited about it," I said. "And don't worry, I'll see to it that he comes up with some kind of costume." That was awfully big talk coming from me when I had no idea what I was going to wear, but dressing me was Gemma's mission in life, and I figured I'd leave it to her.

"I can't wait to see what you come up with," Rod said with a laugh. "I should warn you, though, that you're dealing with the kid who wore the same Robin Hood costume for Halloween every year until he outgrew it. Getting him into a costume will be a real challenge."

When we'd said good-bye to him and continued on our way to the lobby, I couldn't resist asking, "Robin Hood?"

"I liked the movie."

"The one with Errol Flynn?"

"The Disney one, where Robin Hood's a fox. Gloria questioned the moral lesson of robbery ever being good, regardless of who was being robbed, but she thought the cartoon presentation was benign enough in its anthropomorphizing of the animal characters, as long as I also learned the true history of King Richard and Prince John." Then he gave a crooked, rueful grin. "I just wanted to be able to shoot a bow and arrow."

"I liked that one, too," I admitted. "I went as Maid Marian for Halloween one year, but n.o.body knew who I was supposed to be and I got very frustrated. And by the way, the immunity is gone. I saw Rod's illusion, full-strength." Now that I thought about it, I hadn't noticed the usual effects of his attraction spell. Either he hadn't wasted the effort of using it on me, or Owen's nonmagical spell on me was too strong for me to notice anyone else when he was around.

"That's good to know. I think." He stopped just inside the main entrance and said, "If you've got the necklace with you, maybe you should put it on now." I fished it out of my purse, and he took it from me to fasten around my neck while I held my hair up out of the way. It seemed to take him forever to get it fastened, and I couldn't tell if he was fumbling with the clasp or deliberately torturing me by touching me lightly on the back of my neck over and over again. When we left the building, he had a protective arm around my waist. I'd seen what he could do and knew without a doubt that he wouldn't allow anything to happen to me.

We got on the subway and staked out a pole, standing face-to-face on either side of it. As the train lurched forward, he looked over the top of my head at the ads that ran the length of the car, just under the ceiling, then he bent to speak directly into my ear. "Tell me what you see."

I looked up and straight into his eyes, close enough to see the slight color variations throughout the midnight blue. If I wasn't mistaken, there were flecks of silver in there. But I didn't think that was what he was talking about. "You mean the ads?" I forced myself to look away from his eyes and at the ads. "They're just the usual 'get your degree and have a better life' ads in Spanish."

"You read Spanish?"

"You're not the only one who knows other languages. I'm from Texas. We have to learn Spanish in school."

"And that's all you see?"

"Yeah."

"What's your necklace doing?"

I'd barely noticed its steady thrum against my neck when my body was tingling so much from all the physical proximity to Owen. "It's not going berserk, but it feels like there's a low level of steady activity. Let me guess, this car is full of those ads."

"Exactly. And quite frankly, I'm disappointed. I'd have hoped for more creativity in veiling them."

"It looks like he just stuck with whatever was there before he put his ads up," I agreed. "I hope he does better with the TV ads and doesn't mask them with something boring like ads for a mattress store. If he's got ads for Pepsi in Times Square, I'll know he's really lacking in imagination. He loses even more points if it's the latest celebrity campaign."

The silver flecks in his dark eyes sparkled as he grinned and asked, "What would you have had him do?"

"Hmm, I'll have to think about that. Something ironic, maybe? All kinds of companies use magic as a description for their products-like magically clean or magically delicious. He should have used something like that, where the veiling ad talked about magic while covering a real ad about real magic." It felt weird to talk like this on the subway, but we were close together and speaking almost directly into each other's ears, so I doubted anyone else could overhear us even if they weren't all plugged into iPods.

"That's good," he said, nodding. "You should be working in advertising."

"What, and give up saving the world?"

We reached our station, and he kept his arm around me until we got to the exit turnstiles, then he got his arm back around me as soon as we were both clear. The attention seemed so sudden after all those times I'd hoped for the slightest bit of physical contact from him.

"You know, I don't think anything's lurking in the bushes to jump out and grab me," I said.

"I've got you inside a protective field that shields me, too. I had this weird feeling..."

I shivered, knowing the way his weird feelings went. No wonder he was hustling me toward his house at full speed. "Does what you see always come true, or can you do something to stop it?"

"I usually just see the presence of danger, not the results. So all I know tonight is that there might be something dangerous that could affect us, not whether it will actually attack or harm us. And if you don't mind, we can order takeout instead of stopping to pick something up. After the last time, I'm afraid to take the chance."

"That doesn't mean we won't end up with oysters Rockefeller when we try to order burgers."

"We can always feed those to Loony, if we have to," he said with a mischievous smile.

His sense of relief once we were inside the front door of his town house was almost palpable. Whatever he'd sensed must have been a doozy. When we were inside, he turned on lights with a careless wave of his hand while picking up his loudly meowing cat. "Make yourself comfortable," he said. "I need to feed her before she drives us insane, and then we can get something for ourselves."

I took off my coat and draped it over the banister, then wandered after him into the kitchen, where he was opening a can of food for Loony as she practically danced in antic.i.p.ation. "If you actually fed her every day, she wouldn't be quite that desperate," I remarked.

He looked up at me with a grin after he put the dish in front of her. "Yeah, you can tell she's deprived. You should have seen the poor, orphaned kitty look she gave me when I got home on Christmas. If I hadn't seen the empty cans, I might have thought Rod forgot to feed her. Now for us. You mentioned burgers. Does that sound good to you? Ever since the other night, that's what I've been hungry for-but the real thing, this time."

"That sounds wonderful."

He searched the take-out menus hung on the refrigerator by magnets, then took one and handed it to me. "Their burgers are pretty good. Let me know what you want." When I'd made my selection, he called the order in and we retreated to the living room, leaving Loony alone with her dinner. As we entered the room, he waved a hand at the fireplace and a fire sprang to life. "I refuse to feel guilty about that particular shortcut now that I know Gloria has a brownie," he said, settling down on the sofa. "Besides, I tend to burn myself when doing that the hard way."

I joined him on the sofa, trying to fight off the surge of self-consciousness I suddenly felt. He was acting far more relaxed than usual, and I was determined not to let this devolve into awkwardness. We really did need to get over the mutual bashfulness that tended to strike us in the rare situations when we weren't in danger or we'd never get beyond kissing. I tended to move slowly on the physical side of relationships, but one would hope s.e.x would be on the menu eventually. Like, while we were still young enough to enjoy it and have any kind of stamina. "I won't tell on you," I said. "If I could light a fire by waving a hand, I totally would. It seems a waste to have that kind of power and not use it at all."

"I think she was mostly teaching me not to become so dependent on magic that I never learned how to do things the normal way. She also didn't want me to get in the habit of taking shortcuts or the easy way out, in general."

"She and my dad would really get along. He's all about learning big life lessons."

He slid out of his suit coat and threw it over the arm of the sofa, then took off his tie and unb.u.t.toned the top b.u.t.ton of his shirt. "I hope this establishment doesn't require neckties," he said, quirking an eyebrow at me.

"I'll make an exception in this case." I kept seeing him in situations where I thought he'd never looked better, and then he managed to top himself. At the moment, he probably looked s.e.xier than I'd ever seen him, with his hair tousled, the slightest hint of five-o'clock shadow on his jaw, and his white dress shirt unb.u.t.toned at the neck.

"Remind me to tip you extra." He picked up a remote control and turned on the television. "I guess we ought to start watching TV so we can make it worth your while to go through the immunity loss. Let's hope he's got an ad on tonight."

While we watched the first commercial break, Loony came in from the kitchen to join us, jumping up between us on the sofa. I scratched the back of her neck while Owen changed channels. "It was on one of the local channels, if that helps narrow it down," I said. There weren't any Spellworks ads during the next commercial break we found, either. "Maybe he's only advertising during prime time. That would mean we wouldn't see anything until eight."

"Let's hope there's something on that isn't too painful to watch-none of those reality TV dating shows or movie stars trying to dance, or anything like that."

I felt a surge of warmth at the realization we had that much in common. "I hate those kinds of shows, too." It was funny, I thought I knew him fairly well by now, but there was so much I didn't know about him, like what he watched on TV.

The buzzer sounded from downstairs, and he jumped up. "There's dinner, and fortunately, it didn't come during the commercials." He paused before leaving the living room. "I never thought I'd say that."

While he was gone, I kicked off my shoes and tucked my feet under me, grateful that I'd worn a fuller skirt that made it easy to sit comfortably. Loony rolled over onto her back and waved a paw at me in a fairly obvious command to rub her belly, so I obliged. "How do you think it's going so far?" I asked her in a whisper.

Owen returned with a couple of paper bags that had translucent grease spots forming on the sides-a sure sign our burgers hadn't been magically transformed into more highbrow food worthy of a romantic date. "Any commercials?" he asked.

"No, you only missed a story on the newscast."

"Good. Normally I'd suggest we eat at the table, but we do have a TV-watching mission tonight, so what do you say to a living room picnic?"

"I say it sounds great."

"I'll get us something to sit on if you'll go grab us some drinks. There should be some sodas in the refrigerator. Take whatever you want and grab something for me. There's nothing in there that I don't like."

When I returned with a couple of canned drinks, he had a red-and-white-checked blanket spread picnic style on the living room floor in front of the fireplace and television. I hadn't felt anything in my necklace, so that meant he must have had a picnic blanket handy. Interesting. He flattened the paper bags the food had come in and then laid the burgers and fries out on them. I handed him his drink before I sat down.

"This is more like it," he said after taking a bite of burger. "Much better than the other night." He suddenly looked concerned. "Isn't it? Or am I incorrectly a.s.suming? You said you had fun."

"I had fun because I was with you. I'm not sure I'd have had fun with the kind of guy who'd have deliberately taken me to that kind of place. Burgers on the living room floor are much more my style." And, I realized, this indoor picnic in front of the fireplace was a lot more romantic than the limo ride and the fancy restaurant, with or without the weird disruption we'd had.

"Good. And I guess I didn't realize how little I know about you. I feel like I know the kind of person you are because we have been through some pretty extreme stuff together, but I honestly don't know what you like or what you do enjoy."

"It's hard to carry on a good conversation when every time you're together, you're escaping from a fire, falling through ice, fighting off dragons, working, fending off a mob, or anything else we've done together."

"I had to enchant that necklace to know what to give you for Christmas."

"I bought you a scarf. I think that's lamer."

"So, tell me, what would have been a good gift for me to give you?"

"I like the one you gave me. The necklace really has been useful."

"Okay, then, let's try this another way. You already know my favorite childhood movie was Robin Hood. What was yours?"

"Hmm. Let's see, I think I was partial to Sleeping Beauty. They re-released it in theaters when I was about five or six, and we made a special trip to the city to see it. Afterward, I thought that going to live in the forest with a group of wacky fairies seemed like a pretty good life. As an adult, I must admit to being drawn to the dashing prince who fights a dragon."

"Now, I would have got that one wrong. I saw you as more of a Cinderella girl. You don't lie around waiting for other people to take care of the situation. You pull yourself together and head out to the ball to get what you want."

"Yeah, I guess that does make sense, but I still liked Sleeping Beauty's prince better, and let's face it, the prince is the part we really like in those movies. It's your turn now. Let's see, what can I ask you? Favorite movie now?"

"I haven't been to the movies in so long that I couldn't begin to say."

"Okay, then, how about favorite grown-up movie?"

He worried his lower lip in his teeth while he thought, then said, "A lot of it depends on the mood I'm in. But Casablanca is a consistent favorite."

"Oh, so you're a romantic."

"Well, that's not the main thing," he said, even as he turned slightly pink. "I like the idea of knowing you're part of something bigger than you are, and at the same time, no matter how epic the scope of a situation is, it's still about people. Plus, Humphrey Bogart was incredibly cool, and he always knew just what to say in a situation. I'd love to be able to toss out smooth lines like that instead of thinking of them hours later or not having the nerve to say them even if I do think of them at the right time."

"Yeah, you're a romantic. And worse, you're an idealistic romantic. You'd totally make the grand, sacrificial gesture for the greater good and then stride off into the fog."

He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. "Well, maybe I am a bit of a romantic. Enough so that I deliberately ordered our burgers without onions."

"And you think you're not smooth," I said just before he kissed me. It was even better than our very first kiss, which had been magically influenced. We'd kissed a few times since then, but not with the same kind of intensity. As in almost every other thing he did, he was thorough, meticulous, and quite skilled. Fortunately, this time he didn't withdraw in horror, like he had once before after realizing he was under magical influence. Instead, he kept kissing me, and I let myself relax enough to really kiss him back. After all our struggles of the past weeks, once we got over the initial awkwardness, it felt so very right between us.

Then just as I was getting into it, my necklace began vibrating furiously.

Sixteen.

I should have known it was too good to last. "Um, Owen?" I said between kisses.

"Mmm hmm?""Unless you're working some serious mojo on me, there's magic going on."He pulled away, keeping his arm around me, and we both turned to look at the television. "What do you see?" he asked.

"I was right. It's a mattress commercial."

"That's not what I'm seeing. But I don't think it's any better than the mattress commercial in production values."

"Yep, that would be the ad I saw the other night."

"And there's no indication that there's anything unusual about the ad you're seeing?"

"No. It's not even a new ad, just that same annoying mattress ad that's always on. It makes you wonder if he actually bought the airtime, or if he's hijacking it and the station thinks they're showing the same old ads."

"He still had to produce the ad and somehow get it on the air, since we know that there really is an ad there. It isn't an illusion." The ad ended and he picked up the remote to turn the TV off. "I guess that's mission accomplished for the night," he said. "Now, where were we?" He bent to kiss my temple, then my cheek, and then my neck.

I leaned back against him with a sigh of contentment. "I still feel like there's something we're missing. There's a connection we haven't seen yet between the funding and the person who seems to be running things. Like maybe why they're doing this when it doesn't look too profitable. And where did all this come from, anyway?"

"All what?"

I turned to face him. "You. For the last couple of weeks, you've barely touched me, even though we were supposedly dating, and now, well, wow. We're not under enchantment again, are we?"

He tapped the locket where it rested in the hollow of my throat. "What does this tell you?"

"That there's nothing magical going on nearby right now."

"So?"

"So, excuse me if my head is spinning."

"You said it yourself, there was Ari's escape, the fire that wasn't a fire, the ice, my family, the crisis of the day, the dragons, the messed-up dinner plans. This is the first time in a long time it's been just us with nothing crazy going on, and I was determined to make the most of it instead of panicking, getting nervous, or chickening out."

"You were channeling your inner Bogie," I said, resting my hand against his cheek. "I get it now. I like it."

He wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him in a warm embrace. "Sometimes I wish we could forget about magic and saving the world and all of that and just be us for a while."

"But without the weirdness, would it still be us?"

"Good point. I guess we're stuck with it."

"I don't mind all that much." I rested my head on his chest and could hear his heart beating. "Now we know that all we have to do to have a successful relationship is never go out again." "That sounds like one of your better plans."

But we did have to go out again, since the rest of the world was still spinning and we had things to do. After another hour or so of quality snuggling mixed with a kind of twenty questions quiz as we swapped lists of our favorite things, he walked me home and arranged to meet me the next morning to head over to Times Square. This time, I got my good-night kiss on the front steps. Things were definitely looking up.

I got home in time to catch my roommates in the middle of planning their costumes for the party. "Ooh, someone's all aglow," Gemma said when I walked into the bedroom. "We could turn out the lights in here and still find our way around, thanks to Miss Radiance USA."

"I take it you had a good date," Marcia said, raising one eyebrow.