Katie Chandler - Damsel under Stress Part 17

"Yeah. Good date."

"What did you do?" Gemma asked, flipping through a carton of masks.

"We ate dinner on his living room floor and talked."

"Talked, huh?" She held up a black mask shaped like cat's-eye gla.s.ses frames. "What do you think of this one?"

"Very s.e.xy," I said. "And, well, there might have been a little more than talking going on."

"Then you're home awfully early," Gemma remarked.

"It wasn't that much more than talking," I said.

Marcia came over and patted me on the head. "Our Katie is an old-fashioned girl. And a smart one.

Better to be sure of the situation before you get in too deep."

Gemma rolled her eyes." Just don't be so smart you miss the fun. Now, any costume plans for you?"

I shrugged. "I was thinking of using those red shoes, maybe doing a Dorothy outfit, a.s.suming I can find a blue gingham pinafore."

Gemma and Marcia looked at each other. "Tell me she didn't just mention dressing as Dorothy," Gemma said. She then turned to me. "This is not a Halloween carnival. It's a New Year's Eve masked ball. You will not do anything cute or sweet. You're going to have one of the hottest guys there. You must do s.e.xy. But good idea to use the red shoes. Let's see what else we can do with them. Oh, I have an idea."

She disappeared to the back of the closet. There were times when I wondered if our closet had a spell on it to expand it from within. It shouldn't have been able to hold Gemma's extensive wardrobe, let alone Marcia's and my clothes. Gemma returned with a red satin dress and one of my red shoes. "The reds aren't a perfect match, but it's not too bad." When she held the dress up against herself, I saw that it had a pointy tail coming off the back of it. "The horns that go with this should be in the accessories box over there."

"But if that's your dress, it won't fit me," I said. Gemma was taller than I was, and although she was slimmer, she also had more curves. It really wasn't fair.

"Try it on," she ordered.

It turned out to be good that I was several inches shorter than she was, for the dress came to mid-thigh on me. On Gemma it must have been indecently short. It was rather formfitting on me, except in the chest area, where there was extra fabric. "That's okay," Gemma said. "That's why they make Wonderbras." She stuck a horned headband on me and turned me to face the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the bedroom door. "And voila, a she-devil. I can't decide if you should wear fishnets or seamed stockings. Maybe seamed fishnets. We'll have to see what we can find. You're gonna knock your guy's socks off."

As I twirled my tail and looked at myself in the mirror, I was almost looking forward to the party even though I was starting to have a nagging suspicion that it was a recipe for disaster.

Instead of heading to the office the next morning, Owen and I went straight uptown to Times Square. "How will I know that my immunity is still gone?" I asked him while we waited for an uptown train.

"Do you see anything odd?" he asked as my necklace hummed.

"No."

"Your immunity is gone."

He was remarkably chipper, which I chalked up to our first truly successful date. "I figured out my costume for the party," I told him, taking his hand and leaning against him. "Now we have to find something for you."

"Oh really, what is it?"

"It's a surprise." A train pulled into the station, and he ushered me on board.

We got off the train at the Times Square station, then made our way aboveground. The impact of all the giant signs and lights was somewhat diminished during the daytime, but it was still pretty splashy. My necklace had intensified its hum, but I couldn't be sure exactly what was causing it, as I'd noticed magical people in Times Square before. It was one of those parts of town where things were so crazy, magical people could do whatever they wanted and n.o.body would notice anything weird, so long as n.o.body dropped all the magical veils in the area at once on a relatively quiet night. The locals had on blinders and the tourists would think it was just another one of those odd New York things. Besides, some of the nonmagical things going on there were weirder than anything the magical world had to offer. No magical person would be crazy enough to stand outside playing guitar in just his underwear in the dead of winter, for example.

"What do you see?" Owen prodded when we reached the traffic island where we'd studied the Spellworks ads on Christmas night.

"It looks like Times Square, the way it usually is. Some soft drink ads, some computer ads. No magic ads."

"So it's like the other veilings he's done, hiding the magic behind the last ads that were there. That does make you wonder if he really is paying for the s.p.a.ce."

"The billboards alone wouldn't be cheap, so he still needs money. But we might not be at multinational corporation levels of financing. Just one good backer-say, Sylvia-might be enough. Maybe things aren't as bad as we thought. Knowing Idris, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he gets bored with this in a week or two and moves on to something else."

"Let's hope so."

"You know, that may be the way to deal with this," I said as a thought crossed my mind.

"How?"

"Well, I'd imagine that whoever is making Sylvia bankroll him is doing so for a reason and isn't likely to lose interest. If Idris gets sidetracked and moves on to something else, his boss isn't going to be pleased. That's bound to disrupt their operation. What we need to do is come up with something sure to distract Idris."

Owen nodded and chewed on his lower lip, deep in thought. After he'd processed the thought, he broke out in a huge grin and grabbed me in an enthusiastic hug. "You're brilliant!" he said before bending me back in a dip and kissing me thoroughly. A flashbulb went off, and I turned to see a tourist taking our picture. That was when I realized we'd more or less mimicked the pose from that famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II. The deep blush on Owen's face told me he'd just become aware of the same thing. He carefully pulled me back up to a proper standing position while I fought off a bad case of the giggles that I knew would only embarra.s.s him worse.

"Let's check out the store now," he said, making a valiant attempt at looking calm. "I doubt we can get in, but we can see what's going on outside."

"Yeah, they probably have our pictures up behind the cash register, like they do with people known for writing bad checks."

We pa.s.sed one of those kitschy Broadway souvenir shops, and I tugged on Owen's arm. "Let's go in here a second."

"Why?"

My main reason was to escape the tourists who were still giving us odd looks and to give him time to compose himself, but what I said was, "I need to get some postcards. Are you that desperate to get this over with and get back to the office? It's practically New Year's Eve. It's even a short day."

"Whatever makes you happy." He didn't say it in the resigned way that people usually said that sort of thing. He sounded more like he actually meant it.

I flipped through the posters and T-shirts for shows I hadn't seen, and then I spotted something hanging on the wall. "I have an idea for a costume for you," I told Owen, pointing to the white Phantom of the Opera mask. "You have a tux. All you do is wear that and the mask, and you've got a costume. You'd essentially be wearing evening clothes and a mask, but it would still count as a real costume. Rod would have nothing to complain about."

"I don't know," he hedged, looking at the mask.

"It doesn't involve wearing tights or makeup."

"Very good point." He bought the mask, and then we got coffee from a street vendor before wandering over to Fifth Avenue to stand across the street from the Spellworks store. I now saw nothing more than a vacant, boarded-up storefront. We stood there for a while, under a bus stop sign as though we were waiting for a bus, and watched the foot traffic around the store. I saw a few people stop to look in the window, and Owen said he saw them enter the store when they disappeared from my view, but the majority of pedestrians pa.s.sed it by.

"Well, this is exciting," I said after a while. "For this, I gave up my immunity. I think our work here is done, if you want to head back to the office."

He turned as if to go, then did a double take. "Wait a second, isn't that Ari over there? That woman looks exactly like the illusion she was wearing the other day."

"I wouldn't know. I didn't see her illusion then, and I can't see any distinguishing Ari features now."

"Come on, let's see where she goes this time." He grabbed my hand as he took off, and I had no choice but to follow him.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I said as I hurried to keep up with him. "Remember what happened last time? And I can't look out for her if she decides to swap illusions or do something else to throw us off."

"But that's only if she notices we're following her." By the time we got across the street, though, it became apparent that she wasn't actually going anywhere. She looked like she was spying on the store, like we were.

Idris soon came running out of the store. "What are you doing here?" he shouted. "Don't you know it's dangerous for you to be out? You're supposed to be hiding."

She rolled her eyes. In the human disguise I saw, she looked like a club kid who wasn't used to being out in daylight. "Do you know how boring it is down there? I'm going crazy."

"You'll be even more bored if they get you. Then you won't have any visitors."

"Like they'll catch me. I'm in disguise."

"They have immunes, remember?"

"I thought you were taking care of that."

"It's not as easy as you think, and as I recall, you weren't even that successful at it. Now, go. I have work to do."

"You're no fun anymore. It's that Sylvia b.i.t.c.h, isn't it?"

He sighed in exasperation. "I'm not getting into this with you again." Then I had to blink because the woman I'd been watching talk to Idris had vanished. "Not a smart move!" Idris shouted. The pedestrians on the sidewalk just kept pushing around him.

Owen edged me away from the store. When we were a block away, I said, "Looks like there's trouble in paradise."

"I'm surprised at how businesslike he was," Owen said. "He's got to be exhausted at the end of the day from the effort of maintaining that."

"I bet it only lasts a few minutes at a time and we caught him during one of his spells of businesslike activity. In a few minutes, he'll be off playing video games or trying to think of ways to make his employees dance the can-can."

We headed back downtown, and as we crossed City Hall Plaza on our way to the office building, he asked, "Do you want to get together again tonight?" Before I could answer, he shook his head and added, "And I just realized how that sounded. I know I shouldn't a.s.sume you never have any other plans. I should think to ask you a few days in advance. But I didn't really mean it as a date. You don't have your immunity and I'd feel better if I could keep an eye on you."

"As I recall, you warded my place," I said. "And I'd eventually have to go home, like I did last night. I'll be okay."

He looked away for a second, and when he looked back at me there were bright pink spots on both of his cheeks. "Okay, then. It's not just for your safety. I'd like to see you. Last night may have been the first entirely uneventful time we've ever spent together, and I'd like more of it."

"That does sound tempting, but I do already have plans with my roommates. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he said with a shrug, but his ears had turned pink. I hoped he didn't take it as a rejection, but I did have plans, and I didn't want to be the kind of girl who ditched my friends as soon as a man came into my life.

We dropped coats and his mask off in his office, and I took off the necklace before it drove me insane inside the magically charged office building, then we went upstairs to find Merlin. Unfortunately, we found Kim first, sitting at Trix's desk. She must have been filling in while Trix took the day off, but even so, she'd already made that area her own, much as she'd taken over my office. She'd moved her pictures and plants and had even put a nameplate with her name on it on the desk.

"Did you have an appointment?" she asked curtly as we approached the desk.

"No, but I imagine Mr. Mervyn is expecting us," Owen said with the calm he usually displayed in situations like that. He may have struggled with his inner Humphrey Bogart in his personal life, but at work he often managed to be just that cool.

"I'd better check with him, anyway," she said, attempting a flirtatious look at Owen, who remained utterly oblivious. In fact, he ignored her entirely, walking toward Merlin's office doors.

She was opening her mouth to protest when the doors opened and Merlin greeted us with a smile. "Ah, you must have a report for me," he said, ushering us inside. I resisted the impulse to throw a gloating look over my shoulder at Kim as we went inside. Merlin gestured us to take seats on his sofa before he went to the counter on the far side of the office. "I've just made a pot of tea, so your timing is excellent," he said as he poured. He solved the problem of having three cups and two hands by letting one hover alongside as he carried the other two over to us. The third cup settled itself on the small table next to the wing chair he took. "Now, what have you seen with your immunity gone?"

I described what I'd noticed about the subway ads, television commercials, and Times Square billboards, as well as the appearance of the store. "It's possible they haven't necessarily spent as much money on advertising as we thought because the media companies may not even have noticed that there are ads. Still, it would have been an impressive logistical operation just to get those ads up physically, and that would have taken money."

"So they're possibly not quite on the verge of taking over the world," Merlin surmised with a wry twinkle in his eyes.

"Katie also had an idea for a way to deal with Idris," Owen said.

I swallowed and hoped this sounded as good now as it had when I'd first brought it up. "We've noticed that Idris is a bit distractible. That seems to have been the main thing holding him back. Before he can bring any of his evil schemes to fruition, he's become bored and moved on to something else. For instance, he never really took advantage of all the turmoil he caused when we thought we had a mole in the company. I think he became so fascinated by watching us run around in a tizzy that he forgot to actually do anything with that opportunity."

"That also fits the way he used to work," Owen added. "He seldom finished projects. He'd dabble in one thing after another instead of sticking to a particular line of thought or research."

"But now that he's apparently got someone interested enough in what he's doing to bankroll him, he may not be able to get away with that," I continued. "His boss must have something planned, and he's not going to want to just move on to the next great idea. So if we could come up with a way to really distract Idris, it might mess him up with his boss or force the boss to show himself."

Merlin stroked his beard and nodded. "Yes, I could see how that might be effective. It might not stop the plan entirely, but it could buy us time. We'd still need to find a way to discover who is behind him and what he's trying to accomplish, but this could make that task somewhat easier. Very good thinking, Miss Chandler. It's almost a pity you're not magical, for I'd be interested in seeing how you might innovate in that respect."

"I guess we'll never know. And maybe I have to think outside the box because I don't have access to any powers. If I had magical powers, I might be a really boring wizard." I hesitated, then asked a question that weighed heavily on my mind. "How are things going up here? Is there anything you need me to take care of?"

"No, Kim is quite effective. A trifle overeager, perhaps, but she is getting her work done. You can focus on this project in good conscience."

"Good, good." I hoped my smile didn't look too obviously fake. I tried to remind myself that Kim getting my work done didn't mean I was out of a job. It only meant I could concentrate on stopping Idris, which meant far more to the company than typing memos and making sure no one pulled a fast one in meetings.

She was still there, sitting smugly at Trix's desk as we left Merlin's office, which undermined my mental pep talk. There are some people who just bug you, and Kim seemed to be my person of the moment. There was nothing she could do that wouldn't get under my skin.

"Next time, it would help if you'd schedule an appointment in advance," she said.

And a lot of the things she did seemed designed specifically to push my b.u.t.tons. Fortunately, Owen had my back and I didn't have to stoop to her level to respond. "Mr. Mervyn seldom needs anyone to schedule appointments. He'll know before anything important happens," he said. "You may notice that there's never a conflict, even when something comes up unexpectedly."

"That does take some getting used to when you're managing his schedule," I added, trying very hard to avoid sounding patronizing. The stunned expression on her face was more gratifying than any gift I'd received for Christmas, and I hurried to get out of the office suite before she thought of a clever comeback that would diminish my triumph.

By the time we got back to Owen's lab, the short preholiday workday was almost over. "I'll see you home," he said. "I feel like I ought to do at least that much with your immunity gone."

I was starting to regret having made plans with my roommates. Going home with him would have been really nice. "I'm meeting Marcia down here to go to lunch. She works in the financial district. And then we're going uptown to meet Gemma for some shopping." I took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "But I do appreciate the offer. Normally, I'm all in favor of having you keep an eye on me."

He squeezed my hand in response, but his expression remained serious. "I don't like the idea of you being unprotected, especially after what happened this morning. They know we're onto them."

"Have you met Marcia? I'd like to see the magical creature that could take her on. And aren't there my usual bodyguards? I'll be fine. But I'd better get going. She's the punctual type, and I'm more afraid of her than of monsters if I'm ever late meeting her."

I decided to walk to meet Marcia at the restaurant she'd chosen rather than ride the subway to the next station. I'd only walked a couple of blocks when I noticed an elderly lady who seemed to be following me. I tried to ignore her and kept going on my way. That was one of the city survival lessons Marcia had taught me when I first moved to New York. I reached the restaurant and stepped inside to find Marcia already waiting in the foyer. "You're right on time," she said, greeting me with a hug. "They said our table should be ready in a moment."

I opened my mouth to respond, but then a voice at my elbow said, "Well, now, aren't you being rude today?"

I turned to see the lady who'd been following me. She stood next to me, looking at me as though she was astonished that I hadn't recognized her. I mentally ran through every place I might have met someone during my time in New York so I could figure out why I might know her. No bells rang.

"I know you were angry with me," she said, "but that's no reason to snub me entirely."

Only then did I notice her facial structure and put it together with her voice to recognize Ethelinda. So, that's what the rest of the world saw. Without her wings, tiara, and layers of out-of-date evening wear, she looked like an entirely different person. It would have been nice if I could have ignored her, but I was afraid Ethelinda would make a scene. "I'm sorry, I guess I didn't recognize you right away," I said, frantically scrambling for an excuse to get rid of her.

"Who's your friend?" Marcia asked.

"Oh, this is Ethel-" I cut myself off because Ethel was a perfectly reasonable, if a little old-fashioned, name, unlike Ethelinda. "She, uh, we..."

"I'm her fairy G.o.dmother," Ethelinda declared proudly, putting an arm around my shoulders.