Katie Chandler - Damsel under Stress Part 2

Fortunately, my roommates weren't around when I got back, so I was able to give them an almost-true story about borrowing the dress from a co-worker when they arrived as I was doing my hair.

"You look great," Gemma a.s.sured me. "Your co-worker has fabulous taste. Maybe you should invite her shopping with us sometime."

Oh, I could see that happening. "Maybe," I hedged. The buzzer from the front door downstairs kept me from having to come up with an excuse. Owen was right on time, in more ways than one. I got to the intercom before Marcia had a chance to interrogate him. "I'll be right down," I said, making it sound as decisive and final as possible. I wasn't in the mood to have to shelter him from my roommates.

"You're no fun," Gemma pouted, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling. "Have a good time and remember it's a school night."

"Yes, Mom," I promised as I grabbed my purse and headed for the door. When I stepped out the front door downstairs, I was immediately glad that I hadn't invited Owen up. He looked even more handsome than he normally did. He was clean-shaven, the gla.s.ses were gone, and he wore a silk suit with an open-collared shirt that made him look like a photo spread from GQ. My roommates might have fought me for him. I was glad Ethelinda had worked her magic on me. Otherwise, I would have felt awfully frumpy next to him.

A slow smile spread across his face when he saw me. "Wow. You look amazing. Not that you don't always look nice, but you look really nice tonight." That was my Owen, absolutely adorable and delightfully awkward.

"You're not so bad, yourself," I said, feeling my face grow warm. Giving compliments like that wasn't as easy as it looked.

He stepped toward me and gave me a gentle kiss that more than made up for the lack of a kiss Sat.u.r.day morning. Up close to him, I could see I was right about the dark circles under his eyes. "Did you get any sleep at all this weekend?" I asked.

"Some." He didn't meet my eyes and instead turned toward the street. "I'll get a cab." That was an area where magical powers really came in handy in this city. He barely waved one hand, and suddenly a taxi practically jumped the curb to get to him.

He took me to a Village restaurant that was upscale in a cla.s.sy, un.o.btrusive way. It was different enough from the kinds of places we'd gone together when we were going out as friends to make this very clearly a special date, but not so fancy that it looked like he was trying too hard. The prices on the menu were almost high enough to make my eyeb.a.l.l.s bleed, but the food was described in plain, unpretentious English.

We spent several minutes discussing the menu and deciding what to order, then after we'd given our orders and the waiter had brought our drinks, an awkward silence descended over the table. We'd never had trouble talking to each other before. What had we talked about before we were officially dating? Oh yeah, work. Well, whatever it took to get the ball rolling.

"How did things go this weekend? Did you find anything interesting?" I asked.

He looked so relieved and grateful to have a topic of conversation that it was almost funny. "Interesting, yes, but I'm not sure how valuable it was. I'm now certain that someone I don't know broke her out magically. I'm not sure yet how they got past our defenses."

"You don't think Idris was involved?"

He shook his head. "No."

"He doesn't seem to know anything about it." I told him briefly about my earlier encounter with Idris. "So now in addition to having a rogue wizard with a short attention span to deal with, we also now have his girlfriend, who has more than enough reason to have a vendetta against both of us, and who's capable of staying focused on one thing for more than five minutes at a stretch. Plus, maybe another player entirely who's capable of getting past all our security. Fun."

He made a rueful face. "You said it. We're trying to track them down, but I'm also curious to see what they do next. I imagine we'll know soon enough."

"I guess it's too much to hope that their big plan is running away to Fiji and leaving us alone."

He laughed at that. "It would be nice, but I doubt it."

I had something incredibly witty and clever to say in response, but before I could say it, there was a scream from the back of the restaurant, followed by a whooping alarm and a burst of cold water as the sprinkler system came on.

"Fire!" someone yelled, and I somehow doubted they were testing their First Amendment right to yell "fire" in a crowded restaurant.

Three.

A stampede to the exit began immediately, with people knocking over chairs and tables in their haste to escape from the restaurant. Fortunately, our table was against the wall, so we weren't in the traffic pattern to be trampled. As usual, Owen remained calm in the crisis. "Get your coat," he reminded me. "It's cold outside." Meanwhile, he put on his own coat. I threw my coat over my arm and grabbed my purse, then we plunged into the melee. Owen kept a protective arm around me as we moved through the crowd. The real holdup seemed to be the front door, which was so narrow only two people could get through at a time. It created a bottleneck as people pushed forward in a panic. All the while, the sprinklers drenched us.

"This isn't good," Owen muttered. He waved his right hand and whispered something in a mystical language under his breath, and the gla.s.s in the front floor-to-ceiling windows vanished. Another wave of his hand and the tables and chairs in front of those windows relocated to another part of the restaurant. "This way!" Owen called out as he guided me toward one of those open windows, but he was so soft-spoken by nature that his voice didn't carry over the noise of the crowd, the fire alarm, and the approaching sirens.

I put my fingers to my lips the way one of my brothers had taught me and gave a piercing whistle. "This way!" I bellowed. The crowd split off and followed us as we stepped onto the sidewalk. The police and fire engines had arrived by then, and the police officers directed everyone to the sidewalk across the street from the restaurant. n.o.body questioned the gla.s.sless windows without any shards on the ground below. "Are you going to put those back?" I asked Owen, my teeth chattering as the cold outside air hit my thoroughly soaked hair and clothes.

"Oh, sorry, I can't believe I forgot," he said, but when he waved his hand, the window gla.s.s didn't come back. Instead my clothes suddenly became dry. Then he helped me with my coat, which was drier because it had been folded over my arm, but he worked his magic on that, too. His clothes were suddenly drier, as well. "I'd do something about drying your hair, but that's more difficult with your magical immunity, and besides, it might be suspicious if we both suddenly looked blow-dried in this crowd," he said with a rueful grin. I looked around and noticed that all the other escapees from the restaurant looked wet and miserable. "And the gla.s.s should come back in an hour or so."

He pulled me against him, holding me inside his coat with his arms tight around me. That made me a lot warmer, in spite of my damp hair. He wasn't a big guy, but he had a fair amount of muscle packed onto his slim frame, so being held by him made me feel safe. "My dating luck strikes again," I said with a sigh. "Normally it only affects me, but now I can ruin the evening for everyone, just by being there."

He chuckled and hugged me a little tighter. "I don't think you can take the blame for this. It just happened." Then he paused and said, "Or maybe..."

"Maybe what?"

"Take a look at the building and tell me what you see." I turned my head to look at the building where the restaurant was, and while I saw flames, those flames didn't appear to be actually doing anything. The structure of the building wasn't changing at all. I also didn't smell smoke. n.o.body who'd been in the supposedly burning restaurant was coughing or wheezing.

"It's not a real fire," I said. "Magic?"

"More than likely. Come on." He released me from his arms and took my hand, then led me to the side of the restaurant building. He put his palm against the building, closed his eyes for a second, then said, "Yep, it's a magical fire. Do you think it would raise too many questions if I killed the spell now?"

"Could you make it fade away, so the firemen'll think they put it out? It's not hurting anyone, is it?"

"It shouldn't be. I think I even know which spell they're using. If it's what I think it is, countering it will be easy. I can't actually undo it, but there are plenty of spells to stop it."

"I don't suppose they left a trail we could follow."

"I'm already on it," a rough voice said. I looked up and saw a small stone gargoyle perched on the bottom rung of a nearby fire escape ladder.

"Hi, Sam," I said to the gargoyle. Sam was MSI's chief of security.

"You didn't see anything, did you?" Owen asked.

"Nope, but my people are on the case. We're fanning out in a search pattern."

Owen nodded his approval. "Good."

"We're sure to catch 'em before long," Sam a.s.sured us. "Now, you two kids probably ought to find someplace warm and dry to finish your dinners. We've got the situation under control."

"You heard what the gargoyle said," Owen said, holding his arm out to me. I took it, and then we made our way down the street with the rest of the restaurant crowd that was milling away from the scene. About a block away from the restaurant, I felt a warm breeze ruffle my hair and turned to look at Owen. He shrugged and said, "We shouldn't be walking around with wet hair." I couldn't help but wonder what my hair looked like after it had been wet and then dried like that, but I felt much warmer.

We found a bakery a few blocks away that was about to close and bought the last two chocolate cookies in the display case, along with a couple of hot coffees, then we wandered through the West Village, sipping coffee and eating the cookies. The smell of Italian food wafting through the cold air made me glad we'd found that bakery. I hadn't quite been done with my dinner. "This wasn't the way I planned things to go," Owen said after a while.

"I should hope not, or I'd worry about you." Then I sighed. "If it was who we think it was, then it was about me, or us, after all. See, my dating luck holds true." I finished my cookie so I'd have a hand free, then ticked my recent dating disasters off on my fingers. "Let's see, on my last date we were affected by the enchanted shoes that made us do crazy things. And before that I was attacked by a bunch of magical creatures on the way to a party. The date before that, we got caught in a magical scheme to swindle people. Then there was the guy who thought he used to be a frog who showed up during the date to serenade me. Are you sure you want to go out with me? This kind of thing is normal for me."

"And you think my life is what anyone would consider normal?"

"Good point."

"Look on the bright side: We can only go up from here. We can't have a worse date than this one."

I cringed. "Don't say that. Whenever you say that, it's like asking the universe to prove you wrong."

The dry clothes and hair and the hot coffee had warmed me considerably, and I got even warmer when Owen finished his coffee, threw his cup in a nearby trash can, then put his arm around my shoulders. This was turning out to be a pretty good date, after all. We were together, we'd had chocolate, and we were walking through something that felt like a fairyland, with all the Christmas lights twinkling from windows above us.

The Christmas decorations jolted my memory. The holiday was almost upon us, and I'd been too busy to notice it other than as a gift-giving occasion to worry about. "I can't believe Christmas is right around the corner," I said. "Why is it that when you're a kid, it seems to take forever to come, but when you're an adult, it's on you before you realize it?"

"We have been pretty busy," he pointed out.

"Yeah, and I sort of already had Christmas when my parents were here for Thanksgiving, so the day itself is something of an anticlimax for me this year."

"Do you have anything planned?"

"Not really. I'll probably do something with my roommates. You're still going to visit your foster parents?" He was an orphan who'd been brought up by foster parents who'd never adopted him legally, and he'd always had a somewhat distant relationship with them. That explained a lot of his personality quirks.

"Yes, they even invited me. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. We're never going to be the Waltons."

"n.o.body is the Waltons, not even my family, which may be as close as you get."

We reached the Avenue of the Americas, where cabs came by often enough that it didn't even require any of Owen's magic to hail one. Once we were in the cab, the taxi wheels weren't the only ones turning, as I could tell Owen was already furiously pondering the current puzzle with every cell of his powerful brain. He paid off the driver in front of my building and walked me to the front door, his attention clearly elsewhere. "Thanks for the evening," I said. "It was certainly memorable."

"It was, wasn't it? And thank you for making it pleasant in spite of everything." He bent forward to give me a quick kiss, then said, "I'll see you in the morning." He was gone down the sidewalk before I even had a chance to kiss him back or to turn it into a proper kiss good night, and I was left standing there with my lips slightly puckered.

"I'll see you in the morning, too," I muttered under my breath to the thin air where Owen had just been before suppressing a sigh of disappointment. I reminded myself that this sort of thing came with the territory when we had so many other distracting priorities. And, after all, it was only the first date. We'd have plenty of opportunities to intensify things.

When I went down the stairs Monday morning, I felt a familiar flutter in my stomach. Owen had been commuting with me almost every morning since not long after I'd gone to work at MSI, and every morning I'd found myself all atingle with the antic.i.p.ation of seeing him again. This morning, the first since we'd gone beyond being just friends and co-workers, the tingle was even worse. I'd always known that the main reason he escorted me to work in the morning was that we made a good team for keeping each other safe from our enemies. My magical immunity meant I could spot the bad guys even when they tried to disguise themselves or make themselves invisible. Owen, as a magical person, could be affected by magic and might not notice the danger, but once I alerted him, he could do something about it. He lived a few blocks away from me, so he didn't have to go too far out of his way to meet up with me, but I'd always hoped that he might have really wanted to spend that time with me in the morning. That had turned out to be the case.

I opened the front door, and the flutter in my stomach became a full-scale hurricane. You'd think that going out with him the night before would have made the antic.i.p.ation a little less intense, but I was learning that I couldn't predict my reactions when it came to Owen. He really put me off-kilter.

I couldn't hold back a huge smile as I emerged onto the front steps, knowing he'd be waiting on the sidewalk. Then the smile slid right off my face, for he wasn't there. I checked my watch to make sure I wasn't early-I had been a wee bit eager to see him-but it was the same time we usually met, and even when I was off-schedule one way or another, he always managed to adjust and still be there to meet me. I was beginning to wonder if I should wait for him and for how long when I heard a rough voice say, "You're the Chandler gal, aren't you?"

I looked up and down the street, seeing plenty of people on the sidewalk, but n.o.body who seemed to be talking to me. "Psst, up here," the voice said. I stepped forward, turned around and craned my neck to see a gargoyle perched on the fire escape above me. It wasn't Sam or any other gargoyle I'd run into before, but he was probably on the MSI security force.

"I'm Katie Chandler," I said.

He spread his wings and glided down to sit on top of a nearby parking meter. "Mr. Palmer said to meet you here. He had something come up and had to be at the office early. I'm supposed to make sure you get to work safely." He spread his wings once more and took off in the direction of the subway station.

I hurried to follow him. "Did something happen?" I asked, out of breath from having to keep up with a flying gargoyle.

"Hey, I'm just a messenger. All I know is what he told me."

I was worried and disappointed, all at the same time. It had to be something big for him to abandon our daily routine, but it was the second time in just a few days that duty had called him away from time with me. I knew I could expect more of that in the future because of what he was up against, but that didn't entirely erase the disappointment. At least he'd sent word instead of standing me up, and he'd made sure I'd be protected.

Owen wasn't chatty, but he was a far better conversationalist than this gargoyle, who didn't seem to be making much of an effort. He was strictly doing his job. Fortunately, there were no threats. The morning commute was as uneventful as you can get when you're being escorted to work by a taciturn gargoyle.

Once I reached the office, I faced my next ordeal: dealing with all the office gossip about Owen and me. If I'd had my choice, I would have preferred to date secretly until our relationship was more secure. But we'd already been pretending to date to help flush out the bad guys, and then we hadn't dropped the act once the crisis was over. I was pretty sure that, as shy as Owen was, if he'd thought about it, he wouldn't have kissed me in public the way he had, but parties and excitement have a way of short-circuiting the brain. Plus, it was a very nice kiss and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Trix, the fairy who served as receptionist in the executive suite, greeted me with a flutter of her wings and a wink. "Hey, you! How was your weekend?"

"It was good."

"Good? Is that all? I did notice what was going on at the office party, and you didn't seem to need any mistletoe."

"We didn't run off to Vegas over the weekend, if that's what you were wondering. We just got together a couple of times. You know Owen, this thing isn't going to move at light speed." Then it was my turn to tease. "And anyway, I wasn't the one who spent a good portion of the party in a broom closet with someone."

She immediately looked down at her desk and gave her wings a little flick. "That wasn't our idea. Ari and that Idris guy put us there."

"But you did take advantage of the opportunity."

"Hey, I'm no dummy." My turning the tables seemed to have worked, for she quickly became businesslike. "The boss wants you for a meeting at ten. His office."

"Thanks. I'll be there," I said before heading to my office.

"This isn't over!" she called after me. "You're going to have to give me the full scoop sometime."

I ignored her and settled in at my desk to catch up on messages and e-mail before the meeting. I was the a.s.sistant to the boss, who was otherwise known as Ambrose Mervyn, CEO of Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. If you did all the translation into and out of Welsh, Latin, and probably a few other languages in between, that came out as Merlin. Yes, the Camelot wizard. He'd founded MSI, in a noncorporate form, as a way of fine-tuning and regulating magic way back then, then had gone into a self-imposed magical hibernation until he was needed again. Our current problems with a rogue wizard trying to undercut our efforts to keep magic safe and on the good side of things had brought him back to lead the company.

Just before ten, I gathered my supplies and headed for Merlin's office. As I went through the doorway, I almost missed a step even though I was walking on an even surface. Owen was already in there, sitting at the conference table and twirling a pen between his fingers. I wondered if there would ever come a time when seeing him didn't take my breath away. I should have known he'd be at any executive meeting since he usually represented the research and development department, but I still wasn't prepared to see him again. He looked very nice dressed for work, as he always did, but he appeared even more tired than he had been the night before.

"Oh, good, Katie, you're here," Merlin said, waving a hand to shut the door behind me. Owen looked up, saw me, gave a half smile, then turned bright red and looked down at the notebook that lay in front of him on the table. It seemed I wasn't the only one feeling a little taken aback by seeing each other here.

I took my usual seat at Merlin's right hand, ready to take notes on the meeting so I could write up a report and note the items for follow-up. A moment later, the office door flew open and Sam the gargoyle soared inside to land on the back of the chair across from Owen. Merlin waved the door shut again. I wrote the date and time of the meeting on the top of my notepad while I waited for the rest of the department heads to arrive, but before I could start listing names of the attendees, Merlin spoke.

"Katie, I'm sure by now you're aware that the prisoner we apprehended Friday night has escaped."

"Yes, sir," I said, wondering if this meant the meeting had already begun. Apparently, this wasn't the meeting of department heads I'd expected.

"And I'm sure you realize how important it is to find her again."

"She might make Idris even more dangerous. He's not necessarily evil, and even if he was, he's not focused enough to really do anything about it. But she's vindictive, and though I used to think she was flighty, she does seem to be capable of following through on something."

"Exactly. And that's why I want you and Mr. Palmer to work together to either find her or learn what Ari and Mr. Idris are doing. You'll be working closely with Sam on this, since a security breach was involved."

There went my idea of being relatively stress-free for the holidays. "You want me investigating?" I asked.

"You were the one who figured out she was the spy," Owen said. I wondered if he'd been the one to suggest working together. If he had, we'd have words about that later.

"You're also the perfect investigative combination, with your magical immunity and Mr. Palmer's abilities. I believe you also have an excellent personal rapport." I detected a definite twinkle in Merlin's eyes. Great, now even the boss was getting involved in our relationship. "Of course, I don't expect you to work during the holidays, but I would like you to be thinking about it. Sam, you'll have security personnel at their disposal."

"But what about my other work? I got pretty far behind when I was working on the last investigation." Not that I was trying to weasel out of this a.s.signment, but it really wasn't in my job description, and I wasn't getting most of the stuff that was in my job description done.

"I'll have someone else take on your more administrative and clerical duties. Anyone can take notes in a meeting, but you've proved you have the special skills for this task." There was an edge of finality to his voice, like what he'd said had been carved into stone tablets on top of a mountain.

"That'll be a big help, sir," I said.

The meeting adjourned, and Owen caught my elbow as we left Merlin's office. "Maybe we should strategize for a while. Are you free now?" He said it with a totally straight face and no hint of a blush, so I got the impression that he wasn't finding a convenient cover for other kinds of activities. I suspected that while we were in the office, it would be strictly business between us, and that was fine with me, even though my elbow was already tingling from his touch. I'd never dated someone I worked that closely with, and had never worked this closely with someone I was dating. It seemed that the boss didn't mind our personal relationship, but I wished there was a handy rule book for how to make this sort of thing work.

"Your office or mine?" I asked.

"Would you mind going to mine? I have more whiteboard s.p.a.ce for thinking."