chapter Ten
Owen shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I’m so used to being magical that I totally forgot that the wizards think I’m immune right now. That does put a wrinkle in things.”
I clutched his arm urgently. “So maybe we should learn more about the situation before we start waking people up—if we even have to wake them up. Maybe we could get them home somehow, and that will break the spell, and then they won’t have to know about you.”
“I don’t think that’ll work. Too many of them have interacted with me, so they’ll know I was affected, and I think it looks worse if I don’t do something about it as soon as possible. I’ll just have to be up front about it and take whatever consequences come.” He took a deep breath, then set his jaw and said firmly, “In fact, I think we should revive Mac and his partner first.”
“Owen, that’s insane! It’s like telling them, ‘Oh, by the way, I got my powers back awhile ago.’”
“That’s going to be a problem,” he agreed. “And maybe I should have been honest all along instead of hiding it. But I think it’s a show of good faith if I revive them first and bring them in on this. They may know more about the elven realms than I do, and they may know more about what happened to us, since presumably they were taken because they saw it happen. Mac’s a good guy, and he’s known me most of my life. I believe I can trust him to be fair.” He gave a hopeful smile that would have been more convincing if it had gone all the way to his eyes. “And maybe saving the day here will help change my image. Either way, it means I can quit hiding, even if they still don’t trust me.”
“Do you have a memory you can use to revive Mac?”
“I’ve got a few things he might recall from when he visited my parents when I was a kid. He’ll have to wake his partner because I don’t know him well enough, and I’ll leave that decision to Mac. I’ll just have to try to find a way to get Mac alone to talk to him.”
“Well, if you’re sure …”
He took a deep breath and appeared to force his shoulders to relax. “I’m not saying I’m sure this is a great idea, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice.”
I realized we’d been talking for quite a while and wondered what our watcher thought. A long chat at the front door after a date shouldn’t be too strange, I hoped. I impulsively leaned in to give Owen a kiss on the cheek, like I was saying good night. We both paused for a moment, then kissed on the lips, lingering ever so slightly. “I don’t think you should come inside,” I said, quite reluctantly because I didn’t want to be alone or let him out of my sight. I wasn’t even sure where he lived in this world. “Like I said earlier, I was being proposed to by someone else just a couple of hours ago, and we don’t want them to think we’re privately plotting.”
“I’m curious as to whether this guy stays here with you or follows me,” he murmured as he nuzzled my neck and made me wish I hadn’t just announced that he shouldn’t come up. “Turn back like you’re watching me go and see what happens. Then once you’re inside, try veiling yourself and look out the window.”
After one last kiss, he turned to leave and I headed up the front steps. I paused at the front door to turn back and didn’t have to fake a besotted grin as I watched him go. I had to fight to keep that grin when I saw that the gray guy stayed on the sidewalk in front of my building. It made sense that I was the one being watched when I was the one who’d resisted the magic, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable about it.
When Owen was out of sight, I unlocked the front door and went up the indoor stairs to my apartment. Once inside, I changed into sweats before attempting Granny’s veiling spell and peeking out the window. The gray guy was still out there, but he didn’t seem to be watching my place with an intense focus.
Sleep seemed impossible, but I turned out the light so my watcher would think I was going to bed and therefore not likely to do anything suspicious for the rest of the night. I settled onto my bed in the darkness and leaned back against the pillows. The fact that I could do so and feel it made me sure that this apartment wasn’t an illusion, even if it was a fantasy. Building an entire replica of pseudo New York seemed like overkill, so I was sure some of it had to be illusion. But how much? For my apartment to be tangible, the building had to be real, but how many of the residents were real people, either prisoners or guards? Were the extras in this movie real people or just illusion, and were there enough people here to fill out every building? Would they bother to finish out the insides of buildings even if no real person lived there?
There was one way to find out. I tiptoed to my door and then up the stairs. I didn’t recall ever seeing a neighbor coming downstairs or hearing any noise above me. When I reached the upper landing, I paused and listened for any signs of life coming from that apartment. There was no stereo or TV on, but it was late enough that most people would be in bed.
Feeling like I was violating all kinds of social mores, I put my hand on the doorknob, then I squeezed my eyes closed in dread as I turned the knob. It did turn, and the door eased open, so either nobody lived there or my neighbor didn’t lock his door and I was about to be really embarrassed.
When nobody shouted at me, I opened my eyes and was surprised by what I saw. It was an empty shell of a room, not as finished as an “unfinished” apartment, since it didn’t even have rough features like interior walls. It was just a space that happened to be enclosed. It did still have windows, and I imagined there were illusions on those windows to make it look like a normal apartment from outside, but just in case, I dropped to the floor and crawled so my watcher wouldn’t be able to see me.
I couldn’t see much in the dim city light coming in through the windows, but I didn’t think there was much to see, just a lot of nothing. The exterior walls looked like the back side of a movie set, and I had to be careful as I crawled because the floor joists were bare, the plaster of my ceiling showing in the open spaces between them. Although crawling was slower than walking, I soon felt like I’d gone beyond where the wall of my apartment should have been. I glanced at the windows and saw that they were a slightly different size and in a slightly different position. The open space must have extended into the next building. I suspected it might go on until there was some reason it had to stop, like the end of the block or an inhabited apartment.
I wanted to keep exploring, but the risk of getting stuck somewhere and not being able to get back to my place without being caught by my watcher was too great. As I crawled back toward the door, I wondered how much of this prison was just an empty shell, a Hollywood-style backlot to create street scenes. But even if most of it was empty, building something like this seemed like a huge undertaking requiring a lot of resources, either physical or magical. That had to mean that what they were keeping secret by bringing us all here was equally huge.
*
I could hardly wait to tell Owen what I’d discovered. We ran into each other again on our way to work, right in front of the store. I wouldn’t have thought it would take much effort to play the newly-in-love couple, but I was so conscious of being watched by the gray guy who’d followed me from my apartment that I couldn’t relax into the role, even if it was entirely genuine.
We kissed awkwardly, then I blurted, “You’ll never guess what I found last night!”
His lips twitched in a not-quite-suppressed smile. “Most of these buildings are empty shells?”
“Oh, you too, huh?”
“Great minds think alike. We should probably explore more when we get a chance. It could be useful to have a way to move between buildings. Though we’ll have to be careful while we have a shadow.”
“Ooh, that sounds so secretive, like we’re in an underground movement. I feel like I should get a jaunty beret, like the French Resistance.”
“You don’t want to tip our hand, do you?” Although his tone was teasing, I noticed that he kept glancing toward the park across from the store, where Mac and his sidekick were in their usual spot, playing chess.
“Should we talk to Mac now?” I asked, following his gaze.
Owen studied them for a long moment, then said, “Let’s wait a little while, enough to appear normal. If you seem to come out of Josh’s spell and then we’re immediately having intense conversations with people we usually just exchange pleasantries with, it would look suspicious.”
“You’re not getting cold feet about your plan to bravely face the consequences, are you?”
“No, but we should be methodical about this.” He frowned in thought for a moment, then said, “Let’s take lunch to the park, and I’ll challenge him to a game.”
“Okay. It’s a date, but you can always back out if you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” he said firmly, but he didn’t look happy about it.
*
When I went up to the coffee shop, I wasn’t sure how to approach Florence. She’d conspired with Josh, and yet she’d steered me toward Owen. I figured if she was playing the sassy best friend role in this romantic comedy, she’d want to squeal over me finally taking her advice and getting together with Mr. Right. I tried to psych myself up into a good morning-after glow as I reached the top of the stairs and headed for the counter.
“Well, look at you!” she said with obviously faked enthusiasm. “Someone’s all aglow this morning. Last night must have been spectacular. Let me see the ring.”
“There is no ring.”
She looked truly stunned. “He didn’t propose? Then what’s the glow about?”
I had to fight not to smile. “I turned him down.”
“You did what?” It came out in an outraged-sounding yelp, but her eyes lit up and she was unable to restrain a grin.
I tried to remember how the movie had gone so I could sound convincing, since I figured I’d need a better reason than “the spell broke” to explain why the whammy Josh had apparently put on me hadn’t worked. I tied on my apron and straightened the knot to buy myself time to think, then said, “Well, I thought that a lot of my reservations had to do with how unromantic he was the first time he brought up marriage, like it was some chore he was doing to help me. But then when he did the all-out proposal, complete with ring, sparklers, and kneeling, and I still felt the same way about him, I knew it was wrong.”
She gave up fighting the grin and beamed ear-to-ear. “Even with the sparklers?”
“Yeah, even with the sparklers.”
“What did you do next?”
“I left. I can’t believe I did it, but he was kneeling on the floor and everyone was watching, and I just said, ‘I can’t,’ and left the restaurant, and I headed straight to the store to catch Owen before he left. You were right. He was the one, and he has been since we met. Everything just clicked with him. It was right.”
She leaned forward like she was in the audience at the exciting part of a movie. “And what happened?”
I didn’t have to fake a blush. “Well, I told him what I felt, and we kissed, and it turns out he felt the same way, too, and then we went out for a drink and he walked me home.”
She used her apron to wipe imaginary tears from her eyes. “Oh, I just love a happy ending.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” I warned.
“I’m not!” Then she gave me a saucy grin. “Did the earth move for you? Did it change the way you saw everything?”
I had to think quickly. Was it just the way she sounded, a friend looking for juicy details, or was she testing me to see if the spell had broken? If the latter, was that so she could help us or so she could report us to her superiors? She seemed truly happy for me, and I doubted that my getting together with Owen was part of the elves’ plan, but she could have been playing her role to the hilt. It was too risky to trust her, so I merely smiled and said, “It was nice.”
“Nice? That’s all you’ve got to say? Don’t let him hear you say that. He’ll take it as an insult.”
“That’s between us. ‘Nice’ is all you need to know—and don’t you dare ask him.”
“Oh, I’ll get it out of you sooner or later,” she teased. “But I really am happy for you.”
*
In spite of his brave talk about facing Mac head-on, Owen was pale when I met him with sandwiches from our café to take to the park. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted, “but I am sure it’s the right thing to do. Let’s just hope this works and that he’s fair about it. I’m sure he will be.” I didn’t think he sounded too convinced, but he strode across the street like he was on a mission, and it was clear he wasn’t going to talk himself out of it or let me do so. I followed him, feeling a lot less confident than he was acting.
Mac and his Council enforcer partner were at their usual table, playing their usual game of chess. I had to wonder what fantasy they were being allowed to live out that they wouldn’t want to escape. Sitting in a park and playing chess all day didn’t sound like my idea of an ideal life. Then again, living out a bad romantic comedy film hadn’t been high on my list, either. It had just been what was on my mind when they’d taken me. Maybe we’d interrupted a good game of chess by going out to dinner that fateful night.
As luck would have it, the park was fairly full and the only spot where we could sit was at the other end of the picnic table where Mac and his buddy were playing. Owen greeted them, then asked, “Do you mind?” as he gestured at the empty end of the table.
Mac nodded and said, “Go ahead.”
Owen and I sat and started eating our lunch. We made self-conscious small talk, trying to sound normal and innocent. That’s more difficult than I would have thought. You usually don’t even think about the things you say when you’re having lunch with someone, and you don’t care what random semi-strangers might overhear. We chatted for a while about how good the sandwiches were and how we were glad the food in the café had improved. There was some discussion of the changes being made in the store and how they were working. All the while, Owen kept tabs on his target out of the corner of his eye.
He abruptly steered the topic back to food. “The smoked gouda in this sandwich is an interesting choice,” he said. “It goes well with the ham.”
“It’s the bread that gets me,” I said, following his lead. “I’m so glad we found that bakery. I’d swear it’s right out of the oven.” Then I noticed Mac’s buddy glancing at our sandwiches as we ate and I thought I knew what Owen was up to. We went on praising the sandwich ingredients, and I then extolled the virtues of the cookies that had been delivered that morning. “It smells like we baked them ourselves,” I said. “You know there’s chocolate in the house. It’s divine.”
Now the buddy looked like he was about to start drooling. Mac was focused on the game, but he seemed to be stuck, unable to decide what move to make next. Owen glanced over at the board and said helpfully, “That knight has room to move.”
Mac blinked, seemed to see what Owen had seen, moved a piece, and not long afterward won his game. His buddy leaned back, stretched, and said, “I think I’m going to take a lunch break. Want to join me?”
“Nah, I brought a lunch.”
When the buddy was gone, Owen said, “Would you like a new opponent?”
“Why not?”
Owen threw away the trash from his lunch and took the seat across from Mac. I knew nothing about chess, so what they were doing made no sense to me. Their first few moves went rapidly, with Owen moving a piece and Mac responding immediately, and then Owen moving again, seemingly without even having to think about what to do. Then Mac paused and leaned back, frowning at the board. “I’m having the weirdest sense of déjà vu,” he said. “I could swear I’ve played this exact same game before.”
“That’s interesting,” Owen said mildly. I wondered if he was doing this on purpose, playing a game he’d played before with Mac. “Did you win that one?”
Mac’s brow creased, and he said vaguely, “I don’t remember.”
“Then I guess we should keep playing.” Owen indicated the board, and Mac leaned forward to make his move.
The moves went rapidly back and forth again for a while, and then they slowed down as each of them thought about his moves—though I got the feeling Owen was only pretending to think and knew exactly what he was going to do. During one pause, Mac asked, “Who taught you to play chess?”
“My father—foster father, actually, but he was the only father I ever knew. He started teaching me when I was just a kid. That was what we did in the evenings for fun.”
I watched Mac carefully to see how he reacted. He rubbed his temples, then he shook his head, like he needed to clear it. “Some fun for a kid,” he said, making his move.
“I was a strange kid,” Owen said with a shrug. “I thought it was fun. What I really liked when I got a little older was when my parents’ friends came over and I got to play against them. I’m not sure they liked it so much, though, being beaten by a scrawny little kid with thick glasses. I had to sit on a phone book to reach the board. I think my father thought that was the fun part, watching his friends react to the way I played.” He moved a piece, then said, “Check.”
Mac looked like his attention was barely on the game, and he didn’t even react to Owen’s move. I didn’t know anything about chess, but I knew that Owen’s “check” was bad for Mac. He stared at the board for a long time, and I got the impression that he was really seeing a different board from a different game.
Owen went on like he hadn’t noticed. “The first time I asked to learn to play, I must have been about five. I’d started kindergarten, but they quickly moved me up because I was bored. I was so little, and those kids were so much bigger than I was, and I kept beating them in everything, so they hated me. I had an older friend who tried to defend me, but my parents were worried we’d get in trouble for fighting, so they got me a dog.” He paused as Mac finally made his move, made his own move in response, then continued.
“They figured that the dog would scare off anyone who tried to hurt me on my way to and from school. It was a small town, so no one minded that this dog would walk me to school and then run home, and he always knew when to head back to the school to get me. He must have heard the bell and knew it was time. Anyway, that dog was very protective of me, and one day I was playing in the front yard after school when one of my parents’ friends came over. The dog didn’t know he was a friend, and I had to call him away. It was probably the first time I’d seen an adult look scared.”
Mac froze, his eyes distant, and Owen glanced at me before going on. “Later, the friend and my father were playing chess, and I watched the whole time. I think that made the friend almost too nervous to play because that meant the dog was there, also watching him. After that, I asked my father to teach me to play.”
Mac blinked, then whispered, “Owen Palmer?”
“It worked,” I murmured under my breath. I’d been kind of hoping it wouldn’t, in spite of what big-picture implications that might have had.
“Don’t react,” Owen said softly to Mac. “We’re being watched.”
“Watched? By whom? What are you up to, Owen?”
“I’m not up to anything,” Owen protested, visibly fighting to keep the appearance of cool. “I’m as much a victim here as you are.” He quickly described the situation as we understood it, then asked, “What’s the last thing you remember from the real world?”
“You and Katie went into that warehouse, and we followed you. I didn’t think it was anything, but McClusky’s a hard-liner and didn’t want to risk letting anything slide. There was a portal open in there, and then some elves came into the room and grabbed you two. We moved to intervene, and I guess they got us because after that, the next thing I can recall is being here.” He paused, looked at Owen, then at me, and said, “Wait a second, altering consciousness …”
Before Mac got around to connecting the dots on his own, Owen plunged ahead. “Yes, it works on us. Something happened when we destroyed the brooch, and now neither of us is magically immune. In Katie, it’s very likely temporary. She’s already losing her powers, and that’s why the spell seems to have been weaker for her. She fought it, and that allowed her to snap both of us out of it. I’m still not totally certain what it means for me, but I haven’t used magic outside the office since then.”
“You hid it well,” Mac said dryly. “So the elves have us captive, huh? I guess we saw something we weren’t supposed to.”
“That’s what we think. I was hoping you saw more than we did.”
“Just a portal. Who else is here?”
“We’ve seen a few people we know from MSI who’d gone missing,” I put in. “There had been a lot of reports of missing elves, so I imagine they’re here, too.”
“And you say memories break the spell?” Mac asked.
“Bringing up a vivid memory from the real world seems to work,” Owen said. “For us, it was an accident that we simultaneously came up with something that reminded us of each other.” He turned pink and left out exactly what that something was. “My story from when I was a kid worked for you, so I hope that’s all it takes for us to wake up everyone else. You’ll have to bring your partner out of it, since you know him best.”
“But be careful,” I added. “There are people we think might be monitoring us. If they notice we’ve remembered, they might do something.”
“If you’re worried about that, then you’d better act natural now,” Mac said. “There’s a guy across the park who’s watching us.”
I was facing away from our possible watcher, and my back itched between my shoulder blades at the thought of being observed. It took all my willpower not to turn around to see who it was. I was afraid that even using the compact mirror trick to see behind me would be too obvious. “Is he an elf wearing gray?” I asked.
“Yeah. You’ve seen him?”
“Even before the spell broke last night, I did something that I shouldn’t have been able to do if the spell was working—probably because I’m losing whatever magic I had. They’ve been following me since then. I’m trying to convince them that one part of the spell may have broken, but the big spell is still okay.”
“What do you think they’d do if they knew you’d broken the spell?” Mac asked.
“Probably put us back under it,” Owen said with a shrug as he moved a piece on the board. I didn’t know enough about chess to know if it was a real move or if he was maintaining the pretense.
Mac frowned. “I’m worried that they’re keeping such close tabs on you. We should probably have a contingency plan. I wonder if it would help to write down a memory and then keep it in a place where you’re bound to see it, even if you forget who you are again.” He moved a piece on the chessboard.
“That’s a good idea,” Owen said, countering his move. “We should all do that as soon as we can.”
Mac nodded acknowledgment and continued authoritatively. “The first step is getting information. We need to find this end of the portal that brought us here. We need to find the boundaries of our prison. It would help if we knew what they’re hiding. And then maybe we can find a way to get out or send a warning. If we can revive the people we trust, we can get more done.”
“We’ll revive the ones we know, and I think they’ll know which of the other elves should be on our side,” Owen said. I was a little surprised that he didn’t resist Mac taking over, but then he’d known Mac since he was a little kid, so it probably seemed natural to Owen to defer to him. “We’ll take every opportunity we can to see what else we can learn.”
“Okay, then.” Mac nodded toward the board. “Finish the game. I’ll try not to be a sore loser. I’ll deal with McClusky. You want me to tell him all that I know?”
“If we’re going to work as a team to get out of here, I think he’ll figure it out, so you may as well be up front about it,” Owen said wearily.
Mac looked even more somber as he said, “And you know I’ll have to report this when we get back.”
Owen went a little pale, but he nodded. “Of course. I guess I’ll deal with that when we get back.” He made a move, then said, “Checkmate.”
“And just in time, too,” Mac said out loud as McClusky arrived, sipping from a paper coffee cup and nibbling on a giant cookie.
“Did the kid beat you?” McClusky asked.
“It was a good game,” Owen said diplomatically.
“You were right about these cookies,” McClusky said around a mouthful.
“Come over any time,” I said. “You have to try the brownies, too.”
“See you around,” Mac said with a wave as Owen and I headed toward the store.
When Owen still hadn’t commented even after we reached his office and closed the door behind us, I said, “That went well.”
“As well as can be expected,” he said with a solemn nod.
“What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“You don’t seem happy.”
“We’re prisoners with no obvious means of escape and I’ve just let the magical authorities know that my powers have been back for a while without me telling them. The best-case scenario isn’t exactly rosy.”
To distract him from his bad mood, I said, “Since it worked to break the spell, I’m going to assume what you said to Mac was true. But did you really have to have a dog to protect you on the way to and from school?”
“The dog wasn’t to protect me.”
“He wasn’t?”
He blushed slightly, a hint that my tactic was working. “The first time the bigger kids got to me, I panicked and lashed out with my powers. I had very little control over them then and didn’t even do it consciously. There was no serious harm done—at least, nothing that didn’t wear off after a while—but the bullies were in danger until I learned to use my powers. James and Gloria figured that if I had a big dog at my side I wouldn’t be frightened, and everyone would be safe.”
“Did it work?”
“After a few dog bites. The bullies were kind of slow to learn.”
I hated to bring up business again after relaxing him, but we needed a plan. “What next?”
He frowned, thinking, for a moment, then said, “Act as normal as possible. And we should probably avoid talking to anyone else we know is a prisoner for the rest of the day.”
“Do you know how hard it is to act normal? Just the fact that you’re acting keeps it from being normal, by definition. Nothing about this situation is normal.”
He took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Of course it isn’t. Maybe a better way to phrase it is ‘unchanged.’ What would be normal in this scenario?”
“Well, we’ve just fallen in love and found each other, and we’re in romantic comedy world.” I tried to remember every sappy movie I’d ever watched with Nita. “I think we’re due for a montage where we walk around the city, generally acting like we’re in a perfume commercial—stuff like holding hands, acting like you’re oblivious to the rest of the world, or else seeing the world in a new way now that you’re in love. Doing spontaneous things like buying flowers or getting a street musician to play our song.” I felt my face growing warmer as I listed all the things that I’d imagined in those moments that had probably led to me getting stuck in this scenario to begin with. “Talking, laughing, splashing each other in fountains, pausing to kiss in picturesque places.”
“That would be the perfect cover for exploring the dimensions of our prison. Good idea, Katie. You may have to cue me, though.”
“Oh, come on, you can’t be that hopeless,” I teased. He sure knew how to burst a girl’s romantic bubble.
“I’m not that spontaneous.”
“Remember, we’re acting normal, not being normal. And speaking of normal, since we haven’t hired someone to replace me in the coffee shop, I’d better get up there. Florence is really grilling me about you, by the way. I think she’s working for them.”
“Then this is your chance to convince her. But before you go …” He slid a notepad and pen across his desk. “Write down a memory powerful enough to jolt you out of the spell, just in case.”
I scribbled a few lines about growing up in Texas, since that was something that hadn’t come up in this scenario at all, and put it in my skirt pocket. “See you after work,” I said as I left the office.
The gray-suited elf was in the store, lurking among the shelves. I fought to keep my eyes from focusing on him as I passed him on my way to the stairs, then forced myself not to turn around when I heard footsteps behind me.
“Sorry that took so long,” I said to Florence when I reached the café. “We’ve got to hire someone new for the coffee shop so I don’t have to juggle this and the assistant manager thing. Owen’s already giving me the info dump.”
“I bet that’s not all he’s giving you,” she said.
“We just went to lunch and then had a meeting,” I protested, willing myself to blush and forcing myself not to look at the gray guy lurking in the background.
“A meeting, hmmm,” she said with a smile. “About what?”
“Well, what to do tonight did come up, but otherwise we were talking about progress at the store.”
“So, that’s what you’re calling it these days,” she said with a wink. She seemed louder and more cheery than normal, probably because of the gray guy.
I was about to reply when she gasped ever so slightly, then gulped. I turned around to see Josh standing at the top of the stairs. “Awkward!” Florence singsonged under her breath.