Katie Chandler - Damsel under Stress Part 14

"Over on the far side of the room-the blonde who looks like she's got a touch of shark blood in her." He craned his neck to see, and I snapped, "Don't look! At least, don't be so obvious about it."

"Who is that with her?"

"I don't know. I don't recognize him from the back of his head."

An alarmingly skinny girl who I thought I recognized as the heiress to something, or maybe a pop star, or possibly both, walked past Sylvia's table. She wore a filmy blouse that gave her even less coverage than my dress did, and the spaghetti strap kept slipping off one of her shoulders. That wasn't too unexpected, since she was basically a hanger with legs and didn't really have shoulders to hold up straps. But then the strap went clear to her elbow, so that she flashed the entire restaurant with her unspectacular but totally bare chest.

Sylvia's dining companion turned to watch as the girl struggled to pull her blouse back up, and I was then very glad I hadn't been eating anything or I might have choked. "It's Idris!" I said. He was dressed in a nice suit instead of his usual ratty black trench coat, and it looked like he'd had a haircut since I'd seen him last. No wonder I hadn't recognized him from behind.

"Yeah, and what do you bet he was the one who pulled that girl's blouse down?"

The waiter arrived then with our food, distracting us as he laid out plates with a flourish, then carefully arranged a bed of salad greens and finally added what looked like a small McDonald's hamburger in the middle of each plate, the top bun slightly askew to show the purplish sauce on top.

"This is it? It's a hamburger." I said when the waiter had gone. It didn't look like more than a mouthful of food. I guessed that was probably how the restaurant's patrons stayed so skinny.

Owen poked suspiciously at his burger with a fork. He looked up at me and opened his mouth to speak, but another voice interrupted him. "Owen Palmer. Well, well, well. They'll let anyone in here these days." Of course, it was Phelan Idris. He must have come over to our table while the waiter was busy artistically arranging our hamburgers.

"I take it you're celebrating the launch of your new company," Owen said with the cool he usually showed under pressure. Meanwhile, I tried to shrink back into the banquette and hide behind the potted plant because Idris had brought Sylvia over with him. I hoped she wouldn't recognize me out of my disguise as Sue Ellen.

"Yep, it's been pretty successful," Idris said with a smug grin. In his nice suit he looked like a kid dressing up for his first dance. His sleeves weren't quite long enough for his arms, so his wrists showed. "And we're also celebrating the start of a profitable new partners.h.i.+p." He put a possessive arm around Sylvia, who looked like she would probably be burning her clothes as soon as she got home.

"So, how's Ari?" I asked.

He turned red in a blush worthy of Owen, and Sylvia turned even redder. "It's not that kind of partners.h.i.+p," she hurried to correct. "Strictly business." She took one step sideways away from Idris. Then she took another look at me. "Have we met?" she asked.

"I doubt it," I said, fighting to hide any trace of my Texas accent. The conversation had caught Idris's attention. He was looking at my low-cut neckline, and I remembered that magic could affect my clothes even if it couldn't affect me. I casually hooked a thumb through one of my dress straps so I could be sure to hold my top up. "I'm Kathleen Chandler, and you are?"

"Sylvia Meredith, Vandermeer and Company," she said stiffly, like I ought to have known.

"So, you're funding Idris?" Owen asked. "I'd think that would be a losing proposition."

I might have expected her to act smug, as though she was in on something we couldn't possibly know about. Instead, she got defensive-the kind of defensiveness that comes when you know you don't have much of a leg to stand on. "There are nuances I don't expect you to understand," she said, not meeting his eyes. There was also a trapped air about her. I halfway expected her to start blinking an SOS in Morse code. Then again, if I'd been out with Idris I'd have already written my "help!" message on the bathroom mirror in lipstick.

Idris, keen observer of social cues that he wasn't, puffed up what little chest he had and said, "Shows how much you know. She got really good advice about how important it was to back me." Both Owen and I leaned forward in antic.i.p.ation that he was about to slip and reveal something good, but Sylvia elbowed him in the ribs so hard that he spun away and doubled over.

And then he promptly became sidetracked, as usual. The starlet/ heiress/pop star he'd targeted earlier was walking past again, and again the strap of her blouse started moving down one arm. She clearly wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, or else she actually didn't feel too bad about flas.h.i.+ng the restaurant, since she made no move to pull the strap back up. Just as her blouse fell to her waist, there was a flash from the potted palm behind me, and a rumpled photographer jumped out from behind the plant. That was when the screaming started.

Fourteen.

A l the other famous people in the place made a show of being horrified that the paparazzi were in their midst, but they managed to pose and show their good sides while acting outraged. Others immediately took cover. The flash going off repeatedly, practically in my face, blinded me. I looked away to preserve my eyesight, just in time to see Rocky and Rollo swooping down at us from above.

"It's okay, miss," Rocky said, "we're on the case."

"On what case?" I asked.

"Your mortal enemy is here, and we'll take care of him for you."

I pondered crawling under the table, or maybe crawling through the potted plant-now that the photographer was no longer lurking-and getting out of the restaurant. I knew Sam needed the occasional night off, but did the gargoyle world's answer to the Keystone Kops have to be the ones on duty when we were face-to-face with Idris?

Except, we weren't anymore. He was happily in the middle of the melee, posing alongside every famous person in the room while Sylvia hissed at him. He had to be loving the chaos, and he must have disguised himself because Rocky and Rollo were back to circling the room, as if they'd lost him. I wondered which male celebrities would unexpectedly have their pictures in the tabloids this week, and which tabloids would be sued for printing incriminating pictures that were supposedly taken in New York at a time when the celebrities were doc.u.mented as being halfway around the world.

Owen flagged down a waiter who was on his way to nab the photographer. "Could we get the check, please?" he asked. The waiter nodded but didn't slow his stride as he and two other waiters caught the photographer and hauled him bodily out of the room, camera still flas.h.i.+ng. Even with the photographer out of the picture, so to speak, the melee continued. I wouldn't have been surprised if food started flying. I looked down at my untouched plate and couldn't help but agree that my hamburger would make a better missile than dinner.

The waiter returned, straightening his jacket collar. "Your bill has already been taken care of, sir.

Thank you, and have a nice evening."

We didn't waste any time verifying who'd paid for this ridiculous night as we hurried to escape from the restaurant. There wasn't anyone manning the coat check when we got there-probably upstairs helping break up the fight that had started between two pop princesses who'd stolen each other's boyfriends-so Owen waved a hand and our coats flew to join us. We then ran outside to the sidewalk.

When we'd caught our breath, I turned to Owen and said, "I can't take you anywhere."

He looked stunned for a second, and then he broke down in near-hysterical laughter, bending over and bracing his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath between laughs. I imagined he was still a little tipsy, and he was pretty tightly wound, so if he started letting his emotions out, there was bound to be a lot pent up. His laughter was infectious. Soon, I was laughing, too. With the kind of dating luck we seemed to have, we had to laugh at it, or else we'd go crazy.

When he caught his breath, Owen looked up and down the street. "I wonder if the limo is supposed to take us home, or if we're on our own. Where are we, anyway?"

"I don't see any familiar landmarks. We must be uptown somewhere. I guess we could start walking and see if a street name rings a bell." I wasn't too excited about that prospect. Our fancy clothes hadn't changed back to normal when we left the restaurant, so I wasn't exactly dressed for walking. I pulled my coat's collar as tightly closed as I could over my bare chest.

Owen continued looking up and down the street. "And then maybe we'd pa.s.s a burger joint or any other place that serves actual food. I think I may have to hit Rod tomorrow."

"You've already hit Rod. Please don't make it a habit. Besides, he did pay for the dinner."

Just then, the limo pulled up, and the driver hopped out and hurried to open the door for us. Owen and I looked at each other, shrugged, then climbed in.

Owen glanced at his watch as the limo took off, then winced. "I didn't realize it was so late. I thought time only flew when you were having fun."

"It was kind of fun, in retrospect."

"And we got some valuable information."

"Was it just me, or did Sylvia sound like she wasn't happy about having to work with Idris?" I asked.

"I can't say I blame her. Would you be happy to work with Idris?"

"But you may notice I'm not working with him. It almost seemed like she was being forced."

"So maybe she's the one funding him, but there's yet another person pulling the strings."

"Is there anyone you know of who'd be powerful enough to force someone like her to invest in Idris?"

"I have no idea, but James might know some names to start with."

The driver's voice came over a speaker into the back of the limo. "Where would you like me to take you?"

Owen turned to me. "Up for some leftover Chinese? I still have plenty."

I checked my watch. "You know, you're right. It is late, and it's a school night. I'd better just go home." We had to search to find the controls that allowed us to talk to the driver. When the limo came to a stop and the driver told us we were at our destination, Owen helped me out of the car. "Well, it was interesting," I said. "And no, it didn't entirely suck."

"Next time it'll be normal. I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," I said before he got back into the limo. He rolled down the window and waved as the limo drove away. Only then did I realize that we'd both forgotten to kiss good night. So much for a grand, romantic evening. We weren't adapting well to this whole dating thing, though I had a feeling we'd do a lot better if the universe would just leave us alone for a little while. Maybe we should even give up on trying to date and just be friends until everything settled down. It certainly wouldn't change much about our time together, only the amount of frustration I felt after we were together.

When I unlocked the front door, I realized I was still wearing that designer dress. I wondered if I'd get to keep it, or if it was like Cinderella's ball gown, something that would vanish at midnight. But that wasn't the real question. The real question was how I'd explain the dress to Gemma, who'd flagged it in a magazine last month, and even more, how I'd explain when it wasn't there in the morning.

I braced myself as I came up the stairs and hoped Gemma and Marcia were out, or at least sidetracked. No such luck. They both stared at me as I stepped through the door. "Oh, my G.o.d," Gemma breathed. "Where did you get that?"

"It's a knockoff I found in Chinatown," I lied. "It'll probably disintegrate overnight, but I didn't pay that much for it, and it worked for this one date."

She was across the room in a heartbeat, fingering the material and inspecting the seams. "It's the best knockoff I've ever seen. This is couture detailing."

"Oh no!" I said, dredging up some tears, "I bet some poor little girl in a sweatshop made this by hand, and she got paid nothing, and by buying something like this, I helped oppress her. But all I wanted was a nice dress." With my tears in full force, I ran for the bedroom and shut the door behind me, then I took off the dress, wadded it up and hid it in my footlocker, where I was pretty sure I'd find my work skirt and blouse the next morning.

Then I remembered that's what had happened to the dress Ethelinda had given me for my first date with Owen. Could she have been up to her old tricks, engineering her idea of a romantic evening, or was Owen right about Rod's interference?

At work the next day, while Owen and Jake continued testing Idris's spells, I got caught up on my other work that Kim hadn't taken over from me. I was out taking care of some paperwork when I ran into Rod in the hallway. "Hey, I'm glad I caught you," he said.

"What's up?"

"I'm having a New Year's Eve soiree and I was hoping you and Owen might make it if you don't already have plans. I left Owen a message, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. Bring your friends, too-anyone you can think of. It's an impromptu bash, but I'm trying to make it as big as possible."

"Do you really want them there? They aren't in on the magical secret."

"That's the brilliant part. It's a costume party. That way, n.o.body will think anything of us having fairies, elves, or anything else running around, in case they don't want to veil themselves."

"Okay, sounds fun. I'll check with Owen and my roommates and let you know." I realized then that this was my chance to figure out who was behind our adventures of the night before and added casually, "Oh, and thanks for last night. It really was a special evening."

"Last night?" he looked blank. "I thought you and Owen went out to dinner last night."

"We did. But didn't you upgrade his plans for him?"

"No. I know better than that. You don't s.h.i.+ft Owen out of his comfort zone without fair warning. He doesn't take well to that. Why, what happened?"

"Nothing. Just a little misunderstanding." As in, a fairy G.o.dmother who failed to understand that we really did not need her meddling in our lives. I was going to have words with her, and I was going to do it before this nonsense went any further.

I went straight back to Owen's lab to get my coat. "I'm going out for lunch," I declared. "Want me to bring you anything?"

He looked up from his work. "I could conjure you whatever you want."

"No thanks. Not today. I've got errands to run. You know, post office and stuff like that. I may be awhile." I took off before he had a chance to respond.

Life would have been easier if I'd brought Ethelinda's locket with me to work, but as I hadn't been planning to summon her anytime soon, it was still locked in my nightstand. That meant I had to go back to my apartment. Fortunately, the subway trip was pretty quick, and I lucked out with a train coming almost as soon as I entered the station. I got off at Union Square and then ran the few blocks to my apartment. There I grabbed the locket.

Ethelinda had said all I had to do was open the locket, and then I'd know what to do. It sounded simple enough. I held the locket in my palm and flipped it open. Words scrolled across the lower portion of the locket, almost like text messaging on a cell phone. "Would you care to arrange a meeting with Ethelinda?" the words said, spelled out in a fancy, flowing script. "Press your thumb inside the lid to say yes."

I pressed my thumb on the inside of the locket's upper portion. Then more words appeared: "Welcome, Katie. Ethelinda will meet with you at her earliest possible convenience. Press your thumb again if this is agreeable." What do you know, fairy G.o.dmothers had the magical equivalent of a voice-mail system. This seemed almost like calling my bank. I pressed my thumb as directed, then the words "thank you" appeared before the locket went dark. I closed it, then slipped it into my purse, wondering when her earliest possible convenience would be. I hoped it would be soon.

I made a peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich and got a soda from the fridge, then went back to Union Square, where I sat in the park to eat my lunch and wait on my fairy G.o.dmother. I didn't care if it took all day, but I wasn't going back to work until I'd taken care of this.

I didn't have to wait long. She appeared within minutes, scaring the pigeons away when she suddenly popped into existence next to me on the park bench. Today's outfit looked a lot like Scarlett O'Hara's famous dress made out of the drapes, only after the drapes had been hanging for decades and a few generations of moths had made meals out of them. The hot-pink prom dress showing through the holes clashed horribly with the green of the outer dress. A strip of the ta.s.seled border at the hem of the skirt had come undone, leaving the ta.s.sels to trail on the ground.

"Oh, I'm so glad you called me. I couldn't wait to talk to you," she said, her wings fluttering hopefully. "Now, you have to tell me how everything went last night."

"So, it was you. You changed the reservations, got the limo, changed our clothes, and all that?"

"Of course! I don't know what that boy was thinking, taking you to an ordinary place like that when he's supposed to be courting you. He should be wining and dining you, showing you the finer things. He should be making an effort. But that's where I step in, to correct those little mistakes. Tell me how it went! I want to hear everything."

"It was..." I started to go by habit and say "okay," but instead I decided to be honest. "Quite frankly, it bombed."

Her wings wilted. "No romance?"

"No romance. I guess it was fun, in a way, but it wasn't the least bit romantic."

"But it was supposed to be romantic-the limousine, the champagne, the rose, the nice restaurant. That's what young ladies these days want."

I got the sinking feeling that she'd studied up on non-dragon-slaying paths to romance by watching reality TV dating shows. Now that I thought about it, the whole date sounded like the kind of thing you'd see on The Bachelor. It was a fake, made-for-TV date.

"Romance isn't a one-size-fits-all thing," I tried to explain, realizing the irony of me trying to explain romance to the fairy G.o.dmother responsible for hooking up Cinderella with her handsome prince. "I'm sure there are some people who would have found all that very romantic, but not Owen and me. Things were actually going pretty well for us that night. He held my hand on the way to the restaurant, and he never seems to think of doing stuff like that. I liked the restaurant he chose. It was comfortable and cozy, and we'd probably have had a good meal we could have lingered over. He was finally letting his guard down, and we might have really talked. It wasn't all your fault that things didn't work out. It just so happened that one of our enemies was there, too, and that created some of our problems. We were too distracted by everything that happened to even remember to kiss good night."

She didn't look convinced. "Have you considered that my efforts to inspire romance haven't worked for you because you're not suited for each other?"

I had, but only deep down inside, and I wasn't ready to go there yet. "We haven't even been dating for two whole weeks. Isn't that too soon to tell?"

"Cinderella knew after three nights at a ball."

I'd actually always wondered how she could have known so quickly that this was the guy for her, and how he could have based his choice of wife on her shoe size, but I didn't want to get into that with Ethelinda right now. "Aren't we supposed to be destined for each other?"

"Perhaps you were only meant to work together and it was that kind of partners.h.i.+p." She drew herself up straighter. "My methods of instigating romance are time-tested and go back centuries. If I can't get a couple together, then they have no romantic possibilities."

"Yeah, 'cause if dragons don't do it for you, you don't stand a chance," I muttered under my breath.

She reached over and gave my hand a gentle pat. "Don't take this too hard, my dear. Do you realize how difficult a mixed marriage would be? I can't believe I ever allowed myself to think that a wizard of his caliber was meant for an immune like yourself. You two see the world in entirely different ways. I know he tries to act normal, but do you understand what it's like to have that kind of power? And if you don't understand that, there's no way you could ever really understand him."

I shook my head, refusing to believe that-but was it because I was in denial or because it wasn't true? "But...but the magical differences haven't been our problem," I said, thinking out loud. "Whatever problems we've had seem to have more to do with the fact that we work together and our work is challenging. We've got enemies who keep getting in our way." Now that I thought about it, that was absolutely true. I felt better already.

Unfortunately, I didn't seem to have convinced Ethelinda. "You just don't appreciate the differences. That might not be the problem now, but it was sure to be one down the line. Best you stop it now before anyone gets hurt."

"If that's the case, if someone like me can't find happiness with someone like him, then why were you even involved in the first place?"

"Perhaps my job was to keep you from being together. Destiny does tend to blur at times."

I got up from the bench. "Well, I don't want your help. Stay out of my life. I'll take things from here. However things work out, it's up to us."

Needless to say, I was still crabby when I got back to the office, and even though I knew I was taking out my anger on the wrong person, I couldn't stop myself from snapping at Owen when he commented on me being back. "Yes, I'm back. So?"