Damsel Under Stress
Page 65

We went back to the kitchen table, where we barely had room for a couple of plates among all the take-out containers. “I may even be hungry enough to eat all of this,” I said as I served myself. “Being attacked by dragons works up an appetite.”
After we ate, we washed my clothes so I’d have something to go home in and continued discussing what we thought Ari might have been up to, Idris’s new scheme, and what our next move might be. I’d given up on any non-work-related conversation. It wasn’t like I could expect him to spend the day whispering sweet nothings into my ear when he was convinced our enemies had just tried to kill us.
By the time I made it home, my roommates were convinced my evil boss must have made me work all day. “Even Mimi, ex-boss from hell, didn’t make you come in for a whole day on a holiday,” Marcia said as I hung up my coat, which still smelled faintly of sulfur despite Owen’s best efforts to clean it magically.
“I haven’t been at work all day,” I said, wishing I could summon one of Owen’s blushes on command. I was too tired to pull off the bashful maiden routine at the moment. “I went out to lunch with Owen after work, and the day got away from us.”
They both hooted, and I finally felt my face warming properly. At this point, I didn’t care what they thought I’d been doing because that had to be preferable to the truth. “Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?” Gemma said.
“Yeah, it definitely does.”
“Speaking of fun,” Marcia said, “what do we have planned for New Year’s Eve? Since we were apart at Christmas, we should all do something together.”
“I’m barely recovering from the last holiday,” I said. “I can’t think that far ahead.” For all I knew, I’d be engaged in a major magical battle that night. When you’re part of the team trying to stop a rogue wizard, it’s hard to make advance plans.
“Can you think as far ahead as dinner tonight?” Marcia asked. “I’m starving.”
I wouldn’t have thought I could eat anything after all that Chinese food I’d wolfed down that afternoon, but my stomach rumbled as soon as Marcia mentioned food. “I could eat something.”
Gemma stretched lazily on the sofa. “I’ll buy yours if you’ll go to that sandwich shop down the street and pick something up. That’s what I’m hungry for, and they don’t deliver.”
I collected orders and money, then got my coat and headed downstairs. Only after I was a block away from our building did it dawn on me that going out and about on my own might not have been the brightest idea. I did have enemies, after all. Or was I beneath Idris’s notice now that he’d launched his company and, for all he knew, I couldn’t do him much harm? At any rate, I made sure to keep my eyes open for anything that looked out of place.
I was still pondering angles we might be able to take against Idris as I left the sandwich shop with our dinner. I’d just rounded the corner onto our street when someone jumped out at me, shouting, “Wasn’t that exciting?”
Thirteen
I had to juggle for a few seconds to keep from dropping my take-out bags. Only when I was absolutely certain Gemma’s roast beef and brie sandwich wasn’t going to go splat on the pavement did I look up and recognize Ethelinda. “Would you stop that?” I shouted. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Sorry,” she said with a giggle. She still wore that hideous reject prom dress, with bits of the fur from her Mrs. Claus outfit peeking out around the neckline. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“When you don’t mean to startle someone, you don’t appear out of thin air right in front of them. And what did you think was so exciting? I was just getting sandwiches.”
She waved her wand in a dismissive gesture. “I wasn’t referring to the sandwiches. I was talking about the dragons.”
“You knew about the dragons?”
“I hear about things. There’s very little that happens to you that I don’t find out about.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I was crazy about that idea. There were reasons why I’d never auditioned to be on reality TV. I didn’t like the idea of being watched. “Well, ‘exciting’ isn’t quite the word I’d use to describe the dragons.”
“Yes, but surviving an encounter with dragons and being rescued by such a brave young man must have been exciting.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But trust me, it doesn’t work out that way in real life.” It occurred to me then that Owen might have been right about the dragons being a trap. Ethelinda herself might have set it, not to put us in danger but because a hero rescuing a damsel in distress from a dragon was such a staple of romantic fantasy sagas. But surely she couldn’t be that stupid. If she knew my entire relationship history and all that stuff about our destiny, she had to know what our work entailed and that dragons were pretty darn dangerous. It would be awfully hard to play matchmaker to a couple of piles of cinders. “You wouldn’t have happened to arrange our meeting with the dragons, would you?” I asked.