Damsel Under Stress

I got back downstairs to find that he’d removed his suit coat and tie, but otherwise was still wearing his work clothes. Loony lapped at her water in the far corner of the kitchen. She gave me the evil eye, then returned to her water. Owen poured boiling water into a teapot. “I thought I’d make some tea,” he said. “That was always Gloria’s cure for everything.”



“I wish it could cure this,” I said with a wistful sigh, leaning against the counter. “I’m sorry about all this.”



“It’s not your fault,” he said, not turning to look at me. All I could see was his back. His shoulders looked stiff and tense. I wanted desperately to rub his back to get him to relax, but I doubted that would go over very well. It would only make him more tense.



“Well, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t gone against your objections about removing my immunity so I could check out how the ads were veiled.”



Still with his back to me, and his shoulders stiffer than ever, he said, “You didn’t overrule me. Mr. Mervyn did, and he was right to do so. We needed that information, and can you imagine what a disaster it might have been if this had happened to another immune, one who didn’t know how to recognize when something was wrong, and who didn’t have the kind of mental control you’ve got?” He shook his head. “My objection was for purely personal reasons, not for the greater good.”



“It was my idea to go to the party. I should have known that wasn’t the smartest thing to do in the state I was in.”



“And I was with you at the party, which means I was with you when it happened. I let this happen right under my nose.” He laughed bitterly as he lifted the teaball from the teapot. “And I’m supposed to be the super-brilliant wizard.”



There was nothing I could say to that. Not that I totally agreed with him. I wasn’t sure how we could have prevented this, short of locking me in a tower where visitors had to climb up my hair to get inside and no magic could reach me, but I knew he wasn’t ready to hear that. He’d rather take the blame than admit that there were things he couldn’t control, no matter how powerful he was.



“Why didn’t you tell me about the fairy godmother?” he asked after a while, his voice cool and distant.



I shrugged, even though he wasn’t looking at me to see the gesture. “I didn’t think it was important.”



He finally turned around to face me. “Not important? When all those things were happening that could have got you—and sometimes us—killed, and I was trying to figure out how Idris was involved? Don’t you think it would have helped me to know everything that was going on?”



I felt about the size Ari must have shrunk to when she was put in my head. “I thought I had it all under control. I kept telling her I didn’t want her help, and I was never sure she was actually behind that stuff.” I could feel my face growing warmer as I admitted, “And I didn’t want you to think I was using a fairy godmother to get you. I was afraid that would make me look pathetic and desperate.”



“I might have understood that. I know how those things work and that you’d have very little control if a fairy godmother did decide to intervene in your life. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. It affected me, too, you know.”



“It didn’t have anything to do with me not trusting you,” I protested, but he’d already turned his back to me again. He arranged the teapot, a couple of cups, a creamer and sugar bowl, and a small plate of cookies onto a tray in a way that would have made Gloria proud. She’d probably drilled him for hours, just for an occasion such as this. I followed him to the living room and took a seat at the far end of the sofa. He poured tea for both of us, fixing mine the way I liked it without having to ask. Then he sat at the other end of the sofa.



The silence between us grew almost unbearable. “Are you mad at me?” I finally blurted. “I know I must have done and said some awful things, but that wasn’t me. And I’m sorry about not telling you about the fairy godmother. I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to worry you when you had so much else to worry about.”



“I was more hurt and confused than mad. I knew something had to be wrong.”



“Would it have killed you to say something to that effect? I spent the first day thinking my roommates were torturing me by telling me lies about what I’d done, and then when I finally figured it out, I thought everyone would hate me. That is the rumor going around the company, by the way. I think there’s an office pool on how fast you’ll dump me.”