Damsel Under Stress

“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 assured 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.