Damsel Under Stress

The passageway was too small for the dragons to enter, so we were safe. The last thing I expected to hear as we escaped, though, was a mournful whimper. The sound was so sad it brought Owen up short. He turned around. “Stay. Be good,” he told the dragons, who were shoving one another out of the way so they could each see him through the doorway. They settled down, resting their heads on their forearms and looking very much like Arawn had when he lay at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Owen to come down. “We’ll play again some other time,” Owen told the dragons, looking rather guilty.



“You really do have a way with pets, don’t you?” I said as we hurried back to the tunnel that would take us into the train station. “But I bet you won’t feed those guys from the dinner table.”



“Loony might get jealous, and I’d give her pretty good odds against them.”



“You’re not really going to go back and play with them, are you?”



“I might. I feel bad taming them that way and then leaving them lonely. Besides, you never know when a nest of friendly dragons might come in handy.”



“I wonder if you could break any of them to a saddle so you could fly on them,” I said, remembering a book I’d once read about people who rode dragons as a form of transportation. I’d always thought that sounded kind of cool.



“I imagine we’d first have to teach them to fly. These dragons seem to have never left the underground. Their wings might even be atrophied.” When we reached the train platform—with no trains on either track, thank goodness—he said, “Don’t worry, we’re invisible again, and I think we’d better stay that way until we get home, considering the way we look.” In the brighter light, I could see that his face and clothes were streaked with black soot. I probably didn’t look much better. Neither of us smelled all that fresh, between the sweat, the soot, the dust from the tunnels, and the dragons’ sulfur scent. In the New York subway system, our odor would probably blend in with all the other smells.



We slipped through the terminal, leaving traces of sooty footprints behind us, then made our way into the subway station to catch a downtown train. Nobody seemed to notice the turnstiles that turned on their own as we passed invisibly through them. I wasn’t sure if the invisibility spell covered talking or not, so I didn’t try to make conversation with Owen. He nodded at me and got up one station before Union Square. I guessed that meant we were going to his place to clean up.



Sure enough, once we’d made our way to a nearly empty sidewalk near Gramercy Park, he said, “I assume you’ll want to clean up a bit before going home.”



“Very good idea. I can’t think of a single reasonable explanation for looking—and smelling—like this.”



When we entered Owen’s home, Loony took one whiff of him, then arched her back and hissed. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been cheating on you with other pets,” he said wearily. Then he turned to me and said, “By this time, you know the drill. Your usual emergency clothes are in the guest room, and you’re welcome to use the shower there. I have a washer and dryer, so we can take care of your clothes before you go home, and I know a few cleaning spells that may help your coat. And I just realized, we never got around to having lunch. Want to order Chinese or a pizza or something?”



“Anything that’s not a flambé,” I said, shuddering.



As I rinsed the sulfurous soot out of my hair in Owen’s guest bathroom shower, I realized that at least I’d broken my usual pattern. Instead of ending up at Owen’s place cold and wet, I was hot and sooty. That wasn’t much of an improvement. I wondered if there would ever be a time when I was at Owen’s home just because he wanted me there with him and not in the aftermath of a disaster. Of course, that would mean having time with Owen without any disasters popping up, and the chances of that ever happening were beginning to look infinitesimal as long as we were in our current jobs.



The one thing missing in Owen’s well-equipped guest bathroom was a blow dryer, but I made do by toweling my hair thoroughly, then combing it and toweling it again. I’d lathered, rinsed, and repeated enough times to get the sulfurous smell out of my hair, and I’d scrubbed a layer of skin off my face trying to get the soot off. Then I dressed in that same old sweat suit that Owen seemed to have designated as mine. In most relationships, keeping clothes at your boyfriend’s place meant things were getting serious, and it might even be a first step toward moving in. In this relationship, it would mean giving myself a better-fitting option for the next time I found myself recovering from a disaster.