Damsel Under Stress

“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 partnership.” 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 partnership,” 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 anticipation 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 flashing 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



All 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 documented 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 flashing. 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.