“No, but people are wondering where you are.”

“I somehow doubt you’re running rudderless without me.”

“We might survive for a few more minutes, but after that, anarchy is a real possibility.”

He grinned. “Okay, I’ll finish this game if you’ll keep the masses from rioting in my absence.” He sounded like Owen, but then he’d sounded like Owen when he was under the spell before, only I didn’t know it then because I didn’t know who I really was. Now, though, I couldn’t be sure. He seemed to recognize me, and there’d been enough familiarity in his tone to indicate that there was some personal relationship there. But was he putting on an act for anyone who might be watching, or had he forgotten who he really was?

Whatever his status was, I wasn’t about to leave him alone. “Mind if I watch?” I asked, not waiting for his response to sit next to him on the bench.

“You might be terribly distracting,” he teased. That was a good sign. If they’d reset him, they’d kept his relationship with me.

“Then maybe I should flutter my eyelashes at Mac,” I said. Mac gave a slight smile but kept his attention focused on the game. I thought Owen might have pulled off the acting job, since we’d been pretending we were under the spell whenever we were in public, but this Mac was way too different from the way he was with self-awareness. They’d definitely zapped him.

It may have been the longest chess game ever played—at least, it felt like it. All the while, I searched for signs of who Owen might be right now. Was he my Owen, doing an excellent job of playing along, or was he the romantic comedy world’s Owen, who had no idea he was a wizard trapped in an elven prison?

Finally, Owen won, and the easy laughter from McClusky and Mac at his victory proved to me that they weren’t themselves. I wondered if I should try to revive them, too, but decided to save it for later. We were probably safest if the elves thought their reset had worked, and undoing it immediately would be a dead giveaway.

Owen said his good-byes to his chess buddies and cheerfully came with me toward the store. Earl stayed just out of sight, so it wasn’t obvious that he was with me. We were just about to cross the street when I looked both ways, as I’d been taught in kindergarten, and I found myself looking one of the gray guys right in the eye.

There was no doubt that he knew I’d seen him. He reacted, then he moved toward me. I grabbed Owen’s hand and dashed across the street, dodging traffic. When Earl turned to see what was wrong, he, too, couldn’t help but react to the gray guy chasing us.

They knew we knew, and they weren’t going to stop until they’d made sure we were back under their thrall. I wasn’t about to stand for that. “Run!” I shouted to Earl as I took off, dragging a protesting Owen behind me.

Chapter Seventeen

My only plan was to not get caught. That wasn’t a great plan, but I figured I had nothing to lose. The results were likely to be the same, either way, but if I ran, I had a slightly better chance of not being caught and reset. If I didn’t run, it was inevitable.

“What’s going on? Why are we running?” Owen asked, but to his credit, he didn’t stop running. My urgency must have been contagious.

“I’ll explain later,” I said, panting.

With his much longer legs, Earl loped easily ahead of us, clearing a path down the sidewalk. We needed enough distance from our pursuers for us to duck inside a building and hide before they noticed where we’d gone.

A glance over my shoulder told me that I didn’t have nearly enough room to maneuver. They were closing fast, and I was sure others would arrive soon. I needed to act now.

We reached a greengrocer’s, and I got an idea. This was a foot chase in a world out of a movie. So, like in the movies, I should tip things over in my pursuer’s path. The way ahead of me seemed to have been designed for such a move.

I kicked the front legs out from under a bin of oranges, sending them crashing to the sidewalk, then knocked over the adjacent bin of apples. For a moment, I felt bad about messing up the shop like that, but then I remembered that this place wasn’t real. The fruit was probably an illusion. I just hoped it was real enough to slow down the gray guys.

I didn’t take the time to look, though. After knocking over a rack to block the sidewalk entirely, I dragged Owen toward a nearby sidewalk café and turned a table onto its side so that its umbrella not only blocked the sidewalk but also obscured the view of what happened beyond it. Then we darted around the next corner.

The gray guys came around the corner, and now they weren’t just chasing us. They sent magic at us. I felt its approach but wasn’t sure what the spell was supposed to do. I instinctively used the protection spell Rod and Owen had taught me to block it.