Damsel Under Stress (12 page)

Someone wearing a park employee uniform joined us. Owen dealt with him, saying something about how I’d be okay, there must have just been a melted spot. The employee went out on the ice, others leading him to the place where not too long ago there had been a gaping hole full of icy water, but it was impossible to tell that anything had happened there. I almost felt sorry for the guy, who was probably going to have a hard time writing the report on this incident.

He returned and had more words with Owen. There were raised voices, and I wished I could concentrate enough to pay attention to what they were saying because Owen never raised his voice, not even when he was angry. He was one of those people who got quieter and calmer when he got mad, so this was unusual and probably well worth listening to. I did manage to hear him say quite firmly, “I need to get her home and warm. I don’t know what happened, but you don’t have to worry about us filing a complaint or suing. I don’t care about your paperwork. I just need to get her warm.”

Then he came back to me, sitting beside me on the bench. “Do you think you can walk?” he asked, his voice soft and gentle, more like his normal self.

“Yeah,” I managed to croak.

“Okay, then. Let’s go get a cab.”

He picked up my ice-covered coat, then helped me to my feet and walked with his arm around me toward the Fifth Avenue side of the park. Once we were away from the crowds, he said, “I’d try the magical teleportation thing again, but at this distance and with your magical immunity intact this time, I’m not sure I could do it, and even if I could, it would drain me completely. I’d rather be ready to face anything else that comes at us.”

“That sounds like a good idea. A cab will be fine. They usually have their heaters up to eleven this time of year.”

When we got to the street, he did his taxi-summoning trick, and soon I was safe in the back of an overheated cab that smelled faintly of curry and incense. “We’re going downtown,” Owen told the driver, then he turned to me. “Would you rather go to your place or to mine?”

“Yours,” I said without hesitation. “You’ve got a fireplace and a cat, and I recall that you have at least one sweat suit that fits me.”

“Mine it is, then.” He gave the driver the address, then he turned his attention back to me. He tugged my gloves off and wrapped his hands around mine, rubbing them to restore the warmth. Of course, since this was Owen, it had far more than the desired effect on me. Soon my whole body verged on uncomfortably hot. Before I had a complete meltdown, I pulled my hands away from his, but then I leaned my head against his shoulder and let him cuddle me so he wouldn’t think I was rejecting him. The terrifying memory of falling through a hole in the ice that shouldn’t have been there faded rapidly. In retrospect, it was a small price to pay for feeling this cherished.

We reached Owen’s place, and a concerned Loony met us at the door, meowing loudly. Owen hushed her with a glare, then in short order there was a fire blazing in the living room fireplace and he was holding an armful of clothes that seemed to have appeared out of thin air. “There should be some towels in the bathroom under the stairs, if you want to finish drying off. I’m sorry, but I was only able to affect your clothes. I couldn’t dry your skin very well.” As I took the clothing from him, he added, “If you want to warm up with a hot bath or shower, you could do that, too.”

I shook my head. “No thanks. I’m not eager to be wet again for a while.”

It was the same old pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt he’d given me to wear the last time I ended up cold and damp at his place. This was getting to be a very bad habit for me. I stripped off my mostly dry clothes, toweled off, then hurried to put the dry sweat suit on. A pair of thick socks was sheer heaven to my still-chilled feet.

When I emerged from the bathroom, Owen was waiting for me in the living room with two steaming mugs in his hands. He gave one to me. It proved to be a hot groglike drink, full of spices and probably a bit of something else. It reminded me of a drink my grandmother made when we had colds. I sat on the rug in front of the fireplace, and Owen wrapped an afghan around my legs before sitting beside me.

With the hot drink inside me, the fire, Loony in my lap, and Owen’s shoulder to lean against, I finally felt like asking, “What exactly happened back there?”

“I’m really not sure,” he admitted. “One minute we were skating along—and you were doing pretty well—and the next thing I knew, you’d fallen through the ice.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but that really isn’t an iced-over pond, right? I’ve been there in the summer, and that’s a concrete slab they set an ice rink up on in the winter. I shouldn’t have been able to fall more than a few inches, even if the ice melted or broke.”

“It was definitely magic, but I didn’t recognize the spell. Not that it’s a kind of spell I’d want to spend a lot of time with. Then again, it might be useful if you were in a situation where you needed water, depending on whether it requires ice to make it work…”

“Owen,” I said, giving him a little nudge to jolt him back to the present.

The tips of his ears turned red. “Sorry. Anyway, when you fell, it pulled me down, too, but I didn’t go through the ice. I barely managed to hold on to you, but I couldn’t get enough leverage to pull you out. I must have tried every spell I could think of that might have been remotely useful in that situation, but nothing worked. I’m not sure if it was your immunity or something to do with the spell on the ice, or what, but I was getting worried.”

“I imagine you’re not used to being helpless like that,” I mused.

“No, not really,” he said softly, staring into the fireplace. I thought I detected the tiniest flicker of a shudder in his shoulders.

“But you did get me out with some help, and you got me warm and dry, and now I’m okay, so it worked out.” I left out the part about how spending the rest of the day snuggling with him wasn’t such a bad thing. “I guess the usual suspects are behind this, huh?”

“Very likely. I didn’t notice anything odd, but then, I often don’t when they’re using magic to hide. Did you see anything before you fell?”

“Not that I can recall, but I wasn’t really looking. I was a little distracted by trying to remain vertical. It does seem like their style, though.”

“You have been attacked a few times since you joined the company.”

“I think I’d have to take off my socks to count the times, but my feet are too cold for that right now.”

“Are you still cold? I could warm the house up a little more or get you another blanket.”

I had to fight myself to keep from laughing at his tone, which was so concerned it was almost frantic. “I’m fine, really. In an hour or so, I’ll even be ready to go home and get packed for tomorrow. Relax.”

We ordered a pizza for dinner and ate in front of the fire, Owen tossing Loony the occasional bite of meat as he briefed me on the upcoming holiday. “I know I make them sound terrifying, but James and Gloria really aren’t that bad. They’ll be nice to you. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I did tell you they dress for dinner, though, didn’t I?” I nodded. “And they don’t believe in hanging around the house in your pajamas. They’re fully dressed before they leave their bedroom.”

“That’s good to know,” I said, omitting the fact that Rod had already briefed me on that detail. “Y’all don’t have any weird traditions I need to know about, do you?”

“Nothing I can think of, but then I don’t know what you might think of as weird.” I knew if our positions were reversed, my brothers would be likely to invent traditions to put him through and make him think were a normal part of our holidays, but somehow I doubted his foster parents would do anything like that.

When I couldn’t delay getting home anymore, he insisted on walking me to my door, in case the sidewalks decided to swallow me. I was late getting to bed after wrapping up my packing. I doubted I’d get much sleep, anyway, what with my nervousness about the next day and the likelihood I’d end up reliving the day’s adventures.

Sure enough, as soon as I tried to shut my eyes, I was right back on that ice rink, enjoying the blissful moment when I felt like I was living a scene from a favorite romantic Christmas movie and then reliving the sudden terror of plunging through the ice. The memory was vividly painful, and as it flashed before my eyes, I could swear I recalled a hint of silvery sparkles in the air just before I fell.

I sat bolt upright in bed, shouting, “Ethelinda!” Fortunately, my roommates were out of town so I didn’t have to explain that. I wanted to bang my head against the wall in frustration at it having taken so long to dawn on me. It was the kind of semi-disastrous thing she might try, given what I’d seen from her at the tavern the other night. To give her credit, it had worked, in a way. Me falling through the ice had given Owen the chance to play both rescuer and comforter, and we’d had some quality snuggling time in the aftermath.

On the other hand, it could have been dangerous for both of us, and what was the deal with setting up a situation where I became a victim and he had to rescue me? Besides, hadn’t I told her I didn’t want her interfering?

I was tempted to get out the locket and call her so I could give her a piece of my mind, but I didn’t know if she worked nights, and it would be just like her to answer my summons while I was at Owen’s foster parents’ home. No, it was best to leave her out of this until after the holiday. In the meantime, I’d keep my eyes peeled for any signs of silvery sparkles.

Late the next morning, after a train ride during which Owen grew more and more jittery, we stepped off the train onto a platform in a bare-bones station that consisted of little more than cement platforms on either side of the tracks. Owen carried our bags down a flight of steps, then paused to look around. In a parking lot across the street, someone standing by a car waved. Owen nodded and headed over.

The car was a Volvo wagon, several years old but in mint condition, without so much as a door ding. Beside it stood a tall, slender man wearing a dark hat and coat. He looked like the Hollywood stereotype of the perfect, proper English butler, the kind who runs the household and keeps his clueless employer out of trouble. Owen hadn’t mentioned servants, but I shouldn’t have been surprised, as rich as these people supposedly were.

But then Owen reached him and the man shook his hand fondly. It looked like that was as close to a hug as this man ever got. Up close, I could see that he was quite old, with pale, watery blue eyes and skin that looked almost translucent with age.

“Katie, I’d like you to meet James Eaton,” Owen said. “James, this is my friend and colleague, Katie Chandler.”

James gave me a smile that was warm and genuine, even if it wasn’t all that broad. His face looked like it might shatter if he tried a broad grin. He clasped my hand in both of his own and said, “I’m pleased you could join us for the holiday, Katie.” He had a clipped Yankee accent with perfect enunciation.

“Thank you so much for having me,” I replied, trying and failing to fight my own accent. So far, this man didn’t seem to be a monster, and either he was fully human or a being that looked human because I didn’t see anything odd.

James turned to Owen. “I hope you don’t mind driving,” he said. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

“Not at all,” Owen replied. “Let me get our bags loaded.” James handed him the keys, and he put our bags in the back of the car. While he did that, James opened the door to the backseat and got inside. Owen opened the front passenger door for me, then once I was inside, he went around to the driver’s side, where he had to adjust the seat before starting the car.

The road from the station into town was so steep I thought I’d have to get out and help push the car up it. It was a good thing there was no ice or there would have been no way to get up that hill. The buildings that lined the road were stair-stepped into the hill, which gave them a quaint appearance. The town itself looked like something out of a storybook, complete with the fairy fluttering down the sidewalk with shopping bags over her arm. Gnomes tended the grounds in front of the gothic town hall, looking very much like those in that store window we’d seen the day before.

“You’ve got quite the magical population here,” I remarked. “Or is it this way in all the towns in this part of the world?”

“This particular village was settled by magical folk,” James said. “Almost everyone in town is magical or somehow associated with magic.”

I tried not to gawk as we drove through the village center, turned onto a major road, and then turned again to go up yet another steep hill. Most of the homes seemed to be fairly old and fairly large, on spacious, well-groomed lots dotted with mature trees. Owen turned onto a side street, then into a driveway, whose wrought-iron gates swung open at our approach.

The Eatons’ home looked like one of those elaborate gingerbread houses hotel pastry chefs do for display during the holidays. It was an ornate Victorian built from warm brown brick, with lots of peaks, eaves, chimneys, and green-painted woodwork. The icing of snow on the roof added to the gingerbread effect. All it was missing was a row of gumdrops along the roof ridges. “Oh, what a wonderful house,” I said in awe.

“Yes, it is quite the Victorian pile of bricks,” James said. “And in case you were wondering, we’re not the original owners.” I turned just in time to catch the twinkle in his eye, and I couldn’t help but smile back. I decided that I liked him.

Owen pulled into a detached garage that looked like it once must have been a carriage house. It was perfectly neat and organized rather than being the repository for junk that garages tend to be. That was my first sense of what I might be getting into. James’s relative friendliness and good humor had lulled me into complacency, but anyone who kept a garage neat enough that you could have a party in there was someone to be reckoned with.

My next hint that this wasn’t going to be anything like my visits home came when we went around to the front door to enter the house. Back home, we always came in through the kitchen. Our front door may have gone years without being opened. The entry foyer of this house was wide and floored with dark, polished wood overlaid with an antique Oriental rug. An equally polished staircase with an intricately carved banister twisted its way from the back of the foyer up to the next floor. James took off his hat, revealing a thinning shock of white hair, then took my coat and hat from me as Owen took care of his own coat in a closet under the stairs.