Once Upon Stilettos (Enchanted Inc #2) (29 page)

She did a pirouette that was surprisingly graceful for someone twice my size and nearly a foot taller. “Fun, isn’t it? I’ve been looking for an occasion to wear this.” She then saw my shoes and gasped. “Oh my! Those are amazing!”

Ari and Trix joined us, dressed in outfits so skimpy it would have taken all the material in both their dresses to make my skirt. I suddenly felt frumpy in comparison and wished I’d done more to dress up than put on a silk blouse with my black work skirt and red shoes. Their reactions, though, made me feel better. “Fab shoes, Katie,” Ari said.

Trix fluttered over to me. “Yeah, look at you! I bet you’ll find someone to replace Ethan by the end of the night.”

“You can count on that,” Ari added with a firm nod.

Isabel picked up some papers from her desk. “I’ve done a little online research, so I think I have a plan for the evening. Happy hour at one of those beautiful-people bars in SoHo—since we are definitely beautiful people tonight. Then dinner in the Village.”

“And then there’s this club I heard about,” Ari said. “Very hot, very now. I’m sure we can find a way to get in.”

Trix posed saucily. “We’ll have to cast a spell on them—whatever kind of spell it might take.”

I felt almost like a character on
Sex and the City
as we left the office building, going out for a glamorous night in New York with a group of girlfriends. Then I got a good look at Ari and Trix and nearly tripped over my own red shoes. They must have turned on their magical veiling spells when they left the building. I’d never seen them away from work without my magical immunity, so I’d never seen the illusions they wore to hide their status as fairies from the rest of the world. I still recognized them, but it was disconcerting to see them as wholly human. Without her slightly pointed ears and her gauzy wings, Ari’s halo of short blond curls made an even more striking contrast with her goth girl makeup and her edgy clothes. Trix, with her straight strawberry-blond pixie cut, looked like an incredibly cute, pert young woman. Isabel’s appearance hadn’t changed at all, so I presumed that meant she didn’t bother magically hiding her giant size in public.

Isabel put that size to good use and hailed a cab for us by blocking the street with her body. “We can’t be expected to deal with public transportation when we look this fabulous,” she explained.

The cab dropped us at a neon-trimmed bar in SoHo. Half the people in the place looked like models. Some of them were almost as tall as Isabel, but they nearly disappeared when they turned sideways. Isabel had no trouble shoving her way through the crowd and securing a table for us. All the other patrons were too frail to stand up to her.

We ordered drinks—tiny bottles of champagne with straws in them, like all the models were drinking—and watched the crowd. “We don’t stand a chance of getting anyone’s attention with all these models here,” I muttered dejectedly.

“You’d be surprised,” Ari said, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “We have our own ways.”

“Yeah, but where does that leave me?”

Trix patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry. Leave it to us.”

They must have worked quickly, for moments later, there was a rather attractive man at my side. “Hi there,” he said. “I haven’t seen you here before.” I glanced around me to make sure he wasn’t talking to someone else. “Yes, you,” he said with a grin. “You’re the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

I almost fell off my bar stool. “Me?”

“See? You’re so cute! Most of these models know they’re gorgeous and expect you to worship them. But you’re utterly irresistible.”

I looked over to Ari, sure she was putting the mojo on this poor guy, but she gave me an innocent shrug. “That’s really sweet of you to say so,” I replied, not sure he was entirely sane.

“I love your accent. Where are you from?”

“Texas.”

“Of course. That would explain why you’re so charming and genuine.” He held his hand out to me. “I’m Matt.”

Feeling bolder from his attention, I shook his hand. “Hi, Matt. I’m Katie.”

He leaned one elbow on the table in front of me, then placed his other hand on my knee. “Tell me, Katie, how long have you lived in New York?”

“A little more than a year.” I looked over to my friends, who were all watching me. None of them had men around, so I felt bad for abandoning them. “It’s very nice to meet you, Matt, but I’m here with my friends, and I don’t want to be rude to them.”

He grinned. “See, that’s what I like about you. You’re a good person.” He pulled a card out of his back pocket. “You can give me a call and we can get together sometime when you don’t have your friends with you.”

“I’ll have to do that,” I said, taking the card from him and tucking it into my purse.

He gave my knee a squeeze and said, “Don’t ever change,” before disappearing into the crowd.

I turned back to my friends. “What did you do that for?” Ari asked.

“Do what?”

“Ditch the cute guy. You had him right where you wanted him. You might have even had a little fun tonight.”

“But I was with y’all. I didn’t want to ignore you because some guy was talking to me. I did get his phone number, though.”

“You have to promise to call it,” Trix said.

Isabel draped an arm around my shoulders. “I think it’s great that she didn’t ditch her friends. This is a girls’ night out, after all.”

Ari snorted. “Yeah, well, if someone who looks like that is all over me, don’t count on me joining you for dinner.”

A waitress came to our table and handed out another round of drinks. “These are from Matt,” she said. I looked up to see him raise a glass to me from across the room. The only other times a near stranger had bought me drinks, magic had been involved. As far as I could tell, this was the one time in my life when a man had bought my friends and me a drink just because he really liked me. I could get used to that, I thought.

The first little bottle of champagne went straight to my head. The second, along with the giddy feeling of having enticed an attractive man, made me unsteady. I didn’t see how I’d make it through the rest of the night, when Ari declared, “How about dinner now? This place is dead, except for Katie’s admirer, and I’m starved.”

I was proud that I only staggered a little bit when I slid off my stool. I caught Matt’s eye as I made my way out of the bar and gave him a wink and a smile.
Take that, Ethan,
I thought.

The cold air outside was almost refreshing after all the body heat in the bar, though I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was freezing. Isabel set out to find us a cab while Ari, Trix, and I stayed close to the building. Ari whipped out a cell phone and began chatting with someone about our evening’s activities so far. I’d just started shivering when Isabel called out, “Hey, I think I’ve got one!”

We all dashed over to her. I suspected Trix and Ari were using their wings, even though I couldn’t see them, because they easily outran me. Or maybe I wasn’t used to wearing such high, pointy heels. Before they got to Isabel, though, they came to a sudden stop. I picked up my pace, taking advantage of the opportunity to catch up with them. But then something hit me in the middle of my back, and quite suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore.

I
fell forward, but Trix got to me in time to catch me before I hit the ground. She held tightly to me as Isabel joined us, looking like a sequined vengeful Valkyrie. I could feel the charge in the air from the magic that must have been flying fast and furious around us, but I couldn’t see a thing. Normally in a fight like this, I was the one who could tell what was going on, and I was usually able to pitch in by at least throwing a rock at something nobody else could see, but this time I was utterly helpless. At one point, Trix grabbed me tighter, like she was afraid of something. I kicked out blindly, hoping I hit someone where it would really hurt with my pointy heel.

Then the fight must have ended, for Trix, Ari, and Isabel were wiping sweat from their brows and heaving huge sighs. Isabel paused and looked like she was talking to someone I couldn’t see. “You okay?” Trix asked me, releasing her hold.

I checked my body as best I could for signs of damage. My back was sore from whatever had hit me, but otherwise I seemed to be unscathed. My shoes weren’t even scuffed. Trix must have shielded me before any real damage was done. “Yeah, I think I’m fine. Just a little shaky.”

“We’d better get a cab while Sam and his people wrap things up,” Isabel said, returning to the curb to flag one down. She must have let the last one go when she came to my rescue.

“What did you see? Were those the same people who ambushed you at the party?” Trix asked me.

I had no idea, given that I hadn’t seen anything at all, but it was a good bet. The burst of heat I’d felt on my back could have been from one of those fireball things that skeleton guy had tried to hurl at me. “Yeah, I think it’s the same guys, but I didn’t get a good look.” That was putting it mildly. I wondered if the fight was still going on right in front of me.

“Are you sure?” Ari asked.

“Not a hundred percent, obviously. I mean, most skeleton creatures look alike to me,” I said, trying to turn it into a joke. It was going to be more and more difficult to bluff this out, especially if I was going to be in physical danger.

Isabel got a cab, and Trix hustled me over to it, then helped me into the backseat. “Do you want to go home?” Isabel asked me.

I shook my head. “No, not really. It would probably be better if I got a chance to wind down after that.”

“You need a drink or three,” Ari declared, her jaw set and stubborn. “And then maybe a really hot guy to make it all better.”

“Dinner it is,” Isabel said, then turned to the driver and gave him an address.

“You must really be closing in on that spy if they’re attacking you like that,” Trix said, patting my shoulder maternally.

I gave a shaky laugh. “How little they know. I have no clue whatsoever.”

“Really?” Ari asked. “I thought you’d be closer than that.”

“Nope. I have some ideas, but that’s it.”

“And you’ve come up with some pretty good countermeasures,” Ari added reassuringly. “Or maybe whether you realize it or not, you’ve gotten too close for comfort.”

We stopped on a narrow street somewhere in Greenwich Village and went into a nearby restaurant. As soon as we were seated, Isabel ordered a cup of tea for me. “We’ll get you a drink later, but you need strong, sweet tea after a shock like that,” she said.

I didn’t like feeling so helpless, as though everyone else had to look out for me, but I knew I pretty much
was
helpless, so I gave in and let them look after me.

Once they had drinks and Isabel had made me drink tea sweet enough even to please my sweet-toothed Southern grandmother, Ari made an obvious effort to change the subject to lighter things. “So now that Katie and Trix are both single once more, it’s time to come up with a strategy,” she said.

“Leave me out of it,” Trix muttered. “I’m not ready to give up yet.”

“And I don’t think I’m ready to bounce into another relationship,” I added. Especially not while I was still so disconcerted from having lost my magical immunity. What if the guy I hooked up with turned out to be like Rod, hiding behind spells?

“What are you talking about?” Ari teased. “You’ve already got one phone number, and it’s not like you two were together long enough for it to count as a real breakup. You need to show him by getting out there again and snagging a man right away. Make him know what he’s missing.”

“It took me a year in New York to find him. I doubt I’ll have anyone else within the next couple of weeks,” I said with a sigh. I had to blink back tears at the thought. The champagne earlier, then the shock of that attack, and now all the sympathy were combining to make me especially emotional.

“What about Owen?” Isabel asked. “He seems to really like you.”

“Yeah, you do spend a lot of time together,” Ari said. “What’s the deal with you two?”

“We’re just friends.”

“But he talks to you,” Ari said. “I’ve been trying for years, and I haven’t managed to get him to say two words to me that weren’t about work.”

“Most of what we talk about is work,” I insisted. “We only commute together because he has bodyguard duty. We’ve had maybe a couple of conversations that were even remotely personal.”

“That’s two more than anyone else in the company has had,” Ari muttered, rolling her eyes. “I swear, that boy’s hopeless. Cute, rich, and powerful, but utterly hopeless.”

“I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve been told I’m easy to talk to, so I probably make him comfortable. Trust me, that’s not generally a good thing with a guy. It usually leads to the ‘you’re such a good friend, like a sister’ speech.”

Isabel took the garnish off the rim of her glass and chewed on it, then said, “Well, if you don’t think Owen’s interested, I know someone else who might very well be.”

The others giggled, and I felt like they could use my face to direct ships in the harbor. We needed to move the topic of conversation over to someone else’s love life, pronto.