my wits about me enough to reach my other arm up and try to get a grasp on something, but my fingers were numb from cold, and the ice kept breaking off around me. Owen grabbed that wrist and managed to pull me a little farther out of the hole. The whole time, he mumbled under his breath, and I could feel the tingle of magic near me. A crowd gathered around us, and soon a couple of men helped Owen pull me up onto the ice. I turned around to see the hole where I’d fallen and caught only a glimpse of the hole freezing over again.
A muddle of voices asked variations on the “what just happened here?” question, only with lots more profanity, this being New York. My teeth were chattering so hard I could only hear bits and pieces. Next thing I knew, something heavy was being wrapped around me and I was being pulled to my feet. Then I felt my feet leaving the ground. My legs were still pretty numb, but I got the feeling they were draped over someone’s arm, and I was cradled against something warm and solid. The wind stirred around me, making me shiver even more, and I realized that whoever was carrying me was moving.
Soon I was deposited onto a bench, and I heard Owen’s voice barking out orders. “I need someone to bring a blanket and something hot to drink.” Then his face was very close to mine. “Katie?” he asked, looking tense and worried.
I tried to tell him I’d be fine, but my teeth were still chattering. He pulled something from around me—his coat, it turned out—then peeled my own wet coat off me. I tried to fight him because if I was this cold already, how would I feel without a coat on at all? He shushed me, though, murmuring so only I could hear, “I’ll take care of it, but the last thing you need is to be wrapped in a wet coat.” Sure enough, soon my clothes were dry and warm, and I felt much better. He put his dry coat back around me and set my soaking coat, which had ice crystals forming on it, aside on the bench. As the cold seeped away from my brain, I realized what he’d done. He’d managed to dry my clothes magically while still keeping my coat wet, and with his coat around me, nobody would notice that my clothes were dry. They’d only see the wet coat and assume I was still wet, so they’d never suspect anything funny—well, anything funnier than falling through ice that had a concrete slab under it. My Owen was really good at thinking logically in a crisis.
A moment later, someone draped a blanket around me, and Owen held a steaming paper cup to my lips. “Come on, drink,” he urged. It turned out to be hot cocoa, and that warmth going into me just about did the trick. Soon my hands had thawed enough for me to hold the cup myself. While I drank, Owen disappeared for a moment, then returned and knelt in front of me. It took me a second to realize he was pulling off my skates and putting my shoes on. My feet seemed to be the last parts of me that remained numb from the cold.
The people around us were still talking. “Must’ve been a sinkhole,” one voice said. “No way,” another replied. “Not that deep.” “Strangest thing I ever saw, and I seen a lot.” I felt the air around me stir, then turned to see Sam perched beside me on the back of the bench. He winked at me, then faced Owen, who gave him a quizzical look. Sam shook his head grimly, then took off again. He coasted in a spiraling pattern above the rink, looking for all the world like a buzzard circling a dead animal out in the country.
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?”