Damsel Under Stress (Enchanted, Inc. 3)

“Yeah, it definitely does.”

“Speaking of fun,” Marcia said, “what do we have planned for New Year’s Eve? Since we were apart at Christmas, we should all do something together.”

“I’m barely recovering from the last holiday,” I said. “I can’t think that far ahead.” For all I knew, I’d be engaged in a major magical battle that night. When you’re part of the team trying to stop a rogue wizard, it’s hard to make advance plans.

“Can you think as far ahead as dinner tonight?” Marcia asked. “I’m starving.”

I wouldn’t have thought I could eat anything after all that Chinese food I’d wolfed down that afternoon, but my stomach rumbled as soon as Marcia mentioned food. “I could eat something.”

Gemma stretched lazily on the sofa. “I’ll buy yours if you’ll go to that sandwich shop down the street and pick something up. That’s what I’m hungry for, and they don’t deliver.”

I collected orders and money, then got my coat and headed downstairs. Only after I was a block away from our building did it dawn on me that going out and about on my own might not have been the brightest idea. I did have enemies, after all. Or was I beneath Idris’s notice now that he’d launched his company and, for all he knew, I couldn’t do him much harm? At any rate, I made sure to keep my eyes open for anything that looked out of place.

I was still pondering angles we might be able to take against Idris as I left the sandwich shop with our dinner. I’d just rounded the corner onto our street when someone jumped out at me, shouting, “Wasn’t that exciting?”

Thirteen

I had to juggle for a few seconds to keep from dropping my take-out bags. Only when I was absolutely certain Gemma’s roast beef and brie sandwich wasn’t going to go splat on the pavement did I look up and recognize Ethelinda. “Would you stop that?” I shouted. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry,” she said with a giggle. She still wore that hideous reject prom dress, with bits of the fur from her Mrs. Claus outfit peeking out around the neckline. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“When you don’t mean to startle someone, you don’t appear out of thin air right in front of them. And what did you think was so exciting? I was just getting sandwiches.”

She waved her wand in a dismissive gesture. “I wasn’t referring to the sandwiches. I was talking about the dragons.”

“You knew about the dragons?”

“I hear about things. There’s very little that happens to you that I don’t find out about.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I was crazy about that idea. There were reasons why I’d never auditioned to be on reality TV. I didn’t like the idea of being watched. “Well, ‘exciting’ isn’t quite the word I’d use to describe the dragons.”

“Yes, but surviving an encounter with dragons and being rescued by such a brave young man must have been exciting.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But trust me, it doesn’t work out that way in real life.” It occurred to me then that Owen might have been right about the dragons being a trap. Ethelinda herself might have set it, not to put us in danger but because a hero rescuing a damsel in distress from a dragon was such a staple of romantic fantasy sagas. But surely she couldn’t be that stupid. If she knew my entire relationship history and all that stuff about our destiny, she had to know what our work entailed and that dragons were pretty darn dangerous. It would be awfully hard to play matchmaker to a couple of piles of cinders. “You wouldn’t have happened to arrange our meeting with the dragons, would you?” I asked.

“Moi?” She batted her eyelashes vigorously, as though she was both hurt and offended by my accusation, but she didn’t exactly deny it. “Rescuing a maiden from a dragon is a sure way to generate romance. It’s in all the stories. I can’t begin to count the number of couples I’ve known who met that way. But that doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it.”

“You were there. I saw you.”

“I was merely keeping an eye on my client. You were hard to keep up with when you were chasing your friend that way.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced of her innocence, but I could tell arguing would do no good. “Well, for the record, there’s nothing romantic about dragons. They’re ugly, loud, and smelly. And Owen thought someone was trying to lead us into a trap to kill us, so he spent the rest of the day wondering what our enemies might be up to. He probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d swooned into his arms.”

“You didn’t swoon into his arms?” For once, she sounded unsure.

“No. I’m not really the swooning type. I’m also not very good at being a damsel in distress. I don’t like being rescued. I’d rather rescue myself. We already have a pretty skewed balance of power—literally—in this relationship. Him always having to rescue me doesn’t help matters.”

“It wasn’t romantic, then?”

“No!” For once, I didn’t play the good Southern girl and apologize when she looked hurt. I repositioned my bags and resumed walking toward home, making her flutter to keep up with me. “If you did have anything to do with it, or if you were thinking of doing something like that, please give it a rest. You’re really not doing me a lot of favors in the romance department. Not that I recall asking you for any favors in the romance department, beyond one little, tiny bit of information, which you didn’t have.”

“So falling through the ice didn’t give him the chance to warm you up?”

“Aha! I knew that was you! Yeah, there was some warming up and even snuggling, but it also ruined our date just when it was getting romantic. Who knows what might have happened if you’d let things play out naturally?”

“You think I had something to do with that? I’d never do anything to cause you harm.”

She looked so hurt that I almost relented. “Look,” I said, a little more gently, “things are complicated for us right now because of our work, so when something bad happens to us, neither of us is likely to think about romance as we rescue or comfort each other. Instead, we think that someone’s out to get us, so we worry, which isn’t too romantic, and since he’s very, very dedicated to his work, he tends to go right into work mode to try to solve the problem, and that totally kills the romance.”