Damsel Under Stress (Enchanted, Inc. 3)

We looked at each other, then Owen said, “Watching everyone else is more fun for us.”

“It gives us better office blackmail material for after the holidays,” I added.

She fluttered her fake wings at us as she returned to the dance floor. Others might have considered us to be wallflowers, but I had a good time sitting with Owen and trying to guess the identities of the various party guests in their costumes. Marcia and Rod were still dancing together, and still quite close. From what I’d heard about Rod’s social life, that may have been the longest he’d spent with any one woman in years. Philip had finally given up trying to ballroom dance in that crowd and was attempting to follow Gemma’s more contemporary dance style, even as he seemed to be a bit distracted by that catsuit. At least one fairy was floating and spinning above the crowd, and if I saw it, that meant my friends could see it, so I hoped they were too busy dancing to notice.

“I’d say it’s a successful party,” I remarked to Owen.

“Rod does know how to throw a party,” he said. He checked his watch. “It’s not long until midnight. I’d better fight my way back to the bar to grab some champagne.”

While he was gone, I slipped my feet out of my shoes and pointed and flexed my toes a few times to try to get the circulation going again. As I bent to put my shoes back on, a sudden wave of dizziness struck me. Maybe I should have asked Owen to grab some food before he got the champagne, I thought.

Owen returned more quickly than I expected. “They had the champagne all lined up on a table,” he explained. After he handed me my glass, he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew two of those party things you blow into and make uncurl. “And we have something to help us usher in the New Year,” he said, handing me one of those. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want one of these or one of the noisemakers, but I figured there’s enough noise in here.”

“Very good choice,” I said, then blew it at him.

The band stopped playing and Rod took the microphone. “Are we ready for the countdown?” he asked.

Owen and I stood up and moved to join the rest of the crowd. Everyone counted down from ten together, then balloons and streamers floated down from the ceiling—where I hadn’t noticed anything hanging previously—and everyone cheered. Owen and I clinked our glasses together, then he leaned forward to kiss me. “Happy New Year,” he said.

“And happy New Year to you, too.”

I drank my champagne, and then things started to get a little fuzzy. And then things went kind of blank.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed with a killer headache, in my bedroom, in our apartment, and still wearing the red satin dress and fishnet tights.

Eighteen

It was hard to tell what time of day it was from inside my bedroom because so little light came through the airshaft no matter what time of day it was, but this didn’t look like morning sun. I had to squint and force my eyes to focus so I could read my bedside alarm clock. The clock had to be wrong. It said it was nearly three in the afternoon. That was impossible. It would mean I was missing about fifteen hours, since the last thing I remembered clearly was kissing Owen at midnight.

I reached to rub my aching head and found the horned headband, still clinging precariously. Removing it eased the headache a little bit, but not enough. With a supreme effort, I willed myself into a sitting position. Maybe a shower would help, I thought, if I could make it all the way to the bathroom. The wooden floor seemed to have turned to ice, it was so hard to keep my feet under me, and I had to hold my arms out like a tightrope walker to maintain my balance.

A long, hot shower didn’t do as much to clear my head as I hoped. A large part of my brain was still out cold and the other part was having to lug it around like deadweight. My balance had improved some, so navigating the path back to the bedroom wasn’t quite as difficult as the walk to the bathroom had been. I threw on a sweat suit, and then I ventured out into the living room. I wasn’t yet sure I wanted to know what had happened during all those missing hours, but I was sure my roommates would tell me.

“It lives,” Marcia said drily from her seat at the dining table when I shuffled in. Gemma glanced up from the fashion magazine she was reading with a grunt.

“Yeah, it lives. More or less,” I said, sitting very carefully on the sofa to make sure it was where I thought it was. I felt like I had a skewed perception of the world, as though everything was just a bit off from where it seemed to me to be. I noticed as I sat down that one of my red stilettos lay on the floor in front of the door. There was no sign of the other one. Maybe Prince Charming had snagged it when I lost it while fleeing the ball and he’d use it to find me again. “Would anyone mind filling me in on what happened after midnight? ’Cause I’m drawing a blank.”

“Oh, it’s quite the saga,” Gemma said. “I’m not sure we have time to tell the whole story.”

“How about we start with what should be the easy part: How did I end up at home and in bed?”

Marcia got up from the table and came over to stand in front of me. “When things got out of hand at the party, Owen and Philip dragged you out of there. Owen called for a car to drive us home. Owen and Philip got you up the stairs between them, and then Gemma and I threw you in bed.”

I nodded. “Okay. That makes sense. Well, the coming home part does. But what do you mean by things getting out of hand?”

“Ha!” Gemma’s response was somewhere between a snort and a laugh.

“Come on, y’all. What happened? I’m missing a lot of time here, and I don’t know why. I remember kissing Owen at midnight, and after that everything is a big blank.”

“Let’s just say I never had you pegged as a mean drunk.” Marcia tossed her hair, which still held some of the Marilyn curl, and stalked off to the kitchen.

“But I wasn’t drunk,” I protested. “I had one cup of punch, which seemed pretty watered-down even to me, and then a glass of champagne at midnight, and I don’t remember drinking all of that.”

“I hope you were drunk,” Gemma snapped. “Because if you weren’t and you were acting that way, well, you aren’t the person we thought you were.”

“What did I do?”

“You got nasty. You said some really mean things to us and to Owen, and then after you told him how pathetic he was as a boyfriend, you came on to every other man in the place—especially those who were there with dates.”