Damsel Under Stress (Enchanted, Inc. 3)

Of course, the moment I decided to stay, my subconscious got other ideas. I darted out across the street, dodging honking cars, to reach him. It took him a moment to notice me, and then yet another to recognize me. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes bugging. He immediately scanned the area around me like he was looking for my magical bodyguards. Come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed them, myself. I must have thrown them off by leaving so early, before Owen got there to walk me to work.

I opened my mouth to answer him, but what came out was, “Are you missing anything? Or have you been too busy with your lady friend to notice?” My subconscious was a very strange place. I had no idea what I was talking about.

He rolled his eyes. “I am not dating Sylvia. She’s my investor. You may think I’m joking around with my business, but it’s for real, and it’s going to take that dinosaur you work for down.”

I glanced over at his single, tiny storefront, then back to him. “Yeah, we’re shaking.”

“How big a task force do you have assigned to figure out what I’m doing and bring me down?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and taking a pose that made him look like a wannabe rap star. “Yeah, you’re running scared.”

“We’re not scared of you. We’re scared about the mess you’ll make and the innocent people who’ll be hurt along the way.” That was me talking, I was sure.

“That’s what you say.” He glanced around me again, then asked with a smirk, “Where’s your boyfriend this morning? I thought taunting me was his job.”

“He’s too busy to waste time on you.” Part of me wanted desperately to stay there with him, which made me really worry about my subconscious, but I knew I needed to get to the office. It took all my will to drag myself away from him to get to the subway station. While I waited for a downtown train, I checked my watch. Unless a train came very soon, I’d be late. I stared up the tunnel, wishing for a train to get there right away. For once, it worked.

When I got to the office, Owen’s lab was empty. That gave me a chance to focus on my own work. I had a revised marketing plan in response to the Spellworks threat to wrap up and get to Merlin, and that almost distracted me from obsessing over what might have happened at the party and whatever was going on with me this morning. I still didn’t think my friends had told me the truth. After all, I never acted like that. I printed the final document, then headed to the departmental printer room to pick it up.

Trix greeted me with a worried frown when I got up to Merlin’s office. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You were in really bad shape by the end of the party.”

“What kind of shape?” I asked.

She shrugged her wings. “You weren’t acting like yourself.” Then she gave one of her tinkling fairy giggles. “For a moment, I even thought Ethan might have regretted breaking up with you.”

“That bad, huh?” I asked, playing along, though I was sure she was in on my roommates’ scheme.

“I’ve seen worse. Remember, I used to hang out with Ari.” Her eyes flashed in anger for a second, then she was back to her perky self. “What brings you up here?”

“I’ve got this plan the boss wanted to see.”

The intercom on Trix’s desk buzzed. “Tell her to bring it to me,” Kim’s voice said.

Trix looked up at me and rolled her eyes. “Her majesty beckons.”

This would have been the perfect time for Merlin to fling open his office doors and ask to see me, but he didn’t, so I sighed, shrugged, and headed to what used to be my office. “You need to make sure Mr. Mervyn sees this as soon as possible,” I said, trying to give my best impression of a superior speaking to a lowly office peon. “It’s high priority.”

She took the document from me, tossing it casually into a nearby in-box. “I’m sure he’ll look at it when he has time.”

That was the last straw. If I didn’t still have the remnants of a killer headache, I’d have been up for an all-out hair-pulling and face-clawing catfight. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d snatched the plan back out of the in-box. “Look, I don’t know what delusions of grandeur you have going on, but you’re just filling in for my clerical tasks until I finish catching the bad guys yet again. Until you’ve been a big part of stopping the latest evil scheme a couple of times, you don’t stand a chance of taking my job, so you can get over yourself.”

She was struck speechless, which was rather satisfying. It would have been even more satisfying if her elbow had bumped the tall Starbucks cup next to her computer and sent her morning latte into her laptop’s keyboard, but I couldn’t ask for everything. While she was still trying to come up with a snappy comeback, I said, “Now, I’ll give this to Trix to give to Mr. Mervyn.” Then while I stood there watching, the coffee cup tipped over, seemingly of its own accord. It took her a second to realize what was happening, and then she shrieked as she grabbed the cup and then tried to mop up the coffee.

In spite of her frantic reaction, the results were less than spectacular. A minor explosion, or at least some sparks and noise, would have been more fun. Just then, the laptop keyboard blew up, shooting keys and sparks everywhere. Ah, that was more like it, I thought. “It looks like you’re too busy to deal with this at the moment, anyway,” I shot over my shoulder as I left her to damage control.

“That must have gone well,” Trix remarked as I returned to her desk. “Usually you look frustrated instead of satisfied when you get away from Kim.”

“Have you ever had something you wish for really happen? I mean, where you think it would be great if something would happen, and then it does?”

“Of course I have. I can do magic.”

“No, not with you making it happen. I mean like when someone passes you like you’re sitting still on the freeway, and you think it would be terrific if there was a state trooper with a radar gun around the next bend, and then when you get around the next bend you see a state trooper with that guy pulled over. It gives you faith that there is some justice in the universe.”

“I take it Kim just got pulled over?”

“In a way. She had a cup of coffee next to her computer, and her elbow was awfully close to it while she did her superior act with me. I couldn’t help but think that it would be funny if while she was playing power games with me, her elbow hit that cup and knocked it over onto her keyboard. And then the cup fell over, just like that. She’s still in there trying to salvage the computer, but it may be a lost cause, considering it blew up.”

She sighed wistfully. “Oh, I wish I’d been there to see that. Too bad you couldn’t get it on video, but I have a happy picture in my mind. That may be enough to get me through the rest of the day.”

“While you’re daydreaming, can you give this to the boss next time he emerges from his cave?” I handed her the plan.