Damsel Under Stress (Enchanted, Inc. 3)

“Of course! I don’t know what that boy was thinking, taking you to an ordinary place like that when he’s supposed to be courting you. He should be wining and dining you, showing you the finer things. He should be making an effort. But that’s where I step in, to correct those little mistakes. Tell me how it went! I want to hear everything.”

“It was…” I started to go by habit and say “okay,” but instead I decided to be honest. “Quite frankly, it bombed.”

Her wings wilted. “No romance?”

“No romance. I guess it was fun, in a way, but it wasn’t the least bit romantic.”

“But it was supposed to be romantic—the limousine, the champagne, the rose, the nice restaurant. That’s what young ladies these days want.”

I got the sinking feeling that she’d studied up on non-dragon-slaying paths to romance by watching reality TV dating shows. Now that I thought about it, the whole date sounded like the kind of thing you’d see on The Bachelor. It was a fake, made-for-TV date.

“Romance isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing,” I tried to explain, realizing the irony of me trying to explain romance to the fairy godmother responsible for hooking up Cinderella with her handsome prince. “I’m sure there are some people who would have found all that very romantic, but not Owen and me. Things were actually going pretty well for us that night. He held my hand on the way to the restaurant, and he never seems to think of doing stuff like that. I liked the restaurant he chose. It was comfortable and cozy, and we’d probably have had a good meal we could have lingered over. He was finally letting his guard down, and we might have really talked. It wasn’t all your fault that things didn’t work out. It just so happened that one of our enemies was there, too, and that created some of our problems. We were too distracted by everything that happened to even remember to kiss good night.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Have you considered that my efforts to inspire romance haven’t worked for you because you’re not suited for each other?”

I had, but only deep down inside, and I wasn’t ready to go there yet. “We haven’t even been dating for two whole weeks. Isn’t that too soon to tell?”

“Cinderella knew after three nights at a ball.”

I’d actually always wondered how she could have known so quickly that this was the guy for her, and how he could have based his choice of wife on her shoe size, but I didn’t want to get into that with Ethelinda right now. “Aren’t we supposed to be destined for each other?”

“Perhaps you were only meant to work together and it was that kind of partnership.” She drew herself up straighter. “My methods of instigating romance are time-tested and go back centuries. If I can’t get a couple together, then they have no romantic possibilities.”

“Yeah, ’cause if dragons don’t do it for you, you don’t stand a chance,” I muttered under my breath.

She reached over and gave my hand a gentle pat. “Don’t take this too hard, my dear. Do you realize how difficult a mixed marriage would be? I can’t believe I ever allowed myself to think that a wizard of his caliber was meant for an immune like yourself. You two see the world in entirely different ways. I know he tries to act normal, but do you understand what it’s like to have that kind of power? And if you don’t understand that, there’s no way you could ever really understand him.”

I shook my head, refusing to believe that—but was it because I was in denial or because it wasn’t true? “But…but the magical differences haven’t been our problem,” I said, thinking out loud. “Whatever problems we’ve had seem to have more to do with the fact that we work together and our work is challenging. We’ve got enemies who keep getting in our way.” Now that I thought about it, that was absolutely true. I felt better already.

Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to have convinced Ethelinda. “You just don’t appreciate the differences. That might not be the problem now, but it was sure to be one down the line. Best you stop it now before anyone gets hurt.”

“If that’s the case, if someone like me can’t find happiness with someone like him, then why were you even involved in the first place?”

“Perhaps my job was to keep you from being together. Destiny does tend to blur at times.”

I got up from the bench. “Well, I don’t want your help. Stay out of my life. I’ll take things from here. However things work out, it’s up to us.”

Needless to say, I was still crabby when I got back to the office, and even though I knew I was taking out my anger on the wrong person, I couldn’t stop myself from snapping at Owen when he commented on me being back. “Yes, I’m back. So?”

He looked confused, but merely said, “So, we had a meeting. I was worried about you.”

It was only then that I remembered the meeting we had to discuss Idris’s latest scheme. “Oh no! I’m sorry, I guess I got sidetracked.” I thought for a moment about telling Owen about Ethelinda, but now that she’d given up on us and would probably be out of our hair, I figured he didn’t need one more thing to worry about.

“It’s okay, I think I know all that you know at this point, so I was able to fill everyone in. You’ll just have to cover for me at the next meeting.” He frowned as he looked at me, then asked, “Is something wrong?”

I had to fight the urge to laugh maniacally. Seriously, what wasn’t wrong? Our enemy was apparently thriving, and there was nothing we seemed able to do about it. I had an incompetent fairy godmother who was interfering in my life and who had just declared that I wasn’t suited for the man of my dreams, after all. Meanwhile, I had to admit that things with Owen did seem to have stalled out on the romantic front, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was because circumstances kept getting in the way of us having a normal dating life and how much might be because we really weren’t cut out to be anything more than friends. But I knew that wasn’t what he meant. “No, nothing’s wrong. Just frustrating lines and unhelpful people. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

“That’s okay. We all have bad days.” He reached as though to touch the side of my face and came back with a foil-wrapped piece of chocolate. “Maybe this will help.”

As I unwrapped it, I said, “I hope you just conjured this because I’m not sure I want to eat chocolate that’s been hiding up your sleeve or behind my ear.” He gave me a vague, mysterious look, but I needed chocolate in the worst way, so I popped it into my mouth. “Anything interesting come out of the meeting?” I asked once the chocolate had made its way into my system and calmed me somewhat.

He rearranged a few of the piles on one of the lab tables. “Nothing much. We rehashed the same old theories. I did share your theory about boiling a frog—but with a metaphor slightly less frightening to Mr. Lansing—and what we noticed last night about Idris and Sylvia Meredith. Ethan’s still working on Philip’s claim against that company, but it’s hard to prove a century-old enchantment.” He shuffled, then straightened another pile. “Oh, and Mr. Mervyn wants you to try that other experiment.”

“What other experiment?”

“The one to take away your immunity temporarily so you can see what the rest of the world sees. He thinks that could be helpful.”

“Oh yeah, that.” I knew I shouldn’t be nervous about this, since I trusted Owen to do the potion the right way and I’d survived the last time when Idris and his people had tampered with the water supply going into my building. It had been my idea in the first place, but now that it looked like a reality, it was scarier than I’d anticipated.