I put the book back on the shelf, then put up the decorations around the lab as quickly as I could. I stuck an anonymous secret Santa greeting note on Owen’s office door before hurrying out. Ari was still on the phone as I passed and didn’t seem to see me.
I was out of breath when I returned to my office. I didn’t see how our spy could stand the stress. The sneaking around for a good reason, with no consequences other than maybe embarrassment and a good laugh, was difficult enough. I’d nearly had heart failure from sneaking a peek at a book that Owen probably would have loaned me willingly, even if he would have asked me why I wanted it.
I rewarded myself for a successful mission by slipping out of my sensible business shoes, taking the red shoes out of their box, and putting them on. I felt the usual surge of power, like I could rule the world if I really wanted to. I’d always laughed at Gemma when she said it, but I was starting to believe that the right pair of shoes actually could change your life.
I kept them on for the rest of the day, and as a result, all I had to do to get ready for going out was touch up my makeup, add a little sparkle, and change my blouse. I got down to Isabel’s office, where we’d agreed to meet, and found it empty. Rod then appeared in his doorway, and I realized I must have become accustomed to his illusion when I didn’t have to pause and remember who he was.
He gave me a low whistle and said, “You look great. You shouldn’t have any trouble attracting attention tonight.” A warm glow spread through me at his praise. Maybe I wouldn’t have to go out to get attention. All the attention I could want was right there in front of me. Then he looked more somber, jolting me out of what had to have been the effects of his attraction spell. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
I forced myself to focus. “Sure.”
He gestured me into his office and said, “Have a seat, please.” He perched on the edge of his desk, and I sat in the guest chair, crossing my legs like I was modeling panty hose. His eyes were serious enough to snap me out of it once more. It would have helped if he’d turn that spell off even for a second, but I guessed he didn’t realize it was affecting me—unless he was deliberately affecting me. “This is probably none of my business, and I’m sure I’m totally out of line. I also want to make sure you know I’m not saying this in any official capacity, but rather as a friend. I’d like to think that you’re my friend, and Owen has been my best friend for a very long time. But be careful, please.”
Goose bumps grew on my arms, and I momentarily forgot all about the effect Rod had on me. “Careful of what?”
“I know you and Owen have been spending a lot of time together lately.”
“We come to work together in the morning, and we’ve gone to dinner together once. That’s not exactly a lot.”
“For Owen, it is. It’s enough that I feel like I ought to warn you. Owen’s a great guy. But he’s also dangerous. I don’t think he’d do anything deliberately to hurt anyone, but he could easily do it without meaning to. He’s also, well, he doesn’t have much experience outside his lab. I don’t want you getting hurt, but I’m more worried about him getting hurt, and what might happen if he did.”
I thought I understood where he was going with this. “You mean, you don’t want me to break his heart so that he then goes insane with grief and blows up the island without realizing that’s what he’s doing?”
He nodded. “Yes, something like that.” I’d been joking, sort of, but he wasn’t smiling at all. “I’m glad you understand me.”
I might not have had a lot of romantic experience, having had only a handful of real boyfriends, but I’d grown up with brothers and all their friends, so I knew a thing or two about men. My experience had taught me that when a man warned a woman away from another man, it usually had more to do with jealousy than with real worry about that other man, whether or not the guy actually realized it. While I didn’t doubt that Rod was worried to some degree about Owen, I had the strongest sense that he was actually jealous.
That didn’t mean he was really interested in me himself. But if he went to the effort it took to mask his appearance with an illusion, and with his best friend being a total knockout naturally, it wasn’t far-fetched to think he might have issues about me seeing him as he really was and comparing him with Owen. Could that have been his motive for spying on Owen and tinkering with my immunity, if he was the one who’d done it?
Regardless of whether or not he was the culprit, I knew enough about men not to accuse him of jealousy to his face. Instead, I said, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“I don’t?”
“Think about it. You’ve known Owen a long time, right?”
“Since we were kids.”
“So you’ve seen him around someone he was interested in. And if I read him the right way, I’d guess that when he’s interested in someone, he freezes entirely and can’t speak to her.”
“That’s pretty much it,” he agreed.
“Well, he talks to me. Often, and quite comfortably, at that. I’d say that’s a pretty good sign he’s got me filed in the ‘friend’ category. Or, given the way he seems to organize things, I’m somewhere in the middle of the ‘friend’ pile.”
He brightened considerably at that, even as my heart sank when I recognized the truth in my own words. My “like a sister” curse had struck again. “You’re probably right. I guess I overreacted,” he said.
“No problem,” I said with a shrug. Then I realized this was my chance to probe him a little bit about his involvement. “While I’ve got you here,” I said as casually as I could manage, “I just need to take care of a few details in my investigation. Formalities, you know. First, how often do you come to the office on weekends?”
He frowned. “Are you talking about when you saw me nearby last Saturday?” It wasn’t much of a reaction. He didn’t seem surprised by my question, and he didn’t go overboard to act like he was shocked that I’d dare ask such a thing. In fact, he acted the way you’d expect an innocent person to when asked a question like that.
“Yeah. Since I did see you here on a weekend, and since that one break-in we know of happened over the weekend, I really want to tie off that potential thread.”
“Of course,” he said with a nod. “I usually don’t come to the office on weekends. I have a lot of other things going on.” His eyes sparkled a little bit, and I got the feeling I knew what else he had going on. “But that weekend, I’d written the phone number of the girl I was going out with that night on something that I left at the office, and I didn’t realize that until I needed to call her to finalize plans, so I had to come to the office to get it.”
It was an entirely plausible excuse, given what I knew of Rod’s social life. I wasn’t sure I could write him off entirely as a suspect, but he certainly wasn’t acting suspicious. “Okay, thanks,” I said, surprised at the surge of jealousy that hit me when I thought about him going on a date. “So, on the weekend of the break-in, you weren’t here?”
“No, I have an iron-clad alibi for that weekend. I was babysitting Owen.”
“Babysitting?”
“He was supposed to be resting, and you know him when he has a puzzle he wants to solve. I picked that weekend to have my cable go out, which meant I spent the weekend watching football at his place so he had no choice but to be a couch potato, too.”
That was a huge relief. I didn’t want Rod to be the bad guy. He had issues, but he was still my friend. Or could he be more? I wondered how much longer Isabel might be. Even if I knew it was an illusion and an attraction spell at work, Rod was awfully tempting, and he was looking at me with definite appreciation. I licked my lips—because they were dry, of course. Not for any other reason. He took a step toward me, his eyes darkening.
But before either of us could make more of a move than that, Isabel came back, booming, “Now I’m ready to hit the town!” She was dressed neck-to-knee in sequins, which made her look like a walking Times Square billboard.
She did a pirouette that was surprisingly graceful for someone twice my size and nearly a foot taller. “Fun, isn’t it? I’ve been looking for an occasion to wear this.” She then saw my shoes and gasped. “Oh my! Those are amazing!”
Ari and Trix joined us, dressed in outfits so skimpy it would have taken all the material in both their dresses to make my skirt. I suddenly felt frumpy in comparison and wished I’d done more to dress up than put on a silk blouse with my black work skirt and red shoes. Their reactions, though, made me feel better. “Fab shoes, Katie,” Ari said.
Trix fluttered over to me. “Yeah, look at you! I bet you’ll find someone to replace Ethan by the end of the night.”
“You can count on that,” Ari added with a firm nod.
Isabel picked up some papers from her desk. “I’ve done a little online research, so I think I have a plan for the evening. Happy hour at one of those beautiful-people bars in SoHo—since we are definitely beautiful people tonight. Then dinner in the Village.”
“And then there’s this club I heard about,” Ari said. “Very hot, very now. I’m sure we can find a way to get in.”
Trix posed saucily. “We’ll have to cast a spell on them—whatever kind of spell it might take.”
I felt almost like a character on Sex and the City as we left the office building, going out for a glamorous night in New York with a group of girlfriends. Then I got a good look at Ari and Trix and nearly tripped over my own red shoes. They must have turned on their magical veiling spells when they left the building. I’d never seen them away from work without my magical immunity, so I’d never seen the illusions they wore to hide their status as fairies from the rest of the world. I still recognized them, but it was disconcerting to see them as wholly human. Without her slightly pointed ears and her gauzy wings, Ari’s halo of short blond curls made an even more striking contrast with her goth girl makeup and her edgy clothes. Trix, with her straight strawberry-blond pixie cut, looked like an incredibly cute, pert young woman. Isabel’s appearance hadn’t changed at all, so I presumed that meant she didn’t bother magically hiding her giant size in public.
Isabel put that size to good use and hailed a cab for us by blocking the street with her body. “We can’t be expected to deal with public transportation when we look this fabulous,” she explained.
The cab dropped us at a neon-trimmed bar in SoHo. Half the people in the place looked like models. Some of them were almost as tall as Isabel, but they nearly disappeared when they turned sideways. Isabel had no trouble shoving her way through the crowd and securing a table for us. All the other patrons were too frail to stand up to her.
We ordered drinks—tiny bottles of champagne with straws in them, like all the models were drinking—and watched the crowd. “We don’t stand a chance of getting anyone’s attention with all these models here,” I muttered dejectedly.
“You’d be surprised,” Ari said, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “We have our own ways.”
“Yeah, but where does that leave me?”
Trix patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry. Leave it to us.”
They must have worked quickly, for moments later, there was a rather attractive man at my side. “Hi there,” he said. “I haven’t seen you here before.” I glanced around me to make sure he wasn’t talking to someone else. “Yes, you,” he said with a grin. “You’re the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
I almost fell off my bar stool. “Me?”
“See? You’re so cute! Most of these models know they’re gorgeous and expect you to worship them. But you’re utterly irresistible.”
I looked over to Ari, sure she was putting the mojo on this poor guy, but she gave me an innocent shrug. “That’s really sweet of you to say so,” I replied, not sure he was entirely sane.
“I love your accent. Where are you from?”
“Texas.”
“Of course. That would explain why you’re so charming and genuine.” He held his hand out to me. “I’m Matt.”
Feeling bolder from his attention, I shook his hand. “Hi, Matt. I’m Katie.”
He leaned one elbow on the table in front of me, then placed his other hand on my knee. “Tell me, Katie, how long have you lived in New York?”
“A little more than a year.” I looked over to my friends, who were all watching me. None of them had men around, so I felt bad for abandoning them. “It’s very nice to meet you, Matt, but I’m here with my friends, and I don’t want to be rude to them.”
He grinned. “See, that’s what I like about you. You’re a good person.” He pulled a card out of his back pocket. “You can give me a call and we can get together sometime when you don’t have your friends with you.”
“I’ll have to do that,” I said, taking the card from him and tucking it into my purse.
He gave my knee a squeeze and said, “Don’t ever change,” before disappearing into the crowd.
I turned back to my friends. “What did you do that for?” Ari asked.
“Do what?”
“Ditch the cute guy. You had him right where you wanted him. You might have even had a little fun tonight.”
“But I was with y’all. I didn’t want to ignore you because some guy was talking to me. I did get his phone number, though.”
“You have to promise to call it,” Trix said.
Isabel draped an arm around my shoulders. “I think it’s great that she didn’t ditch her friends. This is a girls’ night out, after all.”
Ari snorted. “Yeah, well, if someone who looks like that is all over me, don’t count on me joining you for dinner.”
A waitress came to our table and handed out another round of drinks. “These are from Matt,” she said. I looked up to see him raise a glass to me from across the room. The only other times a near stranger had bought me drinks, magic had been involved. As far as I could tell, this was the one time in my life when a man had bought my friends and me a drink just because he really liked me. I could get used to that, I thought.
The first little bottle of champagne went straight to my head. The second, along with the giddy feeling of having enticed an attractive man, made me unsteady. I didn’t see how I’d make it through the rest of the night, when Ari declared, “How about dinner now? This place is dead, except for Katie’s admirer, and I’m starved.”
I was proud that I only staggered a little bit when I slid off my stool. I caught Matt’s eye as I made my way out of the bar and gave him a wink and a smile. Take that, Ethan, I thought.
The cold air outside was almost refreshing after all the body heat in the bar, though I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was freezing. Isabel set out to find us a cab while Ari, Trix, and I stayed close to the building. Ari whipped out a cell phone and began chatting with someone about our evening’s activities so far. I’d just started shivering when Isabel called out, “Hey, I think I’ve got one!”
We all dashed over to her. I suspected Trix and Ari were using their wings, even though I couldn’t see them, because they easily outran me. Or maybe I wasn’t used to wearing such high, pointy heels. Before they got to Isabel, though, they came to a sudden stop. I picked up my pace, taking advantage of the opportunity to catch up with them. But then something hit me in the middle of my back, and quite suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore.
I fell forward, but Trix got to me in time to catch me before I hit the ground. She held tightly to me as Isabel joined us, looking like a sequined vengeful Valkyrie. I could feel the charge in the air from the magic that must have been flying fast and furious around us, but I couldn’t see a thing. Normally in a fight like this, I was the one who could tell what was going on, and I was usually able to pitch in by at least throwing a rock at something nobody else could see, but this time I was utterly helpless. At one point, Trix grabbed me tighter, like she was afraid of some
thing. I kicked out blindly, hoping I hit someone where it would really hurt with my pointy heel.
Then the fight must have ended, for Trix, Ari, and Isabel were wiping sweat from their brows and heaving huge sighs. Isabel paused and looked like she was talking to someone I couldn’t see. “You okay?” Trix asked me, releasing her hold.
I checked my body as best I could for signs of damage. My back was sore from whatever had hit me, but otherwise I seemed to be unscathed. My shoes weren’t even scuffed. Trix must have shielded me before any real damage was done. “Yeah, I think I’m fine. Just a little shaky.”
“We’d better get a cab while Sam and his people wrap things up,” Isabel said, returning to the curb to flag one down. She must have let the last one go when she came to my rescue.
“What did you see? Were those the same people who ambushed you at the party?” Trix asked me.
I had no idea, given that I hadn’t seen anything at all, but it was a good bet. The burst of heat I’d felt on my back could have been from one of those fireball things that skeleton guy had tried to hurl at me. “Yeah, I think it’s the same guys, but I didn’t get a good look.” That was putting it mildly. I wondered if the fight was still going on right in front of me.
“Are you sure?” Ari asked.
“Not a hundred percent, obviously. I mean, most skeleton creatures look alike to me,” I said, trying to turn it into a joke. It was going to be more and more difficult to bluff this out, especially if I was going to be in physical danger.
Isabel got a cab, and Trix hustled me over to it, then helped me into the backseat. “Do you want to go home?” Isabel asked me.
I shook my head. “No, not really. It would probably be better if I got a chance to wind down after that.”
“You need a drink or three,” Ari declared, her jaw set and stubborn. “And then maybe a really hot guy to make it all better.”
Once Upon Stilettos Page 22