Damsel Under Stress

by Shanna Swendson

  “I’m what? No, I’m Katie. I know I’ve been acting odd, but I’d know if I was someone else, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t have been able to get through your office door. You have her specifically warded out, don’t you?”

  He grabbed my wrist and stood up, tugging me with him. “Come on, we need to talk to the boss about this.” He pulled so hard, I had no choice but to go with him. My head nearly exploded again as I passed back through the doorway, but he barely gave me a chance to get my feet under me again before he took off, dragging me behind him. Jake moved as though to ask a question as we passed, but Owen ignored him and kept going. His grip on my wrist made me feel like I was a prisoner in custody, and I guessed that if he thought I had somehow been switched with Ari, I probably was.

  This was too weird for me to get my mind around. If I really was Ari and I’d managed to switch bodies with me, Katie Chandler, would I really think I was Katie? Wouldn’t I be going around thinking like Ari and gloating about having fooled them all? It would ruin the point to think I was Katie. Meanwhile, where was Katie? If Ari was in my body, shouldn’t I be getting all kinds of good insight into Idris and his company about now?

  Another stab of pain hit my head, and next thing I knew, I was digging in my heels and resisting Owen’s pull. “Oh, no, not so fast,” I said.

  He turned back to fix me with a glare. “Katie, now is not the time.”

  “You know, you’re kind of hot when you get all forceful and manly like that. Do you ever do that in the bedroom?” I heard the words coming out of my mouth but I didn’t remember forming them in my brain. It was like these things came from outside me. I seemed to have a little devil sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear, like in the old cartoons. Shaking my head, as though I thought I could shake that little devil off, I said, “No!” Then I looked at a beet-red Owen and whispered, “Sorry. I don’t know what’s happening, but I want it to stop.”

  He looked sympathetic, and shifted his grip on my wrist so that he held my hand, instead. “I know. And that’s what we’re going to do now, so come on.”

  The closer we got to Merlin’s office, the harder I had to concentrate to force myself to go along with Owen and not resist him. I tasted blood in my mouth from biting my lip to keep myself from saying all the awful things that tried to come off my tongue. The pain in my head got worse and worse, to the point that tears came to my eyes.

  Fortunately, Merlin’s office doors opened as soon as we reached his suite, so we didn’t have to do battle with Kim over scheduling an appointment. I might not have been able to resist whatever cruel things the little devil wanted me to say or do to her because I would have kind of wanted to do them, myself.

  Merlin shut the doors behind us as Owen swept me over to an armchair and seated me there. He remained beside me with one hand on my shoulder in a gesture that was both supportive and restraining. Merlin took a seat opposite us and looked at us expectantly.

  “Something’s been done to Katie,” Owen said. He ran through what I’d told him about my odd string of seeming coincidences. “Then I had her do something for me,” he continued, “and it’s true. She can do magic. I saw it, and I felt the power in use.” I couldn’t see his face from where I sat, but I heard the intake of breath as he steeled himself for the next thing he had to say. “And here’s the odd part: She’s got Ari’s signature to her magic. If you blindfolded me and had Katie do magic near me, I’d think it was Ari.”

  “I’m also acting more like Ari than I’d like,” I confessed. “I keep saying things I don’t mean, really awful things intended to hurt people, and I can’t seem to help myself. I don’t remember a thing about what I did at Rod’s New Year’s Eve party, but what I’ve heard was really awful. My roommates are barely speaking to me.”

  “Whatever it was that happened must have been done at the party,” Owen went on. “She was fine until soon after midnight and then…” His voice trailed off, and when he spoke again there was a roughness to it. “Well, it wasn’t Katie.”

  Merlin nodded. “You’re right, that is quite odd. I’d never heard of a magical immune developing powers, but Ari’s signature could explain it.”

  “She also has a bad headache,” Owen said.

  “Hideously bad, like an alien is about to burst out of my skull,” I added.

  Merlin got out of his chair and came over to stand right in front of me. “Katie, I need you to do some magic now.”

  I glanced around his office, which was far neater than Owen’s, and saw a teacup sitting on a nearby table. Concentrating with all my might, I tried to lift the teacup and turn it around. Although I had a better sense of what to do to make the magic happen, this time it was more of a struggle, like I was fighting against something within me that didn’t want it to work. By the time the teacup finally rose from its saucer and turned around, I had beads of sweat dripping from my forehead and my underarm antiperspirant had given up the ghost.

  I let the teacup fall a few inches into its saucer and collapsed back into my chair. Owen’s hand on my shoulder tightened, and Merlin frowned and stroked his beard. “Very, very interesting,” he said. He stepped forward and rested his hand on the top of my head. I felt a slight tingle of magic, and then he lifted his hand. “And that is even more interesting,” he said. “When she’s not actually using magic, there’s another magical signature lingering.”

  Owen lifted his hand from my shoulder and placed it on top of my head, which sent shivers down my spine. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying the words to that effect that popped into my head. “Some other fairy, but not the usual kind?” he asked, moving his hand back to my shoulder.

  “That’s my assessment, as well.”

  Suddenly, I had a feeling I knew exactly what was going on. “Ethelinda,” I groaned.

  “Who?” they both asked.

  “A fairy godmother. A couple of weeks ago—right at the time Owen and I started dating—this crazy fairy lady showed up and told me she was my fairy godmother. She even had a book with my entire dating history in it. I told her I didn’t want her help, but weird things kept happening that she took a little too much delight in, and she seemed to think they should have brought us closer together. And then she decided when those things didn’t work that maybe we weren’t meant for each other.”

  “That does sound like a fairy godmother,” Merlin confirmed. He glanced over at Owen. “They’re still active?”

  “Apparently. I’ve known a couple of people who had to deal with them. They’re not too good at keeping up with the times, so they’re more annoying now than ever.”

  Merlin stroked his beard again. “I know there are rituals for summoning them, but I’ll have to do some research about this particular one to see how to get to her directly.”

  It then dawned on me that I was still wearing my coat and still had my purse over my shoulder from when I’d been heading home. In all that had happened after I got back to the office, I’d totally forgotten to take the coat off or put my purse away. If I had my purse, that meant I still had Ethelinda’s locket.

  I unzipped my purse and found the heart-shaped locket inside the coin pocket. I pulled it out and held it up to Merlin. “Will this help? She gave this to me as a way of summoning her. I’ve only used it to read her the riot act.”

  His face brightened. “It should help immensely. Thank you.”

  While he did something with the locket, I shrugged out of my coat. Owen took it from me and hung it on the coatrack in the corner of the office. He’d just returned to my side when there was a loud crack in the air, followed by something hitting the nearby sofa with a thud and a cloud of silver sparkles.

  The sparkles cleared, revealing a pair of bloomer-clad legs sticking out of a mass of fabric. The feet at the end of those legs wore pink terrycloth house slippers. The mound of fabric stirred, and then the legs lowered to the ground while a head and torso emerged. It was Ethelinda, of course, dressed in what looked like a high-necked Victorian nightgow
n over all the other clothes. She had pink sponge curlers in her hair and thick, white cream all over her face.

  She started to act indignant, but then she saw who stood in front of her and fell to her knees at Merlin’s feet. “You summoned me, my lord?” she said, bending to touch her head to the ground.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” he replied, ignoring her bowing and scraping. “You seem to have been bothering one of my people.”

  “Helping!” she insisted, tilting her head up slightly but still on her knees. “Not bothering. I never bother people. I only help them.”

  “Perhaps, then, you can explain the latest trauma to strike Miss Chandler. Do you understand how a magical immune is suddenly able to do magic? And don’t deny that you’ve done something to her. I detected the traces of your spell.”

  She rose awkwardly to her feet, beaming with pride. “That’s one of the most clever things I’ve ever done, if I do say so myself. Of course, she’s not doing the magic herself, but while her immunity was gone, I was able to plant someone who could do magic within her.”

  I couldn’t help but shudder. “Ewww! And why?”

  “So you’d understand magic, silly. You weren’t willing to listen when I told you that someone like you isn’t compatible with a wizard, so I thought if you discovered what it was like to have power, you’d understand.”

  “That makes no sense whatsoever,” Owen said.

  Merlin cleared his throat. “At this point, the question at hand is not why this was done, but how, and who else was involved?”

  Ethelinda tittered and batted her eyes at Merlin. “Of course, I can’t take full credit.” She turned to me. “Your friend had the initial idea, and she volunteered to help.”

  Considering what Owen and Merlin had already noted about my “magic,” I knew exactly who that “friend” was. “Friend?” I asked, trying to keep from screeching.

  “The friend you were trying to catch up with in the train station. I saw her at the party when we were both watching you. When I discussed your romance problems with her, she volunteered to help. It was very brave of her. Not many fairies like being shrunk to that size.”

  If it hadn’t been for Owen’s firm hand on my shoulder, I would have come out of my chair. “You mean I’ve got a fairy inside my skull? And you thought Ari was my friend and was volunteering out of the goodness of her heart? Are you insane?”

  Owen’s grip tightened on my shoulder, and I couldn’t tell if that was because he was trying to restrain me or if it was because he’d become very tense. “You have to undo the spell,” he said with the kind of icy calm in his voice that meant he was absolutely furious.

  She shrugged and flounced down onto the sofa. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” This time, I did shriek. “You mean, this is irreversible?”

  “I can’t do magic on an immune. It won’t work.” She waved her wand at us teasingly. “Surely all of you are well aware of that. I didn’t realize her immunity would return again so soon before I could undo it.” She pointed her wand at Owen. “If you weren’t so eager to get her away from the party, I would have had a chance to undo it before it was too late.”

  I couldn’t help but whimper. Owen rubbed my shoulder gently, which made me feel a lot better. I had to bite my lip to keep from blurting out an Ari-like comment about how much better it made me feel. And then my sluggish brain caught up. “We know how to take care of the immunity issue,” I said. “Could you get Ari out of my brain if we did that?”

  Ethelinda blinked. “Oh. I suppose I could.”

  I sighed in a mixture of relief and resignation. I’d just barely regained my immunity, and now I had to give it up again. In this case, though, I was more than willing. Magic powers would be cool to have, but not at the price of having a psycho evil bitch fairy stuck in my head. As that thought crossed my mind, I was struck with another stabbing pain. That made me realize something. “While she’s in my head, it’s very possible that she can read my thoughts,” I told the others.

  Merlin turned his attention from Ethelinda to me. “Why do you think that?”

  “Just now, I thought something about Ari that was, well, not very nice, and it felt like someone kicked me in the head right away. And one of my roommates told me the mean things I said to her at the party were things only I knew. There’s no way Ari could have known, and I’m thinking that since I don’t remember that time at all, she must have been totally in control then. She’s possibly picking up on anything I think, which means she might also be getting anything anyone else says around me. We’ve got a spy all over again.”

  “That’s easy enough to solve,” Merlin said, walking over to the kitchenette area of his office. He took out a glass, then opened the cabinets, fiddled with a few jars, mixed something up in the glass, then brought it back to me. “Drink this. It’s a sedative specific to fairies. As it doesn’t rely on magic to work, it should still be effective, even with the current circumstances. You may notice some minor effects, but I’m afraid they can’t be helped.” I took the glass and downed it in one swallow, even though it tasted pretty nasty. Anything to get Ari out of my head.

  Merlin then returned his attention to Ethelinda. “It will take a couple of days to remove Miss Chandler’s immunity once more, and then we will have to call upon you to undo the spell. You will cooperate.” He said it in a way that emphasized that he was Merlin, the greatest wizard who ever lived.

  “Why, yes, of course!” she said. “Anytime you need me!” He waved a hand, and she vanished instantly.

  I was beginning to feel light-headed. “Why do we have to drag her into it?” I asked, resting my elbow on the chair’s arm and propping my head up against my hand. “We know she’s incompetent. I’m not sure I trust her to do this right.”

  Merlin tucked the locket into his vest pocket. “Unfortunately, a fairy godmother’s magic can only be undone by the godmother, herself. There are occasionally ways to counteract her spells, but not to actually undo them.”

  “Oh yeah, like in Sleeping Beauty, where they can’t undo the curse about pricking her finger on the spindle and dying. They can only change it to sleeping.”

  “From what I’ve heard, that might not have been technically a fairy godmother situation,” Owen said, sounding like he was veering dangerously close to launching into a scholarly lecture, “but the analogy is close enough to work.”

  I yawned. “You know, sleep sounds like a really good idea right now.”

  “Good, the sedative must be working,” Merlin said. “Now Mr. Palmer, perhaps you should go prepare the immunity loss potion. We need to take care of this as soon as possible. I don’t know what damage might be done by forcing magic into a person who has an immunity.”

  Owen took off, and I missed his reassuring presence, even if he was still being a little weird around me. Not that I could blame him. I must have scared him to death, based on what I’d heard. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted details of what Ari had done at the party with my body.

  I closed my eyes and let myself drift as my head grew heavier and heavier. Just when I thought I was going to conk out, my head suddenly cleared. For the first time since the year began, I could think straight, with no interference from within my head. “Oh yeah, that’s better,” I said, sitting upright. I saw then that Owen was back, holding a beaker of potion. I must have really dozed off for a while.

  Owen handed me the beaker. “I don’t suppose this would work faster if I took more of it at a time?” I asked after drinking it.

  “No, sorry. It’s something that has to build up in your system. I’ve tried to adjust it to be more effective, based on our experiences last time, but it will still probably take a day or two.”

  “In the meantime,” Merlin said, “you should be watched carefully. We don’t want our enemies taking further advantage of your lost immunity, and while we can continue dosing you with the sedative, I’m still concerned about what might happen.”

  “You should
stay with me,” Owen said. “My house is secured and private, and you wouldn’t have to worry about explaining any oddities to your roommates. They’ve seen too much as it is.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing with him. I knew he was right, and I also knew that this wasn’t going to be the cozy snuggling in front of the fireplace we’d had not so long ago. This would be uncomfortable and tense in the worst way. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll invent a business trip I have to go on. We can go to my place and I can pack a bag and get over to your place before my roommates get home from work.”

  “Excellent plan,” Merlin said. “And the two of you should stay there until this is resolved. I’d rather you not take any chances while going to and from the office.”

  Great. Even more forced togetherness with a guy who was looking at me like I’d grown a second head. He wouldn’t touch me while there was any hint of Ari about me, even if he wasn’t mad at me. Come to think of it, I didn’t want to touch him while she was there and possibly eavesdropping. I was lucky she was such a bitch she couldn’t resist showing herself. If she’d behaved herself at the party when she first got put in my head, it could have been a while before I figured it out, and then there was no telling what she might have seen—both work-related and personal.

  I forced myself out of the chair. “I guess we’d better get going.” Owen immediately went to my side, a protective hand at my back.

  I felt like my fate had been taken out of my hands. Having magical powers, no matter how unorthodox and temporary they were, should have made me feel strong rather than vulnerable. Here I was, finally able to zap stuff for myself, and I had men rallying around me and treating me like I was made of glass.

  Owen and I went down to the lab to collect the things we’d need to work from home until all this got fixed and then headed to my apartment. I threw a few things in a bag, then wrote a short note explaining that I’d had to go on an unexpected business trip where my boss needed my help. I didn’t think they’d believe it. They’d think I’d run away to avoid them, but at least they wouldn’t guess the truth.