Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.)

by Swendson, Shanna

  “Excellent idea,” I said. “Let’s try the next street over.”

  We walked up and down the neighborhood, frequently comparing the nearby buildings to the printout of Earl’s photo. “So many of them are so close, but not quite,” I said after we’d been searching at least an hour. “Maybe we’re looking at them from the wrong angle.”

  “We should be able to see it from the angle where Earl took the photo, and wherever he was then, he must have seen something he wanted me to know about.”

  “Unless, of course, he pocket dialed the photo.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible. But even if it was, he couldn’t have taken that photo from inside his pocket. He was investigating, and the building isn’t particularly attractive or interesting, I’m pretty sure he photographed it for a reason.”

  “Maybe we should do this in daylight,” I suggested after another half hour of searching. “He took the photo in daylight. Things look different in the dark.”

  “But when it’s dark, we may be able to see inside if the interior’s lit.”

  “I wonder what your followers think of all this wandering around.”

  “I hope their feet are tired.” He usually just sounded resigned about the people who watched him for signs of evil, but there was a hint of relish behind his wish. I didn’t think I’d ever get him to tell me outright what he felt about it, but I was getting the idea.

  Then we rounded a corner, and there it was. “Owen, that’s it!” I said, grabbing his arm.

  We stopped and he took the photo out of his pocket to compare. “Yeah, that’s definitely it.”

  “So you’re going to call Sam, right?”

  He didn’t answer, but I glared at him until he got out his phone and called the gargoyle. He gave the address, and after a pause he said, “Of course I won’t do anything stupid. I just happened to run across it while I was out with Katie and thought you’d want to know.” When he’d put away the phone he turned to me and said, “Want to check it out?”

  “Wouldn’t that fall into the category of stupid things you just told Sam you wouldn’t do?”

  “I just want a peek. And besides, how much trouble can I get into when I have two of the Council’s best enforcers watching my every move? They won’t let me get away with anything evil, but I don’t think they’ll let me come to harm, either.”

  To be perfectly honest, I also wanted to check things out. “What do you think the building is?” I asked. Strange lights showed through the upper windows. “It’s not just some elf rave or underground nightclub, is it? Maybe that’s why Earl took a picture, since the cool places don’t have signs.”

  “Can you imagine Earl going to a cool place? Or anyone inviting me to one?”

  “Good point.” We walked around the block so we could examine the building from all sides. At one point, we flattened ourselves into a doorway when we saw someone approach the building’s entry, but they just walked on by. After that false alarm, we almost didn’t react in time when someone did go up to the door. There were three in the group, and if I wasn’t mistaken, one of them didn’t want to be there.

  “That person may be in danger,” Owen whispered to me. “We should help.”

  “You think this is where all those elves are disappearing?”

  “That person looked kind of like he was being disappeared.”

  “But what can we do to help?”

  “We can bring the Council enforcers down on them.”

  “Oh, you clever thing.”

  Once the coast was clear, we started to leave our hiding place, but he pushed me back. “Maybe you should stay here. I’m the one they’ll follow.”

  “I’m not letting you go in there without me. And I’m not standing alone on the sidewalk at night in this neighborhood.”

  He didn’t argue. We reached the door, and I felt the tingle of magic as he unlocked it. “I’m not sensing wards,” he whispered.

  “Maybe it’s a trap.”

  “Maybe they underestimate us.”

  I still had a bad feeling as we crept through a narrow, unlit hallway. We’d made it into a vast warehouse-like space when I thought I heard the door open and close behind us. I hoped it was Owen’s Council shadows.

  If it was, I doubted they’d see anything they could make an arrest over. I didn’t see any people or elves, definitely not the person who looked like he was being kidnapped. There was a weird glow at the far end of the room that probably explained the odd lights we’d seen through the upper windows.

  “What do you think that is?” I whispered.

  “Let’s go find out.”

  We edged our way around the room, sticking to the shadows and keeping as silent as possible, even though I still didn’t see anyone we needed to hide from. When we were finally on the same end of the room as the glow, I got a good look at what was going on, and before I could remember to stifle my gasp of shock, everything went black.

  Chapter Five

  The sound of an old-fashioned jangling alarm clock woke me from a deep slumber. I snaked a hand out from under the covers to turn it off, then flung the comforter back and sat up, stretching as I yawned. It was time to face the day. I hopped out of bed and went through the morning rituals of washing and dressing, holding a couple of different blouse options in front of myself in the mirror with one hand while I brushed my teeth with the other hand.

  And then I was out the door and down the stairs. I waved to the mailman as I made my way down the front steps of the brownstone. “No bills for you today, Katie!” he called out to me.

  Strange, I had the oddest feeling that I was hearing bouncy music playing behind me all the while. After fighting off an eerie shiver, I told myself I probably just had a song stuck in my head.

  I rounded the corner and popped into the neighborhood coffee shop. “Hey, Katie, I’ve got your usual ready,” the waitress called out. She took the paper cup from the counter and turned to hand it to me, but she stumbled and the cup went flying. I had visions of ending up covered in coffee, but at the last split second, a hand shot out and caught the cup.

  “Here you go,” my rescuer said, handing it to me. I found myself looking into dark blue eyes, and it seemed as though time came to a standstill. I blinked and saw that the eyes were set in a handsome face topped with dark hair. He was as frozen as I was. And then reality returned with a crash.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Katie!” the waitress said, rushing over to check on me. She blushed to the roots of her curly red hair. “I am such a klutz sometimes. Did I spill any coffee on you?”

  “No harm done,” I assured her. I turned back toward my rescuer, but he was gone. I felt bad that I hadn’t even thanked him. Or gotten his phone number. Or married him. Ah, well, I supposed it wasn’t meant to be. I took a sip of the coffee and said, “Just right. Thanks, Perry!”

  The sense of background music had faded slightly during that scene, but it returned as I continued down the sidewalk, heading toward work, only a little late this morning. The regulars were already in the park across the street from the store, including the two men who spent their days playing chess there. I paused for a moment with the strangest feeling of reverse déjà vu. Instead of getting the sense that I’d seen something before, I felt like I hadn’t seen it before, even though I knew I had.

  I finished my coffee as I stared up at the bookstore. Three stories full of books, with a bonus coffee shop, had seemed like my idea of heaven when I first went to work there. It was supposed to have been a temporary job, but I was closing in on a year with no sign of anything better on the horizon. With a dejected sigh, I drained my cup and tossed it in a nearby trash bin before heading across the street and into the store.

  I took the stairs up to the second floor where the coffee shop was, grabbed my apron from the back, put it on, and adjusted my name tag. “And good morning to you,” my coworker—and best friend—Florence greeted me. “I’ve already got the regular, the decaf, and the coffee of the day brewing. Do yo
u want to take care of the bakery case? The delivery’s already come.”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll do that,” I said.

  She blinked, frowned, and sniffed as I spoke. “You’ve got coffee breath!” she accused.

  “Do I need a mint?”

  “You had coffee on your way to work in a coffee shop? Again?”

  I glanced around to make sure there weren’t any managers in earshot. “You know as well as I do that our coffee is nasty.”

  “All coffee is nasty to me. I can’t judge degrees of nastiness.”

  “Don’t tell anyone!” I begged as I opened a bakery box and started arranging pastries on the trays that fit in the display case. “But really, we resell second-rate pastries—at a huge markup—and we make terrible coffee, and people still buy it because it’s supposedly gourmet and because having coffee in a bookstore makes them feel smart.”

  She filled an insulated carafe with the regular coffee. “And this store would’ve gone under ages ago without us. The coffee shop is our biggest profit center, believe it or not.”

  I stopped working and glanced over at her. “Do you ever feel like working here is giving you bad karma? Shouldn’t we be doing something more worthwhile?”

  “We’re keeping a bookstore financially viable. That makes us deserving of a Nobel prize. We’re practically heroes!”

  “I guess that’s one way to look at it. We’re subsidizing literacy. But that doesn’t make the coffee any better.”

  Then we had to stop criticizing our employer as the store opened for the day and patrons came pouring in for their morning caffeine fix. I wanted to stand on the counter and tell them where they could go for better coffee and pastries. If it got me fired, then maybe I’d be forced to find a better job. But I was too busy to give in to the temptation. Those lattes didn’t make themselves.

  At last, the morning rush ended, and we had a chance to catch our breath before the lunch rush. Florence wiped down the counters while I cleared tables, stacking the abandoned books on a shelving cart. Florence glanced into one of the carafes and said, “There’s about a cup left. Do you want it, or should I just throw it out before I make a fresh pot?”

  “Is it the regular or the coffee of the day?”

  “It’s the regular.”

  “I’ll take it.” My morning coffee had already worn off, and it was hard to get away for a coffee break when you worked in a coffee shop. I stood behind the counter, sipping the burnt-tasting coffee, while I perused the classified ads in a newspaper a patron had left behind.

  “Still job-hunting, I see,” Florence remarked when I circled an ad. “Are you going to actually apply for any of these, or are you going to talk yourself out of it again?”

  “The result will be the same,” I said, sighing.

  She snapped me with a towel. “How do you expect good things to come to you when you have that attitude?”

  “I don’t think my attitude has much to do with it. I’m not even getting interviews anymore. There just aren’t any advertising jobs. I’ve been trying for almost a year.”

  “And it’s become easier for you to stay here. It’s a comfort zone.”

  “Here? Comfortable? Are you insane? Of course I want to get out of here.”

  She glanced around, as though making sure we weren’t being overheard, then bent toward me and whispered, “Well, you might want to start applying again or networking or putting up billboards, or whatever it takes to find something, because I heard we’re being sold.”

  “Sold? To one of the chains?”

  “I don’t know, but whatever it is, things are bound to change.”

  “If it stays a bookstore, they’ll keep the coffee shop. As you said, we’re a profit center.”

  “But bookselling isn’t exactly a growth industry these days. They may just want the real estate.”

  I groaned and leaned down, resting my forehead on the newspaper. “Just what I needed. Maybe I should accept Josh’s proposal and become a housewife. It doesn’t look like I’m going to succeed at anything else.”

  “My, that does sound romantic,” she said dryly. “You didn’t tell me Josh proposed.”

  The memory of it was hazy, like it was something I’d dreamed rather than experienced. “Well, it wasn’t really a formal proposal. More a suggestion. I think I said something about my job hunt, and he said if I married him, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

  She fluttered her hand against her chest. “Be still my beating heart. How did you not swoon and fall at his feet?”

  “Shut up!” I scolded her, even as I couldn’t help but grin at her theatrics. “I think he was raising the topic. Who proposes out of the blue without having discussed anything about marriage ahead of time? I’m sure the real proposal, when it comes, will be very romantic.”

  “Yeah, he’ll tell you you’re a failure, but he’s willing to support you.”

  “That’s not what he meant,” I insisted, my cheeks flaming. “And I have no intention of letting him support me, but it might be nice to have the pressure taken off the job hunt and to have more time to work on my résumé and go on interviews.”

  “You’ll get the time if the store closes, though that probably won’t ease the pressure.”

  “The store’s not going to close,” I muttered, returning to the classifieds. And would marrying Josh really be that bad? He was smart, attractive, successful, and he was a decent guy. Heart-stopping romance was the kind of thing that only happened in movies. And in coffee shops, I thought, remembering the moment that morning when time had stood still as I looked into those dark blue eyes and felt like destiny had caught up with me.

  *

  Contrary to Florence’s fears, nothing much seemed to change after the sale went through later that week. There was a memo from the new owner saying it would be business as usual for the time being, and life went on. Josh didn’t bring up the topic of marriage again, so I started to think it must have been a joke or an offhand remark, not something I should take seriously. And that meant I really needed to find a job.

  I was going through my ritual of reading the classifieds during a mid-morning lull while Florence took a break when a voice said, “Job-hunting?”

  I looked up to attend to the customer and had that same time-standing-still feeling when I looked into his deep blue eyes. Was he the guy from the other coffee shop? I couldn’t even remember his face, so I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t a good sign if I was swooning over every pair of blue eyes that crossed my path. I knew that should probably tell me something, but I preferred not to think about it. “Can I help you?” I asked, dropping the newspaper.

  “How’s the coffee here?” He must have noticed my hesitation because he grinned and said, “And be honest.”

  “Well, it’s not really to my taste. It’s kind of, um, strong.”

  “Burnt?”

  “Enthusiastically roasted.”

  “What about the tea?”

  “It’s actually pretty good, but it’s in bags so you have to brew it yourself. We don’t brew tea here. You can see the kinds there in the rack.”

  “Then I’ll have a tea.”

  While I filled a cup with hot water, he leaned against the counter and said, “I thought books and tea went together, and you know, I can’t think of a bookstore that sells real tea in their café. It’s just tea bags.”

  I handed him the cup and he selected a tea bag while I rang him up. “If we upgraded the tea, we’d have to upgrade the scones, and where would that leave us?” I quipped, then realized a second later that I was probably speaking out of turn. I shouldn’t be criticizing the merchandise I was selling.

  “The scones aren’t good?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “It’s not that they’re bad. They’re just, well, probably better for keeping the tables level than for eating. I suspect the bakery sends us their day-old stuff and figures we won’t notice.”

  “Then I think I’ll skip the scone today,” he said as he pa
id for his tea. He nodded toward my newspaper, with several jobs circled in red. “Are you trying to flee the bad coffee and scones?”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that this was supposed to be a temporary job while I looked for a real job in my field. That’s taken a bit longer than I planned.” I squinted at the newspaper as I had the sudden feeling that there was something odd there. Was the newspaper classified section really the best way to find a professional job?

  “How much longer?”

  I snapped back to the present, blinking. “Nearly a year. I gave myself a year, and I have three weeks left.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “I guess I give up and leave the city. Or I suppose I could get married and become a housewife.”

  He dunked his tea bag into his cup and swirled it around. “I would think that finding a husband would be just as challenging as finding a job,” he said, watching his tea rather than looking at me.

  “Oh, I’ve already got that covered. I think. It wasn’t exactly a formal proposal, but my boyfriend and I have been talking about marriage.”

  He gave the newspaper another look. “Your field is advertising?”

  “Yeah. More on the strategy side than the creative—deciding what approach to take and how to target it rather than actually dreaming up the ads.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” he said with a smile as he walked away, pausing to drop his tea bag in a trash bin.

  “He was cute,” Florence remarked as she returned from her break and tied her apron back on.

  “Yeah, I guess he was. Nice, too.”

  “And he seemed interested.” She raised an eyebrow and smirked.

  “I have a boyfriend. Which I mentioned to him, so it’s not even like I was flirt-cheating. He was just making conversation. He got tea, and he had to wait for it to steep, so I’m sure he was just killing time.” So why were my cheeks burning up?