“Well, if you’re sure …”
He took a deep breath and appeared to force his shoulders to relax. “I’m not saying I’m sure this is a great idea, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice.”
I realized we’d been talking for quite a while and wondered what our watcher thought. A long chat at the front door after a date shouldn’t be too strange, I hoped. I impulsively leaned in to give Owen a kiss on the cheek, like I was saying good night. We both paused for a moment, then kissed on the lips, lingering ever so slightly. “I don’t think you should come inside,” I said, quite reluctantly because I didn’t want to be alone or let him out of my sight. I wasn’t even sure where he lived in this world. “Like I said earlier, I was being proposed to by someone else just a couple of hours ago, and we don’t want them to think we’re privately plotting.”
“I’m curious as to whether this guy stays here with you or follows me,” he murmured as he nuzzled my neck and made me wish I hadn’t just announced that he shouldn’t come up. “Turn back like you’re watching me go and see what happens. Then once you’re inside, try veiling yourself and look out the window.”
After one last kiss, he turned to leave and I headed up the front steps. I paused at the front door to turn back and didn’t have to fake a besotted grin as I watched him go. I had to fight to keep that grin when I saw that the gray guy stayed on the sidewalk in front of my building. It made sense that I was the one being watched when I was the one who’d resisted the magic, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable about it.
When Owen was out of sight, I unlocked the front door and went up the indoor stairs to my apartment. Once inside, I changed into sweats before attempting Granny’s veiling spell and peeking out the window. The gray guy was still out there, but he didn’t seem to be watching my place with an intense focus.
Sleep seemed impossible, but I turned out the light so my watcher would think I was going to bed and therefore not likely to do anything suspicious for the rest of the night. I settled onto my bed in the darkness and leaned back against the pillows. The fact that I could do so and feel it made me sure that this apartment wasn’t an illusion, even if it was a fantasy. Building an entire replica of pseudo New York seemed like overkill, so I was sure some of it had to be illusion. But how much? For my apartment to be tangible, the building had to be real, but how many of the residents were real people, either prisoners or guards? Were the extras in this movie real people or just illusion, and were there enough people here to fill out every building? Would they bother to finish out the insides of buildings even if no real person lived there?
There was one way to find out. I tiptoed to my door and then up the stairs. I didn’t recall ever seeing a neighbor coming downstairs or hearing any noise above me. When I reached the upper landing, I paused and listened for any signs of life coming from that apartment. There was no stereo or TV on, but it was late enough that most people would be in bed.
Feeling like I was violating all kinds of social mores, I put my hand on the doorknob, then I squeezed my eyes closed in dread as I turned the knob. It did turn, and the door eased open, so either nobody lived there or my neighbor didn’t lock his door and I was about to be really embarrassed.
When nobody shouted at me, I opened my eyes and was surprised by what I saw. It was an empty shell of a room, not as finished as an “unfinished” apartment, since it didn’t even have rough features like interior walls. It was just a space that happened to be enclosed. It did still have windows, and I imagined there were illusions on those windows to make it look like a normal apartment from outside, but just in case, I dropped to the floor and crawled so my watcher wouldn’t be able to see me.
I couldn’t see much in the dim city light coming in through the windows, but I didn’t think there was much to see, just a lot of nothing. The exterior walls looked like the back side of a movie set, and I had to be careful as I crawled because the floor joists were bare, the plaster of my ceiling showing in the open spaces between them. Although crawling was slower than walking, I soon felt like I’d gone beyond where the wall of my apartment should have been. I glanced at the windows and saw that they were a slightly different size and in a slightly different position. The open space must have extended into the next building. I suspected it might go on until there was some reason it had to stop, like the end of the block or an inhabited apartment.
I wanted to keep exploring, but the risk of getting stuck somewhere and not being able to get back to my place without being caught by my watcher was too great. As I crawled back toward the door, I wondered how much of this prison was just an empty shell, a Hollywood-style backlot to create street scenes. But even if most of it was empty, building something like this seemed like a huge undertaking requiring a lot of resources, either physical or magical. That had to mean that what they were keeping secret by bringing us all here was equally huge.
