“Maybe this is the way out,” I said, grasping Owen’s arm.
We hurried to the gate. Owen made short work of the lock, and then we slipped into the park. The gateway to the park was approximately at the prison’s boundary, but we didn’t find ourselves back in Lincoln Center. We were in a park that should have been barely the size of a single brownstone, but instead it was a vast, lush garden. It was as dark in there as it had been in the city, the trees casting mysterious shadows.
“This must be where their entry point is,” Owen breathed. “We’re in the elven realms now, their more natural state.”
“You mean, this is the prison gate? The way out?”
“The way out into the elven realms,” he specified.
“But wouldn’t that be where the portal is?”
“Presumably, but I don’t think they’ll let us just wander around until we find it.” As if to prove him right, we came out of a stand of trees and nearly ran into a bunch of the gray guys, who seemed to be having a meeting. I felt a slight tingle of magic as Owen must have veiled us just in time before any of them turned our way. We scuttled behind some bushes, then crept our way to the park entrance, staying hidden as more gray guys joined the meeting.
Only when we were safely on the other side of the gate and well away from that block did either of us breathe normally again. “Okay, that was a close call,” I said with deep feeling.
“Yes, but worth it. We seem to have found the way out of the prison and into the elven lands, and maybe that was a guard shift change meeting.”
“Does that do us much good?”
He shrugged. “It’s information, and the more we have, the better. We know a spot we should probably watch, and if that was a shift change, then that’s a possible weak spot in their schedule that we might be able to exploit. I’ll have to report this to Mac in the morning.”
He took my arm and we started heading for my apartment. “Are you okay with reporting to him?” I asked.
“Why shouldn’t I be? He works at the Council level, so he outranks me, and he’s more experienced at this kind of thing—not that anyone’s really experienced at being held prisoner in another realm, but I’m mostly a laboratory guy. And I think everyone else will be more comfortable with someone other than me in charge. I’ll probably come out of this better if I’m a good little soldier instead of trying to be a general. It’s a chance for me to maybe earn some trust.”
I squeezed his arm. “It’ll be okay, I’m sure. Anyone who really knows you has to know you’re not even remotely evil.”
He didn’t say anything else until he kissed me good night at my front steps, and I got the feeling he’d be up late thinking and planning—or worrying. As tired as I was, I didn’t go to bed until I’d written out a few more memories and stashed them in places I was sure to run across them but where no one else was likely to see them, just in case they searched my place when I wasn’t there.
*
The next morning, Owen and I had agreed to meet for breakfast at Perdita’s diner so we could talk before we went to the store, where we seemed to be under tighter surveillance. The gray guy wasn’t outside my apartment, so we must have convinced him—or bored him to death—on our date the night before. I arrived first. “Your usual?” the still-enchanted Perdita greeted me.
“No, Perry, I need breakfast this morning.”
“Then have a seat.” She gestured toward a nearby table.
Owen joined me a few minutes later. When I looked across the table at him, a memory struck me. “It was you that first morning, saving me from one of Perdita’s spills, wasn’t it? I should have known then. You’d think that would have snapped me out of it immediately.”
“Yeah, it was me, and I should have known, too. There was just something about you. It reminded me of when I first saw you for real.” We both kept our voices low as we talked, since we had no idea who among us might be the guards assigned to keep an eye on us instead of other prisoners or part of the scenery.
“That’s what it was like for you?”
“Yeah, it was.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “Because time sort of seemed to come to a halt for me, like there was nothing else in the universe.”
“Yep, that was it.”
I got a lump in my throat. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. That’s why I could barely talk to you when Rod and I met you for that interview. I felt like I was finally meeting my celebrity crush, and I was terrified of making a fool of myself.”
