That reminded me, they weren’t expecting me to be home. I was supposed to have come back the next day. I needed an explanation for why I was already home and why I had to go to work the following day. And I needed it fast, considering I heard a key turning in the lock.
Gemma yelped when she opened the door and saw me. Marcia, coming in behind her, dropped the bags she was carrying and assumed a defensive posture at Gemma’s yell.
“Gee, I didn’t know I was that scary,” I said.
“We weren’t expecting anyone to be here,” Gemma said. “Why are you here? Weren’t you supposed to be with the hottie’s folks until tomorrow? Nothing went wrong, did it?”
I followed them as they carried their bags back to the closet to unpack. “No, nothing went wrong. The visit was fine. I was apparently a big hit with the folks.”
“Of course you were,” Marcia said. “You’re a mother’s dream girlfriend for her son, unless she’s one of those controlling mamas who can’t handle the thought of turning her baby boy over to another woman.”
“There was just a work crisis,” I continued my story, “and he had to come back to the city. I even have to go in for a while tomorrow because the executive I work for is part of it.”
“What kind of business crisis comes up on Christmas?” Marcia asked.
“It’s the perfect time for a business crisis. Don’t they often plan sneak attacks during wartime on Christmas, because they know your guard will be down?”
Even Marcia didn’t have a good response to that. After they dumped their bags in the bedroom, Gemma ordered Chinese food, then we settled down to chat about our respective holidays while watching the last of the Christmas specials on TV until a commercial came on that almost made me spit rice across the room.
Eleven
Phelan Idris’s face filled the TV screen, which in and of itself wasn’t a pleasant sight, but the implications were disturbing beyond that. He’d definitely launched a serious ad campaign. The ad urged magic users to try new and different spells to help them break out of their humdrum lives. Or something like that. The music used as background for the ads gave me a headache and was very distracting. The real surprise was the announcement of a Spellworks store, opening the next day on Fifth Avenue.
I managed to cover up my shock at seeing the ad by going into a coughing fit and sputtering, “Oops, that went down the wrong way,” but I watched my roommates for their reactions at the same time. I doubted they’d seen what I saw, or surely they’d have commented on someone opening a magic store and claiming to sell actual spells. It would have been nice if they’d done me the favor of saying anything that would have hinted at the cover ad nonmagical people saw—something like, “Hey, sale at Victoria’s Secret!” or “Yeah, like a body spray really has that effect.” Unfortunately, whatever they used to mask the ad for normal people, it didn’t seem to be an ad worth noticing or snarking about. Once they were sure I wasn’t going to choke to death, my roommates went back to eating and chatting.
The ad was the first thing I told Owen about when I met him on the sidewalk in front of my building the next morning. “I wish I could tell you what the rest of the world sees,” I finished, “but I couldn’t think of a way to ask my roommates what ad they saw on television without sounding like I’d lost my mind.”
“This is not good,” he said, shaking his head. He looked tired. If I knew him, he’d been up most of the night thinking and researching.
“No, it’s not good,” I agreed, “but hey, at least we know what he’s up to now.” He didn’t rally to my attempt at good cheer. If anything, his frown got deeper. “Okay, is there something I should know that you’re not telling me?” I asked, trying to interpret his mood.
It took him a while to answer, and I’d just started to think he hadn’t heard me when he said, “No, not that I know of.” And that, apparently, was that. He didn’t say another word on the entire walk to the subway station, and I decided against pressing the point. Owen wasn’t the kind of person you could make talk.
Most people had a holiday, so the crowds were a little lighter than normal and we actually got seats. That meant I had a rare chance to notice the advertising that ran overhead. I blinked, then elbowed Owen. Spellworks had blanketed the entire car. He closed his eyes and groaned.
As we walked from the subway station to the office, he finally spoke to me. “I’m sorry everything’s been so messed up,” he said. “Every date we’ve tried to have, the holiday. I guess we haven’t made that great a start.” He gave a bitter little laugh. “In fact, I couldn’t blame you at all if you decided to cut your losses because this isn’t working.”