For a moment I let myself ponder just how useful that could be. No more being nervous about walking home alone late at night or being one of the few noninsane people on a subway car. No more worries about dogs that got away from their owners in the park— assuming he had a dog-calming spell that actually worked. He could probably even help if I got locked out of the apartment. It was a real shame I couldn't tell my folks about this, but I wasn't sure if it would make them feel better to know their daughter was well protected or make them worry that I was associating with someone who had that kind of power.
Now that I thought about it that way, it was unnerving, considering what else I'd learned about Owen. I remembered what Rod had said about him being encouraged to be shy so his power wouldn't be dangerous. Did that mean he was more powerful than the others? He certainly seemed to have their respect, even though it didn't seem to me that he did anything to demand it.
I steered the conversation to small talk before I let myself get wigged out and he blushed himself to death. He probably didn't mean his offer of help in such an intense way anyway. He just sounded so sincere because he wasn't a flippant person. We got off at the same bus stop, but walked in opposite directions after saying good-bye. I got to my building, climbed the stairs, and turned on the evening news before heading to the bedroom to change out of my work clothes.
I had one leg out of my panty hose when something I heard from the TV sent me hobbling back to the living room. "A body across the tracks at the Canal Street station has brought subway traffic on the N and R lines to a standstill, with at least one train stuck between stations. Authorities don't yet know if the incident was accidental or a deliberate suicide or homicide," the announcer said.
I all but fell onto the sofa, one leg of my panty hose dangling limply to the floor. Oh
... My ... God. It was real. It was all really real. Up to that point I'd been treating it as a game. I hadn't really let myself believe in magic. But this brought it all home to me.
If I hadn't had that warning, I'd have been stuck belowground for who knew how long. And the woman in Prophets and Lost had known. Owen had known—though would it have killed him to say something? Or did he already know that I knew?
Back home, I knew plenty of people who could predict the weather without even looking at a newspaper or a TV weathercast. They just looked at the sky, smelled the air and determined the wind direction, and could tell you with a great deal of accuracy whether it would rain and how hot it would get that afternoon. This was different, though. What would it be like to know what was going to happen before it happened? And how much did they know? Was it just a flash of insight, or did they get the full picture? Could they tell beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was real foresight, as opposed to wishful thinking or fears? I had plenty of images of the future in my head all the time, but none of them ever came true—which, for the most part, was fortunate. I was working with people who dealt in very powerful forces I couldn't begin to understand. This wasn't like magic in books or movies. It was something that had the power to affect people's lives.
I was still sitting on the sofa, holding my panty hose, when Gemma came home.
"How was the new job?"
There was no way to convey what my day had been like without sounding absolutely insane, so I just said, "It was interesting." That was the understatement of the century.
"Do you think you're going to like it?"
"It's too soon to tell, but yeah, I think so."
"Must have been a tiring day," she said, and then I remembered that I was still dressed in my second-best suit, holding my panty hose.
"Just a little draining," I said, forcing myself off the sofa to finish changing clothes.
Both Gemma and I had changed out of our work clothes and ordered pizza when Marcia finally came dragging in.
"God, that commute was a nightmare," she said, dropping her briefcase just inside the door. "I got stuck in the subway for what seemed like forever. You don't want to spend that long in a crowded subway car with wall-to-wall people, not all of whom uphold ideal personal hygiene standards."
"I heard about that on the news," I said, getting up to pour her a glass of wine. It was the only thing I could think of to do to ease my guilt. I could have warned her so she wouldn't have been stuck. But how? She'd have laughed at me if I called her at work and told her not to take the subway home that evening. I couldn't have explained how or why I knew, and she might not have believed me if I did.
I'd just have to accept this as one of the perks of my job, I supposed. She couldn't share insider stock tips from her brokerage firm, and I couldn't share portents of the future from my magic company.