Kiss and Spell

“Not here, I don’t think,” Owen said, “but there’s something about this that looks familiar.”

“I think it’s supposed to be Central Park, but it’s whatever green space plays Central Park in movies and TV shows that aren’t actually filmed in New York.”

“Yeah, while I haven’t explored every inch of it, this is one of the parts of the park where I’ve been a lot, and none of this is quite right,” he agreed.

We kept walking through the not-Central Park, then suddenly we came out of the park and into the city, as though we were leaving Central Park and heading into the Upper West Side. We stood on the sidewalk with traffic whizzing past us as we tried to get our bearings.

“Okay, that’s weird,” Owen said. “It’s like we’re in a loop instead of having clear boundaries. Which makes sense—if we bumped into a barrier, we’d notice it, even if we were under a spell, but while under the spell we might not notice that we keep coming back to the same neighborhood, no matter how long we walk.”

“Which means we can’t get out of here,” I said with a sinking feeling.

Chapter Twelve

“We haven’t tried going up or downtown,” Owen said, sounding like he was trying to reassure me as much as himself. “Maybe that’s where the entrances are.”

We crossed the street and kept going, back into the Upper West Side. When we hit the Broadway-like street, we turned and headed up it. As we walked, we paused every so often to look at the menus posted outside restaurants and acted like we were having trouble deciding where to eat. We made it past the street where my apartment was and kept going uptown, but then somewhere around Ninetieth Street we found ourselves back around Lincoln Center—or a vaguely Lincoln Center-ish complex with a fountain in front of it.

Owen proved he’d listened to my description of romantic things to do by giving me a playful splash from the fountain. I played along by squealing and running, but he caught me and pulled me close to him.

“So we’ve got a prison that’s around twenty blocks by maybe four blocks,” I said into his ear. “How depressing.”

“But it means we have less ground to cover to find that portal.” He tensed momentarily, then said loudly, “So, in all that walking, did you find a place you wanted to eat?” I saw an elf in gray lurking nearby and forced myself not to look directly at him. McClusky was also there, but I wasn’t worried about him since we weren’t up to anything evil.

Leaning against Owen and snuggling under the shelter of his arm, I sighed and said, “Don’t hate me for insisting on all that walking to look at every restaurant in the neighborhood, but that first Italian place we saw looks good. It’s a nice night. Maybe we can get a seat on the sidewalk.”

“Okay, Italian it is.”

“But I do have a list of other places I want to try later.” I attempted a flirtatious eyelash flutter. “There were a couple of interesting-looking spots for breakfast.” His blush made me smile in spite of the tense circumstances.

We got a sidewalk seat at the restaurant, and at first I wished we’d sat inside because Mr. Gray stood on the sidewalk right next to our table—pedestrians moving past him without apparently seeing him—but then I realized that had been Owen’s strategy. Sitting outside made it look like we didn’t think we had anything to hide, but it meant we were onstage the entire time, playing out the scene of a first real date.

The acting was kind of fun, though, and before long, I was able to make myself forget my role. It was a rare chance for us to have a semi-normal date. Since the elves were probably controlling just about everything and maintaining the illusion that this was a world without magic, the odds were slim that there would be any magical chaos. As long as we could forget Mr. Gray and McClusky, who’d taken an adjacent table, we could enjoy a rare romantic meal with no worries. We leaned on the table and stared into each other’s eyes, sipped red wine, fed each other tidbits from our plates, held hands under the table, talked, and laughed.

Conversation was the hard part. We couldn’t talk about anything that might give away the fact that we knew who we were, so we couldn’t talk about work the way we normally did when we went out. There was the store, of course, but since we’d supposedly met there and spent all day working there together, that was only a starting point for the conversation. Instead, we had to talk about ourselves in a way that Owen and I never really had before, as close as we were—no mention of work, of magic, or of the strange things we’d been going through.