Damsel under Stress.

Shanna Swendson.

Dedicated in memory of my friend, Rosa Vargas, who helped me find the courage to write the first book, who gave me feedback along the way as I wrote the first two books, and who, sadly, never got to see this one.

Acknowledgments.

Thanks to my agent, Kristin Nelson, my editor, Allison d.i.c.kens, and the whole team at Ballantine who helped me make this book the best it could be.

Thanks to my friends and family for being understanding when I fell off the face of the earth for a while when I was writing, and who put up with all the insanity when I made brief return trips to this reality.

And special thanks to all the readers who wrote to me, commented on my blog, or came to book signings. The readers have to be the coolest part of what I do, and you have no idea how much your support helps, even during The Dreaded Chapter Five.

One.

T he last thing I expected to see when I stepped through the door of the coffee shop was a fairy G.o.dmother. Not that fairy G.o.dmothers are normally high on the list of things I expect to see, even as weird as my life is. I work for a magical company, so running into fairies, gnomes, elves, wizards, and talking gargoyles is something that happens every day. But I'd never yet seen an honest-to-goodness fairy G.o.dmother, and I really wasn't expecting to see one that morning because, for the first time in my life, I really didn't need one.

As of the night before, I had my Prince Charming. At the company Christmas party, Owen Palmer, the wonderfully handsome, brilliant, powerful wizard who also happened to be an incredibly nice guy, had kissed me like he meant it and told me he'd always had an interest in me. Yeah, the guy who was the magical world's answer to a movie star liked plain old nonmagical Katie Chandler, the ordinary small-town girl from Texas. That Sat.u.r.day morning was our first official date as two people who'd admitted that we had feelings for each other. We were meeting for brunch at a snug little coffee shop on Irving Place, possibly the most romantic New York setting I could imagine for a casual first date.

Which meant, of course, that the fairy G.o.dmother had to be waiting for someone else. At least, I a.s.sumed she was a fairy G.o.dmother. I know making a.s.sumptions can be dangerous, but I was pretty good about seeing the truth, and she looked like Central Casting's idea of a fairy G.o.dmother. She looked older than the eternally youthful fairies I knew, and her wings were a fairly good sign that she wasn't just another eccentric New Yorker. A star-topped wand lying on the table in front of her was yet another clue. None of the other magical folk I knew used wands. Anyone else would surely have made the same a.s.sumption, if they saw what I saw.

I almost felt sorry for whoever her Cinderella was because she didn't exactly look like the top-of-the-line fairy G.o.dmother. Unlike most of the fairies I knew, she was squat and round, but I couldn't tell if that was flesh or if it was her clothes. She looked like instead of taking off the previous day's clothes and putting on something new each morning, she just put on a new outfit on top of the old one-and she'd been doing that for centuries. In all the layers of clothing I caught glimpses of calico, tulle, patchwork, satin, and velvet. The top layer was old, dusty rose velvet, worn threadbare in places.

A rusty tiara missing a few stones sat haphazardly on top of her gray sausage curls, and one of her fairy wings was bent.

Of course, no one in the coffee shop seemed to notice that there was anyone odd among them, and it wasn't simply because they were all distracted by their newspapers and conversations or because the caffeine hadn't yet made it to their brains. I'm immune to magic, so the spell she used to hide her magical appearance didn't work on me. I saw what was really there, while I was sure the rest of the patrons probably saw only an elderly woman wearing a tweed suit and sensible shoes.

But as I said, it wasn't any of my business. I was about five minutes early because I knew Owen was relentlessly punctual and I was sadly overeager, but I figured I could use the time to stake out a table. Unfortunately, the shop was crowded, and there weren't that many tables to begin with. I lingered near the doorway, waiting either for Owen to show up or for someone to vacate a table.

"Yoo hoo! Katie!" I turned when I heard my name and saw the fairy G.o.dmother waving at me. I waved back halfheartedly, and she pointed her wand at the empty seat across from her. With a shrug, I went over and took the seat. There was always a chance I could talk her into leaving, and then I would have managed to snag a table before Owen got there. "Oh good, you're right on time," she said as I sat down.

"On time for what?" I asked.

"Our meeting, of course." She gave a tinkling little laugh. "But silly me, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Ethelinda, your fairy G.o.dmother. I'll be managing your case, helping you find true love."

"There must have been some kind of mix-up then. I don't need any help right now. You would have really come in handy for the past ten years, but now things are finally working out for me."

She waved her star-topped wand over the table and an elaborately decorated china tea set appeared. As she poured two cups and dropped in lumps of sugar, she said, "We don't make mistakes. You probably need more help than you think, and that's why I was sent your way. Milk or lemon?"

"Milk, please. But I'm actually meeting someone for a date here in a minute or two. So, you see, I don't need help right now, for probably the first time in my life. I've found Prince Charming, he's found me, and all's right with the world."

Frowning, she waved her wand again, and a battered, dog-eared book appeared on the table. She took the pair of spectacles that hung on a cord around her neck and brought them up to rest on her nose. One of the earpieces was missing, so they hung lopsided on her face. "Hmmm," she murmured as she flipped through the book. "Oh, yes, I see what you mean. I haven't seen such a sad case in a very long time. You really could have used a helping hand or two, couldn't you?"

I cringed at her description of what I a.s.sumed was my dating history. A lot of other people's dating histories would also have had to be in that book, though, for it to be that fat. My relationship history wouldn't have required much more than an index card. "That's putting it mildly. So you can see why I'm confused. If you weren't around all those years when almost every man I met acted like I was his little sister or thought I was too boring and nice, then I don't see why you're here now."

"We don't waste time with the little things. We only step in when destiny is at stake, when it matters in the grand scheme of the universe whether or not you find your fated true love."

"Fated true love" sounded like something out of the worst kind of romance novels. It also sounded like something out of my wildest fantasies. Fate sure would make finding Mr. Right and knowing he was Mr.

Right a lot easier. If Owen and I really were meant to be together, then I could relax about whether or not a super-powerful wizard could stay interested in someone like me. Then a doubt struck me. "Um, we are talking about Owen Palmer here, aren't we?" It would have been just my luck if she'd shown up at this particular time to hook me up with someone entirely different.

She consulted her book again, flipping through pages and making little humming noises to herself as she did so. At last she said, "Most definitely. And, my, he seems to have needed even more help than you did with his past romances. He's awfully shy, isn't he? But then, we only work for women. The men are on their own." She gave a t.i.ttering laugh. "After all, you don't hear much about Prince Charming getting any help from a fairy G.o.dmother, only Cinderella."

"Yeah, but isn't Cinderella a-" I almost said "a fairy tale," but then wondered if that might be considered offensive. "-fiction?"

She raised one eyebrow above the frame of her gla.s.ses, giving her face an even more lopsided appearance as the gla.s.ses dangled precariously off one side of her nose. "Then how would you explain the fact that almost every human culture has some variation of the cla.s.sic Cinderella story?" She sniffed disdainfully. "That was one of my biggest triumphs. I even won an award." She fished around her neckline until she hooked a finger on a golden chain, then pulled on the chain to raise a star-shaped medal from somewhere deep within the layers of clothes. "See? My claim to fame."

"Very nice," I said, even though the medal was so tarnished it may have been an award for best apple pie at the county fair, for all I could tell. I tried to remember all the fairy tales I'd read and heard-beyond the Disney versions. "But aren't there also a lot of stories about fairies helping out good-hearted younger sons on quests?"

"Those are fairies, not fairy G.o.dmothers," she said with an exasperated sigh, like she got that question a lot. "There is a significant difference, you know. We have our own kind of magic, very specific powers and all that. Now, about your case."

I heard the door open and turned to look, hoping it wouldn't be Owen, not yet. Fortunately, it wasn't. He'd picked a very good time to break his punctuality habit. The last thing I wanted was for him to catch me consulting a fairy G.o.dmother. It would give him the totally wrong impression. I turned back to Ethelinda. "Not that I don't appreciate the offer, but I really don't think I need help right now. I'd like to try to work things out on my own."

Her gla.s.ses fell off her face, bouncing once on their cord against her ample chest. She looked positively heartbroken. "Whatever you think is best," she said, her tone chilly, but with enough breaks in her voice to make it clear that she'd put on the ice as a way of covering her hurt.

I couldn't stand to make an old woman-fairy G.o.dmother or otherwise-cry. "I suppose if it starts to be a total disaster, then maybe I could give you a call."

She brightened immediately. Her book disappeared, and a golden heart-shaped locket appeared in her left hand. "You can contact me through this," she said, handing it to me across the table. "Open it when you need me. You'll know what to do from there." And then before I could ask any questions, she was gone, vanished into thin air, along with her tea set.

As I dropped the locket into my jacket pocket, I felt a gust of cold air and thought for a second that it was an aftereffect of her vanishing spell, but then I realized the door had opened. I looked up and saw Owen entering the coffee shop. I wasn't the only one gazing at him. He looked like a celebrity heartthrob, he was so ridiculously handsome. I could practically hear the other patrons trying to remember what movie they'd seen him in as he spotted me and hurried across the room to fall into the seat Ethelinda had just vacated.

On this particular morning, he looked like something out of a paparazzi photo of a celebrity in his off-hours. His nearly black hair was still slightly damp, as if from a shower, and it curled up a little around his ears and at the back of his neck. There was a faint shadow on his strong jaw, and his dark blue eyes were hidden behind wire-rimmed gla.s.ses.

I might have been put out that he hadn't made at least some effort on our first official date if he hadn't appeared so fl.u.s.tered. "Sorry I'm late," he said, slightly out of breath. "There's been a bit of a crisis."

"What is it?" I asked, immediately concerned.

A paper cup bearing the shop's logo appeared between his hands, and he picked it up and took a long sip. I noticed then that a similar cup had appeared in front of me, so I got a little caffeine into my system while I waited for him to answer. Cups appearing out of nowhere were practically normal in my life, especially around Owen, so I'd long since gotten used to it.

"Ari got away last night," he said at last, sounding like he'd finally caught his breath and settled down some. Ari was the wicked fairy-and my ex-friend-who'd been helping our company's enemy by spying and sabotaging from within Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., the company where both Owen and I worked. We'd exposed her at the company party the night before, and she'd been taken into custody by the company security forces.

"How'd she escape?" I asked.

"I don't know. But I'm going to have to go to the office and see if I can detect any remnant traces of spells that might have been used. I'm sorry to have to bail on you like this."

"Don't worry about it," I insisted. I'd never been the type to stamp my feet and demand that a man make me his number-one priority in life, so I certainly wasn't going to start now when my date's other priority happened to be saving the world from bad magic.

"I'll make it up to you," he promised. Then he tilted his head and gave me a smile that would have made me agreeable even if I had been throwing a hissy fit about his priorities. "Care to walk me to the subway?"

"Sure." I picked up my paper coffee cup. "Good thing we got these to-go, huh?"

His cheeks went pink. "I usually wouldn't do that, but I didn't have time to wait in line." We took our cups and headed to the exit, then went up the steps to the street level.

Away from the crowded coffee shop, we could talk more freely about Ari and Phelan Idris, the guy who had to be behind all this. "I guess Idris's calm exit last night should have been a sign he had something up his sleeve," I said. "He usually wouldn't give up that easily."

"Maybe. But he's never struck me as the type to care all that much about a damsel in distress. He'd be more likely to forget about her and move on to the next person he thinks he can use."

"Unless she knows too much about what he's up to, and if she was willing to betray us to him, it stands to reason she could be persuaded to tell us about him."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure that was the case. And I'm not sure 'persuasion' is the right word." He sounded so cool about it, practically icy, that it sent shivers down my spine.

"You weren't going to torture her, were you?" I asked.

He choked on the sip of coffee he'd just taken, and I had to pat him on the back until he caught his breath. "Torture? No! You didn't think we'd do that, did you? But there are other methods for getting information out of people."

"Good. I'm mad at her, but I wouldn't want to go that far. If she got away, does that mean someone else in the company is working for Idris?"

"That's what I'll have to find out. Did he pull this from the outside, or was it an inside job?"

"Our work is never done, is it?"

"My work is never done. I don't think you'll have to worry much about this one-at least, not yet. We've got some immunes doing verification work on the security force, and they'll be helping with this initial sweep."

I probably should have been stung by the implication that I wasn't needed, but what I actually felt was a great sense of relief. I had my own job to do, and I liked my little corner of the company. I was looking forward to returning to what pa.s.sed for normal during the holidays. Christmas was barely a week away, and the last thing I wanted to do was take on a big new project with only a few days left in the office before the holiday.

We reached the Union Square subway entrance, and Owen paused before heading down. "I'll call you later, and I will make it up to you."

"I'll hold you to it," I replied, giving him a little wave. Only when he was out of sight did I realize that our first real date hadn't gone any differently from almost any other time we'd spent together up to that point. We'd walked to the subway station and talked about work, like we did every weekday morning. Nothing had changed. He hadn't kissed me good-bye, and there had been no affectionate physical contact while we'd walked-no hand-holding, no arm around me.

I couldn't hold back a disappointed sigh as I turned and headed toward home, away from the red-and-white-striped stalls of the holiday market that seemed made for browsing hand in hand with someone special. This certainly wasn't the way I'd imagined this day going not much more than twelve hours ago. I smiled to myself as I remembered the night before.

I'd still been floating on air as we left the office party, giddy not only with my success in exposing Ari as the company spy and saboteur, but also with the fact that Owen Palmer had kissed me and told me how he felt about me.

We took a cab back to my place, and I invited him up for some hot cocoa and a chance to rehash the events of the party. Although the shabby little apartment I shared with two roommates was a far cry from his comfortable town house, he hadn't looked like he felt at all out of place there. I had to restrain myself from doing a happy dance in my kitchen while I made the cocoa. All I could think was, "Owen Palmer is sitting at my kitchen table, and he kissed me!" A lot of strange and wonderful-and some not-so-wonderful-things had happened to me in the last couple of months, but this was the one I had the most trouble believing.

I was almost afraid to leave the kitchen and return to the dining alcove, for fear he wouldn't be there, that I had imagined the whole thing. But there he was, looking so very handsome in a tuxedo. After all the kissing and other displays of affection not too long before, a kind of goofy awkwardness had developed between us. We didn't quite meet each other's eyes as we sat at the kitchen table, drank cocoa, and ate Christmas cookies. I wondered if inviting him up had been a bad idea, after all.

"That was a nice party," I said at last, when I couldn't take the silence anymore.

"Well, aside from a few disruptions," he replied with a crooked smile.

"Yeah, I guess. Are our office parties always that interesting?"

"It depends on how you define 'interesting.' They're probably not anything special to us, but most people would find them a little odd."

"Oh yeah. I can see that if you worked for a brokerage firm you might find this party kind of different." Argh! I was alone with Owen Palmer, and all I could do was make small talk about the office party.

Then to make the situation even more awkward, a key turned in the front door. At least one of my roommates was home. I'd hoped I'd be able to solidify things with Owen a little bit more before subjecting him to my roommates, but I guessed I should have thought of that before inviting him up. Why, of all nights, did they have to come home early on a Friday night?

And, just my luck, both Gemma and Marcia stepped through the door. Then they both froze, their mouths hanging open, when they saw who was sitting at the table. They didn't have to say a word; I could read their faces quite clearly: "So, this is the guy you've been talking about? What took you so long to make a move?"

I glanced at Owen, and the beet-red color of his face was a good sign that he'd read their faces as easily as I had. He stood, like a good gentleman, and I hurried to make introductions. "Gemma, Marcia, this is Owen. We work together." I left out the "And he kissed me! He likes me!" part for decorum's sake. Besides, I was sure we'd get to that the moment he left. "Owen, these are my roommates, Gemma and Marcia."

He came around the table and approached them where they still stood frozen not too far inside the doorway. "It's nice to meet you," he said, shaking their hands. They managed to respond, but they looked like something out of a zombie movie. I thought I detected a hint of drool on Gemma's chin. Then he turned to me and said, "I'd better get home."

As I helped him collect his overcoat from where we'd draped it over one arm of the sofa, I said, "I'll walk you out." I went with him as far down the stairs as the first landing, then he paused.

"Thanks again for a nice night," he said.

"And thank you."

"Do you want to get together tomorrow? Maybe for brunch, and then we can spend the day together?"

It sounded like heaven to me. "Sure. That would be great."

"Okay. How about we meet at ten at that coffee shop on Irving Place near my house? I'd pick you up, but I'm not sure your roommates could deal with that right now." Although his tone was teasing, a flush shot up from his collar to his hairline, and I suspected that he was the one who wasn't sure he could handle my roommates.

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"Great. I'll see you then." And then he placed his hand on my cheek and bent forward to kiss me, a soft, warm, firm, gentle kiss that somehow felt like a hug at the same time.

Even the next day, the memory of that kiss made me almost warm enough to have to unb.u.t.ton my coat, although it was a raw December day. If I thought about it, I could still feel the touch of his hand on my face.

I doubted much had changed in those few hours. He was just being Owen, utterly dedicated to his life's work. That was one of the things I liked about him. If he'd blown off the crisis at work because he wanted to spend the day with me, he wouldn't be Owen and I wouldn't have liked him nearly as much.

I got to my apartment building, unlocked the front door, and went up the stairs, pausing only briefly on that landing where the last kiss had taken place. Then I went the rest of the way to my apartment, which was more crowded than I expected it to be. Not only were Gemma and Marcia there, but Connie, the former roommate who'd married and moved out soon before I came to New York, was there, as well. They were gathered around the kitchen table, looking like they were having a summit meeting.

"Katie! You're back early," Gemma said when she noticed me. "What happened?"

"He had an emergency at work, so we just had coffee," I said as I took off my coat. I left out the part where we had coffee while we walked to the subway station. Gemma and Marcia, in good girlfriend form, weren't inclined to be forgiving toward what they perceived as my dates' missteps.

"What did you say he did?" Marcia asked.

I hadn't said anything about what he did. It was kind of hard to explain without bringing up the concept of wizards, and if I said he worked in research and development, it didn't sound important enough to warrant the kind of emergency absences I could expect from him. "He's an executive with the company I work for," I said. That was probably vague enough and sounded important enough to cover a lot of bases.

Marcia nodded. "Yeah, that's the downside of dating powerful men." As driven and career-oriented as she was, she was the most likely to understand someone else who made work a priority. I was surprised, though, at how wistful her voice sounded.

"When you've got one who looks like he does, you can make the occasional allowance, but don't let him get away with it too often," Gemma said. She turned to Connie and added, "You should have seen this guy. He seemed pretty nice, too, what little we saw of him. Our little Katie snagged herself a good one."

"What brings you down to this end of the island?" I asked Connie.

"Minor relationship crisis," Gemma answered before Connie could speak. "And you're just in time."

"For what?"