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“You don’t think Idris was involved?”

He shook his head. “No.”Advertisement

“He doesn’t seem to know anything about it.” I told him briefly about my earlier encounter with Idris. “So now in addition to having a rogue wizard with a short attention span to deal with, we also now have his girlfriend, who has more than enough reason to have a vendetta against both of us, and who’s capable of staying focused on one thing for more than five minutes at a stretch. Plus, maybe another player entirely who’s capable of getting past all our security. Fun.”

He made a rueful face. “You said it. We’re trying to track them down, but I’m also curious to see what they do next. I imagine we’ll know soon enough.”

“I guess it’s too much to hope that their big plan is running away to Fiji and leaving us alone.”

He laughed at that. “It would be nice, but I doubt it.”

I had something incredibly witty and clever to say in response, but before I could say it, there was a scream from the back of the restaurant, followed by a whooping alarm and a burst of cold water as the sprinkler system came on.

“Fire!” someone yelled, and I somehow doubted they were testing their First Amendment right to yell “fire” in a crowded restaurant.

Three

Astampede to the exit began immediately, with people knocking over chairs and tables in their haste to escape from the restaurant. Fortunately, our table was against the wall, so we weren’t in the traffic pattern to be trampled. As usual, Owen remained calm in the crisis. “Get your coat,” he reminded me. “It’s cold outside.” Meanwhile, he put on his own coat. I threw my coat over my arm and grabbed my purse, then we plunged into the melee. Owen kept a protective arm around me as we moved through the crowd. The real holdup seemed to be the front door, which was so narrow only two people could get through at a time. It created a bottleneck as people pushed forward in a panic. All the while, the sprinklers drenched us.

“This isn’t good,” Owen muttered. He waved his right hand and whispered something in a mystical language under his breath, and the glass in the front floor-to-ceiling windows vanished. Another wave of his hand and the tables and chairs in front of those windows relocated to another part of the restaurant. “This way!” Owen called out as he guided me toward one of those open windows, but he was so soft-spoken by nature that his voice didn’t carry over the noise of the crowd, the fire alarm, and the approaching sirens.

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I put my fingers to my lips the way one of my brothers had taught me and gave a piercing whistle. “This way!” I bellowed. The crowd split off and followed us as we stepped onto the sidewalk. The police and fire engines had arrived by then, and the police officers directed everyone to the sidewalk across the street from the restaurant. Nobody questioned the glassless windows without any shards on the ground below. “Are you going to put those back?” I asked Owen, my teeth chattering as the cold outside air hit my thoroughly soaked hair and clothes.

“Oh, sorry, I can’t believe I forgot,” he said, but when he waved his hand, the window glass didn’t come back. Instead my clothes suddenly became dry. Then he helped me with my coat, which was drier because it had been folded over my arm, but he worked his magic on that, too. His clothes were suddenly drier, as well. “I’d do something about drying your hair, but that’s more difficult with your magical immunity, and besides, it might be suspicious if we both suddenly looked blow-dried in this crowd,” he said with a rueful grin. I looked around and noticed that all the other escapees from the restaurant looked wet and miserable. “And the glass should come back in an hour or so.”

He pulled me against him, holding me inside his coat with his arms tight around me. That made me a lot warmer, in spite of my damp hair. He wasn’t a big guy, but he had a fair amount of muscle packed onto his slim frame, so being held by him made me feel safe. “My dating luck strikes again,” I said with a sigh. “Normally it only affects me, but now I can ruin the evening for everyone, just by being there.”

He chuckled and hugged me a little tighter. “I don’t think you can take the blame for this. It just happened.” Then he paused and said, “Or maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Take a look at the building and tell me what you see.” I turned my head to look at the building where the restaurant was, and while I saw flames, those flames didn’t appear to be actually doing anything. The structure of the building wasn’t changing at all. I also didn’t smell smoke. Nobody who’d been in the supposedly burning restaurant was coughing or wheezing. pqdm.com