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I felt almost like a character on Sex and the City as we left the office building, going out for a glamorous night in New York with a group of girlfriends. Then I got a good look at Ari and Trix and nearly tripped over my own red shoes. They must have turned on their magical veiling spells when they left the building. I’d never seen them away from work without my magical immunity, so I’d never seen the illusions they wore to hide their status as fairies from the rest of the world. I still recognized them, but it was disconcerting to see them as wholly human. Without her slightly pointed ears and her gauzy wings, Ari’s halo of short blond curls made an even more striking contrast with her goth girl makeup and her edgy clothes. Trix, with her straight strawberry-blond pixie cut, looked like an incredibly cute, pert young woman. Isabel’s appearance hadn’t changed at all, so I presumed that meant she didn’t bother magically hiding her giant size in public.
Isabel put that size to good use and hailed a cab for us by blocking the street with her body. “We can’t be expected to deal with public transportation when we look this fabulous,” she explained.
The cab dropped us at a neon-trimmed bar in SoHo. Half the people in the place looked like models. Some of them were almost as tall as Isabel, but they nearly disappeared when they turned sideways. Isabel had no trouble shoving her way through the crowd and securing a table for us. All the other patrons were too frail to stand up to her.
We ordered drinks—tiny bottles of champagne with straws in them, like all the models were drinking—and watched the crowd. “We don’t stand a chance of getting anyone’s attention with all these models here,” I muttered dejectedly.
“You’d be surprised,” Ari said, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “We have our own ways.”
“Yeah, but where does that leave me?”
Trix patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry. Leave it to us.”
They must have worked quickly, for moments later, there was a rather attractive man at my side. “Hi there,” he said. “I haven’t seen you here before.” I glanced around me to make sure he wasn’t talking to someone else. “Yes, you,” he said with a grin. “You’re the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
I almost fell off my bar stool. “Me?”
“See? You’re so cute! Most of these models know they’re gorgeous and expect you to worship them. But you’re utterly irresistible.”
I looked over to Ari, sure she was putting the mojo on this poor guy, but she gave me an innocent shrug. “That’s really sweet of you to say so,” I replied, not sure he was entirely sane.
“I love your accent. Where are you from?”
“Texas.”
“Of course. That would explain why you’re so charming and genuine.” He held his hand out to me. “I’m Matt.”
Feeling bolder from his attention, I shook his hand. “Hi, Matt. I’m Katie.”
He leaned one elbow on the table in front of me, then placed his other hand on my knee. “Tell me, Katie, how long have you lived in New York?”
“A little more than a year.” I looked over to my friends, who were all watching me. None of them had men around, so I felt bad for abandoning them. “It’s very nice to meet you, Matt, but I’m here with my friends, and I don’t want to be rude to them.”
He grinned. “See, that’s what I like about you. You’re a good person.” He pulled a card out of his back pocket. “You can give me a call and we can get together sometime when you don’t have your friends with you.”
“I’ll have to do that,” I said, taking the card from him and tucking it into my purse.
He gave my knee a squeeze and said, “Don’t ever change,” before disappearing into the crowd.
I turned back to my friends. “What did you do that for?” Ari asked.
“Do what?”
“Ditch the cute guy. You had him right where you wanted him. You might have even had a little fun tonight.”
“But I was with y’all. I didn’t want to ignore you because some guy was talking to me. I did get his phone number, though.”
“You have to promise to call it,” Trix said.
Isabel draped an arm around my shoulders. “I think it’s great that she didn’t ditch her friends. This is a girls’ night out, after all.”
Ari snorted. “Yeah, well, if someone who looks like that is all over me, don’t count on me joining you for dinner.”
A waitress came to our table and handed out another round of drinks. “These are from Matt,” she said. I looked up to see him raise a glass to me from across the room. The only other times a near stranger had bought me drinks, magic had been involved. As far as I could tell, this was the one time in my life when a man had bought my friends and me a drink just because he really liked me. I could get used to that, I thought.
The first little bottle of champagne went straight to my head. The second, along with the giddy feeling of having enticed an attractive man, made me unsteady. I didn’t see how I’d make it through the rest of the night, when Ari declared, “How about dinner now? This place is dead, except for Katie’s admirer, and I’m starved.”
I was proud that I only staggered a little bit when I slid off my stool. I caught Matt’s eye as I made my way out of the bar and gave him a wink and a smile. Take that, Ethan, I thought.
