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“So you were a bit toasted,” he said with a teasing grin. Even if it was at my expense, I enjoyed the sight too much to complain.
“No ‘a bit’ about it. And here’s where it gets interesting.”
He leaned back against the booth, now looking at me directly, still grinning. “Interesting, how?” He raised one eyebrow.
I glanced around to see how close any other diners were to us then leaned forward across the table. He got the hint and leaned forward until there was only a small space separating us. “I was the most sober person there, other than Ethan. It turned out to be a magical winery,” I whispered. “The wine was enchanted, so everyone else there was even drunker than I was. After dinner, they passed out order forms so people could buy the wines, and it seemed like they were using a variation on that control spell to make people order wine at what Ethan said were outrageously inflated prices.”
“So they were using a wine dinner as a cover for a magical scam?” He managed to scowl, look incredulous, and smile all at the same time.
“Yeah. So Ethan and I called them on it. I don’t think they expected to find a couple of immunes in the party. He offered to fix their ‘typos.’”
“Did you tell the boss?”
“Yeah, and Sales says they stopped being an MSI customer about a year ago.”
“You think the spell was a variation on Idris’s control spell?”
“I’m no expert, remember, but I did feel power in use, and there was something about it that looked similar, but it was also different. It didn’t seem to be nearly as strong as the one I watched you test.”
He nodded and frowned. “Interesting. I wonder if there’s a connection. It’s worth investigating.”
“Are you ready to eat, or am I interrupting a private moment here?” The waitress’s voice startled both of us. Owen blushed bright pink and my cheeks felt uncomfortably warm as we moved back so she could set down our plates. “You two enjoy. Let me know if you need anything else,” she said.
“So, what happened after you foiled their scam?” he asked as he struggled to get catsup out of the bottle onto his fries. His injured arm must have still been bothering him, because he wasn’t very effective at either holding the bottle steady or hitting it, so I reached across the table, took it from him, and poured catsup for him as I answered.
“I don’t remember much else. It got blurry after that point. I remember being in a cab, then Ethan carried me out of the cab but woke me up before we had to climb the stairs. One of my roommates made sure he hadn’t taken advantage of my condition, and that was pretty much it.”
After getting enough catsup out for him, I went to work putting some on my own fries. Now that I thought about it, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard from Ethan since then. He hadn’t had any meetings at MSI, but that hadn’t stopped him from dropping by before. He hadn’t even called me. I knew guys didn’t want to appear too eager by calling too soon, but Ethan hadn’t seemed the type for that. Had I put him off with my drunken belligerence?
“It sounds better than your last date with him.”
“And that one was no thanks to you.” My first date with Ethan had been when Rod and Owen tested him for magical immunity. It got rather weird, to put it mildly. “Why can’t I seem to have a social life without work getting in the way?”
“Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of job you can get away from. Once you become part of our world, it’s difficult to truly escape from it.”
“I notice you left that part out of the company recruiting pitch, along with the part where we have to save the world.” He saved himself from having to answer by taking a conveniently timed bite of burger. I picked up a french fry and pushed it around in the pool of catsup on my plate. “That’s the part that takes getting used to, the idea that things I do now really make a difference. In my old job I was lucky if anything I did still mattered a week later.”
“It’s taking some adjusting for me, too. I always hoped I’d make a difference, of course, but I thought my contribution would be hiding in a lab somewhere doing translations and research. I wasn’t supposed to be on the front lines.”
So our resident superhero was a reluctant one. That was a sobering realization. “I guess we all do our parts, huh?”
“We don’t have much choice.”
After that, we both concentrated on eating for a while. I had a lot to think about. On one level, I hadn’t learned much new about him for my mental fact file other than where he grew up. But on another, it was like I’d gained a whole new insight into his personality.
“It was an interesting day at work, wasn’t it?” he said after a while.
“Oh yeah. Was there anything important on those papers?”
“It was something I was working on directly related to the Idris situation. Now, of course, I’ll have to go a different direction with it.” He shuddered slightly. “I don’t like the idea of someone going through my desk. Not that I have much to hide in there, but still…”
“It’s your space.”
He looked me in the eye. “Exactly.” He held my glance for a while. This time, I was the one who had to duck and look away.
“You know what’s really sad? When my roommates ask me what happened at work today, I’ll have to say, ‘Nothing interesting.’”
He laughed. “Can you imagine what they’d do if you told them the truth?”
