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We got back to the room with pizzas and drinks to find even more piles of diagrams. Ethan tossed the radio to Owen, then I took it away from him and put a slice of pizza in his hand instead. “Eat something first, then work,” I instructed. “You still look awful.”
After Owen ate enough for me to be willing to let him have the radio, I left him to the work while I lay on the bed and watched a movie on TV. Owen kept sending Ethan out to the car for supplies, and I worried about what the motel manager would think when he went out to get duct tape and a tool kit. It didn’t help that Ethan reported with glee how much time she spent staring out the side window of the office.
Sometime during the evening, I must have fallen asleep. I woke groggy and disoriented from not having the slightest idea how long I’d slept or what time it was. There was light coming from around the edges of the curtains, but I couldn’t tell if it was daylight or the parking lot lights. Merlin sat snoring in an armchair and Ethan was curled up on the other side of the bed. Owen was nowhere to be seen.
I jumped and bit back a shriek when the door opened, but relaxed when I saw that it was Owen. He looked tired but a million times better than he had the day before. He’d shaved and his hair was damp, as if from a shower, and he carried a doughnut box and a cardboard holder full of coffee cups. He set the doughnuts and the coffee on the table, and I eased my way off the bed, trying not to disturb Ethan.
Owen took one of the cups out of the holder and handed it to me, took another for himself, then gestured toward the box. We each took a doughnut and went outside, where there were lawn chairs on the walkway outside the rooms. “I suspect they’d rather sleep, and I can reheat the coffee later,” he said once we were outside and sitting on the chairs.
“Didn’t you need some rest?” I asked. Out in the morning light, the dark circles under his eyes were painfully visible.
“I got a few hours of sleep.”
“But not enough. So, what’s the plan?”
“I’ve rigged up a device that should cancel out the spell being transmitted. You, Gemma, and Marcia will need to get it into the Empire State Building. The device should help you locate the transmitter, and then all you’ll have to do is set it up. I can talk you through it by phone, but I can’t go near the city until you’ve got it working.”
“Are you sure the cell phone will work up there?”
“Marcia’s will. I made a few enhancements to it.”
“Why were you souping up my roommate’s phone?”
“Rod wanted to be sure he could reach her anywhere. It only works between magically enhanced phones, though, so if anyone else calls her when she’s in a dead spot, she’s out of luck. If you had a cell phone, I’d do the same for you.”
“Okay, since you’ve thought through the communications logistics, it should be a piece of cake,” I said, even though it sounded like anything but that. “How will I get back to the city?”
“You can get a train to Manhattan from a station not too far from here. We’ll drop you off, then stay here until the job is done and Ethan can drive us back.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “That motel manager is really going to be curious if the bride disappears during the honeymoon and the honeymoon suite is occupied by three men.” Speaking of which, the motel manager went out of the office to sweep the sidewalk, then did a double take to see me sitting outside with a shorter, darker-haired man after I’d checked in with a tall man with sandy-brown hair. I gave her a cheerful wave, and she blinked and shook her head.
“Yeah, we’ll have to cross this place off the list for potential honeymoon spots,” Owen said with a wry grin. “We probably won’t be welcome back.”
I had to work very hard not to visibly react to that, even as my heart practically leapt out of my chest at hearing him refer to potential honeymoon spots. It was probably just a joke, I told myself sternly.
After a long silence, he said, “I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you.”
“Thanked me?”
“For thinking clearly when nobody else was. I can’t imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t figured out what was going on.”
I thought of and then discarded about a dozen responses, finally settling on, “I guess you’d have had to buy the Spellworks cure.”
“I guess so.” There was another long pause, and then he said, “I wasn’t avoiding you. I mean, before I got sick.”
“I was starting to wonder,” I said with a weak laugh. “When a guy disappears after you’ve argued, it’s generally a bad sign.”
He winced. “Sorry about that. I should have thought about how you’d take it. I got busy trying to fix things in my own way—if we could figure out what was going on, then we wouldn’t have anything to argue about.”
“Well, maybe in the future you could respond to my messages or send up an ‘I’m alive and I don’t hate you’ balloon every so often.”
He grinned at me. “I’ll remember that. In case you hadn’t noticed by now, I’m not too good at communicating and relationships and all that.” His grin gradually faded and he looked more serious. I wondered if I should say something, but then it looked like he might say something, and I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I kept quiet and watched him.
And then the motel door opened and Ethan came outside with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know who got the coffee,” he said, “but I think I love you.”
Owen turned scarlet before he broke eye contact with me and looked up at Ethan. “That was me.”
“In that case, I meant ‘love’ in the spirit of friendship and brotherhood. Thanks, man.”
